Version 2 of my map mod is now available

[Tanaka]

ORIGINAL: Andrew Brown

Version 2 of my map mod is now available. This version includes a number of fixes, changes and additions (see below). The mod is available at Spooky's (be warned, it is very big ~ 43MB):

Map mod version 2

Additional map variants and scenario files will be made available at Spooky's as they get done.

Information about the map mod can be found on my website, including an
online copy of the documentation. The web page is here:

War in the Pacific Map Mod

As with version 1, this is still in a "beta" stage. There were several faults discovered in version 1, and there will probably be a few more faults in this version as well. I will fix any faults that are discovered.

Here is an extract from the README file with some information on the changes in version 2:

---

Code: Select all

 Fixes, Changes and Additions
 ============================
 Version 2 includes the following fixes, changes and additions:
 Fixes:
 
    1. Chandpur (hex 31,25) in India was defined as a Land hex, making it
       impossible for naval task forces to travel there. Fixed by making
       it a coastal hex.
    2. Clark Field (hex 43,51) in the Philippines was defined as a
       coastal hex, with the ability for naval task forces to travel
       there via Bataan. Fixed by making the hex a Land hex and
       specifying all bordering hexsides as Land only hexsides. This now
       matches the way that the Clark Field hex is defined on the
       official map.
    3. Tabar (hex 63,88) was defined as a deep ocean hex, and the base
       was not moved from its position on the official map, making the
       base unuseable. The hex has now been drawn in and defined as an
       Atoll, and the base has been moved to its correct place
       (basically, this base was missed completely).
    4. Some hexsides in Manchukuo were defined as Ocean hexsides instead
       of Land hexsids as they should have been. Fixed.
    5. Hex 21,14 in India had railway/highway defined as its transport
       link type instead of trail (for a cultivated hex). Fixed.
    6. Hex 63,43 in Japan had a railway/highway defined as its transport
       link type, but the hex was drawn as containing trails. The map art
       was changed from trails to railway/highway to match the map data.
    7. Okinawa hexes were defined as clear instead of mountains, as in
       the official map. Fixed.
    8. The railway to Darwin, in Australia (hex 36,84), did not extend
       into Darwin itself. Fixed
    9. The Deboyne Island base (hex 59,98) was not in its correct
       location. Fixed.
   10. Numerous minor fixes to hexsides and transport links.
 
 Changes:
 
    1. The terrain type for Dacca (hex 32,24) in India has been changed
       from urban to cultivated (clear). Although it is heavily populated
       today it was MUCH smaller at the time of World War Two. In
       addition it is now flanked by rivers on five hexsides.
    2. Palk Strait, between Southern India and Ceylon, has been made
       impassable to Naval units. This shallow and treacherous strait is
       only navigable by small boats.
    3. Fort St. John in Canada (hex 131,27) has been moved one hex to the
       Northwest to place it on the correct side of the river, and to
       even out the distances on the air route that was used for ferrying
       aircraft to Alaska and the USSR.
    4. The Snake River in the USA was changed to a more correct alignment
       to make the inclusion of Boise easier.
    5. The amount of heavy industry and resources in Auckland, New
       Zealand, which were added in version 1, have been reduced
       considerably.
    6. The Coastal Defence units in Canada that were added in Version 1
       have been reworked to make them more accurate. The CD forces in
       Vancouver were also adjusted to more realistic levels (they were
       massively overpowered).
 
 Additions:
 
    1. The base Rangpur has been added four hexes inland from Calcutta.
       This part of India had no bases, while there are quite a few
       defined along the coast in the Dacca-Calcutta area.
    2. A trail has been added from Imphal (hex 34,26) to meet the railway
       at hex 34,24.
    3. A beach base has been added to Ramree Island (hex 29,29) near
       Akyab.
    4. A river has been added between Hong Kong (hex 43,42) and the rest
       of China. This "river" is intended to simulate the difficulty of
       moving into the region of Hong Kong and Hong Kong island.
    5. Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean (hex 15,62), near Java, has
       been added. It is an undeveloped Australian base at the start of
       the war. If this base causes too many problems with gameplay it
       will be removed in a future update.
    6. The base Boise (hex 143,40) has been added in the United States.
    7. The base Sacramento (hex 143,48) has been added in the United
       States. The railway/highway routes in the area were also adjusted.
       This base provides a backup location, reflecting real-life
       capability, in the unlikely event that San Francisco is attacked
       by the Japanese.
   
 
 

---

As before, if you do try this mod, please let me know if you find any problems with it.

Thanks,
Andrew

Andrew,

will you be updating your lcu movement mod with these version 2 changes as well???

[Andrew Brown]

ORIGINAL: Tanaka
Andrew,

will you be updating your lcu movement mod with these version 2 changes as well???

Don't forget that my LCU movement mod and my map mod are completely separate.

The LCU movement mod is for the official map, and besides the modification made to LCU movement itself, it only contains map data fixes that try to match the artwork of the official game map. When I added map fixes to the LCU movement mod I worked on the assumption that when the map artwork and the map data did not agree, the official map art was correct, and I adjusted the map data to match it.

