How to modify borders on an existing map

Davor Pavlić

Alright, so let me make sure i understand.

So what i need to do is open the blank map in Inkscape and trace the reliefTiles over the blank map?

I'm not very sure how that is done exactly, im kind of overwhelmed by the whole reliefTile thing lol

I understand what you mean by layers but im confused how to do that, im not familiar with inkscape.

TheDog

@davor-pavlić
For your purposes Inkscape is just a viewer, it is much more, but its a quick method for seeing the changes you have made.

baseTiles are required for TripleA to play the game.
reliefTiles are not needed by TripleA, but they look good on the human eye and they sit visually on top of the baseTiles.

Lets assume you have done the baseTiles correctly, you then need to change the reliefTiles.
To see the changes in game you would have to

make the changes on the reliefTiles
break the big png into smaller tiles,
load TripleA
load the game
check the changes
repeat until correct

.
Using Inkscape as a viewer

make the changes on the reliefTiles
Load the big relief png on top of the big baseTiles png
check the changes
repeat until correct

So the Inkscape cycle is a lot shorter and quicker.
Then you just once;

break the big png into smaller tiles,
load TripleA
load the game
check the changes

Does this make sense?

TheDog

@Davor-Pavlić
Maybe I should not of posted that link about Inkscape as it just confused you.

That post was really about a new way to make baseTiles by tracing of say a fantasy map, because its vector based and a lot easier to make changes.

Then for non-graphic artists, like me to make the reliefTiles.

As an aside you can also download complete vector images/svg done by other people off the internet.

Davor Pavlić

@thedog

Okay well i want to get the baseTile map working properly first, ill mingle with relief once i have the base working properly. I modified the centre picker and that works fine, but when i open polygon grabber i need to click into individual TTs and fill them, but whenever i click into any of the TTs, the whole screen gets filled like borders don't exist. Like this :

What is the solution to this?

TheDog

@davor-pavlić said in How to modify borders on an existing map:

But are you saying i need to open the tile reconstructor and do the same for relieftiles to get another large map for relief?

Yes, I am assuming that you do want to change it, so it matches the baseTiles.

Im away from my keyboard, I will post later today.

Davor Pavlić

@thedog

Alright i think i finally understand how to do relief, i also edited my comment for polygons issues i have.

Sure, whenever you are available works for me.

Panther

@davor-pavlić said in How to modify borders on an existing map:

@thedog

Okay well i want to get the baseTile map working properly first, ill mingle with relief once i have the base working properly. I modified the centre picker and that works fine, but when i open polygon grabber i need to click into individual TTs and fill them, but whenever i click into any of the TTs, the whole screen gets filled like borders don't exist. Like this :

What is the solution to this?

Indeed relevant borders don't exist. The solution is to add black borders to the edges of the image, too.

TheDog

@panther
Thanks!
I'm no expert, I know a little and that's dangerous. I was getting the same error as @Davor-Pavlić and I did not know why.

Davor Pavlić

@panther @TheDog

I added a black outline on all edges of the map, it didnt fix the problem. Technically the original map already has some outline as well but i added a thicker outline and still the whole screen turns red.

There are no gaps between TTs, and i only changed the inland TT borders, sea zones should not be affected, but i got no idea why it doesnt recognize any borders at all on the map.

outline at the edges of the map :

Davor Pavlić

The edge borders are the only borders the map recognizes.

Panther

@davor-pavlić
Please upload the entire map-file, so we can take a look at it.

Davor Pavlić

@panther

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1d4lOQ2CbHLe_YhN-n6Gy3XuAaWHuE6lX?usp=sharing

Contains a map without any changes to edges of the map, and a map with added edges.

Panther

@davor-pavlić

You didn't turn antialiasing off, so your lines are not pure black, what is necessary.

Example:

See:
https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/blob/master/docs/map-making/tutorial/map-and-map-skin-making.md

Panther

@davor-pavlić

Also I recommend to keep every territory in plain white.
Restricted territories are not to be marked or defined in the basetile-map.

Panther

@thedog said in How to modify borders on an existing map:

@panther
Thanks!
I'm no expert, I know a little and that's dangerous. I was getting the same error as @Davor-Pavlić and I did not know why.

