Palettes/templates for map-making (download)

[CCIP-subsim]

So, editing maps can be really time-consuming, but I've been figuring out tricks to make it easier. I'll happily share these, since I think these can be time-savers, especially if you're working in an image editor!

I have two to offer right now:

1) Armored Brigade .bmp colour pallette (all colours used for terrain features)
2) "Instant Village" template (a pre-made large block of village objects without roads)

(I will add more if I come up with others!)


NOTE: do not copy the colours/images from this post and use them to edit - they are compressed in .jpeg format and the colours are therefore incorrect. Download the original .bmp files from the links below instead!

1) Armored Brigade .bmp colour pallette

Download colour palette: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1SXGjO ... sDVRgQ-Nsb

This is a quick reference of all the colours used by AB for terrain types/objects (except for the red background), intended for editing the "terrain.bmp" file for a map. You can drop it into your Photoshop/Gimp/etc. image editor as a layer for reference, and copy the pallettes whenever you need them. You can simply copy the colours/use the colour picker tool to get whichever colour you need and then draw it on the map.


2) "Instant Village" template

Download "instant village" template: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1xHrWR ... dF13oyor7f

This is a pre-made "village", meant to represent a generic Eastern European village with a variety of terrain, building, vegetation types, and a bit of water/streams (to model ponds and ditches) - but with no roads.
How is it useful? Well, creating a natural-looking village or town can be very time-consuming in the AB editor at the moment - mostly because of all the different terrain types you have to place. I have made this easier by pre-placing them and creating a good "base" - on top of which you can then "paint" your own road grid, streams, and other features and edit it as needed. You can simply copy and paste any piece of this template into your terrain file, and use it to create your own town or village. An example follows below.

[CCIP-subsim]

"Instant Village" - example

Here's how the template looks like after you paste it onto your map in AB. You don't have to use the whole thing - grab any piece of it that fits the shape of the village you're trying to make. You can also flip it horizontaly/vertically (I don't recommend rotating since it might make certain building types not show up correctly), and mix and match pieces as needed.



Let's take a piece of it like this to create our village:

Right now, it's just a mix of buildings, trees, etc. - no roads yet. I definitely don't recommend using it as-is, since it'd be a nightmare for AI pathfinding. But you can now quickly customize it.

We can start by creating a basic road grid - either in an image editor, or in-game. For best results with the AB in-game map editor - use the "line" tool to draw roads:

This already looks like a village!

Now let's add some minor/dirt roads:


Finally, to finish customizing the town, let's add a highway and rail line, a stream running through the village, and a rail station and small industrial area:

And done!

We now have a perfectly reasonable-looking village, with custom buildings and a road grid - and it took all of 2 minutes to do by just using a random piece of the template. Some of you may find this very useful [:)]

[Issue8]

Perhaps it could be made a pattern in Gimp/Photoshop. In that case, fill an entire layer with the pattern, and then with a hard edge pixel brush paint the villages in areas as a mask. There could be a pattern for villages, a pattern for industrial areas, a pattern for heavy building urban areas . . .

[CCIP-subsim]

ORIGINAL: Issue8

Perhaps it could be made a pattern in Gimp/Photoshop. In that case, fill an entire layer with the pattern, and then with a hard edge pixel brush paint the villages in areas as a mask. There could be a pattern for villages, a pattern for industrial areas, a pattern for heavy building urban areas . . .

That's a really good idea too! I'm not a huge expert on brushes and patterns, but it's certainly doable [:)]

I actually started out with just pre-made blocks - but quickly realized identical blocks don't actually look good (unless they're meant to represent blocks that are actually identical), so I took this approach instead.

It is very nice, however, that you can edit the maps as just image data, since there's a lot you can do simply by using image editing techniques.

[exsonic01]

This is amazing!!