From little things, big things grow!

[RyanCrierie]

Awesome man! You're going to make PzK really awesome! Campaigns Awesome!

How big is each generated map BTW, and how compressable are they?

[RyanCrierie]

One of Stridor's eyes after an all night session of putting together the new map editor

A lot of these roads werent there in 1864; this is a modern 2000s~ TIGER GIS overlay of maps in Gettysburg, PA.

[Stridor]

ORIGINAL: RyanCrierie

Awesome man! You're going to make PzK really awesome! Campaigns Awesome!

How big is each generated map BTW, and how compressable are they?

Map ~ 750Kb
Compresses to ~120Kb

[RyanCrierie]

So yes, It should be possible to have 3 MB map packs with about 20~ maps each now. I think really, the one thing you need to do next is some sort of template maker, so that they can be used in random campaigns or battles. [:'(]

[Mraah]

Stridor,

Wicked awesome!! Please keep up the great work!!

The less time folks spend modding the better!

Appreciate ya!

Rob

[Mad Russian]

ORIGINAL: Stridor

ORIGINAL: RyanCrierie

Awesome man! You're going to make PzK really awesome! Campaigns Awesome!

How big is each generated map BTW, and how compressable are they?

Map ~ 750Kb
Compresses to ~120Kb

Are these at present 1km x 1km or are you expanding the map size at the same time?

Good Hunting.

MR

[Stridor]

ORIGINAL: Mad Russian

ORIGINAL: Stridor

ORIGINAL: RyanCrierie

Awesome man! You're going to make PzK really awesome! Campaigns Awesome!

How big is each generated map BTW, and how compressable are they?

Map ~ 750Kb
Compresses to ~120Kb

Are these at present 1km x 1km or are you expanding the map size at the same time?

Good Hunting.

MR

The map maker can make maps greater than 1km x 1km and the PCK engine can render them. However the rules set which is also coded stipulates a 1kmx1km play area. This will change for the next game but not for PCK [:(]

[rickier65]

This will be quite a bonus for this release. I wasn't expecting a map-maker until the next release. Thanks Stridor! No wonder you you decided to take a brak from your tutorials! If you need any help testing or anything, let me (or any of us I'm sure) know.

Rick

[Stridor]

ORIGINAL: Rick

This will be quite a bonus for this release. I wasn't expecting a map-maker until the next release. Thanks Stridor! No wonder you you decided to take a brak from your tutorials! If you need any help testing or anything, let me (or any of us I'm sure) know.

Rick

Yes the map maker will make all my old tutorials obsolete, but in a good way.

Imagine making a pretty good (read functional) map in about 1-2 hours as opposed to days or weeks the old way [;)].

That is the plan.

Of course if you wanted a map with full bling (eg trenches, dead bodies, tractors, animals, wood, barrels, etc, etc) then you will still need to get your hands dirty in scenedit and place them. So there is still room for master map makers who want full attention to detail, but anyone should be able to knock up a functional rural map pretty quickly (1-2 hours perhaps less).

Regards

S.

P.S. Still so much work to do, ATM working on autogen of forrests [;)] ...

[bardolph]

ORIGINAL: RyanCrierie

One of Stridor's eyes after an all night session of putting together the new map editor

A lot of these roads werent there in 1864; this is a modern 2000s~ TIGER GIS overlay of maps in Gettysburg, PA.

I thought it was Gburg, but the extra roads threw me off a bit I must admit.

Here is G.K. Warren's 1876 map:Map

[bardolph]

[:@][:@]

[bardolph]

[:D][:D]

[rickier65]

Well, I'm no master map maker, but I actually thought Scene edit was pretty straightforward. Much Much easier to use than Blender, for example. Not sure I understood masks and layers and whatnot, but placing map objects seemed to work pretty well!

Of course, I only did one map edit (Balta), mainly to learn the tools, but I thought it scene edit worked pretty well.

Rick

[RyanCrierie]

A suggestion for autogen of forests....

Can it be that you paint on a map with MSPaint; and for example:

x,x,x (random RGB color) paints a forest with trees about x distance from each other (Sparse)

and there are ten different RGB colors for increasing tree densities?

[Stridor]

ORIGINAL: RyanCrierie

A suggestion for autogen of forests....

Can it be that you paint on a map with MSPaint; and for example:

x,x,x (random RGB color) paints a forest with trees about x distance from each other (Sparse)

and there are ten different RGB colors for increasing tree densities?

The game already as this in the form of the map.bmp which is the AI map which resides in each map directory.

This will be your master map, you will draw on this where the forests are, where the mashes are, where the roads are where the fields are etc. The map gen will then use this information along with the heightmap to the generate the actual map.

The game defines 4 levels (colours) of forest density with the option for more, but this is probably enough to start.

[z1812]

Hi Stridor,

ORIGINAL: Stridor

The map maker can make maps greater than 1km x 1km and the PCK engine can render them. However the rules set which is also coded stipulates a 1kmx1km play area. This will change for the next game but not for PCK [:(]

I understood the following games would be backwards compatible to PCK as PCK was to PCOWS. Does that mean when the new game is released larger maps will be possible in PCK at that time?

regards John

[CapnDarwin]

Great work.

[Stridor]

Totally algorithmically generated [;)] Apart from the heightmap and 2D AI overview map (shown) no input required. Scene represents > 2000 trees. That would have taken days - weeks to do by hand.

The maths is migraine inducing! But now done [:D] Found a bug in IE7 which is not in IE6 to do with large arrays. That held me back about 6 hours!

Essentially I need to program a forest ecology now for the local attractors (so that forests look sensible)

You can select tree seasons, densities (in # trees / square meter) tree types, local attractors, etc. Each tree has a subtle variation that you could never have done by hand (like pitch / height / roll / yaw etc)

You can make the trees "plump" in summer and "lean" in winter.

The water is now much better than before as it now has computed depth texturing.

Given that forests were 90+% of the map work, I think it not unreasonable that a new map could be made in under an hour once you are up to speed on how it all works.

I still have to do lighting, skymaps + mask support other stuff but the main guts of it are done.

Enjoy

S.

P.S. It takes about 2 minutes for a fast rig to make the map. There are literally billions of calculations involved. I might be able to optimize it somewhat but I don't think that is a lot of time for a quality map!

[Erik Rutins]

Phenomenal work, Stridor!

[Stridor]

Hopefully I can get this out to you guys soon.