Guide to the ETW map

**taw** · March 17, 2012, 05:47 PM

Here's an example of a fairly deep cell:

v1/v2 are both NOT exactly within the cell bounding box, vertices sometimes go slightly outside cell.
At least one end seems to be always within the bounding box.

This suggests they are not point features, they're something else.

**taw** · March 17, 2012, 05:54 PM

Many cells with mask2=ffffffff with mask1 with few bits set strongly disproves my theory that it's one 64-bit mask. It's two 32-bit values that still look like some kind of masks to me.

No good idea what they are. They seem to mostly be 00XX00YY, with 1st and 3rd most significant bytes zeroed, and usually least-significant byte is also zero, or <=15 at least (usually, there are exceptions).

Most of the action seems to be in 2nd most significant byte.

It's either 00XX00YY or all FFFFFFFF as far as I can tell. I see no other strict regularities,
in particular none of mask/mask1/mask2 is always superset or subset or another.

**taw** · March 17, 2012, 06:11 PM

S2TW uses exactly the same regions.esf format as ETW (so pressumably NTW does as well).
It might be worthwhile to use S2TW files for testing since it's simpler than ETW's.

It seems that vertex pairs that go outside of quad's bounding box are repeated twice. Those that don't are not.

For example 25060 occurs in:

Quad for:

<v2 x="-700.0" y="280.0"/>
<v2 x="-680.0" y="290.0"/>

<cell_quad v1='25060 (-679.65881,288.46317)' v2='27427 (-680.00043,288.63312)' mask1='00b40000' mask2='00240008'/> (crossing box, see below)

Quad for:

<v2 x="-680.0" y="285.0"/>
<v2 x="-670.0" y="290.0"/>

<cell_quad v1='24858 (-679.45221,288.25653)' v2='25060 (-679.65881,288.46317)' mask1='00b40000' mask2='00240008'/> (not crossing box, no inverse anywhere)
<cell_quad v1='25060 (-679.65881,288.46317)' v2='27427 (-680.00043,288.63312)' mask1='00b40000' mask2='00240008'/> (crossing box, see above)

Sometimes copies are exact, something they're reversed (5186-5162, S2TW):

<cell_quad v1='5186 (-30.0012073516846,-141.60289)' v2='5162 (-29.92026,-141.44437)' mask1='00010003' mask2='0001000c'/>
<cell_quad v1='5185 (-31.1498851776123,-143.55949)' v2='5186 (-30.0012073516846,-141.60289)' mask1='00010003' mask2='0001000c'/>
<cell_quad v1='5162 (-29.92026,-141.44437)' v2='5186 (-30.0012073516846,-141.60289)' mask1='0001000c' mask2='00010003'/>

Reversed ones have masks switched backwards. This sort of implies "masks" might be some kind of vertex flags.

If we figured out what masks are, we could make a script which converts a list of vertex pairs into fully formed query info quad tree. This would make massive progress towards working map compiler.

**taw** · March 18, 2012, 02:54 AM

"Mask" as in set of bits where 1s and 0s mean on or off, and that's the only thing the number means.

That was my first guess (8x8 bit array showing which parts of quad tree had something in it - that's how quad_trees/*.xml in startpos.esf work).
Now I'm not sure, but it's definitely not IDs either.

My current best guess is that "mask1" is associated with v1 somehow, and "mask2" with v2 (like you said), based mostly on S2TW
where cell_quads duplicated across boxes can have both v1 switched with v2, and mask1 switched with mask2.

Copying line segment that intersects with multiple bounding boxes is exactly how quad trees are normally used.
I'm not sure why it's sometimes inverted, it probably doesn't matter.

More tests. Assuming each "mask" is actually two numbers (so 4 numbers per line segment).

ETW query_info_1.xml: 0x0000 to 0x00cc (204)

ETW query_info_2.xml: 0x0000 to 0x0004 (4) and 0xffff

S2TW query_info_1.xml: 0x0000 to 0x001b (27)

S2TW query_info_2.xml: 0x0000 to 0x002a (42)

S2TW query_info_3.xml: 0x0000 to 0x0001 (1) and 0xffff

So these look like IDs or indexes of some kind after all - except we have two IDs per vertex.

They are not vertex IDs or cell IDs - there are far too many cells and vertices.
There are too many slots and areas, and not enough regions as far as I can tell.

There are some u2s in area/*.xml (unknown1 id, island id, unknown2 id) but there's no obvious match either.

This is probably a solvable problem. Any more ideas?

**PietroMicca** · March 18, 2012, 06:56 AM

Originally Posted by taw

ETW query_info_1.xml: 0x0000 to 0x00cc (204)

This is the first thing I have noticed. In ETW there are 205 regions, from 0 to 204. I will take a better look later.

**taw** · March 18, 2012, 03:22 AM

I changed the format to something better corresponding to what we know:

No hexes, simply splitting "mask1/mask2" (which turned out not to be masks) into 2 16-bit integers each.

a1/b1 probably correspond to v1, and a2/b2 probably correspond to v2.

If someone can tell me the meaning of a1/b1/a2/b2 that would be lovely.

**taw** · March 18, 2012, 08:07 AM

From one cell:

From another:

<line_segment v1='58057 (-2.09213209152222,316.53064)' a1='70' b1='0' v2='30262 (-2.16471338272095,316.5903)' a2='36' b2='43'/>

So a1 and a2 could plausibly be region numbers (and I'll comment them as such).

b1/b2 really don't look like that. And they're mostly 0 everywhere.

