modding campaign map

[spartan_warrior]

Just to give a little update, I hope I will be able to work more with the maps in the near future, I am currently busy with exams but I am finished at the end of this week and I hope to experiment more with the maps over Christmas break, however of course not much can be done without the supertextures. I wonder if CA has any updates regarding this, Lusted said they were looking into it, but that was a month and a half ago. Maybe someone can question Lusted about it, see if he can give any news about updating the tools.

Edit: I have been doing some work related to these maps, while not actually using 3ds Max, I have been working with ArcGIS to create lots of vector sources to be used in mapping later. For example, I just created a detailed dataset for the major Roman road networks, so if ever we can create a map for Rome it can have detailed roads following the actual historical routes.

[BigDogDavis]

Just to give a little update, I hope I will be able to work more with the maps in the near future, I am currently busy with exams but I am finished at the end of this week and I hope to experiment more with the maps over Christmas break, however of course not much can be done without the supertextures. I wonder if CA has any updates regarding this, Lusted said they were looking into it, but that was a month and a half ago. Maybe someone can question Lusted about it, see if he can give any news about updating the tools.

Edit: I have been doing some work related to these maps, while not actually using 3ds Max, I have been working with ArcGIS to create lots of vector sources to be used in mapping later. For example, I just created a detailed dataset for the major Roman road networks, so if ever we can create a map for Rome it can have detailed roads following the actual historical routes.

I think you're probably the only one who wants the Roman map. No offence, but they even admitted the Rome map system is gonna be different. It'd be a much more productive use of your talents if you worked on an east Asian map.

[weeeee659]

I think you're probably the only one who wants the Roman map. No offence, but they even admitted the Rome map system is gonna be different. It'd be a much more productive use of your talents if you worked on an east Asian map.

It's probably easier if you have something to start with rather than starting from scratch. It is also probably just as productive at the moment, because you can't do without the supertextures.

[wangrin]

I think you're probably the only one who wants the Roman map. No offence, but they even admitted the Rome map system is gonna be different. It'd be a much more productive use of your talents if you worked on an east Asian map.

As it is not possible to modify supertextures, it's even not worth to work on an east Asian map.
And if CA or a tool maker from TWC release a supertexture tool, it will be possible to work on any map.

As spartan_warrior is the one who work on campaign map for S2TW/FotS, he can choose the subject he is the most interested in and not necessarily an Asian map.

[AngryTitusPullo]

What is supertexture use for ? Can for example an existing map province be divided without needed that ? Let say the large province in the north be divided into two smaller province with just a new city added. Can it be done with existing tools provided ? All existing resource etc remains.

[wangrin]

Supertexture is used for texturing the campaign map.

If you work on the existing S2TW campaign map, only dividing province for instance, it is not a problem, you shouldn't need a new supertexture.
But if you want to add island or completely new region, you need to edit supertexture, something that is not possible without tool.

Link : [Tool] Stupid (supertexture tool)

[AngryTitusPullo]

Thanks.

[weirdoascensor]

Without Supertextures, For The Time Being, Province-Splitting is Good Enough...
Make Han-Based Maps, Rather than Kuni-based...

[BigDogDavis]

It's probably easier if you have something to start with rather than starting from scratch. It is also probably just as productive at the moment, because you can't do without the supertextures.

As it is not possible to modify supertextures, it's even not worth to work on an east Asian map.
And if CA or a tool maker from TWC release a supertexture tool, it will be possible to work on any map.

As spartan_warrior is the one who work on campaign map for S2TW/FotS, he can choose the subject he is the most interested in and not necessarily an Asian map.

Just saying, at the moment you can't do much with a European map due to all the Asian architecture and units.

[Erwin Rommel]

.For The Time Being, Province-Splitting is Good Enough...
Make Han-Based Maps, Rather than Kuni-based...

This.

[uanime5]

Given that the supertexture is just a giant image file you can make a new one using photoshop. When making a new map I'd recommend you just create a basic supertexture (green for land, blue for sea) and improve the level of detail later.

[spartan_warrior]

Given that the supertexture is just a giant image file you can make a new one using photoshop. When making a new map I'd recommend you just create a basic supertexture (green for land, blue for sea) and improve the level of detail later.

