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Andrei's Mercator Projection Map Overhaul Project

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Andrei Gijgorev

Andrei Gijgorev

Civilian
3 Badges
May 23, 2007
686
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Andrei's Mercator Projection Map Overhaul Project

AMPMOP, as the name suggests, is a map overhoul mod. Its aim is to replace the complete original HoI2-map with a much more detailed one that uses only one unitary map projection, so that it's correct not only local, but global as well. The map follows the original style.

The projection I'm using is a variation of the mercator projection with flattened polar regions. Like the original map, my map will be clipped to the region between North Cape and Tierra del Fuego.

Concerning provinces, the map does not follow the original map. Therefore, any scenario or mod using the original map will not be compatible with this map.
The provinces will be distributed according to political, historical and geographical aspects. Amongst other things, this means that urban provinces will get smaller, but there will be more of them. Paris for example will definitely be urban.
Another aim is to introduce the core borders since 1770. There won't be Andorra or San Marino, but if you want to conquer Catalonia or the reunion territories with France, unite Cis- and Transleithania under the Austrian banner, restore Poland's former glory (and territories), or fly the Swiss flag in the Valtellina, you will be able to do so. The same goes for the world of today. There will most likely be a province Aksin Chin, as well as the divided Cashmere. And, of course, with Danzig, Kattowitz, Memel, and Alsace-Lorraine getting their shape corrected, the era of the World Wars will be pictured as realistic as possible.
In spite of what you could assume from what I just wrote, the map will not be more eurocentric than the game already is.
But that's all still up in the air, so let's see a few screens of what I've accomplished so far:

Coastlines:
- South Asia
- Ganges Delta
- Oceania
- Philippines
- Yap & Ulithi Atoll (1:1)
- East Africa
- Europe

Provinces:
- Switzerland (obsolete draft)



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The work will be devided into several steps: First is a redrawing of the coasts, then comes creating the provinces, then assigning IDs and connections, and finally revising the province.csv in terms of terrain, resources, position of armies, sprites, and so on. I've probably forgotten something, but that doesn't matter right now.
I assume provinces and coasts will take about the same time, but I can't make any predictions about the other stages.

Here's a progress indicator:

Stage 1 (coasts)
- Siberia, Korea, Japan
- China, Indochina, India, Persia
- Indonesia, Philippines
- Niugini, Australia, New Zealand
- Africa
- Near East
- Europe
- South America
- Caribbean and Central America
- North America
- other islands

Stage 2 (provinces)
- ?

Stage 3 (IDs, connections)
- ?

Stage 4 (resources, terrain, ...)
- ?

Stage 5 (?)

As you can see I'm well on my way.


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I'm not visiting this forum very frequently, so me not having written anything for weeks doesn't mean the mod has died.


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If you feel like contributing: I'm currently for guys that can provide me with concepts for province distribution, since AMPMOP will vastly increase the amount of provinces up to the level of Vicky in Central Europe, so there is a lot of work yet to be done. Distribution criteria are as follows:

1. national borders 1914 - 1945 including claims
2. national borders 1990 - 2009 including claims
3. natural borders (rivers, mountain ranges, ...)
4. national borders 1770-1914 and 1945-1990 including claims
5. frontlines WW2
6. frontlines WW1
7. ethnic and cultural borders
8. administrative borders

So if you are familiar with the history and current situation of a certain region, feel free to submit a concept. Please keep in mind the criteria though, especially that administrative borders are the LEAST important criteria. And please don't send me PMs, but instead post your concepts in this thread, since I'd like to hear other people's views on the concepts as well.

Thanks in advance.
 
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Good luck man, I am anxiously waiting. :)
 
I think i definitely like what ure trying to do and id like to help you if i can.

About qualities you like/dislike, i could be highly motivated cause this project when finished will provide loads of new game play hours, also i have lots of free time, and im willing to do exactly what u want as long as im able, which brings final matter of ability. I cant really help u much with stages 1 and 2 as i have no exp in that area, but depending on the amount of work required i should be able to help with stages 3 and 4 and on top of that i think i can menage repositioning of various country's units and infrastructure as long as someone provides me with crude data. Im somewhat new in writing events, so if required i can menage some basic events, and the thing im best at are technologies. If u wanna remake tech trees at all that is. I wanted to make my own mod for a while now, so i did lots of experimenting in different areas, and maybe i can be of some help to you. Also i use msn for better communication since forum msging tends to be laggy for coordinating any serious work.
 
Good luck man and I'll be waiting for this. The provinces part is where the real challenge (and problems) lie. I'll be waiting for this. Hope everything goes smoothly.

By the way, please make Africa less annoying to play in. I never play as Italy anymore since most of the combat takes place there.
 
@SemmiS
What exactly do you mean with "annoying"?

