[RELZ]Calradia Map Refinement

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Aldwen

Veteran
After days playing around with Thorgrim's Map Editor I finally have something to show for it!! I'm proud to present my first mod to the community, the Calradia Map Refinement!!

I'm a fan of Native and rather than spend my time playing the many mods for M&B I've spend my time tweaking Native to something that become more and more enjoyable every time I boot it. However Calradia itself was always lack-luster and rather boring, lacking any sense of "realism."

I downloaded and tried Calradia Map Makeover while I did like it there were aspect I did not like and over all I felt it could be better. Calradia Map Refinement my attempt at just that.

My goal in the Calradia Map Refinement project was to try and alter as little as I could when it came to settlement placement and general terrain layout, as to many changes would remove the "Native" feel, but at the same time make enough changes to drastically alter and liven up Calradia.

As a result Calradia Map Refinement is very similar to Native however I've done my best to make it feel much more "real." The steeps for example are no longer at the same altitude as the Swadian and Rhodok lowlands. Likewise the snowy mountains of the Vaegir are actually snowy mountains. I've also added in a few more lakes, rivers and forests.

Also while trying to keep the sense of realism intact I did move several towns, villages and castles slightly into more strategical locations while moving towns and cities closer to resources or roads. That's right, Calradia now has an actually road system! All major cities and most towns have a road either connected directly to them, or very nearby.

Without further ado, here is the map! *Warning, large picture!!*
map.jpg

A few more screen-shots...
mb1.jpg


mb11.jpg


mb12.jpg


mb13.jpg


mb14.jpg


mb15.jpg


mb16.jpg


mb2.jpg


mb4.jpg
*All in-game shots are using Punkt's HiRes Textures 2.0 with an altered steppe texture by me*


DOWNLOAD: Calradia Map Refinement V1.2
Version 1.2 is now up! Please redownload for bug fixes. Update is completely, 100%, save game compatible (Only with games already started on the new map.)

[quote author= Calradia Map Refinement V1.2 Readme]
1.2
-Fixed more "sticky" bugs where NPCs could become stuck indefinitely at a crossroads and other random locations.
-Bridge near Nomar actually fixed this time.
-Smoothed out the map removing almost all jaggedness and unusual changes in elevation.
-Flattened the steppes out creating more of a plateau over the somewhat hilly and mountainous older version. This is an attempt to fix the battle maps from always appearing as mountainous. Fix also applied to the Vaegir mountains.

1.1
-Fixed a bug where in NPC parties could become stuck indefinitely at crossroads until the player spoke to or scared the NPC
-Fixed the bridge near Nomar. Both the player and NPC sometimes had difficultly crossing it
-Minor cosmetic fixes

1.0
-Initial Release[/quote]



This mod should be relatively bug free as all I've done is changed the map. I have play tested it for a while and I've yet to see anything unusual, but I may have missed something. If there is something askew feel free to let me know. If something explodes, or otherwise catches fire call your local fire department.

As of right now this mod is not save game compatible. Since I moved towns and castles around and made landscape changes around those movements there is a good possibility that saved games will load with towns and castles in strange or unreachable places.

I will in the future however release a save game compatible version. No set date, however I will start working on it. Since I tried to change as little as I could the fixes shouldn't take more than a few days, however work and RL may delay such a release.

 
Well done on improving the map. You can't understate the importance of making the map more interesting to look at,
as it's just plain boring in native, and you spend quite some time there.

Do you have any difficulty seeing the parties on that map? Try showing some pictures with people in it  :smile:
 
Weren said:
Well it is indeed nice, but it is dark and makes me somehow feel depressed. of course that's just my opinion. :mrgreen:

Those are just the textures. Unless you have Punkt's textures, you won't notice a difference in colours.
 
Elenmmare said:
Those are just the textures. Unless you have Punkt's textures, you won't notice a difference in colours.

Indeed Elenmmare is right, those are just the textures I'm using, those are not included with the mod. Whatever textures you happen to be using, be that Punkt's older version (which I may be switching back to after playing with 2.0 for a while) or Native HD, or just plain old Native that's what will appear. Not the textures picture in those screen shots, notice the * down there.

@Adorno
You can see parties quite fine. No difference, though I think you comment also tied into the whole texture issue. Maybe I should upload some shots without Punkt's textures to avoid confusion?
 
Whoa, this thread fell way off the first page :neutral:

Anyways, I seem to have found my first bug with the new map o_O It's nothing too major, but it does need resolving so I'm going to start working on it.

The bug: It seems Calradia citizens are bad decision makers as when they encounter a crossroad there is a small chance they will get stuck. They'll forever be stuck in that position until the player comes up and either scares them in another direction or talks to them, at which point they'll walk right over the crossroad with no issues what so ever. :shock:

So that's pretty odd. They have no issues traveling on a crossroads usually but for whatever reason, randomly, they get stuck. It does appear to only happen at two or three places so I'm going to double check things and see if it was something I did.


