The BM maps are showing their age, and I would really love to have a new, better map editor to create beautiful pseudo-3D/-isometric maps not only for BM, but also for BM:WI which needs a few additional maps.
I've been looking for years, every now and then, checking out current games and the like. I never found anything that works for me. Either it looks like crap, or it only offers too-specific and too few different tiles, or the editor sucks, or it isn't the right scale, etc. etc.
So I'm now making an open call. If you think you know of a game, a map editor or some other tool that could create maps more beautiful than the current ones, that would totally rock.
Please post below, with screenshots.
http://www.cartographersguild.com
http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?1407-List-of-Mapping-Software
A lot about map making there, perhaps something interesting there.
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http://www.profantasy.com/
http://www.profantasy.com/products/cc3.asp
http://www.profantasy.com/images/cc3/gallery/gallery07.jpg
http://www.profantasy.com/images/cc3/gallery/gallery01.jpg
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http://www.nbos.com/products/mapper/mapper.htm
http://www.nbos.com/products/mapper/screenshots/fm8-TiPander.gif
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I've looked at all the mapping software there is (I think).
Basically, they suck. Those may be good maps, but BM doesn't use maps, it uses rich isometric views. I'm looking at Civ 5 at the moment, it might come close. A real terrain renderer like Terragen might cut it, but it lacks the symbols for towns, castles, etc.
So you want "3d" instead of 2d?
I've always liked the maps used in the Total War series...
This game will also have an editor once it's done. http://dof.reverieworld.com/features.php
Another thing about the maps:
are there plans to have a layer showing the different seasons? Like polar regions would be white in autumn-winter-spring and green in summer, or moderate season regions would be green in sring-summer-autumn, and white in winter?
If the map editor supports it... maybe...
If you can't find one, you could always have one made. I can't see it being too difficult to create what you want, so I'm sure a freelancer programmer will gladly take on the job. This way you could get everything you wanted in it and it could easily be updated in the future. The only problem would be paying for it and since you're looking for free ones, I'm guessing that would be a major obstacle?
Quote from: Nathan on June 12, 2011, 12:39:59 AM
If you can't find one, you could always have one made. I can't see it being too difficult to create what you want, so I'm sure a freelancer programmer will gladly take on the job. This way you could get everything you wanted in it and it could easily be updated in the future. The only problem would be paying for it and since you're looking for free ones, I'm guessing that would be a major obstacle?
What about having a donation drive specifically for paying for a new map editor? For something like nice, new, fancy looking maps I'm sure a lot of players would be willing to help out. And if you don't raise enough money, then it doesn't happen. Maybe you could even come up with a new fun goodie to give out specifically for the donation drive?
I'd donate :) regardless of the goody.
I might (finally, after 8 years) donate after this summer... when I cash my money for a month's work! The thing is though, I hate PayPal. Any other solutions (I can use pp if needed, I have done it before, it's just so.freaking.slow.).
It's not a matter of donation. And no, I don't think creating one specifically for BM is the right approach. The task is massive, and the problem isn't programming so much as artwork.
There are many map editors out there that can be used, the problem is that the artwork they have sucks.
Quote from: Tom on June 12, 2011, 07:54:40 PM
It's not a matter of donation. And no, I don't think creating one specifically for BM is the right approach. The task is massive, and the problem isn't programming so much as artwork.
There are many map editors out there that can be used, the problem is that the artwork they have sucks.
So we need to find/hire an artist?
http://www.eldonthompson.com/World/Maps.htm
http://www.inet2inet.com/InetSoftware/World-Creator/WCv2/NewFeatures_Form.asp
Battle of Wesnoth has a map editor:
http://wiki.wesnoth.org/Screenshots
Note: the tiles that represent "cities" are a single house instead of the clustered buildings, towers etc.
Other than that, there it looks pretty decent. It even has different season look for each tile.
I've tried the BoW editor, and the style looks a bit old, like those 1990s rpg overworld maps. There are custom map graphics that users make though, so maybe there are some good graphics. On the whole, I was rather dissatisfied as it gave only a single top-down view of a map, and the options for cities and castles were lacking.
The BoW graphics stink. They're not up to par with the current ones and I wouldn't want to move backwards.
The eldonthompson ones are made with some Might & Magic editor. Also something that's not adequate.
The World Creator looks interesting, but from what I read we would probably have to supply our own artwork, which puts it in the same category as Djundini and many other existing map editors.
