New MM developments

[Stridor]

Following on from this thread I posted in the Mods and Scenarios forum http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=1985828

The new MM build I am working on has some big changes which should help improve map making by another huge amount.

For those of you who downloaded the open beta, but couldn't run the MM, I think the new build has sorted most out those problems. Many thanks go to Mad Russian for giving me an insight into what was going on.

The biggest change is that MM now incorporates Google Maps inside MM itself. From here you can navgiate to the area you want to map, MM will carefully select the area you want to work with and automatically import a topologically correct height map of said area from the NASA servers.

I am hoping that I can also get the MM to auto import a terrain map from GE as well? At least in some draft form. That will also help to save cutting and pasting in paint programs etc.

Below is a work in progress screen shot. Most of the GE controlls shown are for development purposes only and will change before release.

Regards

S.

[Stridor]

Another SS, it is slowly coming together.

This is how easy and powerful the MM is to use now.

Start MM.
Select your map area of choice with Google Maps from within MM.
Press the import button and the heightmap will be imported as well as the terrain map.
Touch up the terrain map in a paint editor to comply with any template regulations you may be using.
If you are using a template then you are finished just build your map.
If you are not using a template now you need to define your map textures and map objects then you are finished.

If you are using a good quality template you can have a topologically correct map in less than 10 minutes (and half of that time is the computer map building time). If you can use a paint program to trace around some lines and then fill those lines in with color, then you can make maps for PCK. Now you don't even need to worry about the heightmap tools if you don't want to.

Regards

S.

[Mobius]

This is great Stridor!   Instead of Map sizes of 900 or 950 could you make these 1.33 and 1.5 km?
I make my maps 2x2 km as it gives more intereting maps and will probably be the standard size in some future (I hope, I hope) PC.

[rickier65]

This is just great! I'm looking forward to seeing this.

Rick

[Stridor]

ORIGINAL: Mobius

This is great Stridor!   Instead of Map sizes of 900 or 950 could you make these 1.33 and 1.5 km?
I make my maps 2x2 km as it gives more intereting maps and will probably be the standard size in some future (I hope, I hope) PC.

Yes, there will probably be a drop down list to select many distance options from.

PCK will scale down larger maps to 1km so there will be some distance compression if you use > 1km maps, but as you have discovered it makes for better looking terrain. The 1km option will remain for those who are sticklers for topo accuracy.

The PCK engine can easily do 2km x 2km with just a scale tweak even now (this is the same program load as setting up the /hires switch in MM for a 1km map). Indeed it would be so easy I don't know why K just didn't offer the option in the first place?

Regards

S.

[Erik Rutins]

Wow. Some very powerful improvements there that should take this to the next level. Only question I have is regarding the incorporation of GE as far as how that might limit distribution?

[Stridor]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

Wow. Some very powerful improvements there that should take this to the next level. Only question I have is regarding the incorporation of GE as far as how that might limit distribution?

Erik it is fine. MM uses the G maps api (not G earth api). I have signed up to google to get my own private activation key which is good for over 500,000 page hits per day. I seriously don't think that there will be 5,000 MM map designers doing more than 100 hits / day.

Of course google can change the rules when ever they feel like it (read their EULA) but it you want to check that it is all above board read here

http://code.google.com/apis/maps/signup.html

MM complies with *all* points 1 - 9 (including the irritating show logos bit)

Regards

S.

[benpark]

The PCK engine can easily do 2km x 2km with just a scale tweak even now (this is the same program load as setting up the /hires switch in MM for a 1km map). Indeed it would be so easy I don't know why K just didn't offer the option in the first place?

Any chance of this happening? Waiting for the next release for this seems like a great frustration. I'm certainly buying the next iteration either way.

Great stuff. I'm looking forward to re-doing all the maps I was working on with more exact terrain heights.

[Stridor]

ORIGINAL: benpark

The PCK engine can easily do 2km x 2km with just a scale tweak even now (this is the same program load as setting up the /hires switch in MM for a 1km map). Indeed it would be so easy I don't know why K just didn't offer the option in the first place?

Any chance of this happening? Waiting for the next release for this seems like a great frustration. I'm certainly buying the next iteration either way.

Great stuff. I'm looking forward to re-doing all the maps I was working on with more exact terrain heights.

Zero I am afraid. I would need the code.

