[MOD] Lindbrooks Texture Map (LTM) - borders, textures, rivers, terrain, etc.

[Lord of Pain]

Expanded Farmland

Lindbrook's Texture Map
Currently only compatible with SWMH, though a lite version does exist for vanilla.
Download & Install LTM via HIP​

Description
This started as a personal mod, but is now fully integrated into HIP. LTM replaces and updates most cosmetic materials related to the map such as textures, borders, rivers, shaders, among other things, with assets of higher quality and with higher detail. While the mod's primary focus is to improve the look of both the terrain map and political maps within the SWMH map, I will most likely be making this mod fully compatible with the vanilla map in the future, and with any other map project which express their interest ...

Spoiler: Changelog for LTM + SWMH

Release C

ALTERNATE / REQUESTED FILES
- [Optional] Selection of alternate, & rejected country borders + old + all vanilla
- [Optional] High saturation-Low Transparency in political mode
- [Optional] Low saturation-High Transparency in political mode
- [Optional] Basic flat map​

BORDERS

- New non-passable border
- New country border
- New province border
- Slight increase in border intensity, still less than vanilla
- Non-realm border now fade away as the camera is pulled back
- Lowered border height to vanilla settings​

MAP CHANGES

- Reshaped terrain of Massif Central
- Reshaped terrain of Britain
- Reshaped topology of Scotland
- Reshaped terrain along Tigris & Euphrates
- Reshaped trees in Nordkalotten, Finland, Novgorod, Baltics, & Sweden
- Reshaped terrain in Nordkalotten, Finland, Novgorod, Baltics, & Sweden
- Reshaped Irish terrain
- Reshaped Armenian valley topology to be softer & follow terrain
- Added northern wetlands
- Added farmland: focus on rivers, outlets, & branches
- Added coastlines (cliffs & beaches) to France, Portugal, north Spain, Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia... (TBC)
- Moved Italian Apennines terrain to its corresponding topology
- Moved Göta highlands terrain to its corresponding topology
- Removed trees for himalayan treeline
- Removed the green plains' sharpness around damascus
- Compatibility with SWMH's arabia release​

RECOLOURING

- Removed vanilla's seasonal recolouring of rivers
- Expanded physical ice range to cover russian rivers
- Slightly recoloured of most fake lakes
- Recoloured Gotland & other Baltic Isles
- Recoloured Iberia & Italy
- Recoloured Carpathians
- Recoloured Himilayas
- Recoloured Turkey (TBC)
- Recoloured shores of caspian sea, north africa, & normandy
- Added salt lakes
- Removed seams around the Urals & Iran
- Adjusted snow colour
- Corrected colours & contours of water depths
- Recoloured water in all map modes​

TEXTURES

- Replaced texture for hills
- Replaced texture for foothills
- Reworked texture for marshland
- Reworked texture for arid plains
- Reworked texture for farmland
- Flooded fake lakes with real water in Nordkalotten
- Added seperate texture for mountains in arid areas
- Added seperate texture for hills in arid areas
- Added seperate texture for hills in asia minor
- Added two textures for coastline terrain
- Replaced texture for ice
- Reverted desert texture back to vanilla (with adjustments)
- Increased normal sharpness for most textures
- Increased mipmap sharpness for most textures
- Slightly increased saturation in all textures​

VALUES

- Increased water height & water height cap
- Increased trees width & height
- Replaced normal for most textures
- Decreased red hue in arid climate
- Increased green hue in temperate climates
- [Temporary] Farmland function as plains
- Renamed Arctic terrain to Boreal
- Added localisation for marshland terrain
- Increased boreal's movement cost & bottleneck chance
- Removed/Lessened paradox's terrain seams
- Increased of map transparency & saturation​

Release B

- Reshaped the Nile delta's terrain & trees.
- Partially replaced textures for better looking snow & mountain 'crevices'.
- Trimmed trees in Russia.
- Resized construction model as it became too big.
- Increased texture density.​

Release A

- Redone borders, textures, rivers, fog of war,
- Straits, trees (colours, sizes, etc.), reworked snowfall,
- Enlarged mapindicators for construction and siege,
- Adjusted terrain map, lighting, water, added a 'noise filter',
- Removed water reflection, added 'glaciers',
- Initial version
​

Spoiler: Changelog for LTM + Vanilla

Release C

- Initial version
- Lite adaptation​

New and improved bump map​

Improved political mode to fade internal borders when zoomed out​

New shorelines that reflect cliffs and beaches in reality (WIP)

Unique terrain features ex. Salt Lakes​

New ice and snow textures​

Corrections to the already lovely SWMH terrain​

New textures and recolouring of the world (Turkey is WIP)​

All new borders that are both lovely & easily discernible​

Download & Install LTM via HIP​

Feedback is appreciated, etc.
Hopefully everything will work out fine.​

 

[Ruskhan]

Very nice. I will make sure to use this ones HIP gets updated.

 

[zijistark]

Yay! We've been looking at alternatives to NBRT+ since we haven't been able to successfully get in contact with EOOQE for ages despite many attempts, so this is the kind of thing I like to see developing.

My full support,
-z

EDIT: Oh, and it goes without saying that it looks great. I'll have to try it out properly when I get some free time in between compatching for 2.5.

 

[Teutonic_Thrash]

What screen resolution are you using?

 

[Lord of Pain]

3840*2160, I could redo them in a smaller resolution if need be, but they should auto-scale in the browser

 

[Herr Doctor]

Just tried it and I must stay that this is absolutely amazing work. Many thanks!

I understand that this is just a first release, but it already looks very solid. Personally I would still improve the hills and highlands representation a bit, especially in Central and Eastern Europe as those look way too flat. There are quite some hilly areas among those great plains (you can check some detailed relief maps by regions as it is hard to capture them on bigger European ones).

