heights campaign v. battle

**Makanyane** · 03-31-2006, 20:00

Hi, is there any thing we can mod to alter the relationship between heights on the campaign map and the degree of slope generated on the in campaign battle maps?

It seems that if you have good looking mountains for the alps etc. on the strat map, unless you restrict v.large areas you get silly phalanx up a mountain battle conditions,
[img=https://img424.imageshack.us/img424/1262/mountain7sj.jpg]
whilst it's fun its obviously unrealistic.

**Makanyane** · 03-31-2006, 20:06

Sorry, please ignore link above, I was trying to host image but it is just coming up with imageshack spam. Should have been jpeg of phalanx / roman infantry at 45% angle.

**Lusted** · 04-01-2006, 10:41

I managed to get the pic to work, i typed out the link by hand, but its a bit small so i don't know what you mean exactly.

**alpaca** · 04-01-2006, 11:10

I should think that the formula to calculate this is hardcoded...

On second thought, I just took a look at descr_geography.txt, maybe you can use that.

**Ciaran** · 04-01-2006, 13:20

It may have something to do with the map_roughness, too. I´m not sure, but so far nowhere in this forum I´ve read what that particular map is doing. You could try and substitute the original map_roughness by a blank black one, if everything is flat in battles then we know for sure.

**Makanyane** · 04-01-2006, 14:17

Lusted have posted new pics below to explain, (worked this time)

Battle Location. This is from Ice Torque's / Bare Bones map - which looks great on strat map. We're trying to do our own map for a mod so are trying to work out if we need to reduce mountain sizes, or have larger innaccessible perimeters to avoid mountineering units:

Alpaca, suspect you might be right about hard coding, don't think game reads descr_geography.txt, tryed changing it = no effect, deleted it (and map.rwm) and game still ran. There is also a descr_geography.db but I haven't found anything to open that. Any ideas anyone?

Ciaran, good idea but no, tryed flat black / blue version and it made no difference, so we still don't know what that does!

**alpaca** · 04-02-2006, 12:45

I think the DB might be made from a complete .txt file as it is the case with descr_items.db
You might check the tools section, maybe Verci already made a tool for that.
Unfortunately I don't have exactly much time to spend on research at the moment (Chivalry eats it), otherwise I'd write one.
Anyways, I think that this might be a good way to follow.
Maybe try that roughness suggestion by Ciaran, too. It might have some influence...

**Makanyane** · 04-02-2006, 14:31

I've tried a pure black map_roughness.tga now, as well, as per Ciaran's suggestion and it doesn't seem to effect the battle map.

Only tool I could find for .db's is one Vercingetorix did for descr_items.db only.
It seems that descr_items.db and descr_vegetation.db regenerate off the .txt files but descr_geography.db does not auto-regenerate, also couldn't spot any reference to anyone succesfully modding it.

As primitive way of finding out what descr_geography.db does I deleted it:

(click to enlarge)

I'm not sure now if editing it will actually fix my original problem anyway, without it the game seems to be picking up the map heights for the adjacent mountains and then creating an averaged plane between the edge heights. The geography.db must then supply the detailed undulations and terrain effects.

Don't worry I wasn't expecting anyone to research this for me, just wondered if anyone had already done anything with it.