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Map Modding & Map Editor 101

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NaiveCarto said:
Wait!!!!! soooo, IR doesnt have used a conic map projection like Lambert or Albers or an Equidistant ones, but just curves the Mercator ones....
I am going to mad, to be honest.

So, whether there could be any parameters about IR map that can be shown to us?

Wait ,if whether the height map is found from there? https://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view.php?id=73934.
This is not a map of mercartor map projection.
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If that's not mercator i'm calling it the wrong thing, my bad :)
But yeah, that's the height data from Nasa that we've been working with.

And @Talvos , @shadowofneptune , that looks like the right data to change, do note however that they are Defines files, which means they currently cant be changed by mods.
It's possible to force test it by editing the game files, but like mentioned earlier we need to enable defines modding before regular mods can do it. (I am prodding coders about this whenever I have the chance).
 
Carlberg said:
If that's not mercator i'm calling it the wrong thing, my bad :)
But yeah, that's the height data from Nasa that we've been working with.

And @Talvos , @shadowofneptune , that looks like the right data to change, do note however that they are Defines files, which means they currently cant be changed by mods.
It's possible to force test it by editing the game files, but like mentioned earlier we need to enable defines modding before regular mods can do it. (I am prodding coders about this whenever I have the chance).
Click to expand...

Thank you for your answer,if so, the map projection should be Plate Carrée map projection, or the Equirectangular map projection.
The BMNG dataset is gridded at the following spatial resolutions: 15, 60 and240 arc-seconds (500m, 2km, and 8km approximate spacing at the equator). Ituses a geographic (Plate Carrée) projection, which is based on an equal latitude-longitude grid spacing (not an equal area projection!). The projection datum is WGS84.
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Which is found from https://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/74000/74167/readme.pdf
 
@Carlberg

We're still tinkering with terrain in the LOTR mod, but we have a crash on trying to load the map_editor. I was just wondering if you'd ever seen this in the crash log?

Unhandled Exception C0000005 (EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION) at address 0x00007FF7B9F4EA29

Stack Trace:
1 imperator.exe CFortMapObject::UpdateSiegeEntity (fort_map_object.cpp: 124)
2 imperator.exe CProvinceMapObjects::UpdateFortInProvince (province_map_objects.cpp: 198)
3 imperator.exe CProvinceMapObjects::Update (province_map_objects.cpp: 96)

I tried removing both the forts from the locations file and the setup.txt file, but that wasn't it - if you haven't seen this issue before, no worries, we'll probably figure it out eventually via good old trial & error, but I'm just hoping that you might have encountered this issue yoursel at some point and remember the solution.
 
How do you adjust the clouds to match a custom map? My clouds are covering important stuff:

Qg1odep.png
 
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Blood Royal said:
@Carlberg

We're still tinkering with terrain in the LOTR mod, but we have a crash on trying to load the map_editor. I was just wondering if you'd ever seen this in the crash log?

Unhandled Exception C0000005 (EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION) at address 0x00007FF7B9F4EA29

Stack Trace:
1 imperator.exe CFortMapObject::UpdateSiegeEntity (fort_map_object.cpp: 124)
2 imperator.exe CProvinceMapObjects::UpdateFortInProvince (province_map_objects.cpp: 198)
3 imperator.exe CProvinceMapObjects::Update (province_map_objects.cpp: 96)

I tried removing both the forts from the locations file and the setup.txt file, but that wasn't it - if you haven't seen this issue before, no worries, we'll probably figure it out eventually via good old trial & error, but I'm just hoping that you might have encountered this issue yoursel at some point and remember the solution.
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I'm afraid that's a new one to me, sounds like something isnt right under the hood, codewise. Might be that some fort data is trying to (re)generate but failing to.
 
Carlberg said:
giphy.gif

:D Awesome! Will be interesting to see the progress on Isengard.
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Haha thanks, I'm not planning on doing anything more, I'm just an artist who happens to love LOTR so I tend to test things out when modding by making quick LOTR locations :p Perhaps if a LOTR mod is started I'll help out with art though.

On the topic of art, what's your workflow with spec maps. I'm used to either old school diff/spec/norm or PBR with base color/metal/rough but not sure where the spec fits in for PBR. I heard in the 24 hours livestream that you use substance painter. At the moment I have painter set up to export according to how you do your maps and it works well but for spec I wasn't sure if you use 'specular', 'specular level' or something entirely different? Or do you just do it manually? I noticed that even with roughness down quite a bit, there's not much shine, but it could be because my specular map is almost blank.
 
rewinged said:
Haha thanks, I'm not planning on doing anything more, I'm just an artist who happens to love LOTR so I tend to test things out when modding by making quick LOTR locations :p Perhaps if a LOTR mod is started I'll help out with art though.

On the topic of art, what's your workflow with spec maps. I'm used to either old school diff/spec/norm or PBR with base color/metal/rough but not sure where the spec fits in for PBR. I heard in the 24 hours livestream that you use substance painter. At the moment I have painter set up to export according to how you do your maps and it works well but for spec I wasn't sure if you use 'specular', 'specular level' or something entirely different? Or do you just do it manually? I noticed that even with roughness down quite a bit, there's not much shine, but it could be because my specular map is almost blank.
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There isnt a 100% conversion between substance painter and the game, generally though the roughness and metalness should be the same. I.e. Metal should either be very strong or off entirely if the material is metallic. Specular is holding a bit of a complicated position, we generally give a material 50% grey tops if it's an object with more fresnel and reflectivity to it. But it's very strong.