Right now, the best I've found is Civ 5. I'm experimenting with that a little. It has a bit of an awkward workflow because it doesn't render in-editor, only in-game. But it looks nice and has the correct scale.
0ad - http://wildfiregames.com/0ad/ ? or elemental: war of magic (from stardock)?
since i don't mod things.. no idea if they are of any use at all.... haven't even touched 0ad aside from looking at the site from time to time.. there seems to be people making maps.. so there must be an editor or some such somewhere. no idea where though XD
haven't played much of ewom either... aside from a bit when it first came out... i just don't tend to have the patience to play the same things through again and again. short attention span you might say.
Quote from: fodder on June 13, 2011, 01:59:40 PM
0ad - http://wildfiregames.com/0ad/ (http://wildfiregames.com/0ad/) ? or elemental: war of magic (from stardock)?
wrong scale
But I like the current maps. :-[
I've used the Civ 4 editor, and it's been great. Haven't tried Civ 5 yet though.
Scale is not a problem with Civ4, since you can zoom in and out as much as you need. Here's an example that I quickly put together for one of my character's wiki pages:
http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/Ni%27Tessine_Family/Corwyn
I suspect the main problem will be intellectual property concerns though! It doesn't seem like we can just use their copyrighted art for terrain, cities, etc...
That might actually be a selling point in Civ 4's favor. There's a *huge* wealth of "mods", includings custom art terrain that amateur artists have made, and who are very likely willing to let us use for free (if we ask nicely). Civ 5 no doubt always has mods by now (I haven't checked though), but I would guess it's not as complete as Civ 4's and not as high quality.
Theoretically (well, legally), yes. Then again, the same is true for the current AoW maps and in 10+ years there were no complaints.
Those civ 4 maps look pretty cool. I wonder how the blight would look on them... :)
I agree, they look nice!
Quote from: Tom on June 26, 2011, 12:16:20 PM
Theoretically (well, legally), yes. Then again, the same is true for the current AoW maps and in 10+ years there were no complaints.
Haha, win?
Civ5 maps do look really impressive.
Perhaps it'd be best to have independent art on BMs maps, though? Like what Corwin said: art made by users to apply on the civ maps, and still use the foundation of the map generator for that?
My first thought was to use Europa Universalis 3. (and not only because I was playing it today) The map is simple, yet still has some medieval-esque detail to it, is already divided into regions, and most modding in the game is done by editing simple text files and letting the engine churn out the results. If you wanted to use different sprites or textures it should just be a matter of changing what file is loaded.
Of course, I haven't talked to anyone who wanted to build their own map from scratch with it, so it could be more difficult than I think.
Quote from: Tom on June 26, 2011, 12:16:20 PM
Theoretically (well, legally), yes. Then again, the same is true for the current AoW maps and in 10+ years there were no complaints.
Yes, that's certainly very true. Some thoughts:
1. Age of Wonders hasn't been active for a while.
2. The Civ franchise is under active continued development, and it's quite profitable.
3. Perhaps due to this, Civ's owners are reportedly more litigous. The game "Evony (http://www.evony.com/)" had a different name previously ("Civony"), until (it is believed) Take-Two's laywers forced them to change it.
4. In my opinion, it's best not to roll the dice and gamble on staying below Take-Two's radar, when there are legal options available that look just as good (if not better -- some of the terrain art is better in my opinion).
.... it might make the front page... (not so) free advert
I agree on not chancing things.
Where is that artwork for Civ 4? Can I see examples? And what's the editor like? And how do we get images from it out to images?
I found that Civ 5 may look too good for that purpose - you can't simply move the camera over the terrain and make screenshots, because speculars, water reflections, etc. keep changing and make merging the screenshots afterwards quite hard.
Also, with the Civ 5 editor it sucks that the editor does not render the result, so you have to always go back and forth between editor and game to modify things.
Quote from: Tom on June 27, 2011, 01:49:21 PMWhere is that artwork for Civ 4? Can I see examples? And what's the editor like? And how do we get images from it out to images?
I usually get my mods from the CivFanatics web site. Here's the "Graphics mod" section for Civ 4:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=cat&id=4
In particular for terrain packs:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=cat&id=41
The editor comes with Civ 4. Unfortunately, I don't know if it's possible to just download the editor for free.
