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Jamie550

Jamie550

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Jan 29, 2007
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THE NEW THREAD IS HERE: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?p=8557069




MapUtility v1.1
-Includes MapViewer and MapMaker
-Download contains programs, source, and information

Downloads are here
Help
Other links

Have problems? Read this first

FAQ

Q: Will I be able to create new provinces?
A: There is a MAX_PROVINCE limit. But if there are currently extra unused provinces, then yes. Otherwise, either ask Paradox to do it in their 1.2 patch or look for the thousands of MAX_PROVINCE values in the .exe and change them.

Q: Can we change all the wrong names on the map?
A: Yes. The names are just part of a grayscale image, which will be editable.

Q: Where can I get instant notification of updates, without checking my User CP?
A: Subscribe to the RSS feed here: http://ederon.net/Projects/TheMapEditor/tabid/265/moduleid/906/language/en-US/RSS.aspx
 
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This is a really cool initiative, allthough i must say that with the prospect of paradox releasing the source code. It might be a little redundant.

But maybe not, this tool is free (I presume :D )
and you never know when paradox is finished consulting the lawyers.

You ask for suggestions, all i can say is this. Make a tool that will allow these guys can make the map their planning.
 
Jamie,

this sounds like a great project. Inferis has made some progress on a Magellan program (the program that currently allows modders to mod the EU2 map) but not sure how his progress is coming with the Victoria equivalent. It may be real life has intervened.

I saw XieChengnuo, my partner in the Clio project, has already posted over in your HoI2 thread, so I guess I'll save my comments to Victoria specific things, such as unlike HoI, in Victoria rivers do not impact gameplay, so if you do develop a tool you'll need to remember that there are differences in some elements between Victoria and HoI2 in terms of the maps.

If you want an idea of what our Clio project is at, click on the links in my sig. And if you have any other questions, just pm XieChengnuo or myself and we'll see if we can help, and if there is any info you need to help make a Victoria map modding tool workable, just let us know. We are about a month away from needing a modding tool.
 
Announcement (copypasted from HoI thread)

This will make adjacent.tbl, which will later be used for creating the lightmaps

You need a textfile listing the adjacencies in this format:
Empty lines allowed
Lines with # as the first character will be skipped
Lines with values will look like this:
A;B;C;D
A is the province number
B, C, and D are the adjancies
You can have as many ids after A as you want, separated by a semicolon
These are all legal lines:
43
24;42;59;52;29;10;538;275
42;91

There is no need to arrange the IDs in order
If a province has no connections, you can omit it from the file
BUT the maxprovince number MUST be inside the file (How else would the program know how many provinces there are?
So if there are 100 provinces, even if province 100 has no connections there must be a line:
100

http://www.mediafire.com/?4yvnrcgjhgx


QUESTIONS
In Photoshop, is it possible to extract a layer into its own image, and then slice that image into 117 columns of 256 pixels, and then save each slice into a separate file? Note that the numbers can be different, I am just asking if it is easy to do such things.
 
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Since this is copypasted from the Hoi forums, ignore anything I say about rivers. Actually, the overlay maker will make the terrain map if used for Victoria. Of course, I am not sure if people actually still use the the terrain map, but if somebody wants to, the tool is here.

The overlay maker:

This is what makes the rivers that show up.

In a folder, you have to put certain files in.
The file names should be like: XxY.bmp
Even if the files are .jpg or something else, put .bmp
The X ranges from 0 to 12, and the Y ranges from 0 to 4.
The "x" is just a seperator, keep it there.
Each picture should be 2304x2304 pixels
If an area has nothing that needs to be painted, you may skip that picture.
For transparency, just make the alpha value zero.

http://www.mediafire.com/?f7sxygzwccf

Note that this has not yet been tested.
 
The BoundBoxMaker is completed!

After editing your lightmaps, you can run this to generate boundbox.tbl

Maxprovince for HoI is 2608, for Vicky is 2864

If you want to test it now, point it to the current lightmap1, and get the new boundbox.tbl file.

Here is the link: http://www.mediafire.com/?1mw5dyx9tzm

So to make a new map:
1) List adjacent provinces
2) Use AdjacentMaker to make adjacent.tbl
3) Use OverlayMaker to make index.tbl and tiles.bmp
4) Use the tool to make the lightmaps. This step cannot yet be done
5) Use BoundBoxMaker to make boundbox.tbl
6) Delete navaldist.tbl, and let the game recreate it



EDIT: To begin planning for lightmap editing: Make a list of provinceIds and colors like so:
5;24;85;24
This means that when the editor sees the color with the R value of 24, the G value of 85, and the B value of 24, it will know that the province is number 5.

To add comments, either use # for a whole line, or add extra semicolons
The following two comments are legal:
#Bismark
5;38;100;488;Bismark
But the next is not:
10;48;28;42#Bismark
 
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Please comment and give suggestions

Version 0.1 of the Map Editor Photoshop File Specifications

Bottommost layer:
Divided into blocks of 32x32 pixels. Each block will either be filled with black, to signify that it should be transcribed, or kept transparent to prevent copying.
Notes:
a) A separate text file should be included to describe what pixel on the big map (0, 0) is
b) Transcription is described only blocks of 32x32. Either a block is completely included or it is not

Province ownership layer
Colored with RGB values according to the province that owns the pixel.
Notes:
a) What a certain RGB value represents will be determined by a separate .csv file, in this format:
ProvinceId;Red;Green;Blue;Optional Comment;There can be as many semicolons as you want;But the first four sections must be as specified
#Lines can also be blank or commented out as a whole
42;49;20;44#This comment is illegal

Grayscale layer
Colored with a grayscale, to determine the index into colorscales.
The index will be value/4 (Note that remainders are truncated, so a value of 3 will not round to 4 and make 1, but will become 0.

