Maps available

[Kristoffer O]

Originally posted by Targa:
OK, (duh!) I located and downloaded DomMap. Now all that's needed are the tree/mountain/etc graphics from Illwinter. Using the DomMap generated picture and map file, it's a simple matter of cut/paste in Photoshop to get this:

low-quality jpeg map

If the trees and mountains and stuff were available, it'd be fairly simple to make a Dom2-like map, although you'd still need to make the terrain match up... hmm..

No access. Daily limit something.

You can find a mapstuff file (xcf format) on the Illwinter site. If you need another format let me know.

[ January 27, 2004, 19:56: Message edited by: Kristoffer O ]

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by Targa:
OK, (duh!) I located and downloaded DomMap. Now all that's needed are the tree/mountain/etc graphics from Illwinter. Using the DomMap generated picture and map file, it's a simple matter of cut/paste in Photoshop to get this:

Are you using the DomMap2 Version? Hopefully Phillip has the updated Version listed since we did alot of little tweaks to make the .map file match what Dom2 wants. Are you using it in linux? If you manage to compile it for windows let us know.

[PhilD]

Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Targa:
OK, (duh!) I located and downloaded DomMap. Now all that's needed are the tree/mountain/etc graphics from Illwinter. Using the DomMap generated picture and map file, it's a simple matter of cut/paste in Photoshop to get this:

Are you using the DomMap2 Version? Hopefully Phillip has the updated Version listed since we did alot of little tweaks to make the .map file match what Dom2 wants. Are you using it in linux? If you manage to compile it for windows let us know.

---

I haven't made any new changes, but I updated the Version on my page to match the Last I sent to you.

I'm not going to try and make this produce much prettier maps; that would best be done with Gimp scripts, not a few hundred lines of C.

Oh, and it's Philippe, not Phillip. But you're not the first to make that mistake (even though I believe, even in English, it's usually spelled Philip).

[PhilD]

Originally posted by Targa:
Ok, hopefully this link will work...it's a free image hosting site I found:

test map from Bryce

Wow! Nice! What kind of program are you using to make this?

What would be good (either from Gandalf/DomMap or from Kristoffer) would be a map with the following:

1) Water areas are solid blue.
2) Land areas are solid beige (same color as Aran map).
3) Province borders are drawn in.
4) Capital white dots are drawn in.
5) .map file exists, with water/land province info in it (but not strictly necessary as long as the Dom 2 in-game editor works with designating land/water provinces).

I can probably add an option to dommap so that it outputs only these colors (blue for sea provinces, beige for land provinces, white capitals, red borders, another blue for sea borders; I just noticed, though, that the border algorithm apparently loses some pixels, at least in the seas).

I'd leave the neighbours, and can either leave the terrain information or not, in the .map file. Or even add an option for each. AFAIK dom2 doesn't even try to guess at neighbours, so these are required unless you want to mess with them in the editor.

Any interest in this? It's most likely a 20-line hack - should be within my capabilities. After all, I'm just a CS teacher...

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by PhilD:
Any interest in this? It's most likely a 20-line hack - should be within my capabilities. After all, I'm just a CS teacher...

Might be able to do this anyway. There is a setting for how pixilated and another for how much to try and follow the colors for drawing borders. Between those two settings it might already be possible.

What Id like to know is if dommap assigns those colors to a range of height. It does a full fractal map. If a height of 10-20 is given the one green pixel because of the old Dom1 restrictions, then maybe we can change it to do a range of green for each one between 10-20. Even figure in the height into the color choice.(instead of 10/200/10 it could be 10/180+height/10)

[Targa]

Kristoffer (and all), try this link:
low quality jpeg map

They apparently have a daily bandwidth usage for free accounts, so I found a backdoor.

As for the mapstuff files, xcf is GIMP format, which neither I nor many gamers use. So if you could convert them to something like tga or bmp for us that would be great!

Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:
Are you using the DomMap2 Version? Hopefully Phillip has the updated Version listed since we did alot of little tweaks to make the .map file match what Dom2 wants. Are you using it in linux? If you manage to compile it for windows let us know.

I don't see a Version mentioned. I downloaded it from dominionsx I think, and ran it under WinXP. Worked fine...at least for creating the picture file. The map file is there, and full of text, but I have no idea if Dom2 will actually read it correctly. It has a bunch of "neighbor" and "setland" stuff in it... I run it and it pops up in a DOS box, then produces random.tga and random.map files.

Originally posted by PhilD:
Wow! Nice! What kind of program are you using to make this?

Bryce 4.0 from Metacreations.

