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Looking for a mod that makes the borders more identifiable - especially zoomed out.

Maybe a bright red for enemy factions - the white city borders could also be thicker/brighter.

I dont know, i just know its very hard to see

I have the same issue as you do - the borders often melt into the background terrain and its hard to see one zone from another. I've tried to make a border mod, but so far I haven't been able to figure out how the game engine uses the border images. As advertised, this game is definitely not mod friendly.

-Mark R.

You can enable "show colour"

ORIGINAL: Bagpipe

You can enable "show colour"

That just highlights regimes, right? I don't think it helps with internal zone boundaries.
-Mark R.

This would be really useful to have, I find that the dashed white borders can be difficult to make out against the terrain.

Cladboy2 wrote: Tue Mar 07, 2023 10:10 pm This would be really useful to have, I find that the dashed white borders can be difficult to make out against the terrain.

this is hard to implement otherwise (lines) because of the hexes and how the game engine works.
It must be done with dashed lines, but the colour and maybe shape could be improved for readability.
I was playing with that couple of months back, but it went nowhere and just wasted too much time with it, so I focused back on some other things:)

Nsf665 wrote: Wed Mar 22, 2023 7:51 pm

Cladboy2 wrote: Tue Mar 07, 2023 10:10 pm This would be really useful to have, I find that the dashed white borders can be difficult to make out against the terrain.

this is hard to implement otherwise (lines) because of the hexes and how the game engine works.
It must be done with dashed lines, but the colour and maybe shape could be improved for readability.
I was playing with that couple of months back, but it went nowhere and just wasted too much time with it, so I focused back on some other things:)

Yes, exactly my experience.
Every now and then I get motivated, try again, and waste more time
I'm sure I'll try again, someday.

-Mark R.

So, armed with more graphics mod experience and field training than I had last time I tried modifying borders, I assaulted the issue again. This time I set up an experiment, creating six brightly colored and numbered regime border hexside images for easy identification.

The following is what turns up in game. You can see, the same bright-colored border images are rendered very differently from place to place by the game engine, sometimes brownish-red, sometimes gray and sometimes in my modified bright colors. It's not clear to me, yet, why it picks one rendering over another for a given location.


(This is vanilla terrain graphics - I didn't want to affect the experiment with other variables.)

-Mark R.

mroyer wrote: Sat Mar 25, 2023 1:11 pm So, armed with more graphics mod experience and field training than I had last time I tried modifying borders, I assaulted the issue again. This time I set up an experiment, creating six brightly colored and numbered regime border hexside images for easy identification.

The following is what turns up in game. You can see, the same bright-colored border images are rendered very differently from place to place by the game engine, sometimes brownish-red, sometimes gray and sometimes in my modified bright colors. It's not clear to me, yet, why it picks one rendering over another for a given location.


Untitled.jpg


(This is vanilla terrain graphics - I didn't want to affect the experiment with other variables.)

-Mark R.

I tried messing around with it for a few hours about 2 weeks ago and only thing I could get to display consistently were zone borders. These could be made into solid lines.

Cladboy2 wrote: Mon Mar 27, 2023 12:12 pm I tried messing around with it for a few hours about 2 weeks ago and only thing I could get to display consistently were zone borders. These could be made into solid lines.

Agreed - the zone borders seem more straight forward, IIRC. I think they always follow the color of the original image.

-Mark R.

Nation borders are very difficult to see, so I made small nation border mod primarily for my own use. Solid black borders had the best visibility. Did not use white due to zone borders.

It works fine on map, but works strage in history viewing.

I've edited two files to remove that strange black blob effect during HIS video phase, it works ok now
And red zone lines were added
File in zip format
Now called Red-Black Borders Mod

SE Red-Black Borders v.3

EDIT: File replaced 10-Dec-2023

Red-Black Borders Mod v.3
Preview:

Why red? Because white was hardly visible in hills / mountains.

Zone Borders Mod is very useful. In game we have difrent environmental conditions and the colors of the planet are different, which means that sometimes the borders are not visible. Before I found this red borders mod, I started making changes to the files myself to save my eyesight.
I changed the color of all files that had zoneborders in their name. When I compare it to your mod, it looks like I modified some files unnecessarily. At the moment I don't know what they are used for in the game, maybe for nothing?
Files shadowmodgraphicsBIG\border\ZoneBorder1, ZoneBorder2, ...
If it turns out that I have changed these files unnecessarily, just delete them. At the moment the mod works for me, I have green and mint borders. They can be seen in the mountains and in the snow where the original ones are invisible.
download link:
https://mega.nz/file/bZBECTCJ#5LRq99M4h ... znuXYWtRIo