Re: MAPS!
 

:)

A quick search online says that the Donau bridge near Vilshofen was destroyed April 1945 and rebuilt in Aug 1950. Did you want to factor this in, or this being a what-if have a replacement bridge in place for the scenario?


Should not be a problem.

Sure. It's not that complicated, at all. Can you find Vilshofen using Venhola?

Re: MAPS!
 

That's amazing. I didn't know that bridge was destroyed. To me, at that time (a few years later), it looked new but I never gave it a second thought. I'll have to think about that for the scenario. Besides capturing both ends of the bridge, I hadn't factored that bridge in.

Yes, I found Vilshofen using Venhola.

Re: MAPS!
 

Use the + button to center the grid where you want it. This will be your map, it'll be max size.

If you want to rotate the map you can do so by using shift/alt/mouse drag.

Use the arrow button to download your map.

Re: MAPS!
 

Got it. I download it to WinSPMBT and went into the editor. It seems I have various hill heights but there are no details on the map - it's all green (clear).

Re: MAPS!
 

Your map will be set for slot 999. You can change this if you wish, or you can save it to another slot after you have opened it.

The main map will look blank, but it is not. Looking at the mini map you will see a bit what it looks like.

What I do next is this:

1. Set fill range to cover the whole map.
2. Hit the blue triangle in the lower right corner (looks like a "play" button).
3. Hit the clear terrain button in the upper left corner. ("Add clear terrain to hex following the contours of the existing map")
3. Hit the blue triangle agian.
4. Hit the fill button and the height levels will show up. You will see very clearly where the Donau and Vils rivers are located.

Re: MAPS!
 

The game is designed to play left-right only. Artillery arrives from the sides map edge, troops will retreat to thier map edge, and that map edge shall be the right map edge or the left map edge, nothing else.

Naturally a scenario can be designed to be played a bit diagonally, but up-down tends not to work.

Note that I said right, not East, left, not West. The scenario designer decides where North is and can put some text on the map detailing that. The top of the map is the top of the map - not North, necessarily.

Re: MAPS!
 

No luck, I'm afraid. What value do you input to cover the whole map? I typed in 9999 and it seemed to work? What about the 'block' vs. 'splatter' effect? I was using block. Splatter has the 1-90 option.

Re: MAPS!
 

Gotcha. Yea, the few scenarios I've played that go up and down have always been tricky. That's good to know. Thanks again!

Re: MAPS!
 

The Venhola program has a button for generating a link to he map grid. I like to copy it to a word/open office document because I can seldom finish a map in one sitting.

Then it's pretty much time go to town on the map.

I fill in rivers and water first. Notice that the Donau is wide but if you build the river using water hexes it will not read as a wide river map. I suppose the easiest way if you want a wide river (and inflatable rafts) is to deploy a stream in the middle of where the Donau will be use the Convert all streams to wide rivers and maybe set it to width 1 - and then add water hexes for the rest of the shape. I guess it would be possible to make shallow water so units can cross..., but is the river really shallow in reality?

I like to use two computers (or two screens), with the Venhola map on one and the game on the other.

Save early, save often.

Re: MAPS!
 

I tried it with 800 and 9000, both worked.

Can you post the link to the Venhola grid, and I can try and generate the map for you.

Re: MAPS!
 

Re: MAPS!
 

I broke up the URL. If you compress them, it should work.

http://www.venhola.com/maps/geo.html
#13.200268137756227,48.629755946799065,
9.740282683375305

Re: MAPS!
 

It gives me a grid near Helsinki, Finland...

Could be my machine. I'm afriad I'll have to log off for tonight. I'll be around tomorrow...

Re: MAPS!
 

I don't know why that is. It's not your machine, I get the same thing.
No problem, I have to go too. Hopefully we can continue tomorrow. Thanks again for all your good help!

Re: MAPS!
 

search the game guide for gWideRiver and then see the table of map editing hot keys a little further down that section - ^ is the one you want

Re: MAPS!
 

This should work now. I copied the map grid link instead of the page URL...

http://www.venhola.com/maps/geo.php?...40282683375305

Re: MAPS!
 

BTW - I want to thank everyone involved with keeping this game updated and improved over the years. I bought the original back in the mid-90's and have been playing ever since. In fact, I still have the original disc and packaging.
All you folks are amazing and I, for one, am extremely grateful. Thanks again for all you do for us.

Re: MAPS!
 

Not to sound weird, but you really really need to read the game manual everything is explained in there and then you have to really experiment.

