Maps

[Rake]

About map overlay...

Simply put - you find a map, crop the map to the area you want , rename it accordingly & drop it into your mods folder. When you restart the game it'll be the background image for the map editor. The image will expand and contract along with the change in editor map area so you need to adjust your game map proportion until the background image is to the best scale and proportion. Then you paint your roads and elevation points using the background image as a helpful guide.

At the very least, getting minor stuff like the distances between houses and the true sizes of crop field correct makes a HUGE gameplay difference.

I was all set to start a new thread when I figured I'd better search first... I've got the map below that I started working on when CMBN first came out. Then, someone started a La Fiere map that was pretty far along, so I put this aside once I realized how much work was involved. I started to pick it back up a month or so ago, just after I picked up "No Better Place to Die when M1 started posting screens of his fine, new causeway map.

My questions:

1) I'm not sure I understand why I would place this map in my Mods folder; will there be a new section that's part of the Mod Tools?

2) As this is currently a jpeg, I'd need to convert to a bitmap, if I've read the overview correctly.

3) When I open the editor and start a new map, I assume there will be a way to select the "base map". This would then be loaded with the lower left corner of the map at the 0,0 coordinate? I ask this because I want to set up my grid lines to match the editor placement... Photoshop likes the 0,0 "coordinate" at the top left.

I'm asking in advance, because this is the part of the update that I'm looking forward to the most. Once I got into the original editor and realized that I'd need a drafting table and tools, a scanner and a full-size digital plotter in addition to my computer :eek: (just kidding) to build a decent map, I just gave up on the idea of making maps. It didn't help that others were already making maps for the areas that I had under consideration, either. A better understanding of the new editor will let start building some base maps. I can see right now that I need to rotate the base photo so that the roads will run more closely with cardinal compass points (I should have rotated the picture above approximately 15 degrees CCW before cropping so that the road from the Manoir to Cauquigny runs east-west... a point learned).

Thanks in advance... Oh,and a HUGE shoutout to everyone that makes maps, mods, does testing (beta or otherwise), etc. for this game. The time expenditure is enormous and greatly appreciated by me.

[Baneman]

Doesn't "print screen" work on the PC?

It's very odd. When I started playing CMBN on my XP install, I was able to take screenshots perfectly ( I've posted several ).

Sadly, when I upgraded to Windows7-64 to get all that extra grunt out of my machine ... the screenshots are now always black.

[JonS]

My questions:

1) I'm not sure I understand why I would place this map in my Mods folder; will there be a new section that's part of the Mod Tools?

The way it works at the moment is you can only have ONE map overlay, it has a particular name, and it sits in your Z (or Data? I forget which it is right now) folder. You can of course change the image, but you have to do that externally in Windows Explorer, or sumfink. There is currently no way to switch image overlays within CMFI.

2) As this is currently a jpeg, I'd need to convert to a bitmap, if I've read the overview correctly.

Correct.

3) When I open the editor and start a new map, I assume there will be a way to select the "base map". This would then be loaded with the lower left corner of the map at the 0,0 coordinate? I ask this because I want to set up my grid lines to match the editor placement... Photoshop likes the 0,0 "coordinate" at the top left.

The way I've been using it as follows.

I create three image overlays for each map. One is a topo map with any particular features annotated or highlighted. Two is the same topo map with 5m contour lines derived from Google Earth accentuated. Three is a satellite photo taken from Google Earth. All are the same dimensions, because they're all taken as screenshots of Google Earth overlays, then cropped down to a common border, and using the ruler in Google I know exactly how wide and tall - in metres - my images are. In fact, I adjust the common border to match the steps that CM maps works in (minimum step of 16m additional E-W or N-S), but really that's a bit anal. Within a couple of metres of your desired CM size isn't going to matter.

Then I decide which overlay I want to work with first. Usually it's the accentuated Topo map, because I usually put in the contours first. Do I put that in my Z (or Data?) folder. Then I fire up CMFI, and go into the editor.

First task in the map section is to adjust the overall dimensions of the CM map. The overlay already displays, but it will be grossly distorted, because CM automatically stretches or compresses the map overlay in both the N-S and E-W directions so that the image fits the current map size. As you adjust the CM map size the amount of distortion decreases (or maybe increases) until the size of your CM map matches the size of your overlay. And it's at that point that you can start adding elevations or whatever other map feature is wanted.