The above list of fixes and changes only applies to my map, not the official one, and so they don't belong in the LCU movement mod.

I hope that explanation makes sense. If not let me know.

Andrew

[Tanaka]

ORIGINAL: Andrew Brown

ORIGINAL: Tanaka
Andrew,

will you be updating your lcu movement mod with these version 2 changes as well???

Don't forget that my LCU movement mod and my map mod are completely separate.

The LCU movement mod is for the official map, and besides the modification made to LCU movement itself, it only contains map data fixes that try to match the artwork of the official game map. When I added map fixes to the LCU movement mod I worked on the assumption that when the map artwork and the map data did not agree, the official map art was correct, and I adjusted the map data to match it.

The above list of fixes and changes only applies to my map, not the official one, and so they don't belong in the LCU movement mod.

I hope that explanation makes sense. If not let me know.

Andrew

ok i got you makes sense. yes i thought some of your new changes might apply to the official map. sounds like you are pretty much done fixing the official map???

[Tanaka]

also i noticed a lot of bases have a lot lower supply in your map version compared to the game version such as at Lae/scen 104. was this deliberate and have you documented these changes as to why supply was lowered? just curious here...

[Andrew Brown]

ORIGINAL: Tanaka
ok i got you makes sense. yes i thought some of your new changes might apply to the official map. sounds like you are pretty much done fixing the official map???

Most of my map fixes for the official map came from others who noticed problems and posted them on these forums. I haven't seen any new map problems posted here for a while. Hopefully most of them have been found but there might be others.

A while ago, I made a posting to the support forum with a list of my fixes, in case the designers wanted to use the corrections in a future patch, but I don't know if that will happen or not.

[bradfordkay]

Andrew, it appears that the installation instructions are basically the same as for the first version. If I have that one installed, can I just unload these files on top of the previous ones? I don't see much reason to backup the V1 files, do you?

EDIT: I see where the new instructions say that if you already have an /ART/maps_official folder filled with those files then you don't need to redo this step. However, in V1, it was /ART/maps_ original, and the new instructions use this term once and the term "official" more often. Being as I have to perform these steps manually (W98SE), could you clarify this for me? Do I need an "Original" maps folder, or an "official" maps folder?

[Andrew Brown]

ORIGINAL: bradfordkay

Andrew, it appears that the installation instructions are basically the same as for the first version. If I have that one installed, can I just unload these files on top of the previous ones? I don't see much reason to backup the V1 files, do you?

No, there is no reason to back anything up if you have version 1 installed.

The easiest thing to do is to unzip version 2 (anywhere) and run the install script, even if you have version 1 of the mod already installed. It should take care of everything.

With version 2 there are new map files, map data file, scenario files and load/unload utilities. The version 1 scenario files (for scenario 115) and the load/unload utilities will get overwritten. The map files and map data files get written to a separate directory (ART\maps_modified_v2), leaving the version 1 map in its directory (ART\maps_modified_v1) intact. Also, the install script sets up the scenario picture files and text files for the scenario numbers I am using for my modified scenarios (101-116). This last bit only gets done if running the install script, it will not happen if using a manual install, but it is not critical.

After version 2 is installed, then the version 1 map files can be deleted if you like, by removing the directory "ART\maps_modified_v1". They are no longer needed.

Regardless of whether you have the version 1 map loaded in the game or not, after installing version 2 you need to run the MapMod-Load utility to get the v2 map loaded. There is an option to do this when running the version 2 install script.

Andrew

[Andrew Brown]

ORIGINAL: bradfordkay
EDIT: I see where the new instructions say that if you already have an /ART/maps_official folder filled with those files then you don't need to redo this step. However, in V1, it was /ART/maps_ original, and the new instructions use this term once and the term "official" more often. Being as I have to perform these steps manually (W98SE), could you clarify this for me? Do I need an "Original" maps folder, or an "official" maps folder?

Yes, I stuffed up with the manual install instructions for version 1. At some point while working on version 1, I changed the name of the directory from "maps_original" to "maps_official", but I forgot to change all of the references in the manual install part of the version 1 readme. Now I see I also left a single reference in the version 2 instructions [:(] I will update the instructions and send them to Spooky.

The directory with the official/original map backup in it needs to be called "maps_official" as this is what the unload utility looks for.

The install scripts look for "maps_official" and, if it exists, does NOT backup the map. This is important because if you have version 1 of the map mod loaded in the game when you run the install script for version 2, and it didn't make this check, then it would overwrite the official map stored in the backup directory with the version 1 mod map - and you would lose your only copy of the original map.

If you have the official map stored in "maps_original", then you should copy this map to "maps_official" - either before or after running the v2 install script - and it should be OK.

Sorry about the confusion.

