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Map Making pointers to help us get started


Abbott

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Originally posted by Hunter:

Each tile (cmbb map) has 4 victory flags on it, bang in the middle of the 4 quadrants. Hold the flag, hold the quadrant.

This sounds like a quick and easy solution to CM's current method for redrawing battle lines in Operations, if the intention is to cede control of an entire 2x2 grid to the holder of the flag. An alternate method would be to have 5 flags; 1 central and 1 per quadrant, to allow partial control of a 2x2 grid. One could, I suppose, extend that to having 20 flags on the map to assist in subdividing the map further into areas of control.

One does wonder what will happen in the event the flag is contested at the end of 60 minutes - optimally, there would be a drawing of lines similar to Operations in CMBB with forces held in place for the next 60 minutes of battle - with forces withdrawing off a map edge being tracked as to direction. A truly elegant (read: overcomplicated) system would have those forces added to any neighbouring square's ongoing battle as reinforcements, timed to the minute they left the first battle. That would require simultaneous turns in all battles, or else the foreknowledge to make battles with withdrawing units sequential, which would be impossible to predict in many cases.

Many issues to concern one's self with - I'm starting to see little utility for forumites to ask questions before seeing the demo, although the answers are certainly appreciated nonetheless. Shall be exciting to see the work of some of the premier map makers out there come to the fore after taking a backseat to skin artists and scenario designers for so long.

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I'm not certain that is what should happen. If I understand what has been said Moon and the folks, there are four flags, one in each of the 1 km x 1 km "quadrants". If you control all four flags, you control all four "quadrants" and therefore you control the whole square. If you control 1 flag, you control only that one quadrant, and so on. There doesn't seem to be a need for a fifth flag to indicate who controls the entire CMC map square. There is apparently no distinction made in CMC between "control" and "ownership" as there is in some other games, noteably board games.

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Originally posted by Ike:

I'm not certain that is what should happen. If I understand what has been said Moon and the folks, there are four flags, one in each of the 1 km x 1 km "quadrants". If you control all four flags, you control all four "quadrants" and therefore you control the whole square. If you control 1 flat, you control only that one quadrant, and so on. There doesn't seem to be a need for a fifth flag to indicate who controls the entire CMC map square. There is apparently no distinction made in CMC between "control" and "ownership" as there is in some other games, noteably board games.

The quote says "tile" or CMBB map....are the tiles 1x1 or 2x2? Confusing.
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Okay. Let me start from the beginning, so I don't confuse myself or anyone else.

In CMC, the basic map square is 2 km by 2 km. This is the size shown in the "features" section with the smaller red-outlined squares within it. If I understand it right, the smaller squares are 1 km x 1 km squares from CMBB. As I understand things, the 1 km x 1 km squares have to be made in the CM:BB Scenario Editor by whatever method the designer of the campaign wants to use, but it has to start there. Then you can use the CMC Editor to map Campaign Maps in 2 km x 2 km squares, from either CM:BB or wherever. But, there has to be 4 of the CM:BB 1 km x 1 km maps associated with each CMC map square.

I think that the word "tile" has been used to refer to both the 1 x 1 km CM:BB map squares that the battles are fought on in CM:BB and to the 1 x 1 km "quadrants" that are shown outlined in red on the "features" examples of the 2 x 2 km CMC maps. Maybe used also at least once - but I may be wrong in this - to refer to the 2 x 2 km CMC map squares.

What I'm talking about is the in the view shown of the 2 x 2 CMC map square there are four flags, one in each of the four 1 x 1 "quadrants" that form that larger CMC map square. My post refers to those flags in those "quadrants". Hope that made sense. I think I may have confused myself again, though. (laugh)

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I have downloaded Mapping Mission and it works fine for maps about 1km x 1km, but does not work for the 2km x 2km maps I want to make for CMC. I have an nVidia Ti 4200 graphics card and have installed the 30.82 drivers as recommended by the Mapping Mission README but this hasn't helped. Does anyone know what else I can do to make this work? I have read something about turning off the elevation display in CMBB editor, but couldn't figure out how to do that. I appreciate any help.

Thanks!

B

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Per the instructions within Mapping Mission, I start the CMBB editor, verify that the resolutions between CMBB and Mapping Mission are the same and then CTL+ALT+DELETE to get back to my desktop. I then open Mapping Mission.

When I open up Mapping Mission I select "New Map" and then I am prompted for a size. I put in 100 x 100 (20m/tile) which is 2km x 2km. I then add some simple terrain from the tool palette and then export to CMMB. I then go back to the CMBB editor and can see that Mapping Mission is communicating with the CMMB editor because it creates a map that is 2km x 2km. The problem is that it will then start to put down the elevation size and just hang. With smaller maps when the elevation stage is complete then Mapping Mission then run the commands within CMBB to put down the terrain objects. This process works fine for 1km x 1km maps, but hangs on the 2km x2km maps. I think the largest I was able to do was 60 tiles by 60 tiles.

B

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You certainly should be able to create a 2kmx2km map in Mapping Mission and export it to CM.

When you say "hang" what precisely do you mean? Are CMBB and MM still running? Are you sure you're not giving up on the export too quickly? (If there isn't any elevation variation in your map, and all the CMBB elevations are 7, it will look a lot like nothing is happening, except maybe that the map will scroll up and down, and occasionally to the right.)

If you email me your 2x2km mapping mission file, I can try to export it and see if I can replicate your problem.

Regards,

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Barbarossa, you might try a lower export speed, like 20 or 30 and see if that does anything.

Leland, I wonder if you would be able to change the system in some future update so that MM would, like Pyewacket's Map Converter, write the data straight into CM editor's memory instead of simulating clicks on screen. This, I think, would greatly speed up the exporting process and avoid the problems caused by drivers etc. But I don't know how much time you'd be able to put into improving MM at the moment.

