Global Campaign

[danzig70]

I'll try compressing them and will check the size. I havent made an exe before so that might help. Thanks for the tip.

[danzig70]

Well, I have discovered a wonderful thing. There was an aerial photographic survey done in Germany that matches the topo map panels. I have only found areas in Saarland but I imagine there might have been a complete survey. This allows to follow a map and be able to toggle an aerial photograph of the area.





This is the coverage I have now:




So, Im thinking of making a chapter for the above area. There would be far too many BK maps for this entire area, even just this small area, so there will be BK maps in key areas.

[danzig70]

Nov 27, 2010 5:41:12 GMT 1 Ocelo said:

Nov 11, 2010 21:58:53 GMT 1 danzig70 said:

The sizes for the maps of France alone are over 900mb.

Packed?

ZIP, RAR, and EXE files reduce the file size, particularly that of text, tremendously. Big help for images too. If you have 900MB of pics and you pack them well or make an EXE file for them, they could easily shrink down to around 600MBs.

I tried winrar, winzip and 7zip. File size remained the same. Winrar has a zip disk option compresses a file into a number of 100mb files.

[danzig70]

I figured out the layer priority issue. So, now there is a base terrain layer, base satellite image layer, then the topo maps, aerial images, bk maps and unit icons. The LandSat 7 satellite image is on top.

This way the icons wont be "covered" by other layers. The order the layers appear is the alphanumeric order of the layer config files in the config folder. For example, 1_layer.xml, 2_layer.xml, etc.

[danzig70]

There are too many variables to try and release a single project. The scale of the France topos are 1:200,000 which makes them unsuitable for small scale work. They do make a good base image or a street map type of overlay.

Topos really need to be 1:25000 or 1:12000 to be useful. The Poland topo map series at 1:25000 scale is incomplete from the source I use. I will keep looking for good sources.

I am willing to help anyone with their project, so just send a PM and I will do what I can.


Thanks.

[danzig70]

Releases

I have made it a bit easier. Just install the WorldWind application and then add the custom content to the default "world". No need to make a custom "world" at this point.

Of course, I forgot to bring the readme docs this morning. But it it pretty straight forward. After you install the program you will have several folders (directories) in the NASA\WorldWind 1.4 directory. Unzip and the files below and place in this directory. You will be overwriting folders but not files. Files are added and not replaced.

I will add the readme docs tomorrow.

Config files: www.sendspace.com/file/8z2xjj

Add-on files: www.sendspace.com/file/inz61a (includes a few German topo maps)

France topo maps: .......uploading.....

[zaltar]

As soon as I have a little bit of spare time, I'll download it, but I've been real busy lately...

zaltar

[fabrice]

Hello

Officers of the Clan, we are working on a multiplayer campaign Mission Kusk. Your work looks great. And it is very close, but bigger, that we are doing. Soon we could be joining our efforts.

[danzig70]

Zaltar: No problem, the files are still available and Im still working on the project. If they are taken down just send me a PM and I will upload them again.

Fabrice: I plan on using MK for the default map mod. So hopefully this will be helpful. I would be happy to work with your group on this. Im finishing a demo and will post the new files soon.

Here is a screenshot of having an overlay of an aerial image onto the bk map image for the editor. This way roads, bridges, etc are in the correct places.



The same can be done for a topo map so that the location of heights can be mapped in the editor.



If you select create map the files are replaced with new ones and overlays are gone.

[fabrice]

Hello
I have read your post today. This system is very nice for to make a maps.
Where is it possible download your files? Thank you for reply.

[Xmen]

Just one question danzig70, what scale you use to achieve your map???

[danzig70]

Jan 22, 2011 11:57:34 GMT 1 fabrice said:

Hello
I have read your post today. This system is very nice for to make a maps.
Where is it possible download your files? Thank you for reply.

Hello Fabrice. I took down the links to the France topo maps as they are in a scale 1:200 000 which is hard to work with. I will be glad to put up the links again as they do make a nice "road map" feel. Like driving your panzers on a vacation through France.

I will post the links up tomorrow.

Dan

[danzig70]

Jan 23, 2011 12:22:24 GMT 1 Xmen said:

Just one question danzig70, what scale you use to achieve your map???

Hi Xmen. The topo map is a 1:25 000 scale map the luckily the aerial image was made to match the map. The blitzkrieg map is 28x28.

I estimated the area to be .01 decimal degrees latitude in length and 1' minute longitude wide.

I think the mini map is pretty forgiving, as long as the image is 256 pixels x 256 pixels.

Dan

[Ocelo]

Wow, I am very impressed that you were able to make the BK-main map connection work! I really didn't think you could get this far, as I wasn't aware that this was possible! +


My suggestion to you is kinda big: adopt a fragment of a map from Hearts of Iron 2. Then, you can let the player do battle for each province.

The physical nature of the province in question would determine what kind of random map would be selected (ie: have a function that runs one of a variety (~6) of possible random maps. For this I would strongly suggest employing the random map mod by Solvgang, but you can mix in some of the original BK random maps if they are good (some were, some were not). The large variety of maps from these two sources combined would allow you to have a fitting maps for a majority of the provinces. Whether they are defense or attack maps may not matter much (although there are defensive maps in Solvgang's mod as well), and you would also have the advantage of being able to play for either side.


As for the "special" provinces such as Minsk, Berlin, Warsaw, Konigsberg, Budapest, etc., you could use the maps already made for these battles, you just may have to tweak them a bit or a lot (depending on whether the side of the player fits the way the map is made.



Also, I would suggest using modifiers to increase the number of units lost in a battle when it is translated into your campaign system (or else it would be possible to go through an entire campaign with an infantry division of 10,000 men ;D ).



Sift through the above, see if you can make use of the stuff you like, if any.

[danzig70]

Thanks Ocelo. Good idea. I found a series of printable HOI2 maps like this


I could overlay this onto the sphere (Earth) just like any other image. I like the airport and harbor symbols.

When I talked with the fellas making the strategy game using WW they had a program that would look at a position on an image (terrain map) and note the color. Brown equals mountainous, green is plains, etc and then create modifiers for their battles. I think they got it to work with Worldwind but I havent heard from them since. This could perhaps be modified to tell the RMG what factors to use in making a random map.

There's also the Strategic Command map can be added.



I like the random map generator and the ability to make large random maps. It would be nice to be able to drag roads and towns, bridges using the topo maps but I havent tried it yet. Im not a big fan of random maps because they tend to be a bit sparse.

For the WorldWind java edition you can drag and drop the unit icons so that would be even better with HOI type map.

Ideally this would be for a community. Its a bit too much for me to tackle myself without using the a RMG. Basically, people would make maps and upload them to a repository.

Once uploaded the Bk map images show up on the WorldWind map. You can edit the config files with a download location instead of a local path to a file. This way you can use WorldWind to download BK maps. It is just an xml file like the config files WW uses. You can start xml files using the command line parameters by Lee Campbell.

If there were MP players that all had the WW application, then you could have icons represent players and see who is online.

There are many interesting possibilities and even more using the java edition. I won't be releasing map series as I havent found complete sets and the size of the task is a bit daunting. Perhaps a community project?
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I purchased an interesting product from the State of Saarland department of surveying and geodata. The building models are of interest. Im hoping to convert them for use in BK.





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This is interesting software for creating virtual cities. Its called Procedural and has some interesting applications.


www.procedural.com/cityengine/features/2010.html

Its about $5k for the Pro edition so I think I will stick with WorldWind and the BK engine for now.