My recommendation is to start the game and spawn the material test object in a flat ocean somewhere, it's good for getting a hang of material values and how they affect the shading.
Writing the following in console will spawn it at the mouse cursor:
Code: 
spawnentity shader_test_all_test_objects

upload_2019-4-27_23-23-53.png
 
Carlberg said:
There isnt a 100% conversion between substance painter and the game, generally though the roughness and metalness should be the same. I.e. Metal should either be very strong or off entirely if the material is metallic. Specular is holding a bit of a complicated position, we generally give a material 50% grey tops if it's an object with more fresnel and reflectivity to it. But it's very strong.

My recommendation is to start the game and spawn the material test object in a flat ocean somewhere, it's good for getting a hang of material values and how they affect the shading.
Writing the following in console will spawn it at the mouse cursor:
Code: 
spawnentity shader_test_all_test_objects

View attachment 474893
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Ah perfect, I wasn't aware of that test object, that will help a lot! Thanks for the tips on the spec map, I'll have a play around tomorrow and post my results. Maybe I'll spend a little more time and make an Isengard worthy of Saruman :p
 
Could anyone tell me how I make rivers work on a custom map? I tried changing the rivers.bmp file but it wouldn't start the game anymore when I did. Am I missing something?
 
Arthyn said:
Could anyone tell me how I make rivers work on a custom map? I tried changing the rivers.bmp file but it wouldn't start the game anymore when I did. Am I missing something?
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Examine the rivers, and the error log under documents/paradoxinteractive/imperator.

A couple of rules about rivers.bmp:
  • White represents land, pink represents the ocean. Mostly a guide to allow ease of identifying coastlines and dont affect rivers themselves.
  • Rivers uses a gradient of blue and green colors to denote the width of the river. Green colors are wider, blue are thinner, brighter variants are wider, darker thinner out of those.
  • Use the only the width colors already in the river file.
  • Rivers start at a green dot (0, 255, 0)
  • Rivers connects to other rivers as a tributary at a red dot (255, 0, 0)
  • River can diverge at a yellow dot (255, 252, 0)
  • Diverged rivers cannot rejoin with red dot, this causes errors.
  • In a river system only the main unbroken river should have a green starting dot.
  • Every pixel in a river needs to connect to another to form an unbroken line.
  • No pixel can have more than 2 connecting pixels. Except when a river connects or diverges. Doing so will cause an error or crash.
Adding to original post
 
Carlberg said:
Examine the rivers, and the error log under documents/paradoxinteractive/imperator.

A couple of rules about rivers.bmp:
  • White represents land, pink represents the ocean. Mostly a guide to allow ease of identifying coastlines and dont affect rivers themselves.
  • Rivers uses a gradient of blue and green colors to denote the width of the river. Green colors are wider, blue are thinner, brighter variants are wider, darker thinner out of those.
  • Use the only the width colors already in the river file.
  • Rivers start at a green dot (0, 255, 0)
  • Rivers connects to other rivers as a tributary at a red dot (255, 0, 0)
  • River can diverge at a yellow dot (255, 252, 0)
  • Diverged rivers cannot rejoin with red dot, this causes errors.
  • In a river system only the main unbroken river should have a green starting dot.
  • Every pixel in a river needs to connect to another to form an unbroken line.
  • No pixel can have more than 2 connecting pixels. Except when a river connects or diverges. Doing so will cause an error or crash.
Adding to original post
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I used the correct colours for the rivers and land etc. but it still crashes when I change the basegames river.bmp with my own. I tried it both with a river and just with only the sea and land filled in and the error.log file is also completely empty. I don't understand what's going on.
 
Arthyn said:
I used the correct colours for the rivers and land etc. but it still crashes when I change the basegames river.bmp with my own. I tried it both with a river and just with only the sea and land filled in and the error.log file is also completely empty. I don't understand what's going on.
Click to expand...

Make sure you're using indexed colours, you can set this here:

Capture2.PNG

Below where you set Indexed Colour, check your colour table and make sure it looks like this:

Capture.PNG

The easiest way to do this is to just make a copy of the vanilla version and edit that directly rather than starting right from scratch, it ensures nothing weird happens :)
 
Carlberg said:
I'm afraid that's a new one to me, sounds like something isnt right under the hood, codewise. Might be that some fort data is trying to (re)generate but failing to.
Click to expand...

Turns out it was our fault, we had added some new provinces without updating the locator files :)

So for everyone else making new provinces and finding that the map editor suddenly crashes with a fort-related issue in the crashes/x date/exceptions.txt file, make sure to regenerate the locator files each time you add new provinces.
 
Blood Royal said:
Turns out it was our fault, we had added some new provinces without updating the locator files :)

So for everyone else making new provinces and finding that the map editor suddenly crashes with a fort-related issue in the crashes/x date/exceptions.txt file, make sure to regenerate the locator files each time you add new provinces.
Click to expand...
Think that advice is worthy of being added to the list in the original post for sure! Thanks for saving me so many future headaches haha
 
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