Author Topic: A New Map?  (Read 16354 times)

ahowl11

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A New Map?
« on: September 16, 2016, 08:49:59 AM »
Okay so in the past few days, I have had conversations with Gigantus, and Muizer, who both are presumably going to join this discussion.
Basically, our current map whether its the smaller version or blown up version, isn't really that great. There are a lot of issues with terrain, and placement of mountains. Also, our experiment to blow up the map has not gone well, as Gigantus and I concluded this morning (sorry Emodude, it's just not looking right, and the ai will be effected as well :/). Muizer also has some ideas. Basically it seems as if the best idea is to make a new map, but is that what we want to do? Here are some key features that it'd need to have regardless.

- Stretch to Western India & Tarim Basin so Saka have an impact. We have to include the Saka, Xeofox has dedicated a lot to this mod specifically for them, so the map needs to extend to where they were.

- Have proper projection in Eastern Portion of Map

- It needs to extend south to include all of Arabia as the trade was so important back then, and I'd like to emulate that in RTR.

- I vote to keep my regions, which Gigantus and Muizer both seem to agree on.

- We have the resources researched by Suppanut on TWC, shouldn't be hard to port, they were made for the Fortuna Orbis Map.

- Even though EmoDude isn't as active, he put a lot of time into the climates as well as the textures for the map. I'd like to keep those as best we could. Also, because of our climate building feature, we need to keep them as intact as we can.

- What do you all think on having the major rivers Navigable?

Here is an example map that Muizer showed me today.
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?495095-Ozman-s-Workshop

Okay, so Gigantus, Muizer, Emodude.. The floor is yours. Let's do what is best for the team and make sure we have the best map possible.

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Gigantus

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Re: A New Map?
« Reply #1 on: September 16, 2016, 09:46:39 AM »
The problem with maps of this scale (real life distances) is the projection - you end up with distortions and in this case lots of 'dead' space. And if the height values are not exaggerated over its whole range you end up with a flat map as well.



The ideal case from the view of playable area would be if one places the red bordered area into a rectangle.



That's vertigo inducing where I am concerned so we may have to go with conventional maps. I have been using the Demis Mapper for some time now because of it's ease of use but at this scale it starts to become unsuitable as well because of the stretching.



For those interested I wrote a tutorial on how to use the mapper and made some sample maps as well. Ozman's map made a good effort to balance distortion and playable area, but there simply is no way to get an optimal result.

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Jubal

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Re: A New Map?
« Reply #2 on: September 16, 2016, 11:32:09 AM »
Stupid question potentially, but is dead space in the Sahara and on the Steppe really so much of an issue?

Also, is there a maximum map size for RTW, I can't remember?
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Gigantus

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Re: A New Map?
« Reply #3 on: September 16, 2016, 11:56:19 AM »
It's not an issue per se - but it's a sad waste of space to have a map where you only use 50% of the space. And it messes with path finding if it is accessible.

The hard coded limit is 510*510 size in descr_terrain (the problems that come with that size are numerous) and 200 regions (water counts as region) in descr_regions.
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ahowl11

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Re: A New Map?
« Reply #4 on: September 16, 2016, 04:45:03 PM »
Hmm well to fix the ai issue what if we covered the north east with dense forest, and the Sahara with low mountains?
Ozmans might be a good base for us to work with?

Gigantus, how do you feel about navigable rivers?
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Gigantus

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Re: A New Map?
« Reply #5 on: September 16, 2016, 06:06:35 PM »
Dense forest: can be used but contains moving 3D objects that, in large areas, create a massive performance hit. low mountains or impassable ground type are fine.

Navigable rivers: not a big fan of it - ships get stuck on it as they can't pass each other, they create a massive barrier unless kept thin enough to allow land bridges. Roads are not able to cross them, messing up the road system (visual and movement effect only). They effectively act like a sea body, meaning trade will only happen via sea lane with the region on the other side. In the present map the Nile delta cannot trade with the neigboring region on the other side of the navigable river, for example.
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Muizer

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Re: A New Map?
« Reply #6 on: September 16, 2016, 11:40:41 PM »
Hi guys, tnx for the invite.

So here's the thing with these massive maps. The level of detail in things like regions tends to vary tremendously across the map, with usually the highest density of regions in Greece and around the mediterranean, larger but fairly consistently sized regions around that (Gaul, Iberian peninsula, Anatolia) and even bigger regions beyond that towards the north and east.

