working on an alternate map

[Waldemar Kurtz 1]

so, I found an old 1937 book about the US Army's involvement in "the European Battlefields" and decided to see if I could use this for something fun. in the firm hope that this book is now public domain I photocopied a map of France and tried pasting it onto the existing map that came with OFF.

 

getting the contours of one map to line up with the other was a little bit tricky. but I found out that even if I got the maps to line up as much as I could there was still the matter of how "playable" it was. the original map was naturally in black and white. but when I tried playing missions with this it was unreadable! I couldn't find my flight-path or waypoints on the map at all. aerodromes were almost impossible to locate. in short, it was worse than the map we have now!

 

so then I went back and altered the color levels and changed everything to get closer to the dull green colors we have on the OFF map. far more readable!

 

but then I had to see just how close all of the landmarks were. I found that some locations were very close:

 

Douai, Calais, and St. Omer aerodrome lined up almost perfectly.

Aincreville, Bantheville, Martincourt, and Jametz were pretty close

Lomme/Lille was miles NE from the map location

Epinal, Frescaty, and Colmar were even worse.

 

but I'm happy with the progress. even when the aerodromes are way off they're at least within 5-10 miles of where they're supposed to be. and it plays passably well.

 

the bitmap version is just barely under 10 megs.

 

what you see here took about... a full 8 hour work day. (counting the library visit, photocopying the reference book, scanning and compositing images, adjusting contrast levels, changing the color, distorting the 1937 map to overlay properly with the OFF in-game map AND naturally the game-play testing)

 

this doesn't even include the active battle-lines, either! and you have to make adjustments for all of the TWELVE different stages of the war too.

 

I have a new-found respect for the hard work that goes into making a great flight-sim! (I mean, I had it before, but seriously... this is probably one of the easier things to work on for a game like this)

[Macklroy 2]

Looks great! Great work WK.

[von Baur 54]

I agree with Mack, it looks great. A good map that matches up with, if not the real world at least the OFF world, is at the top of my list for immersion improvement (and it's a very short list, btw, you guys have done a terrific job). In Richtofen's Skies the map lined up perfectly with the ingame world (and yours looks very much like it, btw) and I never had any problem using roads, rail lines and rivers to pinpoint where I was even though there was no gps-style plane icon showing your location and heading. In fact, if OFF's map accurately represented the ingame landmarks I'd turn off the icon, if that can be done. My dream map would be a basic roadmap-type of arrangement whose roads, rails, rivers and towns reliably matched what we see when we 'fly' around. Then have optional overlays of military (front lines, airfields, maybe some AA batteries, etc. based on the date) and mission-critical (flight-paths, waypoints and objectives) importance that could be placed on top of the basic map to the player's taste. This is definitely a step in that direction. Fan-damn-tastic.

[Olham 164]

Waldemar, did you ever think of using Rabu's maps. Cause they show all the roads and towns,

and the "full reality" simmers fly after printouts of that map. It is somewhere among the sticky threads

above, and it is made in 12 or 16 parts. Just have a look there, if you haven't seen it.

 

And yes - makin a map is definitely one of the less time-consuming problems on such a sim.

[Dej 17]

Waldemar, did you ever think of using Rabu's maps.

 

Rabu's maps are excellent, but far too big to overlay on the in-game map and by the time you've reduced it enough to fit all the legibility is lost. This looks like a viable alternative. Keep up the good work Waldemar.

 

Here's a suggestion though. If you can set the non-black part of your overlay to transparent and remove the thick 1918 Front line you could overlay the same image on each of the campaign maps that have their appropriate period front line in red and quickly redo all of them. After all, although the front line moved the towns and villages didn't... disappear altogether maybe :-( but not move.

Edited November 22, 2009 by Dej

[Olham 164]

Dej: Rabu's maps are excellent, but far too big to overlay on the in-game map and by the time you've reduced it enough to fit all the legibility is lost.

 

Oh, I see!

[Wels 2]

Hello,

the maps might be a bit more detailed than those from Rabu - if i remember right. BUT: We do not need a map showing the whole front from Nieuport to Switzerland. All we really need is a map showing the area where the next mission takes place.

 

A small map with the area of operation would be enough in-game - and it would need much less pixels than the original one (or so i think) ? Would it be possible to adapt the map to the mission size-wise ?

 

If you leave the area ... well it happened that pilots lost their way, but then they would probably land at the nearest aerodrome and ask where they were, or fly very close to railway stations to read the name of the location - airships indeed did that when being lost.

 

Greetings,

Catfish

Edited November 22, 2009 by Wels

[Parky 8]

Granted, however the Game must 'Store' all those highly detailed Maps to give you. Just because they aren't shown to you, doesn't mean they don't exist. That can eat-up your available memory pretty quickly.

 

Or else we'd have them already.

