Map modding - custom map size

[Neusidler]

Hello everyone!

A few days ago I've started drawing the completely new map for FtG game. I have noticed that some continents/peninsulas in game are smaller/bigger or slightly deformed, for example Scandinavia in game is much smaller than Scandinavia in real life, Europe on map is bigger than in reality, etc. I know this interventions were implemented to the game to improve its playabity, but I'm not very sattisfied of this and want to capsize that mess and create a full, realistic world map.

But let's go back to the main topic - standard game map has dimensions of 18944 x 7296 pixels. What if I create the graphic file bigger than this size? Will be the map working? :unsure:

Thank you in advance.

 

[Therion]

Well, it depends on the projection. Scandinavia and other places close to the poles look bigger in mercator projection. If you draw Scandinavia in mercator projection, Scandinavia would occupy most of the northern region which means that Central and Southern European provinces would not fit in any region (remember that the map is restricted to 256 provinces per region).

Europe necessarily has to be larger than in real life due to the higher number of provinces.

As far as I can gather from the various tests I made, larger dimensions are not accepted.

 

[Neusidler]

Thanks for a quick reply Looks like I'm forced to create a map in standard size. I'll keep up work during summer and perhaps someting will come out of it.

 

[DSMyers1]

I would look at some of the other maps that have been made for inspiration/tips and tricks. WATK, for example: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?444227-World-According-to-Kasperus-(aka-watk)

 

[Card. Contarini]

After looking into similar thoughts some months ago, I can say without any doubt that a true equal-area world rendering is actually impossible at least with the current region limits (Europe becomes too small on the map and "overlap" areas between the regions take up too much space) without severely curtailing the number of provinces in Europe. I did some experimentation, though, on attempting to create maps somewhat better scaled than what we have now; sadly I was the victim of a violent crime which saw my computer stolen some days ago and no longer have the original Photoshop files and have lost a great amount of work, but I still have a mostly-complete map of Europe and the Middle East from this map as well as a global map that also includes partial outlines of North America, Africa, and Southeast Asia. I had been viewing this as a sort of long-term personal project basically out of the desire to play FtG on a better-scaled map; the idea wasn't necessarily to create a 'definitive' map and I think one of the benefits of a project like FtG is the multiplicity of mods and maps possible. (Ultimately most of Europe's provinces on this map are the same as in Plvs Vltra but there are several differences as well and there are fewer sea squares around Europe; the tentative name for this map/mod was New World and I had even installed a preliminary title screen I was personally considering the map to be a version of Plvs Vltra in a similar sense that Plvs Vltra is a version of WATK4, and a majority of the actual province layout was the work of Kasperus and Therion) Europe was mostly done although I think I was still around 1 province over the region limit in the northwest region, and the map of Europe I still have is only 95% complete vs the most recent edits I had made, but in case you're interested in seeing some possibilities for scaling things differently on a map, you could direct messages to me here and I could send you the images I still have of these maps.

 

[Card. Contarini]

I'll just link now to the images I'm discussing:

Europe and Middle East
World

The only core change to Europe was combining the province between Tripolitania and Benghazi into Tripolitania; otherwise there were some minor cosmetic changes in Europe and Egypt but province layout was the same. Again, I believe this map has not dealt with all region limit issues but has come pretty close. The world map is good context for how a smaller Europe could be situated globally. Any questions or comments are welcome.

Note the white space in the north of the map above Europe -- this is intentional in order to correctly stagger the region boundaries and maximize the number of provinces available in the northernmost regions (particularly in Europe). I no longer have the photoshop files with layers I was working on, but it's possible that the northern white space on this map may need to be extended just slightly in order to properly stagger all region boundaries.

I think a more-appropriately scaled map is a worthy project to itself if possible and, just throwing out ideas here, potentially could be a sub-project or sub-mod within PV.

 

[Card. Contarini]

ocean squares around Africa were very tentative and essentially drawn simply to be able to have an outline of that continent for greater sscaling purposes elsewhere on the map. the plan was for the Straits of Magellan to cross the southern edge of the map to relatively properly align South America and Africa unlike most maps.

 

[Therion]

I see you still used the Gall-Peters projection despite my warnings... Latitudinally you compressed almost two regions into one so there is no way you could export that. The vertical distance from the far north to Gibraltar is the same as the distance from the far north to La Rochelle in mine. The northern regions in my map were already packed up to the full so you must have broken the region limit by 200 provinces.

Thing is these maps are not even more "realistic". You're merely using different projections. The ultimate realistic map would have to be globular.

 

[Card. Contarini]

I actually initially used the Hobo-Dyer projection rather than Gall-Peters -- this was basically an aesthetic choice (HD looks much nicer than GP). But ultimately the map as it stood involved pretty big changes even from Hobo-Dyer; essentially, North Africa remained to scale with Europe, but North America and Asia were made slightly (around 10%) smaller vs scale, most of Africa a bit smaller than that, and South America and Australia significantly decreased in size. On region limits, I had actually drawn an eye-guide of the regions as a layer on Photoshop -- keep in mind that white space above the map staggered things such that the boundary between the northernmost region and the one below it fell at an appropriate point; I spent a lot of time calculating and edging the white space area pixels at a time to maximize everything; the maps I just posted would definitely still have some issues to resolve on these matters, but I don't think those would be nearly as severe as you're implying. (I believe the most recent revision had the NW region only one province over the limit, although I no longer have all associated files including the region limit layer guide I was using.)

