Map Mod Testing

[Nuril]

I think it's a missing title history. You might want to check c_meore, if all the map information is complete. I've dealt with it before and I think that was the solution. Also check to make sure that the RGB color code for the province matches what is in the definitions file.

Nevermind, turns out it was just good ol' incompetence. It's the same province as Småland, just renamed and with it's Holdings rearranged (since some are in the other 2 sections), but I accidentally changed it to "title = c_meore" in the province file from when I had the colours of it and Njudung reversed initially. That bit of text was the problem with the other province too, all the technical stuff was fine.

 

[Keanon]

So, getting back into a mood of playing with the CKII map I loaded up my Horizons and it gives me a sort of funny error message.


"File exception:
Exception in: C:\Projects\ClausewitzII\pdx_core\virtualfilesystem.cpp,
line: 572. Description: Could not open file:"

Obviously it's asking for something only Paradox have, now the question is, how do I get my 3072x3072 map back?

How does one correctly inform Paradox of issues such as these?

 

[Camara]

Nuril had discovered something that may solve that. Go to default map and in the topology part note that the new vanilla files have a new command for topology, instead of something_topology = "topology" it's now heightmap = "topology".

Have you tested maps bigger that 3072 with the recent patches?

 

[RedRooster81]

Nevermind, turns out it was just good ol' incompetence. It's the same province as Småland, just renamed and with it's Holdings rearranged (since some are in the other 2 sections), but I accidentally changed it to "title = c_meore" in the province file from when I had the colours of it and Njudung reversed initially. That bit of text was the problem with the other province too, all the technical stuff was fine.

Okay then. Good to hear you worked out the problem. I have fought with the map files myself. I find that renaming vanilla provinces (outside of localisation) brings on much pain. I also realized how to make landless (or rather off-the-map) counties and counties without baronies, which may come in useful later.

 

[Prinz Wilhelm]

Anyone knows an easy way to mod the positions? o

 

[RedRooster81]

Anyone knows an easy way to mod the positions? o

Yes, use 'Nudge', but you will have to (1) enable it in your settings file in My Documents...; and (2) you'll have to make a copy of the vanilla map files, put them in a separate folder, then drop your modded map files into the vanilla /map folder and load up the game without mods. Because Nudge only currently saves changes to the vanilla map files. It's a useful program. There is also the EU3 map positions utility that is linked to on this forum.

 

[Camara]

A map of 3072x1856 I tested worked, but still bigger things like 4096x4096 isn't still working, did you have tested these map limits in the recent patches?

 

[Camara]

I've done some tests on the map size

After some quick tests:

3072x3072 works

3584x2048 works
3584x3072 crashes at Loading Graphics
3584x3584 crashes at Calculating Paths

4096x2048 works
4096x3072 crashes at Calculating Paths

5120x3072 crashes at Calculating Paths

So my conclusion is:
AREA is the important part here. Maybe some number around 10 000 000 is the limiting factor.

3584x3072 with an area of 11 010 048 pixels crashes later at loading, which means it ALMOST works.
4096x2048 with an area of 8 338 608 is the one that works of the tested ones with biggest area.

Yay for science! I call this the Tegus Area Principle!

 

[Nuril]

I'll ask here too (and post the stuff if Cabezaestufa gets back to me in the PM):

According to Camara the files in question would be under "/gfx/FX/" and I have no idea what to do with them! Please help! :happy:

I've successfully expanded the map and all that, but as seen on the following screenshot there is ugliness ahead. The Border-graphic cuts across the map, forests are out of place and even in the seas and everything is too dark. I've included the other map-files they're, but don't know which in the /gfx/FX/-folder I ought to also put in there, so they'd need to be added. The map's resolution is 3584x2048.

[Downloadable archive of the Mod]

 

[Cabezaestufa]

I'll ask here too (and post the stuff if Cabezaestufa gets back to me in the PM):

According to Camara the files in question would be under "/gfx/FX/" and I have no idea what to do with them! Please help! :happy:

I've successfully expanded the map and all that, but as seen on the following screenshot there is ugliness ahead. The Border-graphic cuts across the map, forests are out of place and even in the seas and everything is too dark. I've included the other map-files they're, but don't know which in the /gfx/FX/-folder I ought to also put in there, so they'd need to be added. The map's resolution is 3584x2048.

[Downloadable archive of the Mod]

Ok, good news: it seems that Paradox has already swapped the static sizes in the FX\ files for dynamic ones that take the size of the map into account, so you guys can now use your own non-standard sized maps without worrying about it. Your problem is an easier one to solve: you just have to include your own version of map\static.txt, which is the file that defines the frame (and potentially other cool things like special 3d models to be shown on map). Just modify the "scale" factor to correspond to the scaling you did to the usual dimensions of the map.

But now that I think of it, since your map is rectangular you might have a problem, since "scale" doesn't seem to admit x and y coordinates and so the frame will probably have to be square. You'll have to settle for having the vertical borders frame-less, just use scale = 175 and at least you won't have that ugly thing dividing your map in half.

Don't know why the map is so dark, though; I'll see what I can find.

Good luck with your mod, btw; it looks very interesting!

EDIT: I just noticed you had a tree problem too. That's because your tree.bmp file doesn't have the right proportions. Just crop the leftmost part of it until it's 448 pixel wide (the usual horizontal size * 1.75) and you are set. Just cut the extra pixels on the left away.