Supertextures, don't quite work that way in Shogun anymore, in Empire and Napoleon they did, but they have since changed; which is what causes the problems with the current tool. In Shogun it doesn't affect the ground textures, they are controlled by other means, rather it controls the map's normal/bump mapping, without it the map looks really bland. The supertexture also serves as the parchment map you see over the unexplored areas, and again without that you have severe problems, from my experiments without an appropriate supertexture that FOW map becomes a very bright white, making it unplayable.

Ultimately no real progress for mapping will be made until they can be edited. Small things like moving cities, resources, and splitting regions can be done, but you will run into problems as the 2d map will not represent these changes. Even things like adding Korea or Edo is too much, for now.

In reality Shogun 2 is far too limited in scope for any major mapping, even an Asia map would have severe problems, as we are ultimately limited by animations, Samurai fighting styles don't exactly fit for China and other areas.

I won't be working on an Asia map, I would, but given the limited free time I have between work, school, and other things, I would rather prefer to start building resources for the future. Most of the work I have been doing isn't even with 3DS Max. I am mostly creating accurate datasets in ArcGIS to later convert to be used in 3DS Max. ArcGIS is a very expensive piece of software, the only reason I have it because of my school supplied laptop, so I have a limited amount of time in which I will have access to it, once I am finished school my license ends. Not to mention this summer I will in all likelihood be in the far north of Canada doing GPS collection and mapping work, not exactly a place where I will have time to be able to mod games. My time is better spent creating data which can be used for Rome and hopefully the eventual release of mod tools for it. Shogun is just too limited in my mind, even with the mod tools, I mean we have not even seen any new unit models made with the tools yet.

[hellfire15]

Supertextures, don't quite work that way in Shogun anymore, in Empire and Napoleon they did, but they have since changed; which is what causes the problems with the current tool. In Shogun it doesn't affect the ground textures, they are controlled by other means, rather it controls the map's normal/bump mapping, without it the map looks really bland. The supertexture also serves as the parchment map you see over the unexplored areas, and again without that you have severe problems, from my experiments without an appropriate supertexture that FOW map becomes a very bright white, making it unplayable.

Ultimately no real progress for mapping will be made until they can be edited. Small things like moving cities, resources, and splitting regions can be done, but you will run into problems as the 2d map will not represent these changes. Even things like adding Korea or Edo is too much, for now.

In reality Shogun 2 is far too limited in scope for any major mapping, even an Asia map would have severe problems, as we are ultimately limited by animations, Samurai fighting styles don't exactly fit for China and other areas.

I won't be working on an Asia map, I would, but given the limited free time I have between work, school, and other things, I would rather prefer to start building resources for the future. Most of the work I have been doing isn't even with 3DS Max. I am mostly creating accurate datasets in ArcGIS to later convert to be used in 3DS Max. ArcGIS is a very expensive piece of software, the only reason I have it because of my school supplied laptop, so I have a limited amount of time in which I will have access to it, once I am finished school my license ends. Not to mention this summer I will in all likelihood be in the far north of Canada doing GPS collection and mapping work, not exactly a place where I will have time to be able to mod games. My time is better spent creating data which can be used for Rome and hopefully the eventual release of mod tools for it. Shogun is just too limited in my mind, even with the mod tools, I mean we have not even seen any new unit models made with the tools yet.

Do you think you could find the time to write down how you did all the stuff you did? (like changing regions, etc.) This would help people that just want simple changes like more provinces on the current map.
A mod with such features would also help break the stigma that surrounds map-modding of the current(and last) generation of Total War. And more people interested would mean more people that might know how to make a tool with which to fix the supertexture!

Thanks in advance!

[BigDogDavis]

My time is better spent creating data which can be used for Rome and hopefully the eventual release of mod tools for it. Shogun is just too limited in my mind, even with the mod tools, I mean we have not even seen any new unit models made with the tools yet.

Take a look again

Another thing I would like to say is that the way campaign mpas are made is changing completely for Rome II. Anything you make using Shogun 2 will not work in Rome II. There is no point starting campaign map projects now for it.

I don't wanna sound hostile, but using your resources to try and make a Rome map is fruitless.

[spartan_warrior]

I don't wanna sound hostile, but using your resources to try and make a Rome map is fruitless.

You obviously don't have a lot of experience working with 3d modelling software or else you would realize that polygons are polygons, splines are splines, vertices are vertices no matter what file format they are. As long as Rome uses a 3d model for its map (which it will, unless they decide to go back to the 2d maps of STW and MTW, which I highly doubt), resources made now can be modified later when/if tools are released. This is all evident by the fact that I can take or create GIS data, an entirely different data structure, and use it's geometry to create a map which would work in the game.