@Srboljub
Thank you for your offer. Once I've finished drawing coastlines and set up the provinces, I will have to create bitmaps with the various provinces in their unique colors, and I probably could use some help there, because it's a very boring and tiresome work that requires only basic graphic editing skills. But this won't become important until in four weeks, at the earliest.
By the way, this is only a map mod, so no new events, no techtree, no nothing. Just a plain ol' map.

The only help I could possibly need right now is:
- More RAM. 2GB sucks for working on images with a size > 11.000 x 7.000 and three layers. And I'm too lazy to go buy some. Maybe when I'm finished drawing the coastlines...
- More Provinces. There is a limit in HoI2 to the number of provinces, I think it's somewhere about 2600. If this limit were to be removed, I could spend much more provinces on regions like Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia and so on.
If you have any idea how to bypass this limitation, let me know, and I will give you the best map you could possibly imagine.
 
Andrei Gijgorev said:
The only help I could possibly need right now is:
- More RAM. 2GB sucks for working on images with a size > 11.000 x 7.000 and three layers. And I'm too lazy to go buy some. Maybe when I'm finished drawing the coastlines...
- More Provinces. There is a limit in HoI2 to the number of provinces, I think it's somewhere about 2600. If this limit were to be removed, I could spend much more provinces on regions like Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia and so on.
If you have any idea how to bypass this limitation, let me know, and I will give you the best map you could possibly imagine.
Click to expand...

I have only 768 MB RAM and it is still possible to work on map design, but I advice you to work on smaller images and all should work well with your 2GB ;) And better to disable all programs which use a lot of RAM.

The exact limit of provinces is 2608 (vanilla map has 2568 provinces IIRC and you have next 40 free IDs) and you must have exactly 14860 connections between provinces on the map. Both limits are hardcoded so only teams which have rights to use Paradox source code can help you (me too...). Third useless limit is limit of ports on the world, I don't know exact number, but if you want to add any port, you have to delete one somewhere on the world.

'restore Poland's former glory (and territories)' - this looks fantastic :D
 
Yes, I figured that with the max number of ports already out, and I don't see a serious problem there. I also thought of merging all lakes and removing the connections to the adjacent land provinces, therefore gaining another 25 provinces with the drawback of planes not being able to fly over lakes and the FOW there being permanent.

The problem with the big images is not when editing them, but when scaling and moving the background layers (map projections with the same size), and for this I can't split the images because then I wouldn't have one unique projection anymore and the whole mod would lose its point. It's already tiresome enough to get Asia, Indonesia and Africa fit together seamlessly.
 
Andrei Gijgorev said:
@SemmiS
What exactly do you mean with "annoying"?
[/b]
Click to expand...

I guess the annoying he spoke was the stuff of... less velocity and without connections at some provinces. That screws up the whole plaing... That's why I really hate plaing as italy and UK there.
 
I still don't get it. That's just how warfare in the desert is. To me that sounds a bit like complaining about islands in the Pacific Ocean...

Anyway, I need a bit of advice here. I just finished the Aegean Sea, and this is how it looks: Link
As you can see, I have only included the biggest / most important islands. But I'm not sure if it wouldn't be better to include even smaller Islands, like on this map from E3, or to remove some and focus only on the most important ones, like on the original map.

This is purely an aesthetical choice, so the number of provinces will remain the same, but I'm curious about what you favor.
 
Too many islands can get confusing, so I'll vote on keeping what you have at the moment. :)
 
Andrei Gijgorev said:
I still don't get it. That's just how warfare in the desert is. To me that sounds a bit like complaining about islands in the Pacific Ocean...

Anyway, I need a bit of advice here. I just finished the Aegean Sea, and this is how it looks: Link
As you can see, I have only included the biggest / most important islands. But I'm not sure if it wouldn't be better to include even smaller Islands, like on this map from E3, or to remove some and focus only on the most important ones, like on the original map.

This is purely an aesthetical choice, so the number of provinces will remain the same, but I'm curious about what you favor.
Click to expand...

I've just added them all to make these provinces more clickable without addind too many nameplates. If you plan to make provinces like Ceuta, Melila or Macao you'll have to decide if you make them 10 or more times bigger to have chance to click on them (keep in mind that these provinces have ports, armies, airports and other installations) or just make like we and just add nameplates.
 
Yes I know that. I don't plan on making those provinces considerably bigger than in reality, so it has to be something like nameplates, probably including installations. Another possibilty would be that only armies, airports and ports are shown, and you can only see the rest by clicking on the province.
Armies could stand "on top" of those provinces, while ports only need to touch them, so it should leave enough space for clicking, considering that the black coastline can be clicked on as well.
A third possibility would be that the coast hatchings are actually part of the provinces - this would add quite some clicking space, while maybe even looking cool on the map.
 
Europe is now 99% done. Iceland and a few lakes are still missing, but the continental coastline is complete.
You can find an image in the first post.

I will now proceed with drawing the province borders.
 
Wow this is coming along nicely. Europe looks great. Can't wait to see North America. And to Inner Circle, rivers are on a different texture file than colorscales (which is the part he's doing now) so he will probably add them in at some point.
 
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