Pictorial Map Building

[Mad Russian]

There are 6 Dirt and Mud Textures.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

There are 4 Field Textures.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

There are 10 Forest Textures.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

There are 16 Grass Textures.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

There are 15 Miscellaneous Textures.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

There are 8 Road Textures.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

There are 17 Rock and Sand Textures.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

There are 9 Snow Textures.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

There are 6 Water Textures.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

In total that's 91 Textures for you to choose from. Each with 998,001 display options just from the X and Y display parameters alone.

There are 20 Opacity display choices and 20 Blur display choices for each texture as well.

Which means that there are well over a million display choices for each texture.


There are no basic graphics tiles in this game. You literally draw your map pixel by pixel.


Each texture is assigned a color. The game doesn't know, or care, what that color is. Which means if you want a particular look for a field but don't like what you see there you can pick a dirt texture and use it.

The game doesn't care.

Any texture can be assigned to any color.

Your imagination is the limiting factor for your creation of a map.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

Assigning a Texture is easy.

1) Give it a name.

2) Click on the folder button.

3) Select a texture from one of the texture categories.

4) Set the X, Y, R, Blur and Opacity parameters.

5) Click on the box to the right of the C button.

6) Move your mouse over the map. When you do the mouse pointer becomes an eyedropper. Move the eyedropper over the color you want to assign the Texture to and left click it. This will put that color in the box to the right of the C button.

7) You click the check mark button immediately above the C button.

You have just assigned the parameters to that color for that texture on your map.

Takes less than 3 minutes.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

I reset the textures the way I want them and saved it using Mega Texture. When the save is complete it gives you the save data.

Saving in Mega Texture can take awhile depending on how much information you put in the map and how many structures are on the map.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

Looking at the map in the game I see that the side wall is pretty high.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

Checking the settings for the side wall we find that they are 69.0 and 88.0.

These are the settings under the Height Map selection buttons. They are labeled M_Ht0 and M_Ht1.


EDITED: The number subtracted needs to be the same for both so I subtracted 30 from each.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

I reduced those settings by half.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

Here is the new side wall half as high as it was to start with. From the looks of it I'll reduce it again by about 1/3 to 1/2 of what I've got here now.

Good Hunting.

MR

[eniced73]

MR,
What is the reason you reduced the sidewall?  Just for visual purposes? 
 
By the way.  Excellent job.  Nice and clear. 

[Mad Russian]

Yes, I reduced the side wall for visual effect.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

For me making a map is like painting a picture. The way MM works it's almost like a paint by number picture set.

I use the Google Earth or other source material depiction of the actual terrain to determine where the picture gets the little additional brush strokes.

Here is the map as it's been redone to my specifications. This may or may not be the final terrain map version. I may come back and modify it according to what I see.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

While I have 7 field types for variety I have 4 types of woods for resource management on this map.

The larger the map size the more I concern myself with resource management. Many gamers will be playing PCO with low end machines. The resources used in the map can greatly affect the playability of the scenario on those low end machines.

There are 4 types of woods specifically for a light woods and a heavy woods environment and then an LOD environment for each of those.

When we get to doing auto-gen woods I'll discuss this aspect of map making in greater detail.

Here is a SS showing the village area of the map. The tan color is the village where I'll put buildings. The darker green border with the lighter green interior is light woods and light woods with LOD trees. The medium green border with the black interior is for heavy woods and an LOD interior.

The LOD tree models are used in areas where there will be little to no combat.

Good Hunting.

MR