BigMap 0.99 for M2TW

[repman]

@Spurius
now after including your big map in DLV 1.4 I can play myself the game as I like... a big thank you from my side

repman

[Spurius]

@stefke - you're absolutely right - they are a bit of an eyesore to me too, but was not high on my list yet, since they worked - will fix them, also at Constantinople, same thing, and make all landbridges look better, too.

Extra provinces can be added to a later verson at will - there will probably be a whole library to chose from, later, I am planning to make a collection of region mods per era, and can even blow up certain parts of it to mini-maps with 199 regions each, on request. Those would be empty maps then, with only the regions defined, but like [settlement1] etc and you could fill in the rest of the details yourself.

@Ack_[FHA] - I planning a huge Eastern Europe map first, which will have a playable demo even if the unpacker has not arrived yet by then, and then a similar one for the Americas only, find that deserves a map - and campaign - of its own - not going to expand on the CA verison of it, sorry - would have to move it even closer to Europe, yikes.

@warrius
Nope mods are not instantly cross-compatible. Any mod that wants to adapt BigMap can just get all the info to recalc the coords in their scripts for it, and add it as an option maybe, is just a few hrs work max, with the right tools.

@repman
No thanks - welcome anytime.

Will dl your 1.4 version and make sure any update I make will be compatible with it, and send you any improvements as a separate upgrade via pm or so.

Really looking forward to 1.4 - great it's here already.

[warrius]

this is a great map! i am really enjoying it playing with monthly turns (.0833 timescale)

thank you for this excellent mod. SALUTE, WARRIOR!

to war!

i never knew spain was so big...

[Dagda]

Thought I posted this yesterday, but looks it get lost in forum down time.

Theres a bug I've found regarding the map. The resources in bottom part of African (Arguin/Timbuktu/Dongola) region are placed on an invalid part of the terrain. Merchants are not able to sit on these resources and collect florins.

[yxc qwert!]

can this mod's map include? it's historically (for hungary) better. http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=70539

[adonys]

STOP that "historically hungary" claiming, or I'll have to ask you to prove it using historical documents ie first hand historical sources.

[yxc qwert!]

STOP that "historically hungary" claiming, or I'll have to ask you to prove it using historical documents ie first hand historical sources.

what are you meaning?
sorry for my bad english

[Spurius]

Thought I posted this yesterday, but looks it get lost in forum down time.

Theres a bug I've found regarding the map. The resources in bottom part of African (Arguin/Timbuktu/Dongola) region are placed on an invalid part of the terrain. Merchants are not able to sit on these resources and collect florins.

Thanks for pointing that out. Yeah, LOTS of post got zapped, not funny

There is something strange about those resources in M2 - it normally gives an error if you misplace on, but not always, and sometimes it just conks out with 'unexpected errors' over them - but I will move this one anyway - if you spot any others - pls report them.

Hope this post REMAINS in place - if this forum gets kittens again for any reason, I will be updating stuff here too:

http://www.totalwarmods.com/forum/

so you can check that for updates too, just in case.

Updated the OP to .99f, testversion with all the multiple choice goodies in, except Late Era campaign, and will try make those options so that you cannot choose anything incompatible with each other. Default is medium heights heightsmap there.

Now finishing up the map itself for the 1.0 version, Late Era Campaign is 80% done, first version. Have replaced all Catholic cities and castles with more elaborate versions, will do the Muslims and Orthodox next, and then put in some nice armies for 1346, thanks to ER at the .org I got the unit info, so I can now whip up a list per faction, and put them in fast:

[Nikko0102]

Looks amazing Downloading right now. So are era campaigns in? If I start one. am I then stuck in that era?

[Spurius]

Nope, still working on the Late Era one, will have a dl'able separate version later today, but is WIP, so for new goodies you will have to restart campagins until all units etc are in...

and same goes for other options, so far - will consider making them all in to separate submods, maybe, so you could switch between them concurrently, but needs a bit of research into how much overhead that creates.

[Spurius]

Looks amazing Downloading right now. So are era campaigns in? If I start one. am I then stuck in that era?

First version Late Era campaign (and yes, one campaign only at the moment - will be 3 eras eventually):

Download Link

Rename your current base and campaign dir again and install into main M2TW folder, it creates its own base and campaign dirs, and has a 0 byte map.rwm just in case...

The year is 1346, you have pretty advanced settlements and fortresses, and make money. Units are still a bit old-fashioned in this version, but dirt-cheap in upkeep relatively, and can be added to pretty fast with that income.

Gunpowder event and world is round within 2 yrs, so before 1355 the place is virtually smoking...

Have fun, 1346 version with bigger, diverse, meaner and more advanced troops coming up tomorrow, with the final version of the map everywhere.

