However, there was one really lucky result in having the scenario part of the game especially broken. When I complained about not having enough time, one solution they came up with was to make a program that converted .bmp files into ctp2 map files. This was because I had the map I wanted for the Alex scenario already planned out as a graphic file.

So this conversion program was made by the Activision team, and a handy thing it is. As far as I know, it still isn't released yet, though. I presume they'll make it part of the first patch, or something like that. I of course have a copy already.

Also, many months ago, when I wanted to work on the Alex scenario but didn't have enough game specs to get started, I started creating a graphic file of most of the Old World, pixelated into CTP2 terrain categories. That graphic file is done, and was the thing I made the Alex map from. I would like to make this available to whomever wants it, to make mapmaking a ton easier.

Let me explain the bmp2ctp2 program and the graphic file I've made a bit better. Here is the readme from the bmp2ctp2 program:

------
Contents...

bmp2ctp2.exe The bitmap conversion tool
readme.txt This readme file
testmap.bmp A sample BMP file
testmap1to1.bmp A sample BMP file for 1 to 1 conversion
ctp2map.act A Photoshop palette file
terrain colors.bmp A BMP file with terrain color to palette index info

BMP to CTP2 Map Converter
-------------------------

Usage - bmp2ctp2.exe [-1]

[-1] - [Optional] Flag for 1 to 1 conversion. The default behavior
is to skip every other horizontal pixel to retain the
proper aspect ratio. 1 to 1 conversion will not skip any
pixels.

- The name of the BMP file to be converted
- The name of the CTP2 map file to be created

Notes - The BMP file must be an 8-bit indexed color bitmap. The color index
maps directly to the terrain type in the map (ie. color 1 = terrain 1,
color2 = terrain 2, etc.) The created ASCII map file can then be
imported into Call to Power 2.

Terrain Types
-------------
1 = Plains
2 = Tundra
3 = Glacier
4 = Grassland
5 = Desert
6 = Swamp
7 = Jungle
8 = Mountain
9 = Hill
10 = Shallow Water
11 = Deep Water
12 = Underwater Volcano
13 = Beach
14 = Continental Shelf
15 = Underwater Canyon
16 = Suboceanic Ridge
17 = Dead Tile
18 = Sand Dunes
19 = Desert Mountain
20 = Polar Hill
21 = Polar Mountain
22 = Forest
23 = Kelp Bed
24 = Coral Reef
------

Now, my comment on the program. It works like a charm, with one exception. You'll note there is no way to convert river data over. I came up with a runaround for that: make all the river squares you want into something unusual, like Polar Mountain, then convert them manually later. Not great, but better than having to completely guess the river valley flows.

Here is an explanation of the graphic file I made. I found on the web a huge map of most of the Old World, complete with terrain and river data. It was based on adjusted Mercator projection (adjusted so the far north and south didn't get so absurdly distorted). The area my map covers is all of Asia, Europe and Africa, except that Africa is cut off below the Congo basin, and a little bit of Asia is cut off beyond the Kamchatka Peninsula. None of Australia makes it on, but all of New Guinea and the Solomon Islands do.

The terrain data was relief data, meaning it shows the differences between places, not the total elevation from sea level.

Then I had the difficult task of adding the vegetation data. Since the map was primarily designed for the Alexander time period, I researched what the world's vegetation was like, then. Basically, what this means is it shows what vegetation was like before people started mucking things up. This is reflected mostly in tons more forests. Europe, for instance, was over 90% forest before people started cutting them down.

So if people want to make scenarios, especially, modern day ones, you'll probably want to change the vegetation a lot.

The map is also quite detailed. It is 3599 pixels by 1865 pixels. That's one big map! Just the island of Sardinia would make a map about 47 by 62 pixels- that would be slightly bigger than CTP2's medium map size category. So I figure there's as much or as little map detail as anyone can want.

The only problem is of course, the parts of the world not covered, like the New World. Oh well, you can't have everything.

Since Activision hasn't officially released the Bmp2Ctp2 program, I suppose I shouldn't give it to anyone at this point. But as an example I will make one map of any of the area covered in my map file, if someone has a request for me. Just the one, though.

Good to hear from you again. I was thinking about the CtP2 beta group last night and wondering where everybody is.

I have a copy of your map I got during the Beta. If you have a newer version, please email it to me.

hexagonia@hotmail.com

Am I correct in assuming that the map can be opened in Photoshop?

My goal is to set up some ancient scenarios. I have a map that I now can work with and edit - but it was tied into current terrain, and some incomplete knowledge of past history, so filling in the data would be nice.