Tile layer
Transparent, unless something should be present. If there is a river or terrain there, just draw it with regular RGB

Border layer
Transparent, except for borders between land provinces
When there is a land border, have two colors, which are TBD. One will represent an "inner" coloring, and the other will represent an "outer coloring". To understand what this means, use the Map Viewer, viewing by province on a zoom greater than the smallest one, and look at the country borders, that often have four colors. Each different color is a province. Each actual province has two of these: an outer and inner, which look different somehow.
Click to expand...
 
Since Victoria & Revolutions don't have the adj-defs.csv file that HoI2 (and EU2 1.09) have, can you make a tool to easily modify province adjacencies without otherwise changing the map? Maybe just a tool to generate the adjacency csv file for the current map suitable for importing into your AdjacentMaker tool? Even better would be a tool to take a file in the format of adj-defs.csv and use it to patch those adjacencies into the map.
 
Version 2 of the HoiVicMapViewer!

http://www.mediafire.com/?19dly4zymyd

Fixes the bug with viewing from colorscales. Now it should look much better.

Also: Please send me your .psd files.

@jdrou: The problem is that the lightmap files are connected with the adjacent files, so that changing the adjacent.tbl without later changing the lightmap files will cause problems.
 
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Two announcements:

1) A small update to the map viewer. Now it has grids and numbers, so that you can know the offsets when making your .psd files

http://www.mediafire.com/?yyy4txv031u

2) Version 0.2 of the Map Editor specifications. I will probably begin to rely on these specs very soon, so if you want changes to it, you must state so now.

Version 0.2 of the Map Editor Photoshop File Specifications

Data:
In the same place as the application will be a file called psd.txt.
This file should contain all of the .psd files, each file on a different line

The city field of the .psd files will be filled in like so: x;y
Where x is the x-offset, and y is the y-offset
X=1 is 32 pixels, X=2 is 64 pixels, and so on

Bottommost layer:
Divided into blocks of 32x32 pixels. Each block will either be filled with black, to signify that it should be transcribed, or kept transparent to prevent copying.
Notes:
a) A separate text file should be included to describe what pixel on the big map (0, 0) is
b) Transcription is described only blocks of 32x32. Either a block is completely included or it is not
c) This layer should be called "Base"

Province ownership layer
Colored with RGB values according to the province that owns the pixel.
Notes:
a) What a certain RGB value represents will be determined by a separate .csv file, in this format:
ProvinceId;Red;Green;Blue;Optional Comment;There can be as many semicolons as you want;But the first four sections must be as specified
#Lines can also be blank or commented out as a whole
42;49;20;44#This comment is illegal
b) This layer should be called "ProvID"

Grayscale layer
Colored with a grayscale, to determine the index into colorscales.
Notes:
a) The index will be value/4 (Note that remainders are truncated, so a value of 3 will not round to 4 and make 1, but will become 0.
b) This layer should be called "Colorscales"

Tile layer
Transparent, unless something should be present. If there is a river or terrain there, just draw it with regular RGB
Notes:
a) This layer should be called "Tiles"

Border layer
Transparent, except for borders between land provinces
When there is a land border, have two colors, which are TBD. One will represent an "inner" coloring, and the other will represent an "outer coloring". To understand what this means, use

the Map Viewer, viewing by province on a zoom greater than the smallest one, and look at the country borders, that often have four colors. Each different color is a province. Each

actual province has two of these: an outer and inner, which look different somehow.
Notes:
a) This layer should be called "Borders"
Click to expand...
 
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Updates:

Version 0.4 of specs. These should be more understandable

Version 4 of the MapViewer. This allows you to extract parts of the map into image files. Unfortuantly you still have to merge them into a photoshop file.

CoreLib.dll: MapViewer v4 requires this.

See the first post for links and details.
 
Lots of updates. Lets go from least exciting to most exciting.

First: Version 5 of the Specs. Since support for .bmp, .jpg etc was added, these had to change a bit
http://www.mediafire.com/?m0dhb2ndyzg

Next: Version 5 of the MapViewer. You can now extract files through the commandline, so that you don't have to do it through the sliders. For arguments, type "-help" without quotes.
http://www.mediafire.com/?igdmgtzkrre

Finally: Version 1 of the MapEditor. So far, this cannot do lightmaps. But it can do everything else. (Though making radishfiles might be bugged)
http://www.mediafire.com/?r75ir10iey1

BTW: You have to download CoreLib.dll again. (It is different, even though it still says version 1.0.0.0)
http://www.mediafire.com/?1xxohg4gmic
 
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Neat stuff! You can actually read the lightmaps? I think you're the first person to do it since Inferis and WiSK. :)

*subscribes*
 
This thread is somewhat neglected, so I'll post my progress here for once.

screensave2dw5.png


Almost there. :)
 
Jamie is that a lightmap?

I don't myself know about the technical side of this, but looks like you are making good progress, which for Xie and my Clio project is excellent news indeed.
 
OHgamer said:
Jamie is that a lightmap?

I don't myself know about the technical side of this, but looks like you are making good progress, which for Xie and my Clio project is excellent news indeed.
Click to expand...
Yes, its a lightmap that was made with the editor from a number of exported images.
 
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