Here's a sample image from one of the mods with custom terrain art:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads/untitled-1_hDB.jpg
The "Blue Marble" terrain mod has received
really good reviews:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=295876
(lots of screenshots at this link)
My personal favorite mod, "Fall From Heaven II", which is a lot more than just a terrain mod since it takes Civ 4 and turns it into a fantasy Civ game... truly amazing:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=1
This has terrain art for stuff like Blights, dark castles, etc... ;D
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The editor is really easy to use, and does the rendering in-game. As soon as you make a change you see the difference, and you can easily move the camera around. I just took screenshots to get images. I'll try to send you some samples later today (after work).
Now the bad news: If you're zoomed in then stitching multiple screenshots together can be hard because of the camera's viewpoint. It's truly rendered as if you're looking at it, including with perspective. The more you zoom out, the less this is an issue. However, if you zoom out too much then you get clouds. That can be solved by disabling them (for example by downloading one of the "cloudless" terrain mod packs).
Hey, Tom, I can't answer any of your questions, but I did find these threads after looking around for a while:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=172 (http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=172) It's an active forum, with stuff from 2011, which is always a plus.
There are some files here, but the site is closed and some stuff might be unavailable and links broken: http://civilization4.filefront.com/ (http://civilization4.filefront.com/) (but it does have some terrain and city mods for Dune, so kudos!)
They make lots of leaderheads, but also buildings, units, etc. It takes some work to find stuff, but there are good stuff (and regional flavours, like mods for hungarian units and buildings, or oriental, or apache, or whatever).
Can you post (or send me by e-mail) a couple of those screenshots from civ5 so I can have an idea how hard it would be to merge them?
Hm, I was afraid of perspective issues. Also, it is clear that Civ 4 still uses a square board, and it shows. Ok, not much of an issue since AoW also does that and it's clearly visible in our maps. I did hope for an improvement, though.
Yeah, I have no easy answer to the perspective issue. It is possible to mitigate it to some degree (with various tradeoffs).
Here's what I would consider a good "high-level" view which should have a minimum of perspective issues, and showing off some fantastic terrain (from "Fall from Heaven II"):
http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w57/Adonran/FFH/DragonBones.png
Here's a sample of various cities, grouped by factions:
http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w57/Adonran/FFH/Cities.png
And since someone asked about it, here's an idea of what Blight might look like: :)
http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w57/Adonran/FFH/Barren.png
You'll note that these are pretty dark images (both literally and thematically). That was the flavor for this particular mod. Other mods are more "light", notably the "Blue Marble" terrain mod.
These are all somewhat isometric, so they're not free of perspective issues. That can be further mitigated by panning further out and looking "straight down".
Quote from: Corwyn on June 28, 2011, 04:47:51 AM
Yeah, I have no easy answer to the perspective issue. It is possible to mitigate it to some degree (with various tradeoffs).
Here's what I would consider a good "high-level" view which should have a minimum of perspective issues, and showing off some fantastic terrain (from "Fall from Heaven II"):
http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w57/Adonran/FFH/DragonBones.png
Here's a sample of various cities, grouped by factions:
http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w57/Adonran/FFH/Cities.png
And since someone asked about it, here's an idea of what Blight might look like: :)
http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w57/Adonran/FFH/Barren.png
You'll note that these are pretty dark images (both literally and thematically). That was the flavor for this particular mod. Other mods are more "light", notably the "Blue Marble" terrain mod.
These are all somewhat isometric, so they're not free of perspective issues. That can be further mitigated by panning further out and looking "straight down".
Wow, having BM maps that look like this would freaking awesome. *salivating*
kael (derek paxton) - the ffhII guy now works for stardock along with the civ 5 guy (jon shafer)
maybe you can ask them about other map editors XD
Quote from: Corwyn on June 28, 2011, 04:47:51 AMYeah, I have no easy answer to the perspective issue. It is possible to mitigate it to some degree (with various tradeoffs).
Is it possible to take the source graphic elements and use them directly, without using the map editor?
Quote from: Indirik on June 28, 2011, 01:54:13 PM
Is it possible to take the source graphic elements and use them directly, without using the map editor?
I don't think so. We can get the art to the tiles, but it's the map editor that stitches the tiles together in a seamless fashion. I wouldn't want to do that manually.
(Plus the art is likely specific to its 3D representation... bump maps, etc...)
