Graphics Mod
Posted: Tue Sep 27, 2011 6:26 am
I have finally completed a project that entails a fairly major remake of the map graphics for ATG. I uploaded it to the scenario bank this evening called Scenario Design. The image files are contained in the three directories \ScenarioDesign, \ScenarioDesignBIG, and \ScenarioDesignSMALL. These directories should be placed in the graphics directory. The file ScenarioDesign.at2 is a "master file" that contains the terrain types with links to the appropriate images. It is essentially a remake of the generic.at2 file. This was developed for v2.08.
This distribution primarily replaces most map graphics, including roads, bridges, and rivers, but not some of the special graphics, such as fortifications, factories, airfields, and resources. In the master file, these point to the original images distributed with the game.
Changes to the original terrain types include the addition of the following terrain types: Lakes (plains, mud, snow, and all forest types), mangrove swamp, arid rough (meant to be similar to lava fields), rocky terrain (plains, mud, snow, and desert), low mountain forests (loaf, pine, jungle), bocage (spring, summer, fall, winter), spring forest, major river, frozen rivers (stream, river, and major), plains canyon, desert canyon, unimproved road, paved road, and highway. The following terrain sub-types were removed: wadi, and urban centers for particular cultures (they are all the same now). For enterprising modders, I also included seasonal variations for a few terrain types, so that you can distinguish between spring and fall (fields, bocage, loaf forests). Finally, the images for coastal transition hexes now have seven images, which the game will choose "randomly", which gives a greater variation on the coast, thus removing the glaring repeated patterns along the coast. This is not the case for most other transitions, where only one image is used for each terrain type in the "Fred" transitions file (the exception being fields, where three images are used). Originally, I made seven transitions for each terrain type to give a very wide variety in the generated maps, but generally speaking, these uses way too much memory.
Here's an idea what it looks like:
Issues: This should be considered an rather advanced beta, as not every single combination of edges, roads, etc., have been tested. Thus, I expect some errors. The known problems are with the prehex sprites for many of the "urban" terrains, such as mud, desert, and snow. For some reason, attempting to change these leads to a crash, with an unhandled exception error, with the message "Object reference not set to an instance of an object". I suspect that this might be fixed in v2.09. Some of the railroads and highways don't line up quite right. This a bit difficult and tedious to do, so I accepted this version for now. Also, it looks as if in a few of the streams transitions you can see a seam, which is caused by the beveling. If you find problems, post it on the forum, or shoot me an e-mail at ormand at comcast.net. Lastly, it may be that some of the coastal transitions might pinch the railroads and highways, let me know. I caught several of these, which forced me to remake some 25 coastal images.
Acknowledgements: This project came about because I wanted to make several scenarios for Advanced tactics, and found the vanilla version to be lacking for what I wanted to do. So, before ATG came out I started out trying to use satellite images, but it didn't work since they didn't tile, and it looked awful. Then I stumbled across two web sites. The first, which I can't find anymore, helped me to figure out how to tile hex images. The second is a great web site called "The Cartographer's Guild" (http://www.cartographersguild.com), which has an incredible wealth of tutorials that made it fairly easy. Perhaps the most useful for me, were several posted by RobA (as well as an angular building brush he distributed). Without this web site, I don't think I would have known how to start.
This distribution primarily replaces most map graphics, including roads, bridges, and rivers, but not some of the special graphics, such as fortifications, factories, airfields, and resources. In the master file, these point to the original images distributed with the game.
Changes to the original terrain types include the addition of the following terrain types: Lakes (plains, mud, snow, and all forest types), mangrove swamp, arid rough (meant to be similar to lava fields), rocky terrain (plains, mud, snow, and desert), low mountain forests (loaf, pine, jungle), bocage (spring, summer, fall, winter), spring forest, major river, frozen rivers (stream, river, and major), plains canyon, desert canyon, unimproved road, paved road, and highway. The following terrain sub-types were removed: wadi, and urban centers for particular cultures (they are all the same now). For enterprising modders, I also included seasonal variations for a few terrain types, so that you can distinguish between spring and fall (fields, bocage, loaf forests). Finally, the images for coastal transition hexes now have seven images, which the game will choose "randomly", which gives a greater variation on the coast, thus removing the glaring repeated patterns along the coast. This is not the case for most other transitions, where only one image is used for each terrain type in the "Fred" transitions file (the exception being fields, where three images are used). Originally, I made seven transitions for each terrain type to give a very wide variety in the generated maps, but generally speaking, these uses way too much memory.
Here's an idea what it looks like:
Issues: This should be considered an rather advanced beta, as not every single combination of edges, roads, etc., have been tested. Thus, I expect some errors. The known problems are with the prehex sprites for many of the "urban" terrains, such as mud, desert, and snow. For some reason, attempting to change these leads to a crash, with an unhandled exception error, with the message "Object reference not set to an instance of an object". I suspect that this might be fixed in v2.09. Some of the railroads and highways don't line up quite right. This a bit difficult and tedious to do, so I accepted this version for now. Also, it looks as if in a few of the streams transitions you can see a seam, which is caused by the beveling. If you find problems, post it on the forum, or shoot me an e-mail at ormand at comcast.net. Lastly, it may be that some of the coastal transitions might pinch the railroads and highways, let me know. I caught several of these, which forced me to remake some 25 coastal images.
Acknowledgements: This project came about because I wanted to make several scenarios for Advanced tactics, and found the vanilla version to be lacking for what I wanted to do. So, before ATG came out I started out trying to use satellite images, but it didn't work since they didn't tile, and it looked awful. Then I stumbled across two web sites. The first, which I can't find anymore, helped me to figure out how to tile hex images. The second is a great web site called "The Cartographer's Guild" (http://www.cartographersguild.com), which has an incredible wealth of tutorials that made it fairly easy. Perhaps the most useful for me, were several posted by RobA (as well as an angular building brush he distributed). Without this web site, I don't think I would have known how to start.