 

I suppose it would be possible, but we'd need 2 media drives in our computers.

 

One to hold the OFF Disc, where the maps are stored

 

And the other to hold CFS3

 

Perhaps if we ever get a new Engine, then CFS3 will not be needed

 

But with CFS3, I can't figure out how ?

 

 

What on Earth are you talking about???

[Waldemar Kurtz 1]

Rabu's maps are excellent, but far too big to overlay on the in-game map and by the time you've reduced it enough to fit all the legibility is lost. This looks like a viable alternative. Keep up the good work Waldemar.

 

Here's a suggestion though. If you can set the non-black part of your overlay to transparent and remove the thick 1918 Front line you could overlay the same image on each of the campaign maps that have their appropriate period front line in red and quickly redo all of them. After all, although the front line moved the towns and villages didn't... disappear altogether maybe :-( but not move.

 

yeah, I like Rabu's maps-- I've used them more than a few times.

 

you're right, the big black line needs to go. it means I'll have to go in and 'clean up' the working document and work from there. but, on the bright side, once I get a 'Master' copy done it will be fairly easy to add the Front Line in later.

 

although the game actually inputs the front-line markers on the in-flight map already. so I'm actually pretty fond of leaving the current map the way it is. I will try out both methods though, and see which one works better.

Edited November 22, 2009 by Waldemar Kurtz

[Waldemar Kurtz 1]

RB3D had maps but they had a disc to store them for reference, did they not.

 

In order for the highly detailed operational map to exist, the nieuport to switzerland map must exist somewhere, and it isn't on CFS3

 

PS . . I'm heeding your advise, however this doesn't involve the purchase of expensive hardware

 

 

Red Baron (the original) had five fold-out paper maps that came with the standard purchse:

England, Dunkirk, Marne, Verdun, Alsace

 

I imagine the main reason for the sub-divisions of the Western Front was a lack of memory and resources.

 

and there were no pop-up maps or displays in RB. they would simply say "we're going to destroy some balloons in map grid" and you had to look it up on the paper map!

 

I have no memory of RB3d ever having a second disc with maps on it. maybe you're thinking of Flying Corps Gold or something like that.

 

RB3d probably stuck with the partition approach because it simply couldn't juggle the entire Western Front at once. computers have become far more powerful and it's not so much of a burden now. and at least with OFF you can't fly your plane into an invisible wall and get stuck until you turn around! although I did really like the old RB possibility of passing out from lack of oxygen. that was cool.

Edited November 23, 2009 by Waldemar Kurtz

[Tanyrhiew 0]

Having a series of maps containing detail only for the sector that your flying in and which get swapped in from a repository as part of the mission creation process is a good idea. Ok we might lose 100mb of disk space (say 10 maps at 10Mb each) but considering OFF is already at 15Gb and is only going to get bigger, I don't believe 'a seperate media drive' is necessary!

 

I think uncleal was thinking about Flying Corps - Rowans terrain data was 250Mb plus, which was a lot back in the dos/win95 days, nice of 'em to keep it on the CD even if that cd cache program they used was a bit of a bastard. Jolly acccurate for the 1917 period they covered though, just a pity about the lack of Entente reserve trenches. Still those lovely paper maps from FCG and RB1 still come in handy.

 

Does anyone know how to turn off the plane icon ala Il-2 - I've gotten pretty good at finding my way back to my airfield by following my nose (WM's scenery is top notch) but the GPS can be too tempting at times. Also allows those moments for entering claims where you think you were at one location but were really at another.

Edited November 23, 2009 by Tanyrhiew

[Creaghorn 10]

good job with the map,

i tried it and it really works out. .

would be cool to have smaller sectors, but with more details (villages, lakes etc.) but it's fine now as it is. lot better and immersive than the original.

[Olham 164]

How did you use it, Creaghorn? Did you download it from here?

And where did you put it then?

[Red-Dog 3]

Hi just overlaid the new map will feed back later but so far so good.

 

 

[Creaghorn 10]

How did you use it, Creaghorn? Did you download it from here?

And where did you put it then?

 

i saved the posted picture and renamed it to alt_low. then i changed it from jpeg to bitmap. by the way, as a bitmap file it has about 10mb. but when saving as the other bitmap option (254 colours or the other one? i forgot), then it tells you there might be a loss of colours or quality. with the smaller bitmap the file is exactly as big as the default map, but the colours are little bit more psychadelic (in game you'll hardly notice).

then i went to the uires file and replaced the original one (made a backup first). then i went into the ww1 scenerie folder and replaced the map. for the beginning only for the two 1917 folders. dunno if all this steps were necessary with the different folders, but it works so far.