I have no intention of even creating a working, finished map product in Shogun, way to many hours would be needed to do that, I spent over 50 hours already just stripping the map down to just 4 regions. It's a long, complicated process, one which I don't even think I could write a tutorial for. The amount of individual errors I ran into doing this was insane, all of which had to be troubleshooted differently. Before all this one needs a working knowledge of 3DS MAX (you don't need to be an expert, I certainly am not), without already knowing the basics of MAX you won't be able to do anything. There's not much I can do to help people about this, I am not going to write how to use MAX itself (there are plenty of tutorial out there already for this).

For now though I am not even working with MAX, I prefer ArcGIS, as I know that software better, I can build all the datasets a want with it and convert it later to work in MAX. And seeing as how next semester I have a major mapping project to do, and I intend to create several detailed maps of the later Roman Empire for it, all this work is essentially serving 2 purposes for me. I would love to work on a map for Shogun, but I just don't have the time for it, and without supertextures were are severely limited anyways. Once Rome comes out, I won't be playing Shogun much anymore, and there is no way I would have a map done for it before then, especially since from May until August I will likely be way up north in the arctic working.

Take a look again

If you could point some out to me, as the only projects I have seen are made with the unit editor, just mixing and matching pre-existing pieces. I have seen no units yet made with new objects made and exported from 3DS MAX.

[BigDogDavis]

I admire your optimism about the Rome 2 map, but considering that the current assembly kit is just a glorified version of the Pack file manager, I doubt we're going to be seeing an in depth kit for Rome 2.

Also I didn't say anything about unit models.

[spartan_warrior]

I admire your optimism about the Rome 2 map, but considering that the current assembly kit is just a glorified version of the Pack file manager, I doubt we're going to be seeing an in depth kit for Rome 2.

Also I didn't say anything about unit models.

That glorified pack file manager is all that is needed for mapping, the only thing missing is the suppertextures, which is a shame, because all the complex things such as the pathfinding can be remade now. If CA eventually releases similar tools for Rome, you will see more mods. It's just that Shogun in really limited in scale, we are limited to just Japan, unless you want to try to recreate everything from scratch, which is more than I think anyone wants to undertake.

My mistake about the unit models, when you said "Take a look again" I thought you were referring about my statement the lack of finding new unit models. Even though they too can be made now, it just seems that no one is interested in making any. We finally have a set of tools now, but so few people seem to be taking advantage of them, so many years without comprehensive tools a lot of modders have lost interest I guess. Hopefully, Rome 2 changes that, the demand for mods will be quite high for it I'm sure, and if they don't end up releasing similar tools for it as this Assembly kit, I'm sure it will be my last total war game

[MrClean]

Given that Shogun is limited in scope, as well as any ability to make a proper map mod with the right texture, has anyone taken a look at the possibility of reverse engineering the Shogun tools for Nappy or Empire? IIRC, someone had tossed around the idea of trying it, but I haven't seen anything since.

Since I haven't had any time to even look at the DLC yet, would any of those that have think that this is even a remote possibility?

[spartan_warrior]

Given that Shogun is limited in scope, as well as any ability to make a proper map mod with the right texture, has anyone taken a look at the possibility of reverse engineering the Shogun tools for Nappy or Empire? IIRC, someone had tossed around the idea of trying it, but I haven't seen anything since.

Since I haven't had any time to even look at the DLC yet, would any of those that have think that this is even a remote possibility?

There is a potential that it could be done, but it would be an extreme amount of work to test it, since we don't have any sample 3ds max files for those maps as we do for Shogun it's unknown and everything would need to be built up. You would be pretty much poking around in the dark, doing trial and error tests until something works. My guess is that it would be possible, but alot more manual testing would be required, as the assembly kit tests if the map will work with Shogun's campaign database and start position files, you would not have this for Empire or Napoleon.

Though this is not something I care to undertake, if I had the time, I would much rather try my hand at cracking the supertextures, if CA is not going to update the Assembly kit to edit them.

[BigDogDavis]

The modding for Rome may be just as limited. There's a small chance we could see some mods from eras other than Ancient, but the chances of being able to make mods set in the 15th-19th century are impossible, unless for some reason guns and their animations are left in the games resources.