Guide to the ETW map

[PietroMicca]

Is there any expert of winds?

This is America winds map. In this map I have colored areas with similar values with similar colors. Now I wanna know what kind of data these areas have in common. I suppose that data represent average speed of wind, but I'd like to have confirmation from someone who has some knowledge of the subject.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Notice: I have attached a legend where are present negative ranges. This is not important. There are negative values just because in esf file winds map is in greyscale. I have made this legend only to distinguish higher ranges from lower ranges.

[uanime5]

I tried superimposing the levels, here are the results.

Level 1 with the green channel from level 2.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Level 2 with the green channel from level 1.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

It's possible that the wind map is for determining which way the wind should blow in sea battles.

[wangrin]

Here is a maps of sea and ocean'surface winds that come from oceanworld

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

June, July and August :


December, January, February :

Others maps from climate-charts.com :

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

To determine a wind map, you need :

• wind speed
• wind direction

So, the question is : did ETW wind map contains only wind speed information or did it contain wind direction too ?

[PietroMicca]

Wind is also managed by DB tables

[General Brewster]

Which db pack is that ?

[alhoon]

I counted 6 columns about Foam and Froth and how they seem.
They did their very best to make moddable and realistic foam. Because on release day, that's what everyone would notice and in the years to come that's what people would try to mod and change: The foam and how quickly it dissipates.

[Captain Jack Aubrey]

I counted 6 columns about Foam and Froth and how they seem.
They did their very best to make moddable and realistic foam. Because on release day, that's what everyone would notice and in the years to come that's what people would try to mod and change: The foam and how quickly it dissipates.

it is the breakthrough i personally have been waiting for!!!!

[PietroMicca]

I counted 6 columns about Foam and Froth and how they seem.
They did their very best to make moddable and realistic foam. Because on release day, that's what everyone would notice and in the years to come that's what people would try to mod and change: The foam and how quickly it dissipates.

7 columns

this is the second part of that table

[uanime5]

I decided to test how the alpha channel affects the various ground types. First I found the hex code for the desert, then the impassible level 1 and 2 versions.

Desert passable: 57 57 57 57
Desert impassible level 1: 57 ff 57 ff
Desert impassible level 2: ff 57 ff 57

As I can't add the alpha channel (last pair of numbers/letters) as a colour I decided to triple it, so 57 would be entered as colour 57 57 57.

Here is what the 3 hex codes look like without the alpha channel.


Here is what the 3 hex codes look like without the alpha channel.


PietroMicca do you have a spreadsheet that contains the alpha channels of every cell as I would like to make an image of the alpha channel, then add it to the theatre images I have to see how it changes them?

Unfortunately changing the hex code 57 ff 57 ff ff 57 ff 57 to 57 57 57 57 57 57 57 57 doesn't makes the Sahara and Arabia passable.

[PietroMicca]

PietroMicca do you have a spreadsheet that contains the alpha channels of every cell as I would like to make an image of the alpha channel, then add it to the theatre images I have to see how it changes them?

would you like a spreadsheet with only alpha channel or with triplets for every cell?

[Robertclive]

Any discoveries

[uanime5]

would you like a spreadsheet with only alpha channel or with triplets for every cell?

Triplets would be more useful.

[PietroMicca]

Triplets would be more useful.

here you are

[PietroMicca]

help

taw and me are looking for an easy file format for RGBA

[MrClean]

Is PNG not what you are looking for?

[uanime5]

What do you mean by easy file format? If you means images that uses RBGA I'd recommend tga images (32 bit version as 16 and 24 loses the alpha channel). I've attached a rar with tga versions of the European theatre to this post (I can't upload tga files so I had to use JPEGS).


I've finished making the alpha versions of the European theatre. For some reason the level 1 and 2 alpha channels looked nearly identical to the green channel.

The non-alpha versions of the European theatre can be found here:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...2#post10884382

Here is level 1 of the European theatres with the alpha channel.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Here is level 2 of the European theatres with the alpha channel.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

For level 3 the alpha channel was white where you could walk / sail and black where you couldn't. I had a problem as I couldn't use white (000000) to represent blank tiles, so I decided to use 888888 (grey).