There are also two u16s in cell - first I'll assume is region code as well, second - who known.

Here's how it looks now:

ETW query_info-1 b = 0 to 153
ETW query_info-2 b = 0 to 3 and 65535
S2TW query_info-1 b = 0 to 20
S2TW query_info-2 b = 0 to 42 and 65535
S2TW query_info-3 b = 0 and 65535 only

Does it look like anything?

EDIT: It totally is the number of area within region. Region "all" has 154 areas, and everything else checks.

**taw** · March 18, 2012, 08:14 AM

There are trivial details like figuring out which of multiple regions/areas cell claims as its own, but the entire thing is fully decoded for all practical purposes now.

**PietroMicca** · March 18, 2012, 08:27 AM

This makes things much harder to understand. ~~How can be inserted in a database 2 points in such a way that they are always belonging to two different regions?~~

**taw** · March 18, 2012, 08:49 AM

Originally Posted by PietroMicca

This makes things much harder to understand. How can be inserted in a database 2 points in such a way that they are always belonging to two different regions?

They're from different areas, not necessarily different regions. (grepping shows no cases of same region1=region2 and area1=area2 anywhere).

<line_segment v1='3084 (-1.03942561149597,301.97079)' region1='50 (spain)' area1='5' v2='37345 (-2.33167123794556,302.08218)' region2='50 (spain)' area2='0'/>

Are these line segments borders or connecting lines or what? Have we ever bothered drawing them?

**PietroMicca** · March 18, 2012, 08:56 AM

Originally Posted by taw

They're from different areas, not necessarily different regions. (grepping shows no cases of same region1=region2 and area1=area2 anywhere).

<line_segment v1='3084 (-1.03942561149597,301.97079)' region1='50 (spain)' area1='5' v2='37345 (-2.33167123794556,302.08218)' region2='50 (spain)' area2='0'/>

Are these line segments borders or connecting lines or what? Have we ever bothered drawing them?

Yes, they are what I have said. I have drawn query info for egypt campaign in Napoleon. I only mean that create this kind of file will be much harder for us. There's some complicated technique we don't know and hardly we will know it.

Anyway, there's another similar mask in regions.esf and it's about <ary type="connectivity"> in areas.

**uanime5** · March 18, 2012, 08:31 AM

Congratulations on figuring this out Taw. I'm not sure why but 65535 is often present in the first area entry in the regions.esf\theatres_and_region_keys\region_data\regions\areas. I believe it tells ETW which land mass this region belongs to, while the other area entries tell ETW about specific things in this area. The most common land masses are Eurasia (13) and the Americas (20). The other land masses are usually island, such as the UK (11) or Trinidad and Tobago (108); or areas that cannot easily be accessed, such as French and Dutch Guyana (14).

The primary purpose of this is to stop the AI trying to march their armies across the sea, such as going from Italy to Corsica. If Italy (13) and Corsia (82) are classified as different land masses then the AI knows it can't march between them and needs to sail from one land mass to another one.

Region 'all' refers to the rivers in ETW.

**PietroMicca** · March 18, 2012, 08:35 AM

65535 is for passable areas

if I remember correctly 256 is for impassable (but only in ETW)

**uanime5** · March 18, 2012, 08:55 AM

Originally Posted by PietroMicca

65535 is for passable areas

if I remember correctly 256 is for impassable (but only in ETW)

It's possible that only the 65535 areas are passable, while the other 307 entries refer to impassible areas. I don't think 256 is the only impassible number because the Alps are impassible but they're all 200.

**PietroMicca** · March 18, 2012, 08:58 AM

Originally Posted by uanime5

It's possible that only the 65535 areas are passable, while the other 307 entries refer to impassible areas. I don't think 256 is the only impassible number because the Alps are impassible but they're all 200.

Alps are split. 256 for areas entirely impassable and so not split.

**Taraphir** · March 18, 2012, 01:48 PM

Be not afraid of greatness dear campaign map researchers: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.

**PietroMicca** · March 19, 2012, 12:17 PM

regions.esf research close to 100%

**taw** · March 19, 2012, 12:26 PM

Originally Posted by PietroMicca

regions.esf research close to 100%

**PietroMicca** · March 19, 2012, 01:01 PM

Originally Posted by taw

I know there are still minor lacks of knowledge. We also don't know meaning of unknown float in wind map.

**PietroMicca** · March 19, 2012, 01:06 PM

Originally Posted by taw

Where is this? I can't find.

in france-0001.xml I have this

<u2>553</u2>
<u2>192</u2>
<u2>104</u2>

Thread: Guide to the ETW map

Thread Tools

Search Thread

Display

Hybrid View

Re: Guide to the ETW map

Re: Guide to the ETW map

Re: Guide to the ETW map

Re: Guide to the ETW map

Re: Guide to the ETW map

Re: Guide to the ETW map

Re: Guide to the ETW map

Re: Guide to the ETW map

Re: Guide to the ETW map

Re: Guide to the ETW map

Re: Guide to the ETW map

Re: Guide to the ETW map

Re: Guide to the ETW map

Re: Guide to the ETW map

Re: Guide to the ETW map

Re: Guide to the ETW map

Re: Guide to the ETW map

Re: Guide to the ETW map

Re: Guide to the ETW map

Re: Guide to the ETW map

Posting Permissions