HandDrawn Map by Strannik

[Strannik]

For a newer version look here:

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/...d.php?t=385077

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HandDrawn Map by Strannik
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This is my grain of sand to the wonderful Manga Mundi project. I cannot thank the MagnaMundi team enough for the amazing job they have done in making this mod. After spending hours making this map I realize what it must be to create a project of this magnitude. Thanks, Thanks and a million Thanks.

I made this map based on hand drawn fantasy maps. I built it upon the OldMap of Gregor_y and the TOT map by Pishtaco.

It has a completely different feeling for those that prefer a brighter map with stronger colors.


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Features
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1.0

- Rice paper texture.
- General color overhaul.
- A cleaner and smoother terrain map, with very few small terrain regions (no more salt and pepper terrain).
- Terrain colors that match properly the terrain textures.
- New terrain and water textures that form uniform patterns.
- Simple textures in combination with changes in intensity to give information about terrain in the non-terrain maps.

1.01

- Reworked the winter so that it affects mainly the ground and not the texture features.

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1.1

- Canvas texture.
- Reworked all terrain textures.
- Smoother integration of forests and jungles into the plains to reduce the amount of clustering.
- Reworked water map to have a smooth shallow water that blends nicely into the canvas texture.
- Fixed inconsistencies between maps that produced black dots.
- Darker atmosphere.
- Stronger political map colors

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1.2

- New brighter colors.
- New font 'AM Map Bold' which I made based on Wolfram's Mathematica6 font.
- Fixed some issues with the Terra Incognita.

1.21

- Added topology. The topology is based in the vanilla topology but smoothed so that the terrain is not so jagged.

1.22

- Added optional red country borders.
- Made winters more white and made it affect more the forest textures.


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Installation
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- Backup '\gfx\FX\' and 'map\' folders in the MagnaMundi directory.
- Copy .Rar file to the MagnaMundi directory and unpack overwriting all.
- Run River_fix.bat inside the 'Extras\' folder. This makes a backup of the vanilla 'river.fx' and copies the moded file into the vanilla folder. Without this the rivers will not be as nice. Don't run the bat file more than once or you will overwrite the first backup with the modded file effectively loosing the original file.
- Setup optional features (see the Optional Features section below)
- Erase the 'cache' folder in both the vanilla and mod's \map\ folder. If you are using windows vista and installed your game in the 'c:\program files' folder you may have to go to the 'C:\Users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\Paradox Interactive' folder, look for the map subfolder and delete the 'cache' folder.
- From the game launching menu choose the HandDrawn Map mod.
- Inside the game turn off trees and advanced water.


NOTE:

Make sure you copy the .Rar file into your MagnaMundi before unpacking and overwriting. Otherwise you will overwrite the vanilla files.

The .bat files that install the rivers and the font will not work unless they are properly placed within the MMP folder.


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Optional Features
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New Font:

- If you want to install the font, run AM_Map_Font_Install.bat inside the 'Extras\' folder. This will backup the vanilla font files "tahoma_60.dds" and "tahoma_60.fnt" and copy the modded files into the vanilla folders. Don't run the bat file more than once or you will overwrite the first backup with the modded file effectively loosing the original files.

Terrain color palettes:

- There are two other palettes available if you want. Just edit the file "terrain_2_0.fx" inside the "\gfx\FX" folder of the mod. You can find them inside the function "float4 PixelShader_Map2_0( VS_OUTPUT v ) : COLOR". The one called "Palette" has darker colors specially green. And there is also the TOT palette. Just comment (adding two slashes '//' at the beginning of all the lines in a palette) the one currently in use and uncomment (removing the two slashes '//' at the beginning of all the lines of the palette you want to use).

Red Country Borders:

- You can change the country borders to be red if you want by editing the file "terrain_2_0.fx" inside the "gfx\FX" folder of the mod. Look for the function "float4 PixelShader_Map2_0_Border( VS_OUTPUT v ) : COLOR" and inside it you will find two lines you need to uncomment (removing the two slashes '//' at the beginning) for the country borders to become red. In order to make them black again just comment them again (adding two slashes '//' at the beginning).


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Remarks
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- This version is for Magna Mundi Platinum only, there is another version for In Nomine Vanilla. See the following thread:

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/...d.php?t=384100

-For older versions look at my files in filefront.

http://hosted.filefront.com/Strannik1


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Acknowledgments
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- Thanks to all people that has given me feedback.


