Looking for a Map Editor

[Tom]

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.

[Corwyn]

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 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... 

 ----

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).

[Bluelake]

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 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/ (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?

[Tom]

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.

[Corwyn]

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".

[Perth]

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*

[fodder]

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

[Indirik]

Yeah, 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?

[Corwyn]

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?

[Indirik]

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...)

Yeah, I kinda thought that the maps might be 3D renders. After all, that's where the perspective rendering problem comes in. 

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)

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.

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?

Pasting in cities should be easy enough for someone with graphic arts experience, I would think.

[Corwyn]

But 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"

Pasting in cities should be easy enough for someone with graphic arts experience, I would think.

Yeah, I'm hoping that this might work.

[Anaris]

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.

[Indirik]

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.

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.

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"

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.

[Tom]

From 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.

[Corwyn]

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