[DukeIronHand 8]

i saved the posted picture and renamed it to alt_low. then i changed it from jpeg to bitmap. by the way, as a bitmap file it has about 10mb. but when saving as the other bitmap option (254 colours or the other one? i forgot), then it tells you there might be a loss of colours or quality. with the smaller bitmap the file is exactly as big as the default map, but the colours are little bit more psychadelic (in game you'll hardly notice).

then i went to the uires file and replaced the original one (made a backup first). then i went into the ww1 scenerie folder and replaced the map. for the beginning only for the two 1917 folders. dunno if all this steps were necessary with the different folders, but it works so far.

 

Excellent detective work. Will give it a shot today.

[sitting_duck 3]

Yes...execelent piece of work!!!!

[Creaghorn 10]

sorry, didn't even know if permittet to use it. thank you, waldemar for your great efford. i hope it's ok for you if we use it

[Olham 164]

Okay, thanks, Creaghorn!

[sitting_duck 3]

seems like if you pick an over ride date,,it takes the alt_low map from your ww1 scenery and over writes the one in your uries folder....ie,,the one in uries is semi temporary,,it gets changed as you move from period to period

 

 

[Mr. Lucky 0]

I see now...using it as a replacement for the briefing map! Good idea and doesn't assault my DID paper map sensibilities. Now, I found the uires folder and backed up/pasted but is that all I need for the briefing map? I don't use the in-game map otherwise. Do I need to change the maps in the WWI scenery folder or is that only for in-game maps? And where is this folder? I haven't found it.

 

 

Nevermind...found it. Answered my own questions.

Edited November 26, 2009 by Mr. Lucky

[Waldemar Kurtz 1]

sorry, didn't even know if permittet to use it. thank you, waldemar for your great efford. i hope it's ok for you if we use it

 

 

that's totally cool. it's not finished yet. so that's the main reason I didn't post anything.

 

so, if you find anything interesting you can feel free to post it here. I'm pretty positive that I need to reapply the image to get a better fit. the southern border of france, as it currently stands, I believe extends into the Mediterranean.

 

I'm still looking for non-copyrighted period maps of Belgium, England, and some of the other places so that I can insert them in there. I've got some images from Germany as of 1896, but I don't know how well those will integrate as they use an odd serif font

 

C: OBDSoftware - WWIScenery - Period - (insert folder name here)

 

if you take the jpg and convert it into a bitmap it will be the exact same thing that I've been testing out games with. but, naturally, you'll want to make a back-up of the original map to save yourself some trouble down the road.

 

it will only work during a very specific time-period as encompassed by the Period folder. if you put it in folder "1916 +6 it will only work in the last half of 1916. if you put it in 1915 it will work until 1916 shows up.. and so on.

[OlPaint01 0]

Hello Waldemar Kurtz

 

If I understand you correctly...a copy of your new alt_low.bmp map file goes into the Map folder for each of the year folders inside each of the C:\OBDSoftware\WW1Secenery\Period\"Year"\Map folders, where the "Year" item is all the year folder names found in the Period folder.

 

I tryed that, following your instructions, but could not get the game to overwrite the alt_low.bmp that is already in the C:\OBDSoftware\CFSWW1 Over Flanders Fields\uires\map folder. So, as a consequence, I get no new alternate map displayed on the Briefing page.

 

I see that there is another thread that Red-Dog started in the Multiplayer section -

"Map idea" topic http://forum.combatace.com/topic/50268-map-idea/

- about inserting alternate maps into the game. I like the idea working with a grid imposed over the map. This seems more 'military' referencing grid coordinates for navigating on a map.

 

Rabu has put up the Western Front map with a grid arrangement in the download section http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=8400 . It seems to me that we might combine efforts here to use a low resolution version of that map that Rabu and Chrispdm1 have already drawn up and insert it into the alt_low.bmp map file locations using the techniques described above.

 

OlPaint01

Edited November 30, 2009 by OlPaint01

[sitting_duck 3]

olpaint,,,try overiding the date to something way different,,,

 

and,,you have to be starting from the off manager,,,and not a shortcut to cfs3.exe.....

 

but if you have it in all those folders,,,pretty much has to work,,,,,,,

 

 

[Waldemar Kurtz 1]

OlPaint-- hopefully you converted the JPEG into a bitmap before inserting them into the appropriate folders. I haven't posted a bitmap yet because I didn't feel confident enough about the project to make it a general upload yet.

 

I could tell from just looking at Rabu's maps that they wouldn't reduce well enough to bother with. but, having just tried it out, it confirmed all of my worst suspicions. they had to be reduce to 10 percent or less of their original size just to get even close to matching up with the larger map. not worth the trouble when you can't read any city names, barely see the major roads. about the only thing it would do is include the major forests. which is better than nothing, I guess.

 

a fellow OFF forumite has graciously provided me with some useful source-materials that I think I might be able to make a better map with... in a few weeks.