Never mind. I am not a map-maker or map-making expert myself. I just played around with the tools some years ago to get a basic understanding of how it works. And those tools haven't changed since that time.

And my knowledge about image editing comes in handy when answering to related questions .

Davor Pavlić

@panther @TheDog

Alright so i made some progress. Base tiles are working however i have a few graphical issues which i could use some help with.

Units are stacked together on top of eachother.

Some of smaller island territories lost most of their outline during the polygons grabbing, while most didn't. Should i go back to map editing and increase the border width? The width was the same as every other territory.

Some of the lakes lost their blue color and are white like they are neutral territories. Not sure why this happened. Seems like they became land territories.

North Sea zone automatically gets recognized as a land territory. Orkney and Shetland islands not showing.

Overall, i had quite a few problems with polygon grabbing, usually with sea territories, like 80% of the time when i clicked on the sea TT it would actually select an island, and when i finally managed to select the sea zone, some islands would just dissapear like they don't have a border, which i found to be odd, since all borders are the same width.

Cernel

@davor-pavlić A thing I always say is that, for more than one-and-a-half year, mainland Italy was split between the Axis and the Allies, so mainland Italy being a single territory is something of which is very hard to make sense.

Mainland Italy was invaded starting from 3 september 1944 and split on the Gustav line from December 1943 to June 1944 and on the Gothic line from August 1944 to March 1945.

Davor Pavlić

@cernel

I can agree with that and that is one of the things i will look forward to changing along the way. I also plan to split my new Poland into two parts so that the west can get captured by the germans and the east by ussr.

Currently im just readjusting the zones, not adding any new ones, but i hope to learn to that too in the future.

Davor Pavlić

I am pretty satisfied with what i have achieved in only a few days, considering few days i couldn't even imagine what it took to make and edit maps.

-I have fixed the bugs and redone the polygons and centers, this time everything is really good when it comes to baseTiles. Next step would be relieftiles.

-Another thing i don't know how to do is move the little territory income symbols. Any advise regarding that is highly appreciated.

But yeah, this is pretty much how i want europe to look like as of 1939. Maybe Poland is too big, im not sure.

Black_Elk

@davor-pavlić

Nice work! I like it

One thing I thought would be cool for Iron War is a more even distribution of the production values, esp for the big ticket territories. I feel like some of the Allied spots could be increased in value, like England and Scotland, and then have more of the Axis value spread around to adjacent TTs, so it's not so wild. Like Italy with 2 TTs worth 25, feels somehow more sensible than 1 TT worth 50 hehe. If that makes sense.

I think overall the map benefits when more spots are worth 5, to accommodate production builds. I thought Rally Points were novel, but I kind of like the way building factories works. So I'd rather just see more spots worth 5 I guess.

For values in the German core, I think it'd be cool if W. Germany was knocked down to 25 or 35 and just put that value into the Low Countries or Poland, or Austria, or France but basically making a bit more of that high value production into the contested zones. Or same deal with Japan, just making Manchuria worth more say. Just so it doesn't feel quite like the Axis are so much more concentrated than the Allies. Also the TTs in the Africa and the Mideast, seem to really tip the balance quite a bit between sides. So that's another area where a production tweak might be fun. I think it would be cool to see more value into the Med and North Africa, so it's a little more swingy there, instead of so much focus on Sub-saharan Africa which tends to dominate in the current. I still think Britain would be a more interesting faction if it just included British-Colonies and South Africa hehe, but that might be more than you're after.

I think Carriers using v3 rules on this map would definitely be aces though! If possible, I'd love to see that. The revised placement rules are super buggy into Sea Zones that border multiple coastal factories. V3 carrier rules would solve that issue and be more familiar to players of the more recent World War II games.

My only other suggestion for an Iron War 1939 mod would be to up the fuel so the AI can function properly. It's sort the main thing that brain freezes the machine in the current 1940 map. They manage Steel and regular purchasing pretty well, but I think more high value TTs spread around would increase their factory buys for sure, which might be simpler than rally points, if you just did a higher economy game overall basically. I think a few more convoys might be fun as well.

I believe the Production Value images are part of the decorations in its own folder. So to change the images they're in that folder called PUs. Then tripleA puts them into their location, so that's in the gamefiles somewhere as a value where you should be able to change the coordinates to shift em around.