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Here is level 3 where the blank tiles are black for comparison.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Tried changing '57 ff 57 ff ff 57 ff 57 02 00 00 00' to '57 57 57 57 57 57 57 57 10 01 11 ff' but Arabia and the Sahara are still impassible. There may be another file I need to edit.

[General Brewster]

are we working towards a break through or don't i get anything of this all ?

[mAIOR]

Hello gents, Here's a post I made in another section of the forum on my quick look on the map files.

Well, running the risk of reviving an old thread, I tried today to find out how the hell CA managed to make the campaign map. Now, opening the TGA is not hard however, you can't change anything there. The secret I believe lies in the metadata. I used matlab to read the metadata file and all I got was a vector with the following characteristics: <2097164x1 double>
Now, what you get is a row of numbers ranging from 0 to 84 and a string with the letters MTGI which I believe is something the engine reads so to make heads or tails from this info.
Tried using Autocad and other similar programs to read this and they couldn't open it. I'm trying these tools since I'm a surveying engineer and the map appears to be a raster with information given by the metadata. I can send the re-writen metadata file in an excel file or any other format. I feel like I'm wasting my time since what the engine does is probably read this and allocates whatever the entries mean (probably coordinates since this kind of metadata is usually coordinates) and draws the map. Now, since I can't access the engine, I don't know if without any kind of help from CA we can properly understand the files.

Just for fun, I plotted the results and noticed a pattern there. Can try to show you a section of it later.
Well, this is probably not to helpful but it's all I could find for today in a quick (more or less ten minutes) look.
Btw, if CA workers were Surveying engineers, they'd get their asses fired for making such a mess. I don't think the program is any faster by presenting data in this format. Quite the opposite actually.

EDIT: The plot actually reminds me of GPS code signal... wierd could be that the slight alterations in the pattern actually mean specific points on the map. I'm inclined to try changing one of the values to something ridicously high and see the difference ingame.

EDIT2: gonna reinstall POSTGIS which is a GIS tool which can read metadata from various sources and has a powerful SQL manager attached to it and I'll try to load this file there and see what I get. Don't have a lot of hope as this file is really chaotic.

Cheers...

[Taraphir]

There are hundreds of clever people working at present on modifications of Total War Games.
At least some of them could now and then lend a helping hand on researching the ETW campaign map.
Furthermore I believe that some members of the community undertake mapping studies on Napoleon and Shogun 2.
They should coordinate with the chaps doing the same for Empire Total War here on this thread.

[PietroMicca]

Hello gents, Here's a post I made in another section of the forum on my quick look on the map files.

Well, running the risk of reviving an old thread, I tried today to find out how the hell CA managed to make the campaign map. Now, opening the TGA is not hard however, you can't change anything there. The secret I believe lies in the metadata. I used matlab to read the metadata file and all I got was a vector with the following characteristics: <2097164x1 double>
Now, what you get is a row of numbers ranging from 0 to 84 and a string with the letters MTGI which I believe is something the engine reads so to make heads or tails from this info.
Tried using Autocad and other similar programs to read this and they couldn't open it. I'm trying these tools since I'm a surveying engineer and the map appears to be a raster with information given by the metadata. I can send the re-writen metadata file in an excel file or any other format. I feel like I'm wasting my time since what the engine does is probably read this and allocates whatever the entries mean (probably coordinates since this kind of metadata is usually coordinates) and draws the map. Now, since I can't access the engine, I don't know if without any kind of help from CA we can properly understand the files.

Just for fun, I plotted the results and noticed a pattern there. Can try to show you a section of it later.
Well, this is probably not to helpful but it's all I could find for today in a quick (more or less ten minutes) look.
Btw, if CA workers were Surveying engineers, they'd get their asses fired for making such a mess. I don't think the program is any faster by presenting data in this format. Quite the opposite actually.

EDIT: The plot actually reminds me of GPS code signal... wierd could be that the slight alterations in the pattern actually mean specific points on the map. I'm inclined to try changing one of the values to something ridicously high and see the difference ingame.

EDIT2: gonna reinstall POSTGIS which is a GIS tool which can read metadata from various sources and has a powerful SQL manager attached to it and I'll try to load this file there and see what I get. Don't have a lot of hope as this file is really chaotic.

Cheers...

concentrate on esf files