If I understand what we want, it's:
* Terrain tiles that have no perspective to them, meaning that we are "looking" straight down at them,
* However the cities should have an isometric view to them (because looking at cities/castles straight down is ugly)
That's what AoW did, from what I can tell. *This* we might be able to do manually. Use the map editor from a "looking straight down" viewpoint, but then manually photoshop the cities onto the map. Thoughts?
Quote from: Corwyn on June 28, 2011, 04:01:27 PMI don't think so. We can get the art to the tiles, but it's the map editor that stitches the tiles together in a seamless fashion. I wouldn't want to do that manually.
(Plus the art is likely specific to its 3D representation... bump maps, etc...)
Yeah, I kinda thought that the maps might be 3D renders. After all, that's where the perspective rendering problem comes in. :(
QuoteIf I understand what we want, it's:
* Terrain tiles that have no perspective to them, meaning that we are "looking" straight down at them,
* However the cities should have an isometric view to them (because looking at cities/castles straight down is ugly)
Well, I don't necessarily think that we want straight-down-view, flat maps. A 3D approach to the art is good. It gives the map some depth, and makes it pretty. But we don't want "perspective", we want "isometric". Isometric is 3D without the edge-warping perspective effects.
QuoteThat's what AoW did, from what I can tell. *This* we might be able to do manually. Use the map editor from a "looking straight down" viewpoint, but then manually photoshop the cities onto the map. Thoughts?
Pasting in cities should be easy enough for someone with graphic arts experience, I would think.
Quote from: Indirik on June 28, 2011, 04:14:14 PMBut we don't want "perspective", we want "isometric". Isometric is 3D without the edge-warping perspective effects.
That's what I was wondering, but reading up on Isometric projection it seems like it does have a viewpoint as well, and hence perspective would seem to kick in. If I understand correctly, "isometric" just means a particular viewing angle.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isometric_projection:
"In a similar way an isometric view can be obtained for example in a 3D scene editor. Starting with the camera aligned parallel to the floor and aligned to the coordinate axes, it is first rotated downwards around the horizontal axes by about 35.264° as above, and then rotated ±45° around the vertical axis"
Quote from: Indirik on June 28, 2011, 04:14:14 PM
Pasting in cities should be easy enough for someone with graphic arts experience, I would think.
Yeah, I'm hoping that this might work.
Quote from: Corwyn on June 28, 2011, 05:03:42 PM
That's what I was wondering, but reading up on Isometric projection it seems like it does have a viewpoint as well, and hence perspective would seem to kick in. If I understand correctly, "isometric" just means a particular viewing angle.
A particular,
fixed, viewing angle. Which means that as you pan across the landscape, it doesn't change for the stuff you're going past.
Quote from: Corwyn on June 28, 2011, 05:03:42 PMThat's what I was wondering, but reading up on Isometric projection it seems like it does have a viewpoint as well, and hence perspective would seem to kick in. If I understand correctly, "isometric" just means a particular viewing angle.
Isometric has a fixed perspective. All objects are rendered as if viewed from the same angle, relative to that object, and not the overall scene. The lines drawn through the X, Y, and Z axes of every object in the graphic will always be parallel to the X, Y, and Z axes of every other object.
QuoteFrom http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isometric_projection:
"In a similar way an isometric view can be obtained for example in a 3D scene editor. Starting with the camera aligned parallel to the floor and aligned to the coordinate axes, it is first rotated downwards around the horizontal axes by about 35.264° as above, and then rotated ±45° around the vertical axis"
That's very misleading. That would align the camera to the isometric angles. But unless your 3D software has an isometric rendering mode, the scene will still be rendered as a perspective rendering, causing distortion (or foreshortening) to objects as they get farther from the camera/viewpoint. You don't get a true isometric view.
Of course, that's probably all very confusing. I'm probably not explaining it correctly.
Quote from: Corwyn on June 28, 2011, 05:03:42 PM
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isometric_projection (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isometric_projection):
That's why you don't take wisdom from Wikipedia. They suck at summing up the important parts. Who cares about the angle, what's important is that isometric has no distance distortion and a fixed viewing angle.
Thanks guys, that helps.
This also helped to clarify: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_games_with_isometric_graphics
Seems like isometric games are a dying breed nowadays, which is unfortunate for us :(
The following list of isometric games might help us to see what could potentially be used for BM:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Video_games_with_isometric_graphics
Quote from: Tom on June 27, 2011, 01:49:21 PM
I found that Civ 5 may look too good for that purpose - you can't simply move the camera over the terrain and make screenshots, because speculars, water reflections, etc. keep changing and make merging the screenshots afterwards quite hard.
