Editing Map Heights

[Ἀπολλόδοτος Α΄ ὁ Σωτήρ]

I've tried editing map_heights file in order to make elevation slightly higher because some places, to me at least, look to low, that is the surrounding plateaus don't rise above the lowlands. Most obvious place is Mesopotamia and the neighboring Iranian Plateau and the Armenian Highlands, personally I can't see the elevation, only map texture shows where Mesopotamia ends and these two begin.

In order to highlight these differences I didn't use brush and thus rise individual mountain ranges which would make for steep, or for the lack of better words, bumpy appearance of map. Also using brush for highlighting certain areas while excluding nearby areas can make battle-maps too steep or hilly.

For that reason I've decided to increase the overall brightness of all pixels apart from those depicting lowland. I did this by reducing the number of map_heights colors to less than ten and then assign them different values. Afterwards I've added this as a layer at 10 opacity to the original map_heights and merged it with the background layer. The modified image doesn't look particularly brighter but one can notice a slight increase in brightness in lower areas due to me adding more brightness to the lower heights while the increase in higher areas is unnoticeable, to me at least.

Here's the comparison:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Original:


Edited:


As you can see there's isn't much difference, however it does show on the campaign map. Note that this particular one I haven't tested, this one is more somewhat pronounced.

I've tested the map and there's definitely a more pronounced difference between Mesopotamia and the surrounding higher areas, however the difference isn't too obvious with the numbers I've used originally. I'll test some more using different shades and seeing if there's any issues with battles.

This took less than ten minutes to edit the map_heights, then replace it, after backup of course, delete the map.rwm and create new, however I'm done for today. Also I noticed that the changes made in Egypt and Axum become to pronounced with this, unlike other parts which are more or less the same from the beginning of the mod. I'll just have to edit them separately.

Since custom map battles exist for ports and wonders this change might affect those. The pixels of lowest and coastal areas are unchanged at all however some wonders might be so I'll have to make sure their pixels are unaffected.

I'd appreciate if someone can tell me if the pixels upon ports and wonders are located are left unchanged do you know if I can expect any other problems, or does changing map in any fashion disrupts custom battle-maps? Also I would like to hear if anyone is interested, as you can see I haven't posted any in-game campaign map screens, but I will when I have a momment if anyone's interested.

[Ἀπολλόδοτος Α΄ ὁ Σωτήρ]

I took some screenshots, as you can see the changes are subtle because that's what I intended for, however this is still unfinished. I'd like to make them a bit more pronounced and that'll require more testing.

This is with original map_heights:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

These two screenshots of the same area use different map_heights, first one has slightly smoother transition between higher and lower areas while the second has a bit rougher transition and thus has more noticeable differences.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

You can, hopefully, see the slight increase in elevation of the Taurus and Amanos (Nur) Mountains over the Cilician valley.

[Lusitanio]

A slight change but a nice one indeed