The map

[Caius]

Rex, I promise Im starting.

I need a grey map.

[Rex_Pelasgorum]

Ok, i will wait.
But i can help you if you want.

I know its damn hard to make a map...

[Caius]

All help is need.

I know its damn hard to make a map...

I know that too
Contact me here, or in the proboards forums.

[meliritos]

All help is need.

I know that too
Contact me here, or in the proboards forums.

I thought we had the map ready. Anyway, i will send the Inca units to the mods e-mail today, check the mail later. The Inca units are completely remapped and most of them slightly remodelled with fewer polygons, Rome Total War style.Ill finish the mapuche this week, ok?

[Rex_Pelasgorum]

Hmmm, the map is still not the part wich worries me....

I am worried about all that amount of coding and scripting wich the teammembers will have to make

[Caius]

I am doing some testing.

If everythings goes ok., I know what to do.
If not, we are in the same

[Tuuvi]

Hmmm, the map is still not the part wich worries me....

I am worried about all that amount of coding and scripting wich the teammembers will have to make

that is going to be the worst part of making this mod

[Ramashan]

So, seeing as I've taken on the responsibility of creating the map, I'll hijack this thread to do what I call Rama's Ramblings. Where I just go on about my experiences, ideas, and musings concerning my work on things related to the Inca Total War map. (Well, that's the plan, be sure to expect some tangents every so often)

I am a Noob when it comes to mapping or any modding at all. Its something I began as a chance to make my own fantasy worlds come alive and when I saw there was an opportunity to practice and expand my skills on Inca, I jump on board. I say this up front because many of the discoveries I made while working on Inca may seem obvious to some, but they were moments of accomplishment to me.

One thing that really drew me to the Inca:TW team was that they are attempting to do something that, as far I know, has not been done before. Namely, make a highly detailed game set in the world of the Andean cultures. I follow the progress of many mods here and am always eager to see the changes they have made to the maps. And I find most mods are set in locations where maps have already been made to either reference off of or build off of. However, I have yet to find a South American map for the Total War series.

There are many challenges I faced when approaching the task of creating a South American that would load with a CTD. Over the next few posts I will try to cover just a few.

The Land to Water Ration Bug

The first challenge we faced was the shape of the South American continent. It is long and shaped like an eye drop. This isn't something that would fit easily in the vanilla radar map area on the strategy interface. To further complicate this, we decided to add the Mezo-american Aztec faction which added Mexico and Central America to the map.

One of the major problems we immediately encountered was the land to water ratio bug. No matter how we oriented the map to fit all the regions we wanted, it would CTD. Then someone recalled the solution used by Arthurian Total War. They placed symbols on their map to help balance the ratio. Brilliant! (I mean that, we would have never considered that on our own. We thank you and applaud your creative solution to the problem)

Huzza! We have a map that loads without a CTD. For more info on this you'll just have to wait for some official screen shots when we are prepared to release our Premier Preview. I assure you, we here at Inca are proud of the way in which we used this solution.

Well, there's the first of my rambles which covers the first problem we solved in creating our map, kinda fitting don't you think? When next I find the time or the urge I will cover the second problem we encountered: map_heights.

Until next time, Mod well

Ramashan