So, ideally a projection would have high detail on a central area, dropping off towards the perifery. Perhaps something like an orthogonal map centered on Greece (Lat 38, Lon 22) : http://kartograph.org/showcase/projections/#ortho ?

Now it would be tempting to rotate the cut-out to get rid of "dead space". On the other hand,  the diagonal is the longest axis of the map and from that perspective it would be best to align that, and not the horizontal,  with the main "area of interest".
« Last Edit: September 16, 2016, 11:49:33 PM by Muizer »

Jubal

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Re: A New Map?
« Reply #7 on: September 16, 2016, 11:42:13 PM »
Your link doesn't seem to be loading :(

I agree with Gig on navigable rivers, I remember having tried that on maps previously and given up, the RTW AI does not deal with seas optimally in general.
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Gigantus

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Re: A New Map?
« Reply #8 on: September 17, 2016, 02:21:08 AM »
Agree with a projection that compresses the areas at the top and bottom of the selected map section. Just a pity the demis mapper doesn't have that function. So I guess it will have to be done manually, I wonder if there is a Photoshop function that would be able to do that (gradual reduction).

Edit: I doodled a bit with the map from my other post to achieve some compression. Unfortunately I can't do it in non-cubic mode (unlike with complete resizing) and this results in 'smudging' which makes the result unsuitable for map files. Can't do it gradually either which results in a somewhat weird look.

« Last Edit: September 17, 2016, 03:40:17 AM by Gigantus »
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Alavaria

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Re: A New Map?
« Reply #9 on: September 17, 2016, 09:24:06 AM »
Well actual maps in the ancient world could be rather weird looking, right? I suppose one question is do most RTW/M2TW maps all look about the same for mods that cover large areas?

Gigantus

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Re: A New Map?
« Reply #10 on: September 17, 2016, 09:35:36 AM »
Those maps certainly looked weirder then mine


Same look: If they cover the same area then they do in the layout - the RTR map is pretty much identical to the EBII map. Details like ground textures and strat models differ. The graphic files for the map (map_regions.tga etc and ground textures) are in fact freely interchangeable between RTW and M2TW.
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Muizer

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Re: A New Map?
« Reply #11 on: September 17, 2016, 01:18:40 PM »
The problem with doing anything manually to the shape of the map is that it very much complicates combining data from different sources and placing stuff on the map based on real world coordinates.

The needed compression ins't just a north south thing either. Ahowl mentioned to me wanting to have Lake Baikal on the map, which would also necessitate compression in the west- east direction, especially the nearer you get to the eastern boundary.   

As for the looks of other maps, I wouldn't take that as a reference. I think quite a few are the result of tagging stuff onto an originally smaller map, with little consideration for the overal design.
« Last Edit: September 17, 2016, 01:26:04 PM by Muizer »

Gigantus

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Re: A New Map?
« Reply #12 on: September 17, 2016, 03:07:21 PM »
The problem with doing anything manually to the shape of the map is that it very much complicates combining data from different sources and placing stuff on the map based on real world coordinates.
Agreed - even when it is only the various map graphics that need shaping it's a pain. Plus it needs a 'non smudging' method as the graphics require precise RGB values.

The needed compression ins't just a north south thing either. Ahowl mentioned to me wanting to have Lake Baikal on the map, which would also necessitate compression in the west- east direction, especially the nearer you get to the eastern boundary.
To be honest, I don't think the area to be covered can be done without some serious compromises\alterations to layout, there was a reason why Florida was on the same height as Ireland in the M2 vanilla map

As for the looks of other maps, I wouldn't take that as a reference. I think quite a few are the result of tagging stuff onto an originally smaller map, with little consideration for the overal design.
I was going by the coast lines, but you have a point there with regards to general comparisons.
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ahowl11

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Re: A New Map?
« Reply #13 on: September 17, 2016, 03:24:45 PM »
Hmm well why don't we use ozmans map? It's seems to be the closest to what we need/want right?
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DCLXVIMRTRVEBLAKKOKKVLTDCLXVI

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Re: A New Map?
« Reply #14 on: September 17, 2016, 05:59:47 PM »
I also agree wit ahowl, ozma's map is indeed very well suited for our mod. ps: can we add all major volcanoes like I did for our previous map? (I removed the ridiculous volcano smoke on the battle map so it won't look weird in regions like armenia, anatolia and ethiopia)