The Map Editor Planning Thread

[Jamie550]

For the new thread, click here.





MapUtility v1.1
-Includes MapViewer and MapMaker
-Download contains programs, source, and information

Downloads are here
Help
Other links

Have problems? Read this first

FAQ

Q: Will I be able to create new provinces?
A: There is a MAX_PROVINCE limit. But if there are currently extra unused provinces, then yes. Otherwise, either ask Paradox to do it in their 1.2 patch or look for the thousands of MAX_PROVINCE values in the .exe and change them.

Q: Can we change all the wrong names on the map?
A: Yes. The names are just part of a grayscale image, which will be editable.

Q: Where can I get instant notification of updates, without checking my User CP?
A: Subscribe to the RSS feed here: http://ederon.net/Projects/TheMapEditor/tabid/265/moduleid/906/language/en-US/RSS.aspx

 

[unmerged(62194)]

This is glorious!

Well done!

A few questions tho, just minor things.

1) Can you remove the text from the map that says "The Soviet Union" and "Poland" etc?

This would help with those mods that alter the time frame, where certain countries (like the Soviet Union) don't exist.

2) Can you resize/recolour/restyle the borders that separate the provinces so that they look a bit better? I mean just cosmetics here. I'm aware your announcement hints strongly at editing the map provinces and even perhaps creating entire fantasy worlds. But i'm wondering if it's also possible to merely sex up the map, with your tool, for existing HOI II and the more polished real world mods?

3) This is a dream come true for many. Many thanks and good luck!

 

[Jamie550]

This is glorious!

Well done!

A few questions tho, just minor things.

1) Can you remove the text from the map that says "The Soviet Union" and "Poland" etc?

This would help with those mods that alter the time frame, where certain countries (like the Soviet Union) don't exist.

2) Can you resize/recolour/restyle the borders that separate the provinces so that they look a bit better? I mean just cosmetics here. I'm aware your announcement hints strongly at editing the map provinces and even perhaps creating entire fantasy worlds. But i'm wondering if it's also possible to merely sex up the map, with your tool, for existing HOI II and the more polished real world mods?

3) This is a dream come true for many. Many thanks and good luck!

1) Not personally. However, somebody could take the base maps, and change them so that the colorscale values were the same of the surroundings.

2) I don't exactly understand. Could you photoshop something?

3) You're welcome!

 

[unmerged(42223)]

2) Can you resize/recolour/restyle the borders that separate the provinces so that they look a bit better? I mean just cosmetics here. I'm aware your announcement hints strongly at editing the map provinces and even perhaps creating entire fantasy worlds. But i'm wondering if it's also possible to merely sex up the map, with your tool, for existing HOI II and the more polished real world mods?

This is something specified in the map/colorscales.csv. There you can alter thickness and color of borders.

 

[Jamie550]

This is something specified in the map/colorscales.csv. There you can alter thickness and color of borders.

Thickness??? How?

 

[unmerged(42223)]

Thickness??? How?

Green;;;
red;green;blue;index
200;250;200;0
150;240;150;20
80;150;90;50
40;110;70;64

The first line is the forward color
Second line is the clicked on color
The third line is the border color (forward)
The last line is the border color clicked

The first three numbers are the color scale:
red;green;blue respectively, the fourth number is title, 'index' which disignates the border thickness.

I know by near endless trial and error.

 

[unmerged(42223)]

P.S.

That may account for that 'noise' we were talking about earlier.

 

[Jamie550]

Version 1 of map viewer. Not all is completed, is slow, needs .NET Framework 3.5 (3.0 may work as well)

http://www.mediafire.com/?4eg4i9mjcmx

 

[Fernando Torres]

Oh well, I download it now ! Thanks for your hard work.

 

[Fernando Torres]

It seems not be not working. (the download site)

 

[Jamie550]

What happens when you click on the link?

 

[Fernando Torres]

The link works well. But when i click to download in the site, i got an error. (it's maybe only due to my cpu, i don't know) Let's see if others have the same problems.
I can't wait to dl it !
What is it possible to do so far with your editor ?

 

[Jamie550]

So far, the only thing you can do is view the map. This thread is for discussing how I should make the actual editor, see the first post.

Here is alternate link from the hated Rapidshare:
http://rapidshare.com/files/89059423/HoiMapEditorv1.exe

 

[Fernando Torres]

It works fine, thanks !