[Dagda]

First version Late Era campaign (and yes, one campaign only at the moment - will be 3 eras eventually):

Download Link

You probably haven't gotten to the French yet, but I was messing around with them (those Scots guard are sexy) and their ports don't show up on the map and they are unable to recruit any type of ship.

edit: Actually I was mistaken. All of the nearby rebel cities have this problem (they have no port, just a naval academy/wharf).

[Spurius]

Yep with some French settlements it just refused my ports - probably some minor discrepancy with regions map, it's what you get with all those versions

will correct it, it's probably just a slightly different version with a few pixels off. Commented out the offending ports in descr_strat temporarily, intended to sort them out, but forgot about it - still doing some RL work here too, so got distracted. Fixed in tomorrow's version, no sweat.

Edit: nope, they match perfectly, no such simple stupidity, alas - must be something else I overlooked. Will find it.

Edit 2 : found it. By coincidence, that also solves wilddogs sea edge problem - two in one, not bad.

[repman]

oslo, smyrna and other cities have although no ports in 99e

repman

[Spurius]

Will add them (btw was one of my remarks in OP - probably forgot a port here and there )

[Pode]

Just played a few turns on my first BigMap campaign, and am liking it VERY much. I think I'll find myself loathing heretics and bandits, though, at least until I build a metric f-ton of watchtowers

An unexpected benefit has been to see the AI react more intelligently (the Scottish actually made a move to take rebel York in the opening turns!) I think perhaps with fewer options being near enough to be feasible, the AI has an easier time deciding among them and committing to one.

Quibbles:
- Looks as though the pass and the coastline between genoa and Marseilles (sp?) are actually closed/impassable. WAD or bug?
- Several staring garrisons (York, Bruges, Nottingham for examples) are outside of the settlements they are supposed to garrison by one or 2 tiles. Not a showstopper, they tend to move right into them, and thanks to your mapwork, the first turn isn't nearly so critical anymore.

[Immacolata]

the coastlines in bigmap are very... square looking. The original map had rounded coastlines. Denmark looked like a nice peninsula, but now it resembles more a jigsaw puzzle piece. Why is that exactly?

[Spurius]

Just played a few turns on my first BigMap campaign, and am liking it VERY much. I think I'll find myself loathing heretics and bandits, though, at least until I build a metric f-ton of watchtowers

An unexpected benefit has been to see the AI react more intelligently (the Scottish actually made a move to take rebel York in the opening turns!) I think perhaps with fewer options being near enough to be feasible, the AI has an easier time deciding among them and committing to one.

Quibbles:
- Looks as though the pass and the coastline between genoa and Marseilles (sp?) are actually closed/impassable. WAD or bug?
- Several staring garrisons (York, Bruges, Nottingham for examples) are outside of the settlements they are supposed to garrison by one or 2 tiles. Not a showstopper, they tend to move right into them, and thanks to your mapwork, the first turn isn't nearly so critical anymore.

Thx.

The AI behaves different indeed - and distances do, as you already suspected, make for an improved behaviour, also to do with hardcoded (but up to a part scriptable) proximity of other game objects - its life is indeed a lot simpler, so it appears to us to make saner or more pertinent-looking decisions.

Up to a point I also noticed that in battles with the exaggerated heightsmap - my battles were suddenly not so laden with passive ai phenomena or reinforcements not joining battle anymore, possibly also to do with how internal calculations as to line-of-sight, pathfinding and proximity internally just got blissfully short-cutted by some margin that suddenly make it take its thumb out of its back orifice. Dunno, seems to work for me, and I hardly think it's all wishful thinking on my part - it really annoyed me before.

The garrissons outside the city are to be fixed, will put up a list with things-to-do so people can check that first before posting, and I will just tick that off one by one.

The impassables are not intentional, ever - so I will take a look and remedy it.

Same as with the coastlines, that will be prettyfied a bit where I can, this is an artefact of the enlargement algorithm, its called nearest-neighbour, which is pretty blocky, and would not be the best solution for enlarging a photograph, say, but is the only one usable in this case since it does not introduce new colour values, which more sophisticated algorithms introduce perforce, and which are deadly to the map.

If you've ever seen maps with weird purple or other brightly coloured splotches, that's the cause - illegal RGB values, and if those values are random enough and also randomly placed - utterly incorrigible. Can toss that map away, you will never get that out again ...

So it's a matter of giving it a brush with the pencil in PS as soon as I get to the artistic finishing-touch stage, first get out the real show-stoppers and add some gameplay spice.

[lawngnome]

Great to hear Spurius, I've been pushing for the MTR team to use your map as inspiration for the MTR map. It's perfect for them, I think, since they are expanding the map eastward (getting rid of Americas) and pushing provinces to 200. If this map is used by/and/or inspiration for every MTW mod I will be a happy camper.

So... spread the word! Turn this map into a phenomenon! Make people demand this!

[Oddball_E8]

why not approach the MTR team yourself Spurius... make the map for them... or at least help make it...
im sure they could use some help...