Idiot's Guide to Making Custom Maps?

[Zylithan]

Short Version:
Is there such a thing? I can't find one on the forums or the docs coming with the game...

Longer Version:
Apologies for my ignorance.. I am trying to learn how to make some custom maps for Dom3. I'm a noob to playing, and even worse at making maps. I looked through the stickies and forums, and can't find an Idiot's guide. I made some pretty map pictures, and I drew lines on them, and I put white dots in the middle of each province, then I load them into the map editor. And it usually recognizes all the provinces I marked with dots. But there is no or little neighbor connectivity. From the game docs, I gather I could use text editor to fix all of this - but I like GUIs and this seems slow. Is there any way using the map editor? It seems like right and left clicking on the flags help me make neighbors, but they always seem to get erased when I move on to do other provinces. If anyone could help I promise to try to make it worthwhile by making some maps...
If I missed something obvious, apologies!

Thanks!

[Gandalf Parker]

In the map editor :
Left-click will make a neighbor.
Ctrl-click wilol remove a neighbor.
Right-click will shift your attention to another province.

Moving to another province shows its neighbors only. If you move back to one you already did then you will see that it has remembered the neighbors you gave it.

I recommend that you save often.

Gandalf Parker

[Zylithan]

Hrm. I think I'm missing something. This is sort of what I assumed, but if I click on a province, select some neighbors by left clicking, and then right click on another province, then come back to the first (by right clicking again) it seems to not display the neighbors I assigned. Does it remember them, but not display them? Do I need to click something at left side (besides "save")?

Also, I notice when I open up the map to play on it, I notice two things. One is that the white dots I made still appear on the map, which is not ideal. This is probably because I put the white dots in my .tga file? If I don't do this, the editor doesn't find any provinces. Is there a way to do this so I don't get white dots on my maps?
Second, when I click on a place on the map (in game mode) sometimes it highlights the wrong province (not the one I click on). I think this is because it chooses the one closest to the white dot I made - I have not defined boundaries. How do I properly define boundaries.

Thanks very much!

[Gandalf Parker]

The white dots are the important thing. The dots should only be one pixel big. Thats the tiniest size possible. One touch of the thinnest pencil.

If you made the dots using the dot tool (a filled-in circle) then that would cause the problems you are talking about. When you click on the province, its jumping to a different pixel than the one you clicked on before.

When I actually WANTED the dots to be apparent, I used a single white dot and surrounded it with light yellow ones. That way it seemed like a bigger dot but still only had one of the total white (255,255,255) color for the game to target on

[Ballbarian]

Zylithan,
I just got your pm. Looks like Gandalf has answered your questions. The 255,255,255 that he is talking about is what is known as an RGB value (255 red, 255 green, 255, blue) with valid values being any number between 0 and 255. Your graphics program should allow you to see & change these values when selecting a paint color. As he has already pointed out, each province location is defined by the location of a single white pixel. If the white dot is made up of multiple white pixels, you will get multiple provinces clumped together which will cause the behavior that you are describing.

Assigning neighbors in the map editor can be a tedious process, but like anything worth doing, it can be done one step at a time. I always start in a corner and work progressively through sections and rows in as organized a manner as possible. Try to avoid skipping around randomly or else it will quickly get frustrating as you lose track of which neighbors have been set, and which have not.

Also, as Gandalf has pointed out, save often.

In case you haven't found it, there is a file called "mapedit.pdf" in your dominions3\doc folder. If you can't find it on your hard drive, then try searching your dominions3 cd. (I don't remember if it is automatically installed, or if you have to copy it from the disk like it was in dom2.)

[Zylithan]

Aha! I was using GIMP, but the opacity was dependant upon how long I held down my click, so my single dots were not 255,255,255 because of not having 100% opacity... that's why I went to bigger dots. Thanks for the advice. I think I'll probably have more questions in the future, but maybe I'm good for now? Two quick questions...

1. How does the map editor detect borders?
2. Is it going to be a problem if I make snowy maps, because there can't be any other 255,255,255 pixels?

Thanks!

[Zylithan]

Ballbarin - thanks for your comments, I didn't see them before my last post. I did see the mapedit.pdf, but that seems to start out by assuming you already have a working image. I wasn't to that part yet

Thanks!

[Ballbarian]

1. I believe it is a combination of proximity and if I remember correctly, it looks for red pixels (red province borders). I will sometimes start with solid red province borders to give the map editor a chance to auto detect neighbors, but I often end up clearing it and doing it manually anyhow. (You can always change the border colors later in gimp by using the "select by color" tools.

2. You should have no problem making snowy maps. Just be sure to not use pure white. For example, try using a color like 255/255/245. It is still white, just not pure white.

It is often useful to use gimp to select all white pixels on your image before placing your province pixels and if any are found, just change all of them to some subtle variation of white.

[RamsHead]

1. How does the map editor detect borders?

It doesn't. The little white dots are what it detects. If you connect two white dots in the editor, then they theoretically border each other (though you could make teleporting provinces). Borders are just drawn on for appearance.

2. Is it going to be a problem if I make snowy maps, because there can't be any other 255, 255, 255 pixels.

Just make your snow 245, 245, 245. It would still be white but shouldn't be identified as a province.


Ignore my first paragraph.

[RamsHead]

Ballbarian said:
1. I believe it is a combination of proximity and if I remember correctly, it looks for red pixels (red province borders). I will sometimes start with solid red province borders to give the map editor a chance to auto detect neighbors, but I often end up clearing it and doing it manually anyhow. (You can always change the border colors later in gimp by using the "select by color" tools.

Hmm, I didn't know that it actually made borders. Still, drawing them gives you better control over what you want I would assume.