Brand new canpaign map doubts

[richardo]

Hi guys, I am an absolutely newbie in modding, I have been playing RTW for a long while, and I just get interested in that modding thing, understanding the amount of possibilities (and work) that it brings.

I have been playing around with the guide of Myddraal (superb) about redesigning the campaign map, that with mistakes and patience I made it work more o less.

I know too that there is a lot of posting and probably some of my questions are answered somehow, but I read a lot of them and there is some things I do not catch.

I plan (and dream) to make a brand new campaigns map (I will add more modd at the projects grows), for a fantasy word.

One thing I do not understand is how you guys do quite accurate the shape of the land maps that fits exactly in all the others .tga (regions, roughness, trade, ground types…).do you use a kind of grid, or there is a technique which I ignore??.
This is looks quite important when you do rivers or land-passes, tows..etc.
Another thing I would like to be thought is when I load the modified map, I want to see the effects of “walking” there, so I use to send and spy, but sometimes takes quite a while to reach.
Is there any way to “pop” my, lets say spy, in the new terrain I just added and see how its works?

Finally something I do not know, I got the RTW Gold edition-BI, and I read a lot of for RTW 1.2..or 1.5. How I can know what’s mine?

I think I have a very good idea about what I want to do, and I think that if I get the results is gonna be a very interesting modd to play, but I gonna need a lot of asking (and without doubt a lot of work, but I take the challenge), hope guys you will not get just tired about me.

Nice web site.

Ave Caesar! Morituri te salutant.

[Makanyane]

Finally something I do not know, I got the RTW Gold edition-BI, and I read a lot of for RTW 1.2..or 1.5. How I can know what’s mine?

Start the game, go into the options screen and look in the top right hand corner, it will give you the version number there. I think some early Gold editions were 1.3 version if you have that I recommend you patch it up to 1.5 .

One thing I do not understand is how you guys do quite accurate the shape of the land maps that fits exactly in all the others .tga (regions, roughness, trade, ground types…).do you use a kind of grid, or there is a technique which I ignore??.
This is looks quite important when you do rivers or land-passes, tows..etc.

Important thing to remember is that map_heights.tga is the one that controls the coastline. Once you load your map in RTW it will generate a corrected_regions.tga in the main Rome - total war folder, you can use that one to replace your map_regions.tga as it will show the correct coastline.

the tip for generally matching up the maps is to make a spare copy of the one you want to take information from and resize it to size of other map and paste it in as a new layer, you can select areas on one and layer and then switch to other layer whilst selection is still active.

For example once you have rivers in make a copy of map_features, paste it in as new layer in map_regions, select all the rivers using magic wand and select similar, switch to the map_regions layer and you will see the river paths as a selection so you can line up the regions borders with the edge of the rivers - move cities away from ford positions etc... If you copy map_heights as a layer into map_ground_types you can select all the highest areas using the magic wand with a higher tolerance value, then switch to the ground_types layer and paint those areas with the mountain ground type. You don't have to delete 'spare' layers when you save, just make sure only the one you want is showing...

Spy I'm not sure about - there is possibly a rome shell cheat command that does that adds one or at least moves existing one but I don't know it.