 

[Nuril]

Thanks for checking it out, Cabezaestufa.

Ok, good news: it seems that Paradox has already swapped the static sizes in the FX\ files for dynamic ones that take the size of the map into account, so you guys can now use your own non-standard sized maps without worrying about it. Your problem is an easier one to solve: you just have to include your own version of map\static.txt, which is the file that defines the frame (and potentially other cool things like special 3d models to be shown on map). Just modify the "scale" factor to correspond to the scaling you did to the usual dimensions of the map.

But now that I think of it, since your map is rectangular you might have a problem, since "scale" doesn't seem to admit x and y coordinates and so the frame will probably have to be square. You'll have to settle for having the vertical borders frame-less, just use scale = 175 and at least you won't have that ugly thing dividing your map in half.

Weird result: It didn't turn frame-less, The Left, Right and Bottom now have perfect borders (Like |__| ), but the top is nowhere to be found. It stretches way up there (can see the left and right sides continue up past the area you can see).

Edit: Nevermind, that'd just mean that it measures from a corner. I'll just go ahead and "#" block out the border too. Better to consistently not have it on any side. Looks prettier.

Don't know why the map is so dark, though; I'll see what I can find.

Darn it. Hope you find something, since that's obviously the biggest problem.

Good luck with your mod, btw; it looks very interesting!

Thank you! :happy:

EDIT: I just noticed you had a tree problem too. That's because your tree.bmp file doesn't have the right proportions. Just crop the leftmost part of it until it's 448 pixel wide (the usual horizontal size * 1.75) and you are set. Just cut the extra pixels on the left away.

Yeah, those were just wrong. Never trust me to approximate pixels, I s'pose.

 

[Cabezaestufa]

Try creating a folder called "FX" into your mod's gfx folder and put this file in there.

I did what I could, but I'm afraid the map still doesn't look as good as vanilla. The colors are blander, the textures look worse and I can't seem to get the look of the water right. Still, I guess it's an improvement. I hope some nice dev will notice this and fully fixes different-sized maps in an upcoming patch, since this seems to be the final issue before everything starts working perfectly.

 

[Nuril]

Try creating a folder called "FX" into your mod's gfx folder and put this file in there.

I did what I could, but I'm afraid the map still doesn't look as good as vanilla. The colors are blander, the textures look worse and I can't seem to get the look of the water right. Still, I guess it's an improvement. I hope some nice dev will notice this and fully fixes different-sized maps in an upcoming patch, since this seems to be the final issue before everything starts working perfectly.

Wow. That's a massive improvement. What'd you find in it that was relevant?

(Quite creepy to have oil-black rivers clawing across the land, though, naturallly.)

 

[Camara]

Great work.

Meanwhile, 4096x2304 was the biggest resolution I got that works. 4096x2432 and beyond don't work.

 

[Keanon]

The problem seems to me to be that it won't load colormap.dds if it isn't square.

Edit: Nope, isn't this, got it working. Must've been some other silly mistake.

 

[Wolfgang Pauli]

I haven't so much as finished the provinces.bmp map yet, but I have a new project that'll last me a month or two. I'm probably going to need a great deal of help from this thread.

 

[Keanon]

I've created 4 working maps the last 2 weeks, it doesn't take that much to get it working, it's the perfectioning that takes time.

 

[Nuril]

Strike that. I can fix this.

...

When expanding the map am I seriously going to have to manually re-make every single Positions-entry, not just edit the X value? Because I just spent a lot of time today going through a hundred entries in it to add 1536 (the amount of new pixels on the horizontal expansion) since logically they'd be 1536 pixels to the right of their original location, but when loading it up it's all over the effing place and not even in a logical manner. Some have drifted left out into the ocean and some to the right. I was friggin' meticulous in making sure I didn't type it in wrong, constantly going back and cross-checking, yet practically all of them are marked red in a manner inconsistent with 1536.

At the moment it's looking like you actually have to re-do the whole map and constantly load up vanilla to see that they look "sort of in the same place"? That's idiotic. The coordinate system makes no sense.

 

[Keanon]

I read something about some Nudge thingy that lets you do it ingame now, anyone who knows more about it? Might save both me and Nuril some headache

 

[Nuril]

As I said, no longer relevant.

I read something about some Nudge thingy that lets you do it ingame now, anyone who knows more about it? Might save both me and Nuril some headache

No it won't. I already have that activated. It'd still mean manually redoing all thousand of them. The problem isn't to do with that. It's to do with the coordinates not making sense. I don't see a reason why I shouldn't be able to duplicate the regular coordinates exactly on the pixel by adding 1536 to the original X-coordinate sums of positions.txt. I don't want to "eyeball" similar results by re-doing the map. I want to go through the text-file and make it exactly the same. Not to mention it wouldn't actually be faster to use the "Nudge" tool, since it requires more cross-checking than just doing the math in the file itself with potentially worse results.

The Nudge tool only becomes relevant when making positions for the new provinces west of the line for the 1584 new pixels in this case, since those don't have original positions to begin with.

(FYI you activate it in the settings.txt file in My Documents/Paradox Interactive/CK2/ModName. But it doesn't support mods, so it'll be overwriting your vanilla positions.txt-file. Remember to switch that one out with your mod's, otherwise it doesn't do any good.)