The World Map Community Project

[Actus Reus]

Jonny, whether trade-ship-circles and regions with settlement can coexist peacefully in the same theatre hasn't been tested, yet. It would indeed be a neat mod that puts some regions ("installed" trade-posts, so to say) in the trade theatres while keeping trade circles around; those regions would add the aspect of real naval control of the theatre through having a port.
Depending on how much else we're able to find out - and we're actually pretty far with handling regions, if you take a thorough glance on this thread - such a mod may happen not too far in the future.

No... No, no, no...

I disagree entirely sorry if this is offtopic but I think if you can transform the trade nodes places thingys into regions with ports then this would be far better than those stupid yellow nodes, and to cover the use of trade ships (which isnt much) some lovely modder could make so that you 1st need to send a trade ship from home/trade place - to - trade place/home, before you can receive an income from the new region..

Either that or just hav it function as an extrmely valuable region with limited development capabilities like some already present in the carribean for example..

[Pares]

i think the testdata contains not implemented content only.

Or maybe it is there for the upcoming DLC?

[Ketzerfreund]

Sooo... I'm back with some more news. Jammi, this may be why your additional heightmap landmasses don't show up:

I've used the mesh converter made by just and the DirectX SDK mesh viewer to take a look at those .rigid_mesh files that are part of the map.

This is what they look like in 3d:

..\data\campaign\terrain\land.rigid_mesh

Compare this to the campaign detail mask files... And look how wrong the ivory coast trade theatre is misplaced.
This is one big sheet with the oceans cut out.

Here's a coastline:
..\data\campaign\coastline\coastline_group26.rigid_mesh


Those two rings (=lakes?) are not on the same level as the rest of the coastline - turn it around a bit:

[Jammi]

This looks very interesting!
But now there is the problem to importing the new mesh files, right?

After I check the new informations I will tell you my results.

[ray243]

I'd hate to be the person doing the chinese and japanese areas
If they're even ever done that is.

Why? There is tons of historical documents in regards to China and Japan during the 18th century.

[Simon754]

My proposal map of Europe:

[Ketzerfreund]

But now there is the problem to importing the new mesh files, right?

Right. We're not able to do so, yet. If you have some experience with 3d modelling (I don't have much. Programs like 3DSMax are too expensive for checking out on a whim, whether modelling may be something for me.) take a look at the converter thread. Maybe just is able to come up with a converter which works in both directions; and maybe with better formats than *.x; that one doesn't seem to be one of the most useful formats out there.


@Simon754:

This is NOT about what region goes where and who held what colony etc. - this shall be a project to provide BLANK map material to be used by actual mods.

Placing regions and giving them to someone is to be done by the actual mods people are working on out there. Errabundi for example.
Here, we'll only provide additional landmasses to populate in the future.

[Antantoon]

wow im new to all this modding stuff lol and this map if it works would be wicked i can't wait to conquer the lands of africa, SE asia and S america you guys rule

[Ketzerfreund]

Jammi, you said you removed the camera restrictions in regions.esf. How? I've just browsed that file again with the EsfEditor, but there's no sign of a "camera-border".

[Dud doodoo]

I remember seeing some camera related stuff in startpos.esf

[Jynx]

Shouldn't there be more regions in the Brirish isles and Scandinavia and maybe Persia and Turkey? France was split up so why not them too?

Also, has the way of editing the map textures been found? Lots of people liked it better im Med I and II so there should be an easy way to revert it.

[Berdiche Knyaz]

You guys are forgetting much of Sweden and Norway.

Norway had Bergen and Trondheim and were very big in those times (not as big, but yiu know what Im saying), Rovaniemi should also be included since it was the only largest city in the north of Finland. Also your forgetting Kalmar, Gotenborg, and Norrkoping or was it Nykoping.

For India and Caribbean, your going to need alot of colony settlements in those regions since they were big.

[Dud doodoo]

As stated in the very first post, this thread is about making a world map and/or editing the terrain of the map. It is not about editing regions within the map, for that you can make a separate thread.

[Errabundi]

Ketzerfreund, I'm just really started to worry whether these people are following all the posts or are just looking at the topic's title and read the last post to add a totally-out-of-the-question answer.

Ask the mod to remove unnecessary posts. I'm getting confused, because I expect a breaktrough or something relevant to the matter and suddely it appears to be Simon's map or BKnyaz'es Norway thoughts.

Guys: please - read the 1 post. And at least check the others then paticipate in the discussion. People are getting irritated.

BTW, THX Dud doodoo.