When I've finished with the accentuated topo map, I usually switch to the plain topo, and carry on with roads, walls, fences, and other linear objects. But, and this is key, because my three overlays were all created from Google Earth using a common border, each of the three displays perfectly in the CM editor when I switch the images.

PROTIP: crop your overlays to show only the features and terrain you want to create on your CM map. Get rid of any border or 'white space' around the edges, because all that junk will display in the editor, and mess you around when you;re trying to create your CM map.

I can see right now that I need to rotate the base photo so that the roads will run more closely with cardinal compass points

Or 45°, yeah. That's a good idea.

Regards

Jon

[JonS]

It's very odd. When I started playing CMBN on my XP install, I was able to take screenshots perfectly ( I've posted several ).

Sadly, when I upgraded to Windows7-64 to get all that extra grunt out of my machine ... the screenshots are now always black.

I had exactly the same experience. I don't know what causes it, but I use Fraps now (it's free).

[LongLeftFlank]

AFAIK, lawyers and corporate ass-covering caused it. PrintScreen makes it "too easy" for people to grab images of copyrighted material and Microsoft doesn't want to be dragged into some BS lawsuit. So they force you to obtain third party software to do this stuff, which shields them. Similar thing happened to that useful little Photo Editor program they used to bundle free with Windows.

[Rake]

I create three image overlays for each map. One is a topo map with any particular features annotated or highlighted. Two is the same topo map with 5m contour lines derived from Google Earth accentuated. Three is a satellite photo taken from Google Earth. All are the same dimensions, because they're all taken as screenshots of Google Earth overlays, then cropped down to a common border, and using the ruler in Google I know exactly how wide and tall - in metres - my images are.

Jon, thanks for the reply. I'm sure I'll figure it out once CMFI arrives.

I haven't been able to figure out how to get topo in Google Earth. The photo in my post is dl'd from IGN as was the topo. I traced the topo and other features (including the scale bar... very important!!!) in one file, with the contours and other info on separate layers. Once the tracing was complete, I flattened the file and discarded the background layer, leaving a white background. This part is time consuming, probably taking three - four hours for the map I posted.

This file was dragged into the aerial photo. It's then simple to select and delete the white background, leaving just the topo. Then, it's just a matter of scaling and rotating the topo layer to match the photo. The problem here is that, due to distortion of the photo, or minor inaccuracies in the mapping, there's no perfect fit. Many of the spot elevations in the map are located at road junctions, but no matter how I rotated or scaled, they just wouldn't fit. In any case, it's plenty close for CM work. Final elevations will have to be torqued in CM to match however the road net lays out.

The scale bar was copied and rotated 90 degree (the red cross near the top of the photo) so I could lay out the grid. From the IGN topo, the bar was 200 meters, so that's what the grid was set to.

I'll go back into Google Earth and poke around a bit more. Your method of topo acquisition seems to be quite a bit faster. I still like having the 1947 photos for the background work. In any event, having overlay capability with the update will speed things up tremendously.

Thanks again,

Mike

[JonS]

Yeah, the 1947 photos are gold, but I haven't found an equivalent for Italy.

I found taking screen shots a lot easier once I moved everything in to Google Earth as layers. There's the distortion that you mentioned, but you can make allowances for that. The big thing is that once you've got them all in there, they're scaled relative to each other, and once you set a border it's common to all of them.

To get topos out of GE, add a whole series of filled-in rectangles, with each at a slightly different altitude - 100m, 105m, 110m, 115m, 120m, 125m, etc. Then turn each layer on in sequence, and draw a thick black line around where the land emerges from the rectangle (obviously you need to have the 'Terrain' checkbox ticked). It's a bit tedious, but it does give you a pretty reasonable topo, although because of the algorithm that GE uses it does throw up some odd results from time to time. It's definitely not as good as the French Geoportail topos, but sometimes there just aren't any good maps available.

I'm sure I'll figure it out once CMFI arrives.

Yeah, for sure. I thought it was going to be a total PITA trying to size and scale images, but it turns out to be dead easy ... a lot easier to do than to try and explain

[A Canadian Cat]

Yeah, for sure. I thought it was going to be a total PITA trying to size and scale images, but it turns out to be dead easy ... a lot easier to do than to try and explain

Well that's good because I was pretty confused after reading your explanation:D

I'll wait to try it out / read the manual before asking questions. I am really looking forward to it.