Matrix Games Forums

Is there a way to generate a giant image file of the entire map zoomed-in? I like to scribble plans on it, but for that I always have to take a bunch of screenshots to try and capture where the action is happening.

It's always possible the game's developers have something along that line. Outside of taking a lot of screenshots and stitching them together in a graphic app I can't think of an easy way to generate a giant contiguous "zoomed-in" map image. Panel-based maps were a lot easier as you could just join the panel art together to re-create the map, but tile-based games have become the norm as they give better performance and memory usage. If such a large map image file could be created it would probably be rather unwieldy and slow to scroll.

In the editor, you can open a campaign and use the F8 key (or the Map menu) to create full-map screenshots. These are not combined as a single map but that can be done manually. The PNG maps are stored in the [My Games]\SCWAW\screenshots folder.

Dropbox link

world.png is the whole WaW map.
I have a world.xcf for editing in GIMP file but it is 1.29 Gb (each screenie is embedded in it) and overloaded my DB limit.

El_Condoro wrote: Mon Dec 02, 2024 1:19 am Dropbox link

world.png is the whole WaW map.
I have a world.xcf for editing in GIMP file but it is 1.29 Gb (each screenie is embedded in it) and overloaded my DB limit.

Awesome! Old_Shane won't know what hit him once I start planning my moves like this. I really think a big picture like this should maybe be a resource available on the forum for everyone, you know? Very useful.

Old Shane has access to it now, too!

I don't know why I haven't done it before but I will do one for Orb & Crown, too.

El_Condoro wrote: Mon Dec 02, 2024 4:22 am Old Shane has access to it now, too!

Not if we all keep quiet about it!
Also, sorry to ask this but could you look over the full world map again? In some places like Europe the way it's lined up is a bit wonky.

Yes, it will be wonky - I haven't had a chance to line things up accurately, yet. That was the purpose of the GIMP file for players. I'll see what I can do.

OK, I think this is about as good as I am going to get it. Unfortunately, the top of Norway has been cut off but otherwise, it seems OK.

I will use OneDrive for the files and have linked both the PNG and XCF files. Preview probably won't work, so download first.

world.png 202 Mb

world.xcf 1.2 Gb

Ok, am I missing something? How do I look at my current game situation on the downloaded map?

You can't - it's just a graphic map intended for planning strategies and that sort of thing.

Platoonist wrote: Sun Dec 01, 2024 4:02 pm It's always possible the game's developers have something along that line.

As far as I'm aware, we don't.

Might be for the best too. Some of the reference files I use to create the maps can become absolutely colossal - the one I'm working on now is just shy of 450 MB - and I do the hexes on those a lot smaller than they appear in the game.

- BNC

BiteNibbleChomp wrote: Tue Dec 03, 2024 9:50 am Might be for the best too. Some of the reference files I use to create the maps can become absolutely colossal - the one I'm working on now is just shy of 450 MB - and I do the hexes on those a lot smaller than they appear in the game.

I always figured that North American/Caribbean map you did for the ACW game must have been a beast to create. Without giving too much away is the map you're currently working on even more beastly?

Platoonist wrote: Tue Dec 03, 2024 5:13 pm I always figured that North American/Caribbean map you did for the ACW game must have been a beast to create. Without giving too much away is the map you're currently working on even more beastly?

The ACW one took about 9 months to put together, beastly is an understatement!

The one I'm doing at the moment is a fair bit smaller, but the main point of difference is that I have a much better stash of references to use now than I did back in 2020 - so I can create the maps a good deal faster (the Balkan one in WWI I did in three days despite it being about 10% the hexes of ACW), but also means I end up with these gigantic reference files. Turns out layering half a dozen huge maps (we're talking 10000px by 10000px here) and then annotating everything uses up a lot of disk space!

- BNC

I asked about this once before briefly. But is it not easy (easy for me to say) to have a reference map like this with the game situation on it? Not an interactive one - just a screen shot (or whatever you might call it) to refer to and scroll around between turns. And thanks El_Condoro for the map you did!