Re-textured map

[Modestus]

Update 15-06-08

ModestusMap5.0 for In Nomine only.

Download: http://www.mediafire.com/?e4kbdzxixwz

See small fix at end of this post

Installation: Download and extract the file above into your main EU3 folder, this will place a mod called ModestusMap5.0 you can then choose this mod from the launcher. Remember that each mod will have its own save folder so transfer any old save to your new Modestusmap5.0 save games folder. The first time you load the mod it will take some time to create a new cache folder. Also included a small read me.


Important Note: If you intend to replace some of the vanilla files make sure you have backups first and..........
DO NOT replace the vanilla EU3\interface\ .gfx files with the ModestusMap5.0\interface\.gfx files.

Description:

1\ Map: Changes to most of the terrain textures in an attempt to make the map look more realistic.
Replaced some hill textures with mountain textures using terrain.bmp to get a better look for some of the mountain ranges,Norway, Alps, Pyrenees Carpathians, Caucuses, Greece Scotland and Albania. Added some Jungle textures to Cuba Tortuga and Jamaica. Removed some of the desert from the Nile delta and made Venice look more like an Island. All are minor and will not affect game play (see issues below).

Changed Positions.txt and rotated about 12 ports, moved 2 cities slightly and 1 trade center for a better look. All are minor and will not affect game play (see issues below).


2\ FX : Adjustments to mapobject.fx and terrain_2.0.fx for a more distinctive winter and less Fog of terrain, this helps the overall appearance of the map by having a more uniformed look. Rippleflag.fx ( Phistaco) to make the flags smaller and water.fx so you have advanced water for all the map views. Again nothing will affect game play. (see issues below)


3\ Mapitems: New city designs with walls to represent your level of fortification. Three basic designs for fort level 0-2 , 3-4 and 5-6 with a corresponding but distinctive design for each culture. These styles are then scaled and should represent population levels 1000-5000, 5001-20000 and 20000+. In total 9 cities for each culture. The Latin culture has 3 extra files which I think where intended to represent cities without forts not sure how or if they are used, all other cultures have only 9 city files.(see issues below)

New Harbors, New Capital graphic and New Trade Center graphic.


4\ Interface: Small change to ledger button to make it more obvious and new ideas graphics.


5\ Anims: New uniforms, fourth level France and Revolutionary France ,third level Sweden , France and Prussia and second level Sweden. Also Merlin's new textures for units and ships.


6\ Common: Darker blue for France and revolutionary France


7\ Flags: I have given flags a more rippled look. Included in the flag folder is a template. see read me for instructions how to use this in Adobe for your own flags. Note that if you recalculate the map the flagfiles.dds will be replaced by the vanilla files so always have a backup copy of the modded flagfiles .dds file within the mod folder.


8\ Sounds: Also included new sound effects by Memnon37.

Issues: As I changed some hills to mountains and added some jungle in the Caribbean travel time and defense are affected for these provinces. I did some testing with travel and most areas that have been changed (very few) have only an increase of about 3-4 days travel time, adding jungle can be up to 10 days, just three Islands Cuba Tortuga and Jamaica.

Just assume that if your attacking an army in some mountainous provinces there will be a higher chance that a Mountain terrain will be the battlefield, as a result the attacker will suffer a penalty however this could have happened anyhow.

As the fog of terrain is lessened you may fool yourself into thinking that a province contains no troops just remember that your knowledge of the land and its structures may appear to be better but you will still not see troops within the fog of war.

I have used some of the buildings from the city view and scaled them to fit on the map so the citygfx files I have are much larger files then the vanilla files. This may cause a slowdown for older computers or a slight delay as the cities load if you moved suddenly to another part of the map. Personally I have seen no real difference.

Because each city now has a wall and some are slightly larger you will find that in certain areas of the map cities will stick into the landscape or another building,you may also find that some of the harbors are oddly positioned however this also happened with the vanilla files but was less noticeable because unlike mine they have no clear front unless ships are in port.


In conclusion you are essentially playing the vanilla game with new graphics.

Anyone can use any file that they want in any mod that they wish.

Cheers Modestus.


Screenshots: http://www.mediafire.com/imageview.p...dylbjx&thumb=4

http://www.mediafire.com/imageview.p...moiymx&thumb=4

http://www.mediafire.com/imageview.p...vgbp4j&thumb=4

http://www.mediafire.com/imageview.p...nj2xyl&thumb=4

http://www.mediafire.com/imageview.p...18tk9a&thumb=4

http://www.mediafire.com/imageview.p...vmnzmy&thumb=4


Fix: After all this time thanks to Paradygmat for spotting a small mistake with ModestusMap5.0.

Download and replace your mod\modestusmap5.0\interface\ mapitems.gfx (16.7kb)

with this one. http://www.mediafire.com/?nwobnmfhzz4

[Icy]

Just installed it, will try it now, thanks for this awesome job!

[Icy]

Ok, installed it and it looks good, your textures are way more natural than the default ones. I would do maybe a little change, there is too much "green" on it, for example the south of Spain and north of Africa should be more desert and overall the whole map looks too have too much forest.

