Map sizes using the BMP to WBS Converter tool

[Feet]

Hi,
I'm using the BMP to WBS converter method to try and create a map for my mod.

The question I want to ask is how many pixels does a tile have in the Converter? When I convert the BMP how many tiles will my map have?

Currently the BMP map I'm making is 402 pixels (Width) x 804 pixels (Height). It will be a flat map (so know zooming out to view a globe thing ).

Is this gonna be too big for the game to handle or could I make it bigger? Ideally the bigger the map the better for the moment as I can scale it down later on if need be.

Many thanks for your help.

Feet

[Maquiladora]

The converter resizes the BMP to whatever the game map size is defined to before the conversion or in the *.py file (EmptyScenario.py in the case of the converter tutorial), so it doesnt matter what size the BMP is, its what size you give the map. Its better though to have your BMP the same size as your required map (1 pixel=1 tile) so it doesnt distort at all in conversion making the map.

402*804 tiles in game would be far too big. It shows the default game map sizes in the tutorial, its best to roughly stick to those sizes (not necessarily proportions though) for now.

[Feet]

1 pixel = 1 tile. Got it.

Thanks and I'll resize my BMP accordingly. Thanks for the information.

EDIT: So I've resized my BMP to 178 x 88 pixels.

Will that be small enough or is the only way to know to test it?

[Feet]

See my edit in previous post. Thanks.

[Maquiladora]

That seems small enough to me. I imagine you can have it any size, just any size that your PC can take obviously, but better to do yourself a favour and keep it around the sizes used in the default game.

Number of players	Width	Height
	3		52	32
	5		64	40
	7		84	52
	9		104	64
	11		128	80

[Feet]

If it runs alright I might make it a bit bigger. The more features and space I have to work with the better.

Thanks for your help. I've completed the main height, terrain and feature BMPs today and I'm gonna convert them tonight when I get home.

Thanks again for your help.

[Feet]

Ok. I used the converter with a height BMP and a terrain BMP. This has worked well and I'm really pleased with the tool and utility so thank you very much to whoever designed it. I would not have been able to create the map nearly as quickly without and I shudder at the prospect of using th world builder for the same map.

However, I do have one problem. Check the screenshot (sorry it's pretty huge so give it time to load if need be) I took below,

http://img60.imageshack.us/img60/8082/bah8jd.jpg

Basically in the south of the map all is sweet. I can zoom out as far as possible. However in the centre all the way to the north of the map I get this blackness. You can see where the normal expected zoom out meets the black.

Anyone know what has caused this and how I can rectify it?

Thanks again!

[Maquiladora]

Strange, did you remove the fog of war? Ive havent made a map that big yet but i couldnt move around fully on another map i made till i removed the FoW.

[Jon Shafer]

Glad you were able to use the utility to produce something Feet. I've made a number of maps with it as well as it's rather useful for this sort of thing.

What plot Y are you getting that blackness starting at?

There may be no way of fixing that, given the strange dimensions of the map...

[Feet]

Maq: I didn't do anything with the FoW for this conversion just let it at defaults. This was kinda just a test to see if I could build a map. I'll be starting from scatch again for the map I actually intend to use. I thought perhaps it might be because the BMPs I use may have been slightly different in places in pixel size and position of the colours. Hence me wanting to start again to make sure. Is that possible or would it not make a difference?

Trip: Yeah I could never have even attempted to make this map in World builder. I did this one inside 3 hours from start of produing the height and terrain BMP to converting and testing them. Took along time but I didn't realise till I tried to convert that the coastline can be automatically generated and that took quite a while to get the coast in place manually.

X (Width) = 89
Y (Height) = 178

The plot number that the black ends is around 128 ish. It's not a big problem as after you've zoomed in a bit the black dissapears. It's only after a certain level of zooming out that the blackness shows.

Any ideas?

[Jon Shafer]

Are you making the map per-pixel or allowing the utility to scale? If you let the utility scale like I do it takes much less time to produce the images for the utility (though you will have to spend some time fixing the rivers in the WorldBuilder).

I'm afraid 128 is a very nice round number in programming which leads me to believe that that blackness is 'hardcoded'.

[Feet]

The BMPs are 89 x 178 pixels and then i inputed the same numbers for the X and Y fields in the "Set BMP Converter Options". So I guess that means the map is per pixel.

I'll experiment with differnent sizes above and below 128 and post back with the results.

[Feet]

Sorry Trip, another quesiton. Can you explain to me what you mean by letting the utility scale.

Do you mean make big BMPs and let the utility scale it down to a playable size, or do you mean the opposite. Making a small BMP and then scaling it up to a playable size.

Can you give an example so I can understand better?

I've read the section in the PDF but I'm still somewhat confused about how it would work works.

(I get 1 pixel = 1 tile ofcourse, that's what I used for this map)

[Jon Shafer]

Large BMPs and letting the utility scale it down. That way you don't have to spend hours slaving over getting the coast plots to be all exactly correct. You just draw bunches of lines in MS Paint or whatever (which is actually what I used to create most of my images) and the utility will 'pretti-fy' it for you. The source images for my maps look UUUUUUGLY as BMPs but combine to make a nice looking in-game map.

[Feet]

I'll give it a try tomorrow.

I think for this particular mod I'll be choosing to use the 1pxl = 1tile method again anyway though as this way I know exactly what to expect when I finally load it up in Civ 4 Worldbuilder, whereas I'm thinking I might see some anomalies from the scaling process otherwise.

Thanks for your help mate. Much apprecaited.