Regarding the landmass ratio...

**IceTorque** · 06-27-2006, 10:27

Makanyane, nice work, the maps huge.

with your radar maps, just resize and rename one of your map tga's, it should fit perfectly then. If you work out a way to hide the extra landmass, please let me know.

-IceTorque

**Lentonius** · 06-27-2006, 16:49

Makanyane, good idea about 'hiding' extra landmass, but the only problem is that it could look a but ugly on the map, and also may affect loading times.

However, i really would appreciate any feedback by CA on the exact issues of the landmass ratio, as it is something really unknown in the community, even expert mappers like Icetorque and BDH still dont know the exact limits, and this really effects mod progress, and ultimetely, creativity.

Because I want to create a large map for strategic gameplay, the limitations of this ratio really show, and there seems no clear way to 'find a loophole' in the limitation.

Even if the 'mountains' plan worked, it would still not look right, the water flows in the map, and a blank blue texture would not look nice, also, you have to assign this 'sea' to a region, also causing problems everywhere. Anywho, i am testing this 'mountain' thing now, cya

Lentonius

**Lentonius** · 06-27-2006, 16:53

hmm, the campaign goes back to the main menu, its really fustrating

**Avicenna** · 06-27-2006, 17:21

I'm no modding expert, in fact I'm a complete modding noob. But I think Lentonius has a good idea.

Can't you just have, say, the coastline and nearby as 'water', creating a huge impassable area at the ocean? The impassable section will be 'land', with no settlements on it and looking like water, so the human won't land there.

**IceTorque** · 06-27-2006, 18:58

Tiberius, thats the problem, how do you make it appear as water. I think Makanyane has the best idea, surround the xtra land with deep ocean so FOW will keep it covered. Though the problem of large areas of impassable terrain causing CTD's would need to be fixed, as I think the AI behaviour could be effected if the xtra land was passable.

-IceTorque

**Makanyane** · 06-27-2006, 19:02

Interesting but I'm not sure how relevant finding:

Played with getting rid of boat shaped land on my map again, can get down to dividing sea with 1pixel land border i.e:

1pixel width doesn't show horizontally on radar map with fow off, but unfortunately vertical or zigg-zagged diagonal does show up, point to point pixels on the diagonal brings back CTD. At least I think this proved theory on dividing seas...

Will try playing with ground types now area is smaller to try disguising land.

**Makanyane** · 06-27-2006, 20:43

Tried assigning ground types to 1 pixel division, left as water works but gives default land appearance, changed to beach or swamp work, using impassable forest and high mountains gives same old CTD, so no progress there.

Ice Torque: using FOW / deep water doesn't work as I'd hoped forgotten that with FOW on you still see ground type in main strat map if you scroll over it, so appearance there still needs to be sorted. Also outlines of 'region' still show up on radar map - game seems to overlay it - having FOW not reach it only stops it lighting up on radar map with faction ownership (rebel) colour:

don't know how clear to view this is but vertical line and rebel island in corner are game generated and not on my radar map - they could possibly be slightly disguised on radar map by fading in dark area to cover them.

If 'spare' land ground type is passable terrain but rebel owned and unreachable by sea do you think that would still effect AI?

Lentonius If you're going back to menu (not desktop) then its not solely the landmass / impassable terrain issue thats causing your initial crash.

**Lentonius** · 06-27-2006, 21:01

Makanyane, nice screenies, but I dont think that this would solve the problem.

According to Icetorque, the bigger the map, the less water you can have in proportion to land. For a Europe map, with the mediterranean sea, this is a big problem, as it would be hard to create a european map much bigger than in Vanilla without causing CTDs by this, frankly, silly limitation.

However, with a europe map, I dont think that this would really stop this rule, as even with a 1 pixel line, there will still be pretty much teh same amount of water, do you get what i mean?

Unfortunately, I think it will be very hard to manually configure a larger map to work, it would be very buggy, and not look very good either.

I think the map is the number one priority for CA to offer support, guidance, and hopefully, solutions to with. From the beginning it has been impossible to fully understand how the map works, and the various limitations. Even if CA could not offer a solution, knowledge of the exact limitations would prove invaluable, and would be much thanked by the community.

Also, if CA are making a 1.7 and 1.8 patch, removal of the landmass issue would be a top priority in my opinion.

Regards
Lentonius

**IceTorque** · 06-27-2006, 21:43

If 'spare' land ground type is passable terrain but rebel owned and unreachable by sea do you think that would still effect AI?

That will be ok, it's only if the spare land has no region of it's own, then the nearest region to it will aquire the spare land ( as you would already know ). Then the AI will try and send an army to guard it's border. if it can't reach it, then it will just stand on the nearest point.

Lentonius, you really do want a giant map. Lets hope with MTW II we can stretch it a bit more than my tiny WarMap. I'm testing Makanyane's theory on dividing seas, so maybe we'll break the barrier yet. If not, would you like an all land map to play with ?

-IceTorque