Lets say you wanted to do a 2km x 2km map. Then PCK engine needs to multiply all its 3D rendering by 0.5. It would also need to rework its internal game calcs. I don't think it would be a huge amount of work but I doubt it will happen with a patch to PCK (not to mention all the work I would need to do to the scenario editor).

Sorry.

Regards

S.

[Stridor]

Here is a screen shot of some greek isles at 5km with MM doing all the work [;)].

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: Stridor
Erik it is fine. MM uses the G maps api (not G earth api). I have signed up to google to get my own private activation key which is good for over 500,000 page hits per day. I seriously don't think that there will be 5,000 MM map designers doing more than 100 hits / day.

MM complies with *all* points 1 - 9 (including the irritating show logos bit)

Outstanding, thanks.

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: Stridor
Here is a screen shot of some greek isles at 5km with MM doing all the work [;)].

Amazing!

[Mraah]

ORIGINAL: Stridor

Here is a screen shot of some greek isles at 5km with MM doing all the work [;)].

Stridor,

As always .... You're program is wicked awesome!

Those 5km maps would come in handy if MM was to then break down that huge map into 1km maps totally 25 maps!

Think of it ... you can pump out 25 maps in an instance.

Great stuff!

I'll be more than happy to pay good money if/when this get's included with a module in the future. The whole thing kinda rests on the developer now since it sounds like you're exceeding well beyond them at this point. I'd feel guilty if this was freeware.

Rob

[Stridor]

Even more new developments and this one is exciting! It should remove the requirement for an external paint program (for most cases) and it will speed up map making time and accuracy as well.

What I have done is to develop some new terrain imaging algorithms which intelligently group related colors together. This means that the Terrain map can now be built automatically for you by MM itself. Worst case scenario is that it will save you a ton of time making external edits, and best case is that MM will essentially make the entire map for you directly from google maps by just telling MM which colors represent what type of terrain.

In many ways this is getting close to the holy grail of map making for these types of games. Simply pan MM to which part of the world you want to play on, press a build button and MM will go and make it for you [:D]

Consider the following screen shots:

The first is a SS of MM with an area of the earth (in this case mid Ukraine) loaded up at (1kmx1km) scale.

[Stridor]

This next SS is an image of the imported HeightMap. Recall from my earlier posts that *all* I did was press the import HM button and MM went away and got the exact elevation data from the NASA servers and imported it all into the MM for me.

Looks a bit boring I know ... (note the stats breakdown box)

[Stridor]

This next SS shows the new terrain map import control feature. With this processing system you can control how aggressive or subtle MM is at converting the google map into a terrain map which is compatible with PCK.

This control does have a default which works well for most terrain as found in ye old USSR (on GE). You have lots of options to tweak it however. Whilst still a work in progress I am hoping the final version will let you preview your changes before you commit them to importation into MM. In general if you use very crude settings you won't need to do much color linking work in MM post import to get a useable map but you will lose out on map detail. If you use very sensitive settings then you will have more map detail, but at the expense of more post processing work (which is a common life trade off [;)]).

[Stridor]

Here is what the final MM terrain map looks like with quite aggresive import processing settings. There are only 7 unique colors with high NR values. This map would be easy to make changes to a loaded template, so as to then make a final map. (Note the loss of detail in some of the finer features). However this is still much better than you could do by hand even with layers in a paint program (compare with my Map Maker Tutorial posts).

[Stridor]

Finally here is a SS showing 16 colors with less aggressive NR and smoothing settings. This map has more detail but would require more work in post processing to get it to make a map from a template.

In no instance did I need to do anything in an external paint program. This only works of course if you want to pull data from NASA/GE. If you want to make fictional maps you will still need to edit your terrain map in a paint program and learn the MM height map sculpt tools.

Regards

S.

[Stridor]

Also note: Whilst MM is more automated than ever before, it still won't be able to make maps entirely unsupervised as it still needs a human to be able to decide what processed terrain color represents what type of terrain (eg "Dark green in this map = heavy forest, but Dark green on this other map represents deep water"). Also a human needs to assign different types of foliage and structural architecture to the map.

Regards

S.

[rickier65]

This keeps getting closer and closer to be totally automated. At some point you should turn your creative thoughts toward the force placement template and see if there are some things that might speed that up. Based on everything you've done with MM, creting that template now probably is the longest step in the process.

Which doesn't affect those just creating historical battles, but for random games still important.

Very nicely done! Thanks,
Rick