Re: MAPS!
 

Gee thanks :rolleyes:

Re: MAPS!
 

The best way to reveal contours of a freshly downloaded Venhola map is to load it into the Extended Map Editor and press the "Strip Map" button..that will reveal all the map contours in one easy step

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/attac...1&d=1545926064

Re: MAPS!
 

That worked! Thanks so much. That Venhola is a great time-saving program. Now it's time to get to work.
You guys are awesome! Thanks again and Happy New Year!

Re: MAPS!
 

Your welcome. I just wanted to point out that everything that you were asking is in the game guide, they put in not only a lot of work in the yearly updates of the game itself but also in the documentation of the game and all the improvements to go with it. I was not trying to be snarky or anything and sorry if I came off that way.

Way-points, map editing, and a host of other items are in the guide.

There is also a ton of helpful tips and notes you wont get anywhere else like this basic one:

Re: MAPS!
 

Understood but that's not the way the conversation unfolded. I know there's a guide but if someone is volunteering the info in the course of a discussion, that's the best way to go. If you read the entire conversation, you'll see it started out quite differently. I wasn't looking to bypass the manual and have someone spoon-feed me.

Re: MAPS!
 

Cool! :up:

Re: MAPS!
 

Thanks for your help, much appreciated! Have a great New Year!

Re: MAPS!
 

For map makers that don't already know this.

Here is a tip.

Use this url:

https://satellites.pro/

Do a search for say Berlin in the search box.

Now grab the URL or just the latitude and longitude. So for the above search this comes back in the url field:

https://satellites.pro/#52.523300,13.413770,19

So continuing with this example grab the latitude of: 52.523300 and the longitude of: 13.413770.

Place that in a text editor and then modify the default venhola url in the text editor replacing the lat & long like so:

http://www.venhola.com/maps/geo.php?...3.413770&rot=0

Make sure you don't mess up the url string (i.e., you need to keep the characters in bold text and just replace the numbers, and some lat/long may have a - number in them: ?lat=12.123456789&lo=12.1234567&rot=0)

Now you can adjust and download and then just load the map into either WW2 or MBT and hit strip map if you have the extended editor to reveal the contours. Then edit the map to your heart's content.

Re: MAPS!
 

Is it not easier to find place in google maps - click on map to get latitude and longitude and paste into the boxes on the first screen at http://www.venhola.com/maps/ ?

Re: MAPS!
 

I am sure you can use that url too, I just was using the one I posted cause someone passed it along to me. Let me know if Google Maps works.

Re: MAPS!
 

It is possible to just hit Go with the Venhola program (without setting longitude/latitude). You'll end up in the Atlantic, south of Ghana. Zoom out, move to where you want to go, zoom in. Set the grid...

My first three maps
 

Just starting with mapping but i really love it already, it's quite relaxing.

Did the following three last weekend mostly with some additional work over the week and today.

I tried to be somewhat accurate without going crazy on details. There is no elevation on this maps (well, most parts of Lower Saxony are kind of pretty flat anyways). I just recently discovered Venhola and how to use it, might just remake these three with elevation at some point.

Would love some constructive feedback: Glitches? What could have been made better? Maybe some technical mistakes i made or some special rules i missed being that mapping noob i am? :rolleyes:

Brome-Boeckwitz
Map overview

Brome-Steimke
Map overview

Danndorf-Oebisfelde
Map overview

:feedback:

Re: My first three maps
 

Wow. A lot of effort in such a short amount of time. Let me say thanks for getting into map making, we can always use maps. Although, I am the least able to comment on your maps, may I offer the following:

1) Place a few identifiers, i.e. landmarks, for example: highway 244, Ohre Lake.

Otherwise, do I understand you created these maps without Venhola? If so, stop whatever you're doing, get up to speed on Venhola as the next patch should be "magical." And, let me say I find it impressive the inclusion of spmap txt files!
<br>

Re: My first three maps
 

Thanks for your feedback shahadi :)

I have to confess i play SP since 1997 or so but i've always been shut in playing the AI.
There's so many maps and scenarios that entertained me over all these years, i think it's time to step up and give a little bit back :)

So far, i took a screenshot of the map area and used Photoshops measuring tool on the 500m distance mark on the map (length in pixels).
Then just set the "grid overlay" option to that distance (and adding 10 sub divisions). Pretty straight forward, the result is the "topo" image i included for each map which i used as a reference.

