Idiot's Guide to Making Custom Maps?

[Ballbarian]

1. I believe it is a combination of proximity and if I remember correctly, it looks for red pixels (red province borders). I will sometimes start with solid red province borders to give the map editor a chance to auto detect neighbors, but I often end up clearing it and doing it manually anyhow. (You can always change the border colors later in gimp by using the "select by color" tools.

2. You should have no problem making snowy maps. Just be sure to not use pure white. For example, try using a color like 255/255/245. It is still white, just not pure white.

It is often useful to use gimp to select all white pixels on your image before placing your province pixels and if any are found, just change all of them to some subtle variation of white.

[RamsHead]

Ballbarian said:
1. I believe it is a combination of proximity and if I remember correctly, it looks for red pixels (red province borders). I will sometimes start with solid red province borders to give the map editor a chance to auto detect neighbors, but I often end up clearing it and doing it manually anyhow. (You can always change the border colors later in gimp by using the "select by color" tools.

Hmm, I didn't know that it actually made borders. Still, drawing them gives you better control over what you want I would assume.

[Ballbarian]

It does not draw borders but it does detect red pixels in an effort to guess neighbors (or it did in dom2 and I am pretty sure it does in dom3).

I gave a lot of thought to this when I was working on my own custom map editor. If you draw an imaginary line between two points (provinces) and check each pixel's color along that line and set a flag when you hit a border (red) pixel, then skip ahead a few pixels (to clear a border that might be several pixels wide at that point) and if you reach the 2nd point without hitting another set of red border pixels, then you can say that it is likely for the 2 points to be neighbors. This is not 100% foolproof, but it can generate a fair guesstimate.

[Gandalf Parker]

Johan has says that red borders help the game detect province boundaries. Its not a necessity but it helps. Ive used red+blue for water borders and red+green for land borders. But just before distribution I like to hit them both with a good dose of transparency.

[Zylithan]

Alright, I'm back with more stupid questions/ better clarification of an old question.

I can make a map now, and assign neighbors. But when I play the map, if I right click on a province, sometimes it selects a different province - especially for unusually shaped provinces. There has to be some way for me to define the geometric boundaries of the provinces. I attached a simple map, as a .bmp ( normally I use .tga)
Depending on where I click in province 5 (as determined by visual red lines) in game, sometimes the computer decides I want info about 5, but often also 1,2,3,4,6. It chooses whichever white dot I am closest to I think. How can I tell it to identify the red lines with the geometrical outline of my provinces?

Thanks!

[Edi]

Every white pixel is a separate province. So if you have for example two white pixels next to each other, both will be provinces and will act accordingly, which may be part of your problem.

If this is not the case, then you need to right-click as close to the province flag as possible to select it.

[Gandalf Parker]

The game doesnt actually recognize the boundaries as far as in-game clicking. Only the dots.

If your map is playing too small for comfort then you might want to change the defaultzoom in the .map file