Problems with MapEdit, Photoshop et al.

[GhostOfDisco]

Long story short - I've given though to eventually making a scenario about Jan III Sobieski (the Polish king who defeated the Ottomans at Vienna in 1683 (I think), and, to that end, I've tried to make a map. I used Mercator's big European map and tried to convert the desired area to a Civ 2 map. Unfortunately, well, "a pictures speaks a thousand words," so here's two attempts; first in .BMP as seen in photoshop, and then as how MapEdit reads it.

Could anyone please help me on this?

[Mercator]

If I have to guess, I'd say the first attempt was a 24-bit bitmap, and the second attempt a 256-color palette bitmap with a custom palette.

MapEdit doesn't rely on the colors so much as on the indexes of the colors in the image's palette. So it can only get the terrain right if you use the exact same, ordered 256-color palette. The European map has that palette, and so does the MapEdit.pal you can find in the MapEdit folder (unless you've edited that).

I'm not sure how Photoshop is with palettes, but you have to make sure it loads that palette without mixing up the indexes used in it. I think some programs have the tendency to use the correct colors but not care about what order the colors are in.

Oh, and Harlan Thompson made that map of Europe, not me. Just so you know.

I've attached the map you'd get if the colors are done properly, as well as a version of the bitmap that works... I think you'll find that you need to do a bit more work on the image, because the map looks all wide. You'll actually have to squash the image to make the map come out more naturally.

[Cyrion]

Re: Problems with MapEdit, Photoshop et al.

Originally posted by GhostOfDisco
I've given though to eventually making a scenario about Jan III Sobieski (the Polish king who defeated the Ottomans at Vienna in 1683 (I think),

I can't help you on your graphical problem, but what I quoted above is great news!

[GhostOfDisco]

Re: Re: Problems with MapEdit, Photoshop et al.

Originally posted by Cyrion


I can't help you on your graphical problem, but what I quoted above is great news!

Thanks!

I've considered making the scenario with the Red Front map, as it goes from Russia all the way to Berlin (lincuding Vienna). I hope that the map I chose includes the latter Austrian city as well.

I looked at the map Mercator provided last night, and it looks like it could use some tweaking. It might take some work, but I think it is doable.

Though the Sobieski scenario might take a good bit of time; I've still got the US Civil War 2013 scenario (download the unfinished alpha now! ) to complete, and I've got to do some more research on the Polish king. Though I do hope to use some of fairline's 17th century Polish and Russian units (the one's I've got now are from the 30 years war, so some might be "obsolete" by the time of my scenario, but at least they'll make very nice placeholder graphics.

[battosai]

This fantastic Europe map is excactly the same I used for Thirty Years War. (and I struggled with excactly the same problems ). Is there any chance for a global version of it ?

[Mercator]

Not unless you make it.