Is there any documentation on using the Map Editor included with Dominions 2? I read the 2 pdf files that came with the patch, and they're not very explicit. They also don't explain anything about how to use the built-in program. I read on this board that if you use "guess neighbors" it crashes the game. My question is: Can the built-in editor be used to generate an accurate .map file? It appears as though it's just asking for a finished .tga file, but when I loaded one (complete with white dots for capitols), none of the buttons/boxes did anything. There was just a white indie flag in the bottom-left corner of the map the whole time.

EDIT: Found another freebie site. Try these links if you can't see the pics:
low quality jpg quickie map
Bryce test map

[ January 28, 2004, 04:25: Message edited by: Targa ]

[PhilD]

Originally posted by Targa:

As for the mapstuff files, xcf is GIMP format, which neither I nor many gamers use. So if you could convert them to something like tga or bmp for us that would be great!

Note that Gimp is free, so you can use it. But I'd understand if you didn't want to switch from your favorite program.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:
Are you using the DomMap2 Version? Hopefully Phillip has the updated Version listed since we did alot of little tweaks to make the .map file match what Dom2 wants. Are you using it in linux? If you manage to compile it for windows let us know.

I don't see a Version mentioned. I downloaded it from dominionsx I think, and ran it under WinXP. Worked fine...at least for creating the picture file. The map file is there, and full of text, but I have no idea if Dom2 will actually read it correctly. It has a bunch of "neighbor" and "setland" stuff in it... I run it and it pops up in a DOS box, then produces random.tga and random.map files.

---

That's most likely the original dommap program, which is for dom1 maps. Look at the first line of the .map file: the new Version outputs something like "#dom2title random". It will produce .map files that can be used right out of the box to play ugly games, but then you can do almost whatever you like to the .tga file to make it bearable.

The new Version is available here .

[PhilD]

Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:

quote:

---

Originally posted by PhilD:
Any interest in this? It's most likely a 20-line hack - should be within my capabilities. After all, I'm just a CS teacher...

Might be able to do this anyway. There is a setting for how pixilated and another for how much to try and follow the colors for drawing borders. Between those two settings it might already be possible.

---

Might be doable, but it will likely result in Provinces with very convoluted shapes. You could set the various height/richness limits at outrageous levels so that it results in single-color provinces, but that will make it output the same terrain type for all Provinces.

What Id like to know is if dommap assigns those colors to a range of height. It does a full fractal map. If a height of 10-20 is given the one green pixel because of the old Dom1 restrictions, then maybe we can change it to do a range of green for each one between 10-20. Even figure in the height into the color choice.(instead of 10/200/10 it could be 10/180+height/10)

It's two fractal maps, actually: a height map, and a richness map. Then low/poor pixels are assigned such terrain type, low/normal pixels get this, and so on. There are command line switches to change the low, high, poor, and rich levels.

We could do more ranges, but because of the fractal nature of the thing, this will result in more isolated pixels. Plus, more work for me
. What is needed is smoothing of the maps, which is most likely what the Gimp scripts that generate maps do, so that the terrain limits are actually limits instead of lots of isolated pixels.

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by PhilD:
We could do more ranges, but because of the fractal nature of the thing, this will result in more isolated pixels. Plus, more work for me
. What is needed is smoothing of the maps, which is most likely what the Gimp scripts that generate maps do, so that the terrain limits are actually limits instead of lots of isolated pixels.

Well GIMP would be another direction. So far we dont seem to have any scheme programmers showing up (which GIMP seems to prefer for scripts-fu). Too bad. A nice 3-step scipt would do much for fixing up the dommaps.

I can get some very nice rendered maps from GIMP. Maybe someone could write something that will pick up the images and dommap them. EDGE (put borders around large color areas. DIVIDE draw borders across areas still too large. CAPITALIZE put a white dot in the middle of each one. WRITE MAP with guessed neighbors and terrains. I know it would be a big project but it would be useable for any map coming from any program or even hand drawn.

[ January 28, 2004, 14:22: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

[Targa]

Ah...OK, I see it now in the map file. It says Version 0.7, so I guess it's the Dom1 prog. Well, I don't know anything about C, other than it being the 3rd letter of the alphabet so..... I found and downloaded "LCC-Win32" which seems like it's what's needed to run your Version (which I also downloaded, thanks!), but have no clue as to how to use it. Some searching comes up with some cryptic information like:

Open a DOS box in Windows, set PATH=c:\lcc-win32\bin, and that's about as far as I got.

LCC-Win32 is "C only" (won't work with C++), so I dunno about that either. But in response to Gandalf's earlier question about getting it to compile in Windows, you guys should check out this page. It seems like it would work:
http://home.worldOnline.co.za/~rmaritz/

-Targa