Crusader Kings II - Dev Diary 5 - The map

[Tegus]

Hello everyone, I'm Tegus, one of the programmers working on Crusader
Kings II. Welcome to the fifth dev diary for CK2 and the first one written
by me. In today's dev diary I'm going to talk a bit about the map and why
we've chosen to implement a new one in CK2.

As you all know, in our games the map is an important tool for both
displaying information and setting the mood of the game. In HoI3 we had a
grayish map that we felt was appropriate for a war game. We took this map
and altered it slightly when making Victoria 2, but this time the map was
drawn with vivid colors to portray the progress of the era. The next game to
use the map was Divine Wind because we all felt that EU3 was in need of a
graphical face lift. While this map technology looked good in the
mentioned games, there were certain technological limitations which we
wanted to improve upon or get rid of.

With CK2, we have devoted time to rewrite the graphics code for the map
from scratch. We are back to a pure 3D map similar to the one used in EU3:
Rome. We have visible topology and you will be able to rotate the world
around the way you please. While neither the technology nor the art assets
are in any way final, we do feel that the new map already has great
potential and is a big step in the right direction towards our visual
goals. Hopefully this new tech will also span multiple games, so we
can steadily improve it.



To be fair, if I would describe what we have done with the map so far, it
would just be sentence after sentence of technical mumbo-jumbo, so I'll
spare you the details. Let's instead focus on what visual details that
have been improved and what we want to add before the game is shipped.

We've improved the looks of the water significantly and added refraction
so you can actually see topology under the ocean surface. Aerie has taken
the time to find real-world topology data(although we've exaggerated it
somewhat), it definitely gives a cool feel to the terrain. Borders have
also gotten some love and now use a new system which enables us to make
them much smoother. Much of the previous jaggedness is gone. We've also
begun to implement and test a more detailed lighting model, which we will
continue to improve upon until we release the game. Another cool
feature(which isn't really part of the map) are the units, whose tabards
now show the heraldic flag of the unit leader.



But there are still some things which we're missing. We need trees and
rivers. We need to add province names and realm names, which exist in all
our latest games. I'd like to add more information to borders, so borders
between two realms are colored by the realms' respective colors. There are
of course lots of more things we want to do, but I won't spill the beans
just yet.



All in all, we are very happy with the way the new map is coming along.
Hopefully you will enjoy it as well once you get to play the game!

Fredrik Zetterman, Deluxe programmer, currently working on Crusader Kings
II

 

[Tegus]

Excellent! Beautiful indeed.
How about Civilization-style borders?

We're toying with the idea, we'll see what we'll end up with

 

[Tegus]

Is the 3D terrain created via bump maps? Will it be hard to mod our own maps?

The height is determined by a grayscale bitmap, but everything else can pretty much be modded exactly like our other games(i.e. provinces.bmp and terrain.bmp are there as usual). Modding will probably be faster even, since we have removed large part of the map cache(it's now calculated at the start of the game instead)

 

[Tegus]

May I ask if this really still is Clausewitz?

It is.

 

[Tegus]

Certainly a technical "leap forward" compared to other Clausewitz games, but hopefully the map will receive the necessary polish before release to make it superior to previous games. I actually like the 3D (some still swear to the "neatness" of 2D), but borders (a tad too wide imo, especially sea borders which should be extra thin to not appear jagged and pixelated (at least without transparency)), cities (models are placeholders I presume?), a few of the textures (woodlands and hills are tiny bit blurry) need additional "love". BIG pluses imo are the new dynamic unit models, the water and the topography.

Also, about the 360 degree view, will it be possible to bookmark positions and possibly lock a position using a shortcut?

I think that all of the things you mention will change before we release the game, such as cities, borders and terrain texture

If we have time and feel that the game needs bookmarks, we will add them, but as of now there is no plan to implement that feature.

 

[Tegus]

Suggestion, as the cloths are from the heraldic flag of the unit leader (which is nice). The Shields blue and white are boring.

Why not having the Coat of Arms of their Liege on their shield?

That in a war between France and England. All the french forces having fleures-de-lis and the English ones use the Three Lions.

We will most likely change the shields. I'm not sure we'll use CoAs, but all shields will definitely not be blue/white when the game ships

 

[Tegus]

Looking nice. What resolution is the province.bmp file? I'd love to be able to get a head start on a map mod and knowing the resolution should make it easier to ensure that it will work once the game hits the streets.

2048 x 2048

 

[SolSara]

How many provinces in the map?

910, if I remember it correctly. 1013 with the sea provinces.

 

[SolSara]

What is the status of province drawing on the map? Is this far advanced now, and if so how has it been researched? Will you be requesting accuracy feedback on the province set-up?

It is pretty much done, don't think we'll change anything now. It's mostly the old provinces from CK1 with a couple more added. The betas will and have commented on the accuracy of the map.

 

[Doomdark]

That's kinda disappointing to hear, I gotta be honest. The province set-up in CK1 was pretty problematic, as far as historical accuracy goes. Pretty much the whole life of CK1 we were told it was impossible to fix the map, and a lot of research from various people on the boards went into improving it recently for map mods. Now you seem to be saying "well, we ignored it and you'll be stuck with the same map for the sequel".

