Maps available

[Targa]

I shoulda known that IE couldn't display .tga's.

I see the difference now, and I actually like the DomMap pictures better. Is there any way you could adapt the program so you could "feed" it a picture file, and it would insert province borders and the white dots in the middle of each, along with generating a .map file? Perhaps specifying that shades of blue would be water and anything else would be land? (don't know a thing about coding). I whipped up a quick map in Bryce...if I had a web site I'd post it. But it's just a picture. The thought of hand-drawing all the province borders and white dots, along with making a .map file...ugh. Not to mention the unpassable borders by mountain ranges...hmm, that could be a problem for an auto-program.

[Gandalf Parker]

It can be done but not by me Im afraid. I can work out alot of the steps (what programmers call psuedo-code) but turning it into a program is probably out of my league.

[Gandalf Parker]

New thing going on here. Im not so good at understanding all of setings for DomMap so Ive come up with a hacker fix. Im running maps on almost completely random settings and saving the scripts that generate something I like. Many of them fail with errors saying xxxx cant be larger then yyyy and stuff like that. But Im getting some interesting results.
http://www.techno-mage.com/~dominion...ndomMaps/junk/
Even though the results are playable I didnt expect to get more than junk (hence the directory name) so only the jpgs were put there but Im considering changing that. Is anyone else running the Dom2 Version of DomMap? Should I put these scripts there for viewing?

If you see one you really like and are quick with an email I can zip it and put it there for pickup.

On an added note... I am considering dropping the nightly runs of the Dom1 Version DomMaps.

Gandalf Parker
-- to email me replace Parker with @community.net

[ January 27, 2004, 16:11: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

[Targa]

How about making maps/pictures, but without any colors other than water? If you had the .map file and a .tga file with borders/capitals, it could be used as an overlay layer on a user-made map. I was going to try this with the ones you have, but the "speckled" colors make it too difficult.

[Kristoffer O]

Originally posted by Targa:
How about making maps/pictures, but without any colors other than water? If you had the .map file and a .tga file with borders/capitals, it could be used as an overlay layer on a user-made map. I was going to try this with the ones you have, but the "speckled" colors make it too difficult.

I'm not sure I understand?

Do you mean that I should make a two colour map without capitals and borders? I could easily do a hundred of these, but would they be of any interest.

Or do you mean that I should make maps without borders and capitals?

Or do you mean that I should make borders and capitals without maps?

Or do you mean something in between?

[Targa]

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

test map from Bryce

Kristoffer: Actually I was referring to Gandalf's maps. The "speckle effect" would hamper modifications. I also can't select/delete the areas inside the borders, because the borders themselves are too ill-defined and pixelated. I realize now that I was wrong in what I was asking for though. 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).

Then a user could take this "base map" and paint in green areas for fertile lands, add trees and mountains, etc. Also, it would be nice if you (Illwinter) would give us the icons you used in the game (the trees, mountains, etc).

So it would look something like this:

goof **EDIT: Pic removed and changed due to off-site hosting restrictions in storage space.

Except it would have province borders and capital white dots.

The first picture is something I threw together in Bryce real quick. That's sort of what I had in mind when I said I'd like to see a better-looking map. But the prospect of having to draw all the province borders, dots, and creating a .map file....ugh.

[ January 27, 2004, 19:27: Message edited by: Targa ]

[Gandalf Parker]

I love the Bryce map.

I can probably get DomMap to do larger colored areas but Im not sure if it would work that well. DomMap does 2 things now that save alot of time. Setting all the #neighbor commands and setting all the #terrain commands. Doing what you want would make the terrains have to be done manually.

With GIMP it is easy to grab the capitals and borders to a seperate image. Hmmmm brain kicking in here. Grab borders and capitals. Keep the original there but semi-transparent. Replace the pixels with smoother gradient effects but appropriate to what was there such as one for grass, one for swamp, one for mountain. Paste some of the icon stuff as appropriate. Then delete the original layer, merge the repainted one with the borders and capitals, save image. Hmmmm that could work. It would make all the original map info still good.

Another direction Im looking at is that DomMap seems to do a fractal landcape but pixels it in 8 colors possibly because of the old Dom1 limits. Maybe I can find the place in the code where it puts 1 color for a whole range of hieghts and change it to use a range of colors there for smoother effects. It would be better if some C programmer looked at it. The original DomMap programmer doesnt seem to be active anymore (Im half tempted to buy a copy of Dom2 and send it to him to get him hooked again MUHAHahahaha)

[Strages Sanctus]

Wow I forgot all about Bryce. Time to dust off the cd and the skills heh.

[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..

[ January 27, 2004, 19:32: Message edited by: Targa ]

All you have to do then is just add a 3d for Banner, castle, temple and labs, and suddenly you have a 'pretty' interface. I'd enjoy it.