Andrew

[bradfordkay]

Okay, I've run into a hiccup with this version. As you may have surmised, I have W98SE installed on my home computer, which causes me to perform a manual install. I have made sure that the original maps aare in a folder /ART/maps_official (as opposed to /ART/_maps_original under v1), everything in the Andrew_Map_Mod_v21 zip file is copied into a new /ART/maps_modified_v2 folder, and then try to run the MapModLoad utility. I get a message that "The "ART/Maps_Modified_v2" folder does not seem to contain the correct files!" and so the utiilty stops running.

I have since loaded everything into the correct (I hope!) folders by hand, thanks ever so much to the WinZip utility showing the destination paths. I have started a new scen 116 and the map fixes appear to have taken hold, but both scen 115 and 116 claim to be v1 when you are looking at the scenario choice screen. Could it be that I've gotten everything okay and you just didn't update that information, or could I possibly have a botched install?

Thanks for the beautiful map!

[Andrew Brown]

ORIGINAL: bradfordkay
I have since loaded everything into the correct (I hope!) folders by hand, thanks ever so much to the WinZip utility showing the destination paths. I have started a new scen 116 and the map fixes appear to have taken hold, but both scen 115 and 116 claim to be v1 when you are looking at the scenario choice screen. Could it be that I've gotten everything okay and you just didn't update that information, or could I possibly have a botched install?

Thanks for the beautiful map!

The manual installation instructions in the README file should explain what goes where. The list is in point 7 of the manual install instructions. Please take a look ansd see whether you have everything in the right place.

I think the reason why the scenario 115 looks like version 1 in the scenario choice screen is because the text files for the scenarios are overwritten by the install script, and therefore this doesn't get done with a manual install. The scenario text files will therefore still be the old version 1 files. It shouldn't affect anything anyway, as long as you are really using version 2 of the scenario. You can verify this by ensuring that you can see the new bases, like Sacramento, when you load scenario 115.

Andrew

[bradfordkay]

Here is the section in the ReadMe (Point 7):
"7) The list of files in the mod, and the locations they need to be
placed is as follows:

From the folder where the files were unzipped:
READ_ME_Map_Mod_v2.txt - move to "[Game folder]"

From the folder "Misc" (below the folder where the files were
unzipped):
Misc\MapMod-Load.bat to "[Game folder]"
Misc\MapMod-Unload.bat to "[Game folder]"

From the folder "mapmod_docs" (below the folder where the files were
unzipped):
mapmod_docs\*.* (all files) to "[Game folder]\mapmod_docs\"

From the folder "ART" (below the folder where the files were
unzipped):
ART\Maps_Modified_v2\*.* (all files) to
"[Game folder]\ART\Maps_Modified_v2\"

From the folder "SCEN" (below the folder where the files were
unzipped):
SCEN\*.txt (all .txt files) to "[Game folder]\SCEN"
SCEN\*.dat (all .dat files) to "[Game folder]\SCEN"
SCEN\*.cmt to "[Game folder]\SCEN"


This list is a little nebulous, but it is okay since when you use WinZip it shows the path for each file within the zipped file. In W98, when you unzip this stuff - at least it worked this way for me, it didn't create those folders (scen, misc, etc). I had to create them manually. I am not too worried about the official maps, because I created a new WITP-Mod installation, leaving my original alone (and haven't played the original since getting your map to work the first time!).


It appears that everything is working okay, since I've been playing scen 116 while waiting for your response. I'm okay with the scen selection screen being wrong, since the map data appears to be correct. The first thing I did was check the Darwin RR, and then I built a TF to ship SEAsia HQ to Chandpur. The latter worked fine, the former was there. I hadn't even noticed Sacramento (in the sahdow of SF), but will thank you for the inclusion (in V1) of the Columbia River to Portland.

[Andrew Brown]

ORIGINAL: bradfordkay
This list is a little nebulous, but it is okay since when you use WinZip it shows the path for each file within the zipped file. In W98, when you unzip this stuff - at least it worked this way for me, it didn't create those folders (scen, misc, etc). I had to create them manually. I am not too worried about the official maps, because I created a new WITP-Mod installation, leaving my original alone (and haven't played the original since getting your map to work the first time!).


It appears that everything is working okay, since I've been playing scen 116 while waiting for your response. I'm okay with the scen selection screen being wrong, since the map data appears to be correct. The first thing I did was check the Darwin RR, and then I built a TF to ship SEAsia HQ to Chandpur. The latter worked fine, the former was there. I hadn't even noticed Sacramento (in the sahdow of SF), but will thank you for the inclusion (in V1) of the Columbia River to Portland.

I agree the manual install file list could contain a bit more detail. Documentation is always a hard thing to do properly. I will do an updated version of the README and try to make it more comprehensive.

The way I decided to do the setup of the scenario area (scenarios 101-116) cuts down on the number of files I had to add to the mod file, and makes it much easier to add new scenarios in that range, but it leaves out the Win98 users. I will look at adding an extra batch file for Win98 users to set up the files properly. If I get this done, I will send you a copy as well, since it should still be able to be done after the rest of the installation.