 

[theKing1988]

Looking good Lord of Pain. We've definetely missed some attention to the Graphical side of HIPs mapmodding since EOOQE disappeared, both the first and second time

 

[tsk92]

Tested this in my game and it looks really good, although it makes the holding construction cranes ten times bigger so they consume the entire province which is rather ugly.

Is this caused by the "mapitems.gfx" in the interface folder, if deleted what else would it change?

 

[Lord of Pain]

Tested this in my game and it looks really good, although it makes the holding construction cranes ten times bigger so they consume the entire province which is rather ugly.

Is this caused by the "mapitems.gfx" in the interface folder, if deleted what else would it change?

Yes, construction is three times as big, they will be two times in the next one. I always lose track of constructions and sieges, so they get a lot easier to spot with this, but only those two would get effected upon deletion. In the future however, deletion will change more things.

 

[yezhanquan]

Great to see that you intend to update the vanilla map as well.

 

[StarlightTW]

This is spectacular! I'm very glad you decided to share this with us. Will be trying it out on next HIP release!

 

[zijistark]

Looking forward to 2.5.1 compatibility so that I can try it out while I'm working on the HIP compatch. The only thing you'll need to add is common/province_setup/00_province_setup.txt, and I've already generated one of these for SWMH (which is running fine currently on the new patch now). The province terrain classifications, however, will need to be changed for LTM. Here's a link to SWMH's current file for it-- so that you wouldn't have to do the rest of the grunt work:

http://hip.zijistark.com/files/00_province_setup.txt

 

[Lord of Pain]

Yay! We've been looking at alternatives to NBRT+ since we haven't been able to successfully get in contact with EOOQE for ages despite many attempts, so this is the kind of thing I like to see developing.

My full support,
-z

EDIT: Oh, and it goes without saying that it looks great. I'll have to try it out properly when I get some free time in between compatching for 2.5.

Yeah, I figured as much (about the loss of contact). Since I have a compatible NBRT+ as well, I suppose I can give you a choice of either LTM or NBRT. Personally I prefer LTM much more, and I can fiddle with anything, seeing as everything is my creation.

Looking forward to 2.5.1 compatibility so that I can try it out while I'm working on the HIP compatch. The only thing you'll need to add is common/province_setup/00_province_setup.txt, and I've already generated one of these for SWMH (which is running fine currently on the new patch now). The province terrain classifications, however, will need to be changed for LTM. Here's a link to SWMH's current file for it-- so that you wouldn't have to do the rest of the grunt work:

http://hip.zijistark.com/files/00_province_setup.txt

Thanks, but am I understanding this correctly, does that province_setup overwrite the terrain map? And how did you 'generate' it? Seeing as I'm avoiding making gameplay changes, wouldn't SWMH file work just as fine? That way, the terrain modifiers stay the same between the mods, right?

 

[Lord of Pain]

Great to see that you intend to update the vanilla map as well.

Just so you know, that might take a few months at least. It's just better to put focus on one map at a time, than to divide it over multiple.

 

[yezhanquan]

Just so you know, that might take a few months at least. It's just better to put focus on one map at a time, than to divide it over multiple.

No worries. Patience has always been a PDS fan's trait.

 

[StarlightTW]

No worries. Patience has always been a PDS fan's trait.

It gives +1 to pretty much everything.

 

[zijistark]

Yeah, I figured as much (about the loss of contact). Since I have a compatible NBRT+ as well, I suppose I can give you a choice of either LTM or NBRT. Personally I prefer LTM much more, and I can fiddle with anything, seeing as everything is my creation.

Noted. I'd assume LTM if we go that direction, but those are decisions for the future, so IDK.

Thanks, but am I understanding this correctly, does that province_setup overwrite the terrain map? And how did you 'generate' it? Seeing as I'm avoiding making gameplay changes, wouldn't SWMH file work just as fine? That way, the terrain modifiers stay the same between the mods, right?

It doesn't overwrite the terrain.bmp texture mappings. It summarizes the representative terrain of each province (each province has a single terrain-type, all graphics aside) as some sort of optimization so that automatic terrain type classification doesn't have to be done (slightly time-consuming algorithm). SWMH's _could_ work just fine, but you use far more terrain types than SWMH, and it'd be nice to see a province actually classified and treated as 'marsh' and such things (and generally to have the terrain classifications actually match what things look like on the map), which is currently impossible with vanilla terrain color table assignments.

I generated that 00_province_setup.txt for SWMH with a program that reads province history, provinces.bmp, terrain.bmp, etc. to fill-in the requisite fields for their map. The automatic terrain classification algorithm is inferior, however (not the same logic as whatever black magic paradox uses, so it has a 3-8%ish error rate). For non-wasteland provinces, I dumped all the terrain types that 2.4.5 inferred w/ its magic algorithm in-game and used those as overrides when my algorithm was wrong. The rest of the file is mostly just doing the correct things w/r/t province IDs, types, associated county titles, holding capacity, etc.

No worries. Patience has always been a PDS fan's trait.

It might be one of your traits, but I daresay patience is hardly Paradoxian.

 

[yezhanquan]

To me, it's either patience or your willingness to stomach half-baked stuff which cannot be modded out cos the code's not yet open. You guys are the main reason why I'm still throwing money at PDS.

 

[RforRush]

Vanilla map is less depressive. Maybe, if I got depressed trait, I would download this for better roleplay.

 

[Lord of Pain]

Vanilla map is less depressive. Maybe, if I got depressed trait, I would download this for better roleplay.

You might be in need of an monitor adjustment.

Also, a bit rude, dude.