make us some maps

[Gandalf Parker]

I mean YOU!
You make us some maps. Yeah, you. The one reading this.

get map images from
A) the Dom3 map generator
B) the old Dom2 DomMap generator
C) other games
D) other map generators
E) satellite images
F) fantasy books
G) draw one
H) grab some that get offered once in awhile at Dom2Minions.com or Dom3Minions.com then add personal touches to it.

use the map editor in Dom3 to do some of the work, and then edit the .map file for special changes. Its plain text and can be opened in any word processor such as NotePad.

Some uses for the special map commands are...
A) create planned provinces where the magic sites, indept race, structures, etc are all defined and logical
B) create commanders with units and equipment then position them
C) create AIs with starting prov, castle type, god, units, researched spells, etc
D) any of the above but done by a program which does it on random rolls
E) manually create "yourself" as an AI nation with your favorite god and items and spells. Then play against "yourself". This could be saved as a seperate file which you can then add to any map you feel like playing against yourself on (if it really kicks tail then upload it so we can use it also)

join us in the MAPS/MODS subforum if this was interesting to you

[Edi]

Hey! Just let me get the Dom3DB halfway finished first! Then you'll get a remake of the Faerun map for Dom3, though I'll need to do separate map files for the different eras.

Edi

[Gandalf Parker]

I rather like that this game has the image and the text seperate. It makes it easy to offer one really extensive image (and long download) with multiple (small dowload) text files that give you multiple options to choose from on the menu. So the "Eye" image file can be reused to show up in the menu as
Eye
Black Eye
Eye and AIs
Poke in the Eye
Eye Barbarian Age
etc etc etc

[HoneyBadger]

Gandalf, dear friend!; I'm already working on two whole AGES, not to mention a huge Lovecraft-mod, so that's atleast 7 or 8 nations on top of that, PLUS I'm doing artwork for Uh-nu-buh...so, yeah ok I'll make you some maps (as soon as I figure out the map-editor)

[NTJedi]

Gandalf Parker said:
use the map editor in Dom3 to do some of the work, and then edit the .map file for special changes. Its plain text and can be opened in any word processor such as NotePad.

You should list all the .map edit commands which are currently broken within your topic. This will save these individuals several hours of editing and testing and editing and testing... then only to discover all the time was wasted because the .map command doesn't work as expected.
Here's a few of the broken commands which will hopefully be fixed in an upcoming patch:
1) #startspell <player> "spellname"
BROKEN: only works for the first turn making it useless

2) #fort "<fort number>"
BROKEN: fort specified is different than what appears... and sometimes no fort will appear.

3) Late Age nation 56 says Jotunheim when its actually Jomon

4) #randomequip 3 and 4 says it will provide the commander with MANY items yet usually only one or two items are given.

[Edi]

Actually, #fort <nbr> does work as advertised, but I'm not sure if the fort numbers in the manual are correct. I have them listed correctly in the DB and I can post some kind of a list of them from home tomorrow (I'm at work now).

Edi

[LDiCesare]

I've done the skeleton for a map (the topology so that you can have 16 starting nations, each of which has 3 possible neighbours) but it takes a lot of time putting art on top of it...

[Gandalf Parker]

http://www.dom3minions.com/docs/forts.txt
altho I probably should pull the list from the game again in case the last couple of patches added any.

[DrPraetorious]

Incidentally, I believe that one of those dark fortresses is *under water* and the other is for surface provinces.

I'm not sure what difference this makes - if any.

I'm working on a random special province generator - it's a bit less extreme than the one in Gandalf's er... uniquely challenging maps. These are designed to add a little spice to multiplayer, so they are only placed at strategic locations - actually, they are placed at provinces that are as close to equidistant from all existing start locations as is possible (possible given that I'm lazy and my heuristic doesn't work that well.) If you know perl you can easily change how my map-funker works, however.

Anyway, I need two things, provinces, and squads to put in provinces. Squads (which can actually be any number of units strung together) can be reused as guardians in multiple special province placements.

Special provinces have both names and numbers.

Here's an example of how this all works out. I generally use #s instead of names so that I don't have to escape quotes (\") but it might be harder to read, maybe I should shift over:

-- special province 16, fortress of a barbarian khan.
$mask[16] = 0;
$descript[16] = "#poptype 26\n#fort 2\n#knownfeature 562\n#knownfeature 483\n#knownfeature 492\n#knownfeature 500\n";
@{$squads[16]} = ("major khan","horse chief","horse chief","ancestor shamans");

$def_squad{"major khan"} = "#leader 930\n#mag_priest 4\n#randomequip 4\n#bodyguards 10 1577\n#units 20 939\n#units 20 939\n#units 30 938\n#units 30 938\n";
$def_squad{"horse chief"}= "#leader 136\#randomequip 2\n#bodyguards 10 137\n#units 40 137\n";
$def_squad{"ancestor shamans") = "#leader 1709\n#randomequip 4\n#bodyguards 10 139\n#randomequip 2\n#leader 1710\n#randomequip 2\n#bodyguards 10 139\n#leader 1711\n#bodyguards 10 139\n");

If, when placing special provinces, it rolls 16, if the mask meets requirements (there are none, so that's easy) it'll put a simple hillfort, a dragon mountain, a wolven gate, a tundra, a haunted torture chamber and a a khan, two horse tribe chiefs and three shamans (with significant armies each) into the province.

If anyone wants to contribute more such useful snippets, it'd be quite coo. I can reformat them for you if you find all the \n stuff difficult to deal with - just separate each entry with an extra line of blank space or something.

[NTJedi]

Edi said:
Actually, #fort <nbr> does work as advertised, but I'm not sure if the fort numbers in the manual are correct. I have them listed correctly in the DB and I can post some kind of a list of them from home tomorrow (I'm at work now).

Edi

This might be a 'notepad' issue again, but #fort "<nbr>" gives unpredictable results on the many maps I've tested.
I did find a complicated workaround to get the correct fort to appear using notepad.
#fort "<fort_number>" = is unpredictable and should not be used
however
IF the map editor uses the complicated workaround below the correct fort can appear using notepad:
#owner <fort_number>#fort "<any_number>" = WORKS !!

Using the command above within notepad will allow the correct fort to appear and proves the command is broken at least when using notepad. Since most game owners are using Windows and the map edit PDF says a text editor can be used... it's broken. Based on what I discovered it's not working as advertised.