 

[Jamie550]

Final version of the Map Viewer (Requires .NET 3.5 (3.0 might work))

Good link: http://www.mediafire.com/?fwbnex41whw
Rapidshare link: http://rapidshare.com/files/89082455/HoiVicMapViewer.exe

If you want a map editor, make some suggestions here about how the editor should work. I cannot make an editor without input from those who will use it. So somebody please have an opinion about how the editor should work. (See the first post for my suggestion (I am not a photoshopper, so I do not how much difficulty my suggestion would entail(Therefore: If you want to edit maps, make your suggestions)))

 

[Fernando Torres]

I don't know if you can make it but as you ask for our opnions i'll give you mine :

i would like to be able to change the lines of the provinces borders and to add new provinces.

 

[Jamie550]

I don't know if you can make it but as you ask for our opnions i'll give you mine :

i would like to be able to change the lines of the provinces borders and to add new provinces.

What you want is possible (though there is probably a maxprovince limit)

What I ask is:
When you make the images that my editor will process, how do you want to make the images.

From the first post, this is what I suggested:

For the lightmaps:
Use one color (maybe green) to represent the colorscale value, and have it range from 0-63. (0-255 is also possible. Obviously then the values will be divided by four)
There are alpha, red and blue left.
For normal provinces, the alpha will be 255, and the combination of the red and blue will be the province Id.
For border provinces, the first bit of the alpha will be 0. The second bit will either be 0 or 1, depending on whether it should be painted with "Border" or "BorderOutline" in colorscales. The next six and the first five of the red will be one provinceId, and the second three of the red and the eight of the blue will be a second province.

Also a text document listing the adjencies of all provinces will be helpful.

For the overlays:
Make images of 2304x2304 pixels. These images will then be 13x5. If a tile of 32x32 should not have anything, fill it with that pukish yellow color in tiles.csv. If it should have something, fill it with a green background, then put what you want on top.

But those who use photoshop might know that messing with the alpha value is too complicated or something, and think that having two images for each section is better. Also there can be debate on the size of individual images. The thing is, I want to know what the people who will edit the maps think is the best way to draw the raw images.

 

[unmerged(5110)]

What you want is possible (though there is probably a maxprovince limit)

What I ask is:
When you make the images that my editor will process, how do you want to make the images.

From the first post, this is what I suggested:

But those who use photoshop might know that messing with the alpha value is too complicated or something, and think that having two images for each section is better. Also there can be debate on the size of individual images. The thing is, I want to know what the people who will edit the maps think is the best way to draw the raw images.

Hi Jamie,

Good on you for work on the HoI2 map editor! My suggestion is to follow the precedent made by Inferis and have there be several layers in a photoshop .psd file:

1) Lightmaps, this is a grayscale layer 0-255 ranging from pure black to pure white with grays in between. (If in photoshop, you could make this layer start in the "Multiply" blend mode, that would be great.

2) For the border province, you could make a clear layer with pure red indicating the borders (a cool thing you could also add would be if the user could draw green or blue lines to either indicate bridges across islands or blockable straits, which would add the appropriate lines to the adj_defs.csv file)

3) For the province IDs, to use the RGB values - it will be a lot clearer to people which provinces are different if you try and make the colours as far apart from each other as possible, if they are all varying shades of purple, then it can get very difficult to tell at a glance if that's one big province i see or two smaller ones.

3) The rivers overlay could be yet another layer, with actual RGB values, this time

OK, now the extra cool stuff - those nice-to-haves:

a) Some sort of colorscales.csv previewer, where you insert the R,G,B,index values in some sort of slider form, and a picture to the left of your sliders immediately shows you what your province would look like. This would be GREAT as a separate .exe file for people that just want to play around with colorscales.csv without worrying any of the other map-editing stuff.

b) Please have the ability to be able to edit the map as manageable chunks rather than only the whole thing, because the map is pretty huge and we don't all have a million GBs or RAM ^__^. It would be even cooler if we could set the parameters of what exactly which sizes we wanted so we could have a "europe" map and a "iran" map or whatever.

c) Do you have any idea what those artifacts at the bottom of the map are when you go out to maximum zoom? any way to fix that?

 

[unmerged(62194)]

c) Do you have any idea what those artifacts at the bottom of the map are when you go out to maximum zoom? any way to fix that?

Sorry to interrupt, i'm underqualified for a meat and bones discussion but can i just jump in and ask you if you have an ATI graphics card?

I thought it was just me you see, i didn't recall seeing those strange cone shaped gradients on my previous computer at the bottom of the screen when playing HOI II at maximum zoom out.

My current computer is an absolute beast but i have noticed that even ATI's flagship cards, of which i have 2, don't handle certain graphical features too well. I'm talking about next gen shooters, but looking at that again in HOI has made me wonder if it's an ATI thing.

 

[ADukes]

if it's an ATI thing

It isn't, it's with NVidia cards too.