Second bug, even weirder, is one with the bridge near Nomar. It seems that both the player and NPCs have trouble crossing it. The weird thing is that I didn't touch that bridge or that river at all... This issue has been resolved however.


After I figure out what's up with the crossroad bug I'll be releasing a V1.1 of the map with the fixes. This won't invalidate saved games as I'm not changing building location or making drastic landscape changes so you'll be able to continue playing as normal.  :mrgreen:


Oh, has anyone else noticed any of these things?
 
Grimsbo said:
Looks great!
Do these map makeovers work with any mods without harming their scripts ect?

Thanks, and yes, this map makeover will work with any mod that uses an unmodified Native map as their own. Since this mod only replaces two files, it's easy to integrate into any mod as well.

As for scripts being affected, I'm not quite sure I follow... I didn't modify any script files so we should be good. Or were you talking about something else?


As for the bugs I mentioned earlier... I worked them out, I just want to take some time to 100% confirm they're gone. It seems the "stuckage" was happening when I left two vertexes right on top of each other. That's why it happened only on crossroads, there I had to lump a whole bunch of vertexes together to get the crossroads effect. Most of the time I organized the crossroads in an orderly manner, but in some cases I just rushed through and lumped stuff together, as a result some of the vertexes were left on top of each other. Thus, the bug happened. Fixing it was just a matter of sorting things out at the affected crossroads.

The bridge thing I still can't figure out why it broke, but I managed to fix it just by moving a few vertexes around.

Going to play test it for the night to be sure it's all fixed.

BTW, is there a cheat or a way to reveal the whole map?
 
Ah, the [RELZ] and [WIP].  Brings back horrid memories from the Oblivion mod forums... :sad:

But, I love the map, especially the steppe texture.  Can I use it? :razz:
 
Pali Gap said:
Ah, the [RELZ] and [WIP].  Brings back horrid memories from the Oblivion mod forums... :sad:

But, I love the map, especially the steppe texture.  Can I use it? :razz:

Horrible!! Aw :razz: I <3 the Oblivion modding forums! I had a few of my own [WIP] and [RELZ] threads over there too! :mrgreen:

As for the textures they're from Punkt's HiRes Textures 2.0, the steppe texture however I modified slightly so that it better stands out from Punkts mountain texture. If you'd like me to host it somewhere, or just email  you the modified texture just let me know.  :grin:

Thanks, Grimsbo for that cheat... However it seems I cannot get it to work xD I'm guessing I missed something other than just Ctrl + T

As to everyone else....

Version 1.1 is up!!!
Calradia Map Refinement V1.1

Those bugs I mentioned earlier should be completely fixed now. Like I said earlier this update is completely save-game safe. No locations were changed and the "Minor cosmetic fixes" were just a few sharp looking surfaces here and there which I smoothed out...

Copied from the readme...
[quote author=Read Me]]1.1
-Fixed a bug where in NPC parties could become stuck indefinitely at crossroads until the player spoke to or scared the NPC
-Fixed the bridge near Nomar. Both the player and NPC sometimes had difficultly crossing it
-Minor cosmetic fixes

1.0
-Initial Release[/quote]

 
well done, I like it !! it makes the plain native more interesting to play! thanks for improving...  :grin:
 
Since the towns and castles and villages are in the same place as in native, then yes.  Just make sure to ONLY add the map.txt file.
 
what will happen if i add the other files, cause it doesn't seem to be correct, a couple places don't look right...
 
Then Custom Settlements will not work.

This was not build to comply with CS, so if it doesn't look right, get Thorgrim's Map Editor and edit the map combined with CS so that things do look right.
 
Yeah, unfortunately this will not work with CS :neutral:

As you noticed some of the settlements will be in odd or unreachable places. Reason being that I did changed some of the locations of settlements and castles to reflect the changes in terrain I made. Since I changed some locations you need the parties.txt to see the changes. Otherwise you get what you saw...

I will however be releasing a save-game compatible version soon. The save-game compatible version will also be compatible with CS because I will not be moving any settlements around, instead I will be making changes to the terrain only (the map.txt)  so that the SGC version will be compatible will all previous save games, CS, and any other mod that does change the parties.txt.

No set date on that yet though :???: Work has been crazy as of late because of the holidays, I work at the airport you see, so I've barely been home let alone on the computer. That's why V1.1 took an extra day or two. I will be getting to it though. Once things slow down at work I'll start work on the SGC version and that will in turn be compatible with all other mods that modified the parties.txt :smile:
 
HOLY COW!*

Could you please upload your steppe texture somewhere? This is just awesome!

Edit: 1, changed a foul word into 'cow' and deleted another.
Edit: 2, Okay, since when have I been a Master Knight?

Servitor
 
:grin:

Ok, due to popular demand I've uploaded my modified version of Punkts steppe texture. I uploaded it to the UFR, not exactly sure if that was the place to do it (don't know if they have issues with something like that) but Rapidshare would have only allowed 10 people to download it.  Anyways, for those of you who asked....

Modified Steppe -Punkt's HiRes Textures 2.0-
 
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