One suggestion for Southern Storm: map modding

[exsonic01]

I'm really glad to see brief screenshot of SS and plan from Origin 2019 post. Me and all other wargame fans are waiting for any news of SS.

I have one simple suggestion. Is it possible to make map modding a bit easier?

I also tried map modding years ago, but I eventually gave up. One reason was I was getting really busy around that time, but map modding really needs some level of concentration and labor, which was bit burdensome to me...

As far as I remember, right now, moders manually need to draw roads and designate tile types and etc. Hex tile part was not that tough, at least for me. However, drawing river and waterway, road, building blocks and etc... was a real challenge. Would it be possible to introduce a easy tool to road-drawing and river-drawing, or automate them? Or, would it be possible to make some short script to recognize roads, rivers, woods, and towns the google map or any other maps, simplify them into FPC-style map items? This needs some image processing algorithm, which I have no experience of. But I guess this might not that be difficult...

With some smart automation scheme, or some sort of helper, I think energy barrier for any map making would be much lowered. This will appeal many wargamers who wish to create their own battlefield...

[WildCatNL]

Hi Exsonic,

good question, one that we still debate within OTS.

Short answer: Southern Storm makes map creation slightly easier than in Red Storm, since obstacles won't have to be tagged manually in the Map Editor/Scanner.


Longer answer: (and I know you and I discussed how to create maps of Korea using QGis).
No, we cannot make it significantly easier to create maps, without devoting a full developer to this; the complexity of automatic GIS parsing is similar to that of creating a game.

For a tile based editor, you probably can make HexDraw work with Southern STorm (but you might have to create your own HexDraw art). For fantasy maps, HexDraw is a nice editor, but I find it very inefficient for recreating real-world terrain.

The GIS based based editors are great for creating real-world maps, but come with complexity (the 'burdensome' bit you refer to).
I have looked into automation of map creation, by first loading and filtering OpenStreetMap data, and then mapping that data to full hexes or hex boundaries* (warping OSM polylines and polygons to a hex grid). The new QGis3.x has some algorithms to perform this warping. However, the results aren't good, for several reasons:
- it's not easy to map detailed roads and water ways to a coarse grid (500m hexes), while maintaining their original spatial relation (road running on the left river bank for example)
- (free) OSM data is typically incomplete, perhaps less so for the USA and in Germany, but it will need corrections
- the algorithms aren't mature for this purpose
Effectively this automation always requires manual correction, which means that the automation perhaps might make things more efficient but certainly not less complex; you still have to do manual work, and in addition you have to learn how to import and filter OSM data and run algorithms.
To create a QGis plug-in that pulls in the OSM data, and formats it for a 500m hex grid, would be a significant effort.

*: The Armored Brigade triggered me to look into this, since that team seems to have developed some pre-processing of GIS data (in QGis); however, their scale (30m squares? instead of our 500m hexes) has less abstraction and thus is more suited to this. AFAIK, they haven't released their tool-set, only instructions.

William

[exsonic01]

Hello William

Thank you for nice answers, and thank you for remembering me and my abandoned attempt XD.

OK, I understand, it seems I too much underestimated the difficulty of coding for such script. Someday maybe we could see some miraculous image recognition/processing algorithm for wargame map-making, which converts google map to any wargame map format, or similar smart GIS add-ons...

By the way, previous map-making manual for FPC-RS was really good, all I had to do was just follow. It should be somewhere in this forum. I wish something similar map manual for SS as well, that would be still good enough. Also, it is glad to hear about SS map making will be slightly easier than RS.

Speaking of AB, it is kinda pixelize the map, and AB reads pixel color and prints out corresponding terrains. Making of basic pixel map is a bit easy, it use QGIS OSM road data. But still, after load the basic pixel, one need to do manual labor to fix the map. This also requires good amount of effort and time.

Regarding the map I was working (Korea), I will come back and I will finish them again. If you are ready with SS version of map modding manual, let me know. I can't invest that much of time but I will try to keep it slow but steady.

[StuccoFresco]

HexDraw doesn't work anymore: tm.asp?m=3556405

I'm an amateur modder myself, and the engine working on spreadsheets made making custom OOBs extremly simple and fast, but without a sensible way to make maps there is no way to really do anything. I tried making maps entirely "by hand" and the result isn't really satisfactory on top of being a huge time sink.

[CapnDarwin]

StuccoFresco, I understand the need to mod. Been doing longer than its been a word. William makes the maps for the game and he is working up instructions on how he does the process via QGIS. I don't see us in the near term making a "simple" tile based map maker since we are using real world inputs. There may be means down the road to make semi-automated helpers, but that's really something William will have to evaluate. HexDraw being down is bad luck as well. I'm hoping we see a new version in the near future, but that is just hope. Right now the we are discussing other options internally on what we can do to lower the bar on making workable maps for other content makers. Once we get out new website up and start on some designer blogs, I'm sure this will be a topic of discussion. Until then, we just have what we have to make the games go. [8D]

[exsonic01]

Hmmm I didn't used HexDraw when I tried my project few years ago. I think I did Hex work from QGIS. I remember there was a manual regarding this, and there was an addon for hex tile generation in QGIS. QGIS is freeware, so anyone can try.

[CapnDarwin]

William has info and steps for QGIS map making in the modding sub-forum.