[Multiball]

Hmmm some interesting progress thought I'd chip in, I think the land.x thing is something to do with the map, but not as important as we think, it's far to low poly to be the empire map, and if theres a land one... may be worth checking if theres a sea.x one. The more I look at the campaign map the more I think the entire thing is one giant max model that we can't see as it's buried somewhere. RIGID_MODEL, RIGID_MESH, RIGID_SPLINE sound like some sort of processed max file, probably a max model run through a converter to strip out useless max data.

Also one reason I think the map is a Mesh, click on any unit and look at the edges of the pathfinding models, they're teselated in places NOT smooth like a texture would be made, It must be highlighting polys in the base map to create movement extents, I definatly think there is some base model that will be very detailed, probably have land and sea and regions and maybe mountains and stuff as part of it.


and Ketzerfreund I think the coastlines models are for waves, and those 2 little circles are Islands not lakes, Im guessing this as Im not 100%, but the waves are broken up and seperated in places, and I had a quick look round some coasts and lakes and there doesnt seem to be any waves on lakes as they're mostly very small and waves would need to be in the middle, whilst Islands have the sapce around them for waves.

[Ketzerfreund]

@Multiball:
I thought so, too, at first, when I had seen those long lists of meshes. I though it'd be conceived like I had shown in post #18. But then came the heightmap experiment in post #110. As you can see, you can directly affect the heights of the landmasses. Paint around in the heightmap file, and your changes will be applied instantly.
I don't understand that land mesh, however; it does not outline what is visible on screen. It does not outline where troops/ships can or can't go (the landmasses are too cluttered for that). So what does it do? On the other hand, I've also seen meshes for the rivers and certain land features... Those might fill the gaps in the land mesh. Gotta look that up again to take a peek at it via the converter and Dxview.
The coastline meshes are not so low poly that they couldn't be used to enframe the landmasses. Too bad they are not properly named.

@Errabundi:
You're right. I'll send a notice to a mod. This pointless region talk is getting out of hand.

@Jynx:
The only campaign map texture I've found so far that looks "meaningful" is rocks1_diffuse.tga in ..\data\campaign\terrain.
There are two big files in supertexture.pack named world_.stpi and .stpd. I have no idea what these can be opened with. I had read something about those files somewhere and tried the suggestions, but to no avail.

[Mr.Jack]

I would like to help with this, is this organised in anyway or are you just finding things out for yourself then posting it on here?

[Ketzerfreund]

So far, it's the latter. We don't have proper access (=a converter to .rigid_mesh, for example) to some of the files, yet, and a lot of how exactly each file contributing to the campaign map shape comes into play.
That means we're not at actually making maps, yet.
If you find out something new, feel free to contribute.

That reminds me... I should finally edit the stuff found out into the opening post, already... We're approaching page ten and the thread is slowly getting tedious to comb through...
No thanks to the people blarbing about who should get what region and in what shape China was back then.

[Mr.Jack]

cool, i just figuring the pack manager thing out first, seems pretty easy to use.

[Baleur]

It definetly seems like it is a huge max model, that is later run through an exporter that seperates the coastlines from the world rigid.blaha file. This could be done with having the coastlines seperate mesh-id's and such, to allow the exporter to properly cut them up and name the new files.

However, it seems to be an extrrrrrrreeeeeeemely stupid way of doing it..
Why not just have a really high-res global texturemap, bumpmap, heightmap and snowmap?
I mean it makes no sense, why would you make a semi-flat wireframe of the continent shapes and coastlines, then export it and cut em up into hundreds of individual coastline meshes? Were the developers drunk or just preffer to make things needlessly complicated?

I have made really really detailed Earth models in 3ds max myself, and thats just the way you do it. You use really high res bumpmaps/texturemaps/specularmaps. You dont model the continents by hand, because first of all it wouldnt be accurate (compared to satellite images), secondly it would be utterly pointless..
Since there are crazy resolution heightmaps out there of our entire planet, down to a few km per pixel.
So again, i cant understand why the developers chose this method..

Especially how the regions seems to be SEPERATED in that global mesh, makes no sense either.
I think it is one huge mesh that is cut up by an exporter plugin/program.
Then the fact that the heightmap still has an effect ingame, as when you wrote "It works!", that may simply be for finer details such as hills and valleys, that have no immediate impact on the passability or gameplay. (notice how the city got pushed up on your lettering)

The mesh itself could be used for the actual shape and borders somehow, while the heightmap is used for visual goodies.
Because look at that mesh, it hasnt got the detail for the mountains in norway etc, just the basic shape outlines.