(BTW, your map was very nice)

But more importantly, now I need to figure out how you were able to place cities, units, trade routes, revealed maps with other civs, etc. in the editor without having the file crash and burn.

At this point, all I can do is get settlers sucessfully placed in the editior. It's placing everything else that causes things to go haywire. You need cities to be able to support units, and I can deal with the logistics of that, but placing cities seems to cause a host of goofy stuuf to happen.

Placing prebuilt cities causes the city icon styles to change unexpectedly when I increase the size of the city, and city names do not match up with the player involved (I get Greek city names on the Assyrian manager screens).

I would also like to place some trade routes and have have certain civs already have access to maps from other civs, but do not have a clue how to do that. And I would like to change the timeline.

Anyway, please let us get access to the BMP map? I think that map is awesome. You put some serious work into detailing that geography and that is a good portion of any scenario's success.

BTW tell your boss you did very good with the time you had and I look forward to downloading your revision!

Hexagonian,
About your question on how to do certain scenario things. I'll have to wait on that till I get my copy of the released game and see what is possible now. My ability to do some of the things you mentioned came and went as I got more recent versions of the game. Two steps forward, and one step back- or vice versa. For instance, at one point I could add new cities, but near the end I couldn't, and Activision people were having to do that. Let's hope they're working on things like this for the first patch.

Also, Skorpion, I'm sure I saw somewhere that they were going to release the BMP2CTP2 publically. Where did you hear otherwise? I remember them saying they didn't want to release it as part of the game disk, because they didn't want it officially supported (and have official helplines have to answer questions about it and so on), so they would put it up on their website shortly after.

Oh, and Savant, what's your email?

Markos,
I'll buy it. Public comment in an open forum with a date later than I had. Sounds good.

OK, here you go.....
NOTE: Do NOT call Activision for support on this. If you need help, email me or post on the forums here at Apolyton.
NOTE: This pgm creates a TEXT map which must be imported through the chat window.

Harlan's Map:

BmP2CtP2 Indexed Color Palette:

Downloads:
BmP2CtP2 Pgm & Palettes(44k)

Harlan's Map(390k)

I have sent the program to Dan/Markos to post in the DB. The .act file is the indexed color palette for Adobe Photoshop while the .pal file is the indexed color palette for JASC Paint Shop Pro.

Judging from an earlier post, if downloaded and loaded as a CTP map directly, this would be hundreds of times larger than a standard map. Did I understand that correctly?

If so, is there any way you can think of to "shrink" the file during the conversion process to make it come out as something closer to a standard map size [or maybe something only larger than the CTP2 Gigantic map by a single order of magnitude]?

Do I open it in CTP2 and then copy and paste a section into a new map and then save that? Like for instance, if I wanted to make a scenario of Spain during the reconquista, do I:

1. open the full map into CTP2
2. use the map utilities in the editor to select the iberian peninsula
3. wipe the original map
4. paste the selected iberian portion into the blank map
5. save the map.

Is that right?

Merci

I just wanted to let you know, that despite what many other people have said about your Alexander scenario, I thought it was great. It's fun, interesting, has great events, a great story line, and wonderful scenario specific modifications (e.g. only build certain units in certain cities).

Although there may be a few minor things to work out, you did a wonderful job and are to be commended.

Good Work!

A couple words of warning on the map. One: all rivers are displayed as Polar Mountain terrain type currently. Then one has to take these and convert them by hand to grassland (or whatever is the dominant terrain type around) and then paint river on top. Also, the Tundra type is currently actually Glacier as far as I know, because I was having trouble with getting the right shade of grey to work with the conversion program when it came to Tundra.

Also, if anyone is interested, I have a version of the map saved in .psd format, but its very large (about 2 MB, I think). This version is useful because the river data is saved in a seperate layer. So, if you're good at graphical manipulation, you can thin out or widen the river data (if you were making a very detailed map, such as Sardinia only, you'd want to thin out the river data, so a river came across as only a couple of pixels across, instead of 5 or 6 pixels wide. If you were making a map of a large area, you might want to widen the river data, to make sure enough of the rivers came through). The .psd version of the program as has data saved as Forested Hill and Taiga, in the hopes that someday we’ll be able to change some of the terrain graphics.

Anyways, to be a bit clearer to Savant, no, that isn't how you would do it if you wanted a map of the Iberian Peninsula. Instead, you would do all of your manipulation in PaintShopPro (or some such program).

1. Use that program to copy out just the Iberian Peninsula, and save it as a separate file.

2. Resize this new file to be as big or small as you want. Keep in mind that the conversion program will automatically double the horizontal dimension to make the dimensions appear correct within CTP2 (unless you use the -1 command when using the program). So if you make the Iberian Peninsula file 50 pixels by 50 pixels, it will become 50 by 100 squares in CTP2.