But then i found out about Venhola, holy! Even easier :)

I included some map text on town centers, rivers, roads and such, i placed some * along the (former) border, but for some reason just some or none show up on lowest zoom. On second lowest zoom they should show up.
If not, there's something else going wrong too.

These spmaptxt files are great. Stumbled upon this earlier today and loved the idea of giving some info on the region. Most of the time you load up a map and got no real clue where the heck this place is exactly :D I'm into this kind of gimmicks.

(To be honest, i would have loved to include some pictures of how it looks like in reality too but i am afraid that's way out of the scope of whats possible with spmaptxt. SpmapHTML would be awesome)

Odd Map Thread
 

Here i am going to post some of the odd maps i have created.

This one is first to enter the BETA state. I would appreciate some feedback on the map.

The spammed farm in the right side of map is something i might change, but it wont affect the gameplay much.

Re: Odd Map Thread
 

Well it's ok map in particular but it's bit too "symmetrical" for my taste. So it just seems to be "unnaturally unrealistic" (how many areas in world have almost identically located places, almost two "mirror images" near each other)... That farm area is only exception.

Warhero

Re: Odd Map Thread
 

edit. fixed wrong word in 1st sentence;)

Re: Odd Map Thread
 

Nice map, the only odd part is the center of the map, like warhorse posted its a little too symmetrical. I like the left and the right sides of the map, those seem natural.

One thing to consider is to use a real location via the venhola tool, and then flip back and forth and paint the map (or section of it) per what it really looks like.

This is very time consuming, addictive, but very rewarding.

So far I have created around 30 venhola maps (not all of them use the full map size a few do and those take many hours to create).

For MBT I have a couple of scenarios like that coming up in the next patch that uses only a part of the venhola map (more for WW2) that you can see for some examples maybe.

Re: Odd Map Thread
 

I am creating different kind of maps. Symmetrical parts are just being artistic but the basic idea is to think of tactical perspective and how the map is played, realism is not part of my odd maps.

I have several others to come, one of them which is a Steel Panthers remake from old and legendary RTS map called "The Hunters".


Here is my first try on the map editor, i am just learning. Here is also a new version of that map above as i found some places to fix.

I might try more realistic approach in the future. Two other maps that are under production are "Canyon Wars" and "King of the Hill" but those are just at the concept state.

Re: MAPS!
 

Wow you really like patterns and wild designs in 437, shows your artistic side.

Re: MAPS! Devil's Bath
 

This map has some interesting features if anyone runs a battle with let me know how the AI does.

Devil's Bath, offers an interesting tactical level of control, how do you manuever across the map and not get a bath, that is the key.

Re: New Map From Karagin
 

This one has slight twist to it. The river bend allows for an interesting set of crossing for the AI or player depending on how the user sets things up.

I have run three battles with this map, and each time the AI has responded pretty well to the river course on the map.

Map 866 Northview
 

This is a fiction map based on a sand table set we had in Germany during a training event. I filled in more details than were on the sand table, actually a lot more. This gives the user a mix of terrain to deal with.

Re: MAPS!
 

This is a city outskirts to urban map 100x130

It is a portion of WINSPmbt map 103 so I hope the creator does not mind me modifying their work.

Played this a long time ago in a PBEM & enjoyed it so decided to do a version that should work fairly well in a standard battle with the defender on the right.

Main changes are removal of the highway so it can be used in WWII as well along with adding a train station & large building on a hill as possible objectives.

Created 30 odd hex rows to the left to shift the deployment line to hex row 65.
Largely done with fill tool on splatter - thanks Don great time saver.

Re: MAPS!
 

Here is a map pack, several maps, roughly 5 maps. They give you a mix of terrain to battle over and some could double for WW2 maps as well. Commnets are always welcome.

Re: MAPS!
 

Mountain Farms. Nice farmland with some peaks to fight over.

Re: MAPS!
 

Villages and Farms. A Good map for Central Europe or North America or Southern parts of South America.

Re: MAPS!
 

Hi. I couldn't open the latest maps. When the low they tell me that the file is corrupted. Did it happen to someone else?

Re: MAPS!
 

I just tried 757 and it extracted OK and loads in the game. Nice map ...would be good for generated battles or PBEM

Re: MAPS!
 

I can upload them again, but I get them to download no issues.

Re: MAPS!
 

Hi. I could already open them. My problem was that the winrar was not updated. Thank you.

Re: MAPS!
 

I used 7zFm to extract them. It worked just fine.

troopie