Changing province borders is trivial, and I expect further corrections will be made once the Alpha phase kicks off.

 

[King]

Hm i'm, not really impressed by the map so far. To be honest i have to say don't like this kind of 3D map. In terms of graphics its imo far behind of other games for example the Total War Series. But i don't want to judge on it before i see some more final screens.

Maybe a possibilty to switch to a 2D map would be nice...

Bu tthe Total War Series has a a 3D map. So either you feel that you don't like the kind of map seen in Total War or you think our switch to a 3D map is nice.

 

[SolSara]

That's kinda disappointing to hear, I gotta be honest. The province set-up in CK1 was pretty problematic, as far as historical accuracy goes. Pretty much the whole life of CK1 we were told it was impossible to fix the map, and a lot of research from various people on the boards went into improving it recently for map mods. Now you seem to be saying "well, we ignored it and you'll be stuck with the same map for the sequel".

Changing province borders is trivial, and I expect further corrections will be made once the Alpha phase kicks off.

What Doomdark says, and perhaps I should have written "right now" instead of crushing everyone's hopes

 

[Doomdark]

Like many players, I spend about 90% of my time in political mode. So while I like the new topographical map a lot, I'm really curious/anxious/excited to see some more screenies of the political map, since that's what I'll likely be staring at for hours on end. Please?

Yes, most players (including me) tend to use the political map mode all the time. That is a shame and not really the way forward, IMO. The ambition is to make the terrain mode more useful, with enough political information that a separate map mode is not really needed.

 

[Tegus]

Does this mean that there will be no political map mode?

We'll see. Just like we add mapmodes for different gameplay mechanics when needed, political mapmode will be there if we feel a need for it. If we however manage to improve terrain mode so much that you don't want/need to play in political mapmode, it might be removed. Time will tell

 

[Doomdark]

Visuals do matter Safferli, even if not to you... If you can have a political map which gives you the info but also looks even better, I can't imagine why anyone would oppose it.

You would be surprised...

 

[Tegus]

Concerning the tabbards/surcoats, you will have to flip the coats of arms horizontally.

I keep telling our artist to fix the texturing as well, but he seems to ignore me...

 

[King]

However, the world map of the Total War give you a sense of what the terrain of the battle map will look like before you enter a battle, where the terrain may give the player an advantage. What benefits the player with the 3D map of CK2?

Your question makes absolutely no sense. The map in Total War could no doubt indicate what the terrain would be on a 2D map if the developers were inclined to go for a 2D map, from that perspective is there no benefit for a 3D map in Total War.

 

[King]

I think that he was trying to ask what effect terrain will have on battles. Like in EU3 where mountainous terrain gave defenders an advantage.

No he is not asking that, he is asking for a 2D map after 5 years of Paradox making 3D maps.

 

[Tegus]

I'm not a programmer, but I once talked with a programmer on this. He said that it is possible to do these things, but it needs additional computational resources. So, take everything I say with a big grain of salt.

Think about your example of Moscow again: you tilt and scroll the map that you have Moscow at your back, and view Berlin in front. Now, the view goes farther, Netherlands, UK, over to the US, etc until you're back at Moscow, where it starts again. Even if you put a "horizon" somewhere, the actual computation of this horizon (if you want to do it correctly and not cut off at some arbitrary value) takes a lot of computing power, as you basically need to step-by-step find out where to "fade out" the view.

Again, I really don't know what I am talking about, and given the fact that my friend is doing his PhD in mathematics/computer sciences, he might only look at the theoretical problems. There might be an easy workaround, but the fact that the only two Paradox games that have a tilting map are the only ones that do not have a full, continuous globe map leads me to believe he was right.

Not really. I already know how I would solve this problem without even have tried to program it. I'd go as far as saying it would be trivial given the tech we've already have now in CK2. The trick is simply to use a horizon (as you mention) and fade the terrain with some distance fog. Why your friend said this would be computationally expensive, I don't know. It's easy and lightweight.

 

[Aerie]

I suppose they could shrink the soldier graphics down to about 1/6 the size or so, and have each group of 5,000 soldiers act as 1 soldier icon. So if you have 15,000 soldiers you'll see 3 soldiers grouped, if you have 30,000 you'll see 6 soldiers grouped, and so on. You wouldn't even need to hover over their army to see the size, you could have a solid guess that way, at least within 5k or so.

For Victoria 2 we looked at having multiple soldiers. The reason we decided not have them was partly aesthetic, the soldiers became to small and that looked bad. But the main reason was performance. one soldier has about 25 bones for animation. with 6 soldiers you have 150. For each unit on the map! This is a lot of vertex calculation calculations to make! And at times there will be very many units on the map at once and it would be unsustainable.

you might say, but Victoria 1 had groups, and so dose Civ 5.

- Well, in Victoria 1 they were a single pre-rendered 2d sprite, which is just not viable option anymore.
- And in Civ 5, there are no where near the amount of units on the map, compared to a Paradox game.

But for every game we re-review things like this, and see if we can be done. We have dreams too, but we can't do the impossible.