Landbridges in 1.5/BI

[irishron2004]

I have read the tutorial in the Scriptorium and read the ones at TWC. I have also read some of the info was made of date when 1.5 was released. I have tried to put a landbridge across Gibraltor, no show. I have tried to put an Italy to Sicily one, no show. I do delete the map.rwm after each one.
1. I read that on the map_heights.tga, the shoreline for the landbridge has to be set to 1,1,1 RGB. I have read that water between can only be 1 pixel wide and set 0,0,253 RGB.
2. I read that the map_groundtypes.tga for the shoreline has to be set to 255,255,255 RGB and match the shoreline on the map_heights.tga.
3. I read that in 1.5 a new map_heights.hgt has to be regenerated. How and where are the tools?
Thank you.

[Makanyane]

The info you have doesn't sound quite correct. The only thing you need to adjust to make the land bridge work is map_heights.tga.

Ground types is only relevant in making sure you don't have forest or mountains in way that would block the path.

Map_heights.hgt is not required in 1.5 and won't help you with this.

To adjust map_heights to make a land bridge you need to realise that only the pixels with completely odd numbered co-ordinates control what turns up as land or sea pixels in map_regions (map regions being half the size). To make a land bridge you need to get map_heights to generate a corrected_regions.tga which has the corners of two pixels from each island touching. The corrected_regions.tga is the 'real' map_regions that the game uses, trying to re-draw the coast on your map_regions won't change anything as heights controls the coastline entirely.

A land bridge from my mod:

The two pixels I've marked in red are co-ordinates 33,195 and 35,195 they are the ones that make the land bridge because in the corrected_regions.tga they give:

the two diagonal corners touching.

You can create something that looks close enough to make land bridge in heights but if you don't have the two odd numbered co-ordinates it won't work.

The land pixels in map_heights do have to be 1,1,1 or lighter (not 0,0,0) but they can be lighter and the sea darker that doesn't effect the creation of the landbridge only the appearance of the map, the presence of the other land/sea pixels on the even or odd/even pixels doesn't effect where units can walk only what coastline looks like.

[irishron2004]

I remember corrected_regions.tga from it seems the original MTW. I don't remember seeing it in RTW. How do you convince this program to generate one?

[Makanyane]

It always does when you launch campaign (at least if old map.rwm is not present) - difference might be it is now found at upper level in same folder as the RTW.exe, so you need to copy it down into campaign folder if you want to use it and re-name to map_regions.tga.

If you aren't getting one I have no idea why, I didn't think it was possible to disable.

[irishron2004]

Okay, I found it. Thank you for the enlightenment. One more question, please. What does the cliffs_debug.tga that generates at the same time do?

Edit: The old line, "One answer creates ten more questions." I just created a landbridge between Byzantium and Turkey but I can't get a ship through there. I have the eastern point of the landbridge only 1 pixel with water on 3 sides. The west side I made straight from the Black Sea to the Agean Sea. How much space do you need to get a ship through there and still have the land bridge?

[Makanyane]

Cliffs debug, pass... Never did work that one out and getting cliffs to align is a pain in the rear! You seem to have to have coastline chunky as they are drawn on the smaller map_features.tga, so don't relate well to intermediate positions in map_heights.tga but even then it doesn't seem to behave quite predictably.

I'll have to check on getting ship past land-bridge, I thought they could get through unless you had a road built over the bridge. You can tweak the size of the land bridge so roads don't get built over it but I can't remember exactly how that worked. Will look later, if you don't find out first.

[irishron2004]

I got the landbridges to wotk with ships. Come to find out hte hard way and with your help, the ship channel has to be 2 pixels wide to get a ship through. Doesn't make any difference north-south or east-west. The trick is the odd numbered pixels and where. On one of mine, the land pixels are 37, 121 and 39,123 with the sea pixel being 38,122. For some reason, the game thinks it's 2 pixels wide for ships and 1 pixel wide for landbridge and will generate a corrected_regions.tga with the diagonal regions.
Thank you.