Clearly any two-dimensional map of our spherical globe will be imperfect, although I personally aesthetically appreciate 2D gaming (and think keeping things at two dimensions regarding a game like this allows more intensive efforts to go toward strategic rather than graphical purposes), and the particular set of constraints we have involving regional province limits makes matters especially difficult; Europe is actually still outsized on the maps I just posted, but just much less so than on all other maps. Presenting Europe somewhat more proportionately was just a very specific aesthetic project I had, with a sort of long-term trajectory in mind (essentially, this was just painting in my free time for meditative purposes) although I have no idea if/when I might be able to contribute significant work toward that project at any near-future point -- but I thought it would be worthwhile to show my work in case Neusidler or anyone else is interested in possibilities toward a map projection somewhat more accurately scaled.

 

[Neusidler]

To create a realistically-scaled world map we must have a possibility to create a bigger graphic file which game will be operating, otherwise Europe will be too small and many of provinces become unclickable, not to mention the region province limits. I think we can attempt to do something like that, but if work has to be perfected, I suppose pure technical changes in game engine will be needed.

 

[Therion]

On region limits, I had actually drawn an eye-guide of the regions as a layer on Photoshop -- keep in mind that white space above the map staggered things such that the boundary between the northernmost region and the one below it fell at an appropriate point; I spent a lot of time calculating and edging the white space area pixels at a time to maximize everything; the maps I just posted would definitely still have some issues to resolve on these matters, but I don't think those would be nearly as severe as you're implying. (I believe the most recent revision had the NW region only one province over the limit, although I no longer have all associated files including the region limit layer guide I was using.)

You must have omitted the overlay regions in your calculations as there's no way those amount of province can fit in that area, even if you take into account the staggering.

Europe is actually still outsized on the maps I just posted, but just much less so than on all other maps

I just don't see the rationale behind the use of projections which make Europe smaller when that's the most province-intensive region. What's the purpose of using an equal-area projection when you would not be able to represent important provinces in Europe? And why should Africa and other equatorial regions be as large when they'll mostly be PTI? Another problem is that the map dimensions are 18944 x 7296 which is to say almost 2.6:1. Almost all projections are 2:1 or less so you'll never be able to mimic those projections without either compressing longitudinally or stretching latitudinally.

 

[Card. Contarini]

This would be a mostly-complete map of the northwest and northeast regions in Europe, staggered with white space above, and, if I'm not calculating this incorrectly, including the overlap areas. I believe at this point that neither region is more than several provinces over the limit. my question now is: am I somehow radically misinterpreting how regions are defined? (I don't really mind asking this publicly, as if I'm making some conceptual mistake here perhaps asking aloud about it would prevent someone else from making the same error) [in fact if my exact calculations are correct, the nw region is slightly below limit and ne region slightly above, and so effectively that problem could be "staggered" away as well by moving the entire projection slightly so that the region boundary would fall slightly east of where that map would project it now.]

On rationale: I think FtG basically should be thought of as almost an "open source" strategy gaming project and that there's definitely room within that project for varying maps and mods advancing at varying paces and pursuing different emphases or valuations; purely from a strategic point of view, it might seem to make the most sense to oversize Europe. But another standpoint might value a map more proportionately-sized for other reasons -- I'm thinking really here of aesthetic immersion, something like the sense of scrolling around the map and having everything feel like it's all lining up correctly and sized correctly, creating more the impression of "being in" the world by reducing visual discrepancies from the known world; the sorts of misalignments on most maps can be jarring or at least distracting during gameplay. Per a certain set of aesthetic valuations, it might be appropriate for one project to sacrifice a small amount of detail within Europe in order to visually portray Europe more proportionately in context of the world. The time arc of this game depicts Europe, a relatively small corner of the world or basically a large peninsula of Asia, building empires over the rest of the globe -- it's an amazing story that might be aesthetically-experienced by a gamer in a more deep and immersive sense through more proportionately-sized landmasses. No one is forced to agree with me on this of course.

 

[Therion]

First things first. This sort of projection is NOT objectively more realistic as you make it out to be. Given that its cylindrical projection cuts through at 37.5 degrees north and south, it only preserves shape between latitudes 45 degrees north and south but land masses near the poles are flattened to preserve the equal area property. This is why your map looks so stretched and flattened. These kind of projections are politically motivated in that they are specifically designed to overestimate the size of the "Third World" vis-a-vis the "First World". You might partake to that agenda but you cannot claim without delusion that these projections are in any way MORE realistic than others.

am I somehow radically misinterpreting how regions are defined?

Yes or maybe you're thinking disjointly and not considering how the regions affect one another. Even if you manage to fit the northern regions, the two regions beneath them won't. Take the SE region (Greece, Asia Minor, Egypt, etc.). It was already maxed out and now its overlay region will cover up to Germany-Poland-Russia.

I absolutely have nothing against people developing their own maps/mods from but I personally find it quite ridiculous, knowing the complexity of the task, that we have four persons working on four different maps. What I tried to establish is a unified project to develop the best map possible in a reasonable timeframe but this has not been possible due to lack of collaboration, interest and disagreements.