[Modestus]

Ok, installed it and it looks good, your textures are way more natural than the default ones. I would do maybe a little change, there is too much "green" on it, for example the south of Spain and north of Africa should be more desert and overall the whole map looks too have too much forest.

Slight problem with that, the textures are in little tiles and are reproduced all over the world so for example if I changed Spain's grass texture to look more brown it will be reproduced elsewhere so Sweden's grass will also turn brown. But now that you mentioned it there may be away around this.

Anyhow I wanted to get it out there and see what people think, I am sure other people will come up with much better consider it an ongoing project but I should really start to play the game.

Blast it I am going to have to look at this.

[Finnegwyn]

Very pretty. Armies and cities and such all stand out better against the new textures too. Cheers.

[Saben]

Very nice, I like the look alot better than the default map. I agree it is a bit heavy on the green side but it still looks nice.

If you find a way around the problem with textures aplying globaly, could you post a how to? That definitly got possibilites.

[.Spartan]

A most excellent first effort. Thanks for taking the time to create this for the community. I think original graphics are a bit to dark and not spiffy or crispy enough if that makes sense to anyone.

[ubik]

Very nice effort!

Just a question... is it possible to have the province names on the map when the map is zoomed out to show just the flags, instead of the models?

[bwyb00]

Is there any impact on performance? These textures seems to be in higher resolution than the originals.

[Modestus]

Is there any impact on performance? These textures seems to be in higher resolution than the originals.

I honestly don't know, I have not noticed any difference, I be very surprised if changing textures like this would have any real effect on performance. Perhaps if an object was animated it would.

[Saben]

Is there any impact on performance? These textures seems to be in higher resolution than the originals.

I been looking at some of Paradox textures and they give the impression of simply having been blown up to a larger resolution from smaller (about 50%) originals (this is not the case for all extures, mountains for example look fine). If you have photoshop and the dds plugin, take a look at decidious forrest.dds and hills.dds. theese are fairly commonly used so they have a big impact on the overall look.

Modestus textures are of the same resolution, just sharper.

Might be an idea to shrink Paradox originals, shouldn't affect the look and might improve performance, provided the game automaticly stretches them.




EDIT: Went ahead and tested. No noticeable change of quality shrinking the original textures (Retained the mipmap and used one pixel alpha). Can't realy test performance, since my graphics card is pretty beefy and have enough mem on it to handle the original textures just fine. It does confirm that there is alot of room for improvement though. Also noticed that the same texture been used for pretty much all terrains, wich is why the map looks so bland.

If someone with choppy performance using a 128mb card feels like testing, I could email the shrinked textures.

[Need_87]

Nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, downloading

[ZykloNuk]

Nice, indeed. I'll use it as default territory.

May I make a suggestion for a future version? Mild and normal winter grounds could get some more snow, IMHO (and possibly severe winter should get white since it should happen in the very north and east of Europe, for example). For mild winter, it looks strange having white trees on perfectly green grass, and normal winter also looks like snow-free, but just a with a little bit of frost. Moreover, if you zoom out, everything looks like summer, since the trees as indicator become invisible.

Maybe reducing the strong green values a bit would help also, as suggested by Icy and others.

Except from that, it's a good improvement of the standard map. Especially concerning hills. Two thumbs up!!

[Modestus]

Yes I wanted to put in better snow on the ground but I cant seem to find that file, it must be related to provinces as it turns a specific province white at a certain time which may offer the opportunity of turning specific provinces more burnt during summer. Anyone know what I am looking for?

As regards the green I can adjust it in the colormap however this is not very subtle for example I can turn Spain more yellow and bring this through the other textures unfortunately the base farmlands hill textures etc are still more dominant and the extra yellow just makes them look crap.

Once you choose a basic colour lets say for your hills all the other textures must be related to it in some way otherwise you begin to notice the separate tiles so my nice green hill leads to green farmland to green plains to green base textures. There are some files (terrainalpha) that I think are used for masking unsightly joints but I havent bothered to look at them.

In between wars I will look at these but I would like to know about the snow if anyone can help.

Thanks in advance.

[marshman]

this working for 1.21?

[Modestus]

this working for 1.21?

Yes should be no problem, one thing though which I was kindly informed about, the new patch now creates a save folder in each mod so if you want to play an old save you will have to copy and transfer the old save to the mod save. Any problems with that are to do with different patches and nothing to do with the mod. New games make no difference.

I must tidy it up a bit as you can now extend the FX files as well. I think I will ask around and lump all the files I like into one mod.

[tretii_sleva]

Nice work mate. I will be downloading it instantly.
By the way, Modestus, will you map work with Magna mundi mod?

Cheers

[marshman]

w/ 1.21 its not working with me. tried reinstalling. not sure whats up. i get an error loading variables and it crashes every time when i try and load the mod

[Modestus]

w/ 1.21 its not working with me. tried reinstalling. not sure whats up. i get an error loading variables and it crashes every time when i try and load the mod

I had the same problem forgot about it sorry, first delete the cache folder in your Mod\ModestusMap\map\ cache this wont cause any problems with saves etc. The game should now load with ModestusMap. and create a new cache folder.

[marshman]

Deleted the mod completely --and reinstalled. that worked.

which is good cuz I really like this map mod. cant play without it and cant wait till next version.