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Download
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http://files.filefront.com/HandDrawn.../fileinfo.html

http://rapidshare.com/files/17101386..._1.22.rar.html


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Screenshots
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Terrain Map




Political Map




Political Map Textures (compare with the winter screenshot)




Winter (Compare with the textures in the political map)




Forests and Plains




Plains, Steppes and Farmland




Jungles, Mountains and Hills




Desert, Mountains and Hills




Optional Red Country Borders

[ZmajOgnjeniVuk]

I see each new version is looking better and better. Good work!

[cocodtim]

it looks very good but i has one feature i personally dislike.
NO RED BORDERS!

[Oorlog]

Beautiful work!

[Grenoble]

Wow that's much better than the old map! i'll download it!

[Cortes_R]

Nice map, though colours are too bright to my liking A "milder" ones would be better imho (specially green).

Btw, how did you manage to craft that beautiful map font, what program did you use?

[The Wookiee]

edit: oops, wrong place.

[ubik]

A great map that will be included as optional content in version 1.30 of MMP.


Congrats Stranik and thanks for your words.

[deathsai]

Any input on how this runs compared to the stock MM map? It actually looks like it would run more smoothly.

[Strannik]

Nice map, though colours are too bright to my liking A "milder" ones would be better imho (specially green).

Btw, how did you manage to craft that beautiful map font, what program did you use?

Cortes_R, there are two other palettes available if you want. Just edit the file "terrain_2_0.fx" inside the "\gfx\FX" The one called "Palette" has darker colors specially green. And there is also the TOT palette.

I will include this information at the beginning of the post

Also for the fonts, I used AngelCode's Bitmap Font Generator. You can find it here: http://www.angelcode.com/products/bmfont/
With it you can create a .tga that contains the font plus the .fnt file. You need then to invert the colors of the .tga, manipulate the color of the mask 'alpha', save it as a .dds and edit the .fnt file so that the header looks similar to mine.

I will include a link to this in the mod programs thread

deathsai, its hard for me to tell because for me EUIII always takes a lot to load. I have the impresion it's similar. Maybe someone else can tell you better.

EVERYONE I'm glad you like it

[Ignatich]

Wow, terrain map is awesome. I wonder if it's technically possible to see terrain map with country colors applied as filters? Personally I would love to see terrain and political modes combined.

[unclemestor]

That is a beautiful map! I'm impressed

[Dragoner]

I must admit it does look fantastic.

Unfortunatly I get a crash to desktop when I run MMP after overwriting the contents of the folder "HandDrawn_Map_for_MMP_1.21" into the MMP folders.

The only thing that worked is the font and the rivers.

Does that only happen to me?

[Strannik]

Wow, terrain map is awesome. I wonder if it's technically possible to see terrain map with country colors applied as filters? Personally I would love to see terrain and political modes combined.

Ignatich, I tried hard but it's beyond my capabilities. The best I could do is add two simplified textures to the political map: It has to do with the order in which the maps are rendered and the fact that the people at paradox re-utilizes variable names. They use the same variable name for the stripes in the political map and the terrain textures in the physical map. Since the stripes have three channels(rgb) I was able to use one channel for the stripes, one for all forests and jungles and one for mountains and hills. That's very unfortunate because I had exactly the same idea.

Unfortunatly I get a crash to desktop when I run MMP after overwriting the contents of the folder "HandDrawn_Map_for_MMP_1.21" into the MMP folders.

Dragoner, are you using windows vista?

[Dragoner]

Dragoner, are you using windows vista?

Yep, Vista it is.
Anything I can do to avoid the CTD?

[Moquia]

Yep, Vista it is.
Anything I can do to avoid the CTD?

Clear your map cache. That helped for me.

And btw great map Stannik.

[Strannik]

Yep, Vista it is.
Anything I can do to avoid the CTD?

Dragoner, there are several things that may help. As Ubik mentioned in the Windows Vista Issues post, you may be running into trouble because your EUIII is installed in the "c:\program files\" folder. Also try cleaning the cache following the instructions in the same post. (this is on top of erasing the folder map\cache in both the EUIII and MMP folders).

Finally if all else fails you may try installing the DirectX End-User Runtimes (November 2008), it helped me solve some issues of backward compatibility between directX 10 and 9

[Dragoner]

Excellent advice. Clearing the cache did the job. Thanks.

[SnowyFox]

I like the map. Personally, it's a bit too bright for me. I prefer to use the current MMP map. However, excellent work. I certainly admire your skill.

[Duke of Bavaria]

This gives me a hard time to deicide , i like your terrain map very much , but political map is too bright for me. Think i will stay with MMP map.