Do you have a couple of screenshots of that, so I can try to predict how much photoshop work that would mean?
Quote from: Bluelake on June 29, 2011, 01:52:29 AM
Do you have a couple of screenshots of that, so I can try to predict how much photoshop work that would mean?
A lot. That's why I posted. You have water speculars always on the right side of the screen, fading gently towards nothing at the left. You either have to do a
lot of stitching with small parts of the screen, or some other stuff. :-(
Quote from: Tom on June 29, 2011, 06:45:29 AM
A lot. That's why I posted. You have water speculars always on the right side of the screen, fading gently towards nothing at the left. You either have to do a lot of stitching with small parts of the screen, or some other stuff. :-(
I'm not sure I know what you mean by that, but isn't it fixable by replacing the whole water body with a texture of our own? Or are they water speculars that float in air?
If you're going to replace entire parts of the map, you could draw your own to begin with, couldn't you?
It's more than enough work to put a map together. Adding extensive Photoshop work to the process will only make one thing certain: That it doesn't happen.
I am not sure if this is what your looking for, but it might be something to take a look at, as it has a map editor I think. (It might also be thats it is not the graphics or look that your after)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elemental:_War_of_Magic
Quote from: Tom on June 29, 2011, 09:13:49 AM
If you're going to replace entire parts of the map, you could draw your own to begin with, couldn't you?
It's more than enough work to put a map together. Adding extensive Photoshop work to the process will only make one thing certain: That it doesn't happen.
Maybe you're right, and having done this for years, I trust your opinion.
But the thing is, considering all elements a map must have (considering battlemaster), the water effects are really the minor part. The only parts of the maps in which what happens in the water is of significance are some sea routes, and they can easily be made as a mask over the water, with perhaps a boat drawn there.
Of course, the amount of photoshop work depends on how perfect you want water effects to be, but depending on the awesomeness of the map editor, I wouldn't mind water being solid blue, if that's what it takes. :)
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On another approach to this problem, the large scale maps that show the whole world could be made as actual maps, different from the region(/duchy/realm?) views, which could have the artwork from the civ5 editor, because they could be done in a single screenshot.
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Other than these, let's keep looking for a good map editor.
Quote from: Silverhawk on June 29, 2011, 10:59:34 AM
I am not sure if this is what your looking for, but it might be something to take a look at, as it has a map editor I think. (It might also be thats it is not the graphics or look that your after)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elemental:_War_of_Magic
tom didn't fancy that. wrong scale, apparently. it does have a 3d map editor.
thing with it... is that if you really zoom out.. you'll get a cloth map... heh.
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it's got biggish squares too and i haven't figured out how to place buildings... XD
The older Civ Editors had the option to turn off animation, which eliminated the issue of moving water and the like (also helped with your older machines to be able to run it). Do the newer editors not have the same option? I mean, you'd have to screen shot while in the editor and stitch it together from those, but I doubt that's too unreasonable.
Hm, good idea. There's a console in Civ5 with lots of options. There could be options to turn off water reflections and stuff like that, which would solve most of the issues.
I've found that Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic, the 3rd part of the series, does a good job. It's not as far advanced as I'd like to (hey, it's from 2003), but I've not yet found anything better. Check out the BM:WI Facebook page for an example map made with it, and compare it to the current one.
Opinions?
Ehh I didn't use AW2 because youu told me the cities were too big. If I can use it why the hell am I dealing with new programs! :) Maybe I should use it for the SM maps too.
Quote from: Zakilevo on November 01, 2011, 01:15:47 AM
Ehh I didn't use AW2 because youu told me the cities were too big. If I can use it why the hell am I dealing with new programs! :) Maybe I should use it for the SM maps too.
I'm not certain about AoW2 - Shadow Magic is AoW3. I just discovered it yesterday. :-)
Quote from: Tom on November 01, 2011, 01:31:10 AM
I'm not certain about AoW2 - Shadow Magic is AoW3. I just discovered it yesterday. :-)
Ehh AoW shadow magic is the expansion of AoW2....
Whatever. :-)
Yeah, it's not perfect. The maps will have to be bigger to compensate, but frankly, show me an alternative. I've been searching for one for what, five years or so?
And I even suggested it some time ago :P You refused it haha. And now you ended up using it. It is a nice editor no doubt.