(Unfortunately I'm still suffering from the "slow map scroll" syndrome in post-30.82 versions despite having upgraded my video adapter, and to add insult to injury, the 30.82 doesn't seem to work correctly for me anymore.)

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I am sure I have had the same trouble as Barbarossa and I think when it comes to using mapping mission to export maps larger than the display area of the CMBB editor TI4200 owners will have no joy. If you have a TI4200 8X card then the 30.82 drivers won't work for starters.

While the later drivers do work to a degree and you can get results (I successfully exported many small maps at the default and higher speeds) as soon as the export process needs to scroll the CMBB editor in any direction either north/south or east/west the scroll lags and mapping mission may manage to place a few elevations then it appears hang.

I gave this a real good test with all different map shapes, display resolutions, refresh rates and display drivers (45.23, 61.77 and 78.01). For every map that was larger than the visible area of the CMBB editor you would get a few clicks on the scroll compass (it may place some elevations markers depending on the speed/resolution settings) then it hangs. While I never got it to work for the large maps I found mapping mission managed the most transfer when the speed was set to 50x and the CMBB/mapping mission resolution was 800*600 so you might want to give it another try with these settings.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I successfully translated a 1x1km height map (just the contours, no terrain) in Mapping Mission and send the stuff over to CMBB. However, larger maps don´t work and it appears to be the known NVidia drivers problem (me is using a NVidia GeForce4 MX 440 card with driver version 40.72). Would an older driver version for my graphics card enable me to create at least 2x2km maps (or larger)?

Finally converting the CMBB map to CMAK with "Map Converter 1.29" went smoothly. smile.gif

For the future that means I´ll produce some CMAK (NWE) scenarios with highly realistic terrain data, made from my digital topo maps.

Btw, I found that the "CM level mode: 0-19" in Options menu of Mapping Mission works best for my purposes. Also I´ve not yet worked with the "Load terrain from bitmap file" (beside "...elevations from bitmap file"), but will do for my next map projects in sequence.

Conclusion so far: Need a map made in Mapping Mission to be available in CMAK too, use Map Converter.

Big thanks to Mr.Tankersley and also the creator of Map Converter! smile.gif

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Originally posted by RockinHarry:

I successfully translated a 1x1km height map (just the contours, no terrain) in Mapping Mission and send the stuff over to CMBB. However, larger maps don´t work and it appears to be the known NVidia drivers problem (me is using a NVidia GeForce4 MX 440 card with driver version 40.72). Would an older driver version for my graphics card enable me to create at least 2x2km maps (or larger)?

38.?? should work better. Or you could try different exporting speed settings.
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  • 2 weeks later...

I have the same issue, I can produce 1280 height, the issue seem to be not really hanging.

It gets stuck pressing the up "N" button a million times after inputting the first lot of terrain to the top of the screen and doesn't go back to carry on with terrain,

I have even pressed the down "S" button and it quickly click the North button over and over again so its not like the program is hanging it just doesn't know the next step after "N" button a million times.

I have an Nvidia 5700 with the latest drivers going back aint really an option. But everything is moving very fast and I can do 1280x by any width no problems at all very fast in fact. Just anything that falls outside that boundary.

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UPDATE GUYS, I got it to work and if you had similar problems to me try this

I selected Operation North-South even though it not an operation map, and the damn thing exported on speed of 30 2km x 2km, but the real issue was fixed when I selected a north south operation.

So the real issue was not having any of the operation menu ticked, this must help with the scrolling of the map for some reason

I hope this helps others in future.

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Originally posted by Barbarossa:

Per the instructions within Mapping Mission, I start the CMBB editor, verify that the resolutions between CMBB and Mapping Mission are the same and then CTL+ALT+DELETE to get back to my desktop. I then open Mapping Mission.

When I open up Mapping Mission I select "New Map" and then I am prompted for a size. I put in 100 x 100 (20m/tile) which is 2km x 2km. I then add some simple terrain from the tool palette and then export to CMMB. I then go back to the CMBB editor and can see that Mapping Mission is communicating with the CMMB editor because it creates a map that is 2km x 2km. The problem is that it will then start to put down the elevation size and just hang. With smaller maps when the elevation stage is complete then Mapping Mission then run the commands within CMBB to put down the terrain objects. This process works fine for 1km x 1km maps, but hangs on the 2km x2km maps. I think the largest I was able to do was 60 tiles by 60 tiles.

B

Barbarossa/all,

I have tracked down the problem you are describing above. Mapping Mission v1.12 should correct it and allow you to export maps more than 64 tiles high; I hope to release it to the public in the next day or so. I will announce the release here on the BF.C forums.

ETA: thanks to Ardem for assistance in identifying exactly what was happening.

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Happy holidays, all!

Mapping Mission v1.12 is now available for download. Go to the page http://home.comcast.net/~leland53 and click the link to download the file.

Version 1.12 is a bug fix release that corrects an unfortunate problem introduced in 1.11 that would prevent Mapping Mission from scrolling the CM map editor window north when exporting a map that was not specified as an operation map in the Mapping Mission options menu. (If that doesn't make sense to you, don't worry about it; but if your exports ever got stuck while exporting the first column of elevation data, this update is for you.)

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  • 2 months later...

Just wondering if Leland is still around and whether v1.12 did the trick for everyone? I'm having a massive amount of trouble getting 2km by 2km maps going. It's related to not waiting long enough when the compass buttons are hit.

1km by 1km takes under 2 mninutes on my computer but 2km by 2km takes about 90 minutes and the maps are unusable.

Off to try the "export as operation" trick to see if it makes a difference.

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