Mount&Blade Cartographer | Just my own spin-off...

[Swyter]

So will this make it easier for us to create maps and stuff, I hope so as the edges in the tokyo map I did were all messed up and the rivers looked edgy and really bad. I see in the image on the first post that the rivers are proper so I that I will be able to make the map better.

Well, this is going to be a bridge app. Blender has great tools for refining edges and sculpting mountains, give it a shot.

At the moment it does the same than existing tools. I may add some specific functionalities if needed.
My objective when creating this was to make a party-mover, if you see what I mean.

Lua is a scripting language with an elegant syntax, and compiles just-in-time, so it doesn't needs a maintainer like Thorgrim's.
Any competent coder can enhance it with a good degree of customization and adapt it to her/his workflow and pipeline.

 

[xPearse]

Oh right so you use blender to make the map better by editing it as a model, how would I go about doing that.

 

[Arvenski]

Gosh Swyter,if you and Lumos worked together you might be unstopable when it comes to creating editing tools!



P.S:I hate to *****,but are you sure this "SW Conquest" is still a good idea? I mean,it's for the old,outdated M&B,there's been "coming soon" stuff floating around for a year,probably many,Taleworlds has released WFAS,then dumped it,Warband has been updated to 1.153,a WB DLC has been released,there's talk of a WFAS2,there's rumor of a Warband Two,surely there isn't much market for a "coming someday" 1.011 mod?

 

[Swyter]

Gosh Swyter,if you and Lumos worked together you might be unstopable when it comes to creating editing tools!



P.S:I hate to *****,but are you sure this "SW Conquest" is still a good idea? I mean,it's for the old,outdated M&B,there's been "coming soon" stuff floating around for a year,probably many,Taleworlds has released WFAS,then dumped it,Warband has been updated to 1.153,a WB DLC has been released,there's talk of a WFAS2,there's rumor of a Warband Two,surely there isn't much market for a "coming someday" 1.011 mod?

We do it for fun.

*shrugs*

Also, being constantly in the top 40+ of ModDB since June 2010 is a good signal to me.
Moreover, with 130 downloads today making sum of 121k of downloads just for the latest version, gives us confidence.

Look, I'm not making it up:

 

New isn't better sometimes. I like the classic feel that Warband didn't gave me.

 

[Arvenski]

Best of luck to you then!

 

[Swyter]

Got the

module_parties.py

parser working without much problem, and a first preview of floaty city markers.
Used Native Warband for visual testing, as our galactic map is flat.

Now is just matter of getting the vertical position, put labels over them and all the OpenGL selection mode. Picking is implemented already.

 

[Swyter]

Well, yesterday I advanced a lot.
Prettified quite a bit the output and added projected 2D labels using my text engine.

Now text scales property and if you pay attention to the image, you'll see that major cities have bigger labels, like in the game.
This is shaping pretty well.   Comments?

 

[Dawiduh]

Nice work man! Keep it up

 

[Swyter]

It toke me a lot of thinking to ground align them without raycasting. That isn't something I can afford to use right away.
This was one of the more complex things I was fearing I couldn't do, but managed to overcome.

After this, the only remaining points to have a full featured map editor are saving back to

module_parties.py

plus object picking and selection.

That's all. Don't forget that you can download and test it out anytime.

 

[Swyter]

Well, today implemented

module_parties.py

saving. Woo!

I'm very proud of how the entire thing works, instead of reformatting the lines just keeps them pristine, replaces digits and adds a small space aligned
comment with the previous positions of every party.

As much delicate and unobtrusive as one can be.



So, let's recap about all what this bad boy can already do:
[+]Loads Mount&Blade map files.
[+]Saves Mount&Blade map files.
[+]Imports Wavefront OBJ files.
[+]Exports Wavefront OBJ files. (converting between coord. handedness)

[o]Detects all the possible Mount&Blade installations and checks if they are broken.
[o]Loads DDS images compressed in DXT1-3-5 directly to a OpenGL image.
[o]Loads and renders custom bitmap fonts in Mount&Blade format. Module dependent?
[o]Screen space strategic map label rendering.
[o]Unscaled map/party/location rendering.
[o]Sidelog with handy position under cursor display. (not in game format tho, just compute

{X=-X, Y=Z}

in your head for the time being)

[o]Should work on any computer with minimum OpenGL requirements. Doesn't even need ARB extensions like Thorgrim's. So Windows' default drivers will do the trick.
[o]Relatively fast, and responsive.
[o]Modular, open, scriptable design.
Missing:
[o]Reposition the 3D markers in realtime using the cursor.
Maybe:
[o] Generate a blank plane using the provided dimensions.

 

[Arvenski]

Nice work! I'll give you a few days to do finalising,and then i may just download it and give it a try!

 

[Dawiduh]

Really nice work man, I'll surely give it a try soon

 

[Gambino]

if i make a map with it you cant add textures to the map ?

 

[Swyter]

if i make a map with it you cant add textures to the map ?

Well, it imp/exports the terrain types as materials, that you can paint within your 3D application of choice.
Same than the existing OBJ to map tools by Tul and company but with direct preview and goodies.

I did this because I wanted to tweak party positions and neither Bioxx's or Bloodpass' tools worked on my system.
Thorgrim's is extraordinarily cumbersome and rigid. And doesn't works directly with

module_parties.py

 

[Swyter]

Just committed a pair of changesets with party selection/moving functionality. Was pretty fast to do.
Now it just needs a bit of cleanup and better presentation.

Hopefully I'll release the first nicely-packed-for-public-consumption build today soon.
Stay tuned, I'm eager for feedback.

 

[Swyter]

Okay, all done! Try it and tell me.

[URL=https://bitbucket.org/Swyter/cartographer/downloads/swycartographer-2012.07.24.zip]https://bitbucket.org/Swyter/cartographer/downloads/swycartographer-2012.07.24.zip[/URL]

Let's see how it works.

 

[Dargor]

I didn't get how to start.  In what file I must write lines mentioned in _configureme ?

 

[Swyter]

I didn't get how to start.  In what file I must write lines mentioned in _configureme ?

Oh, just launch

cartographer.cmd

. And

_configureme.ini

is the real configuration file.
But it should work without needing any change, providing that you've Warband installed.

 

[Dargor]

I tried cartographer.cmd  but it close a second after start.

 

[Swyter]

I tried cartographer.cmd  but it close a second after start.

And you extracted everything from the zip file, right?
That file is just a shortcut for the rest of the thing. Every component counts.