3. Make sure the file is saved as 8 bit, and uses the correct palatte. The easiest way to get this right is copy and paste into a preexisting file that has the right palatte and bit number already (such as the file testmap.bmp that comes with the program).

4. Now convert using the BMP2CTP2 map program.

Me thinks my Ph.D. is in some unrelated area to computer graphics. Me thincks my head will hert moar if I tri to figer this out.

Better leave it to the chefs I say while I go and bus tables!

Is it a file pathway thing? Do we have to create a .bmp file with a certain pathway relative to the map utility first? Is this program creating a .txt file that we have to move to the CTP maps folder?

quote: BMP to CTP2 Map Converter ------------------------- Usage - bmp2ctp2.exe [-1] input.bmp output.txt [-1] - [Optional] Flag for 1 to 1 conversion. The default behavior is to skip every other horizontal pixel to retain the proper aspect ratio. 1 to 1 conversion will not skip any pixels. input.bmp - Required The name of the BMP file to be converted output.txt - Required The name of the CTP2 map file to be created

And the resultant file minus .txt is the map... at least that's my understanding... do I win a prize Harlan?

Omni - apparently a 3599x1865 is too big for CTP

- Start up DOS.
- Have the BMP file you're made in the same directory as the BMP2CTP2 .exe file.
- Have the DOS prompt line be that directory as well.
- Type: bmp2ctp2.exe [-1] input.bmp output.txt (with input.bmp and output.txt being the names you gave of the files.
- Start up CTP2
- In the chat window box, type in: /importmap output.txt
- The map should now be replaced with the map you've made

I may be forgetting something here, its been a while since I've done it (Don, any thing else?)

It may look hard, but really isn't. Takes a couple minutes, maximum.

You may also have to change the line in Const.txt saying how big each of the four map sizes are if your map is different from one of those map sizes. We had to do that in alpha and beta stages of the game, but maybe its something they were going to fix, I don't know.

I guess the map specs would be large to gigantic to provide good detail of island and coastal features.

The map would include the following borders and be a flat map version.

North: Oslo Norway/St Petersburg so that all of Denmark and the baltic nations could be included. This would also include Ireland and Scotland, and a fair portion of Sweden. Specifically this would be 60 degrees Latitude North.

South: Sinai peninsula so that all of the Med coast of Africa is shown as far as Morocco and to the Persian Gulf. This would correspond to roughly 30 degrees Latitude North.

East: Would include the Caucasus mountains, all of Mesopotiamia and most of Western Persia. Specifically, this amounts to 50 degrees Longitude East. Something shy of this is good too, say 40 degrees but would cut out Persia and most of Mesopotamia and might limit it's use for ancient and more contemporary scenarios. The 50 degree version would probably be most useful for a wider set of scenarios.

West: Should include Portugal and Ireland, so this would correspond to roughly 10 degrees longitude West. A map that extends to 15 degrees would probably be better for WWI and WW2 scenarios as that would include some portion of the Atlantic for submarine warfare and the like. But for ancient and medieval scen's, the 10 degree limit would ve perfect. Either setting is great.

If this is do-able, let me know. I think it would be a frequently used map for purposes of historical scenarios. I think your terrain features as they currently stand are great and can be modified by individual scenario makers as they see fit based on the era - ancient, modern, etc. Personally, I'd like the Dutch to keep a foothold in Europe, so I would let them keep their reclaimed land even in 300 AD.

For example, if your input map is 70x140, you must start CtP2 with the standard Gigantic map size.

If your map is a custom size, you must specify this in the [CTP2]\ctp2_data\default\gamedata\const.txt file before starting CtP2. Say your map is 150x300. Change MAP_SIZE_GIGANTIC 70 140 2 to MAP_SIZE_GIGANTIC 150 300 2. Now start CtP2 with the Gigantic map size.

Once CtP2 is started, go into the Editor(cheat menu). Turn Fog of War off then clear the map(terrain and units). Wait a couple minutes for all the settlers to die off. Then hit the apostrophe key to bring up the Chat Window. Click on the Chat Window and type "/importmap mapname.ext"(minus the quotes). Mapname.ext is the name of your input map, it can be anything and doesn't even require an extension. When you see the map in the main window, click outside the Chat Window and hit apostrophe to close the Chat Window. Turn on Fog of War and then turn it back off and you now will also see the map in the miniwindow. Create your map scenario.

Helpful hints:
When you type "/importmap mapname.ext", 1 of 3 things will happen. 1)The map will show up in the main window, this is what you want. 2)No map and it says 'George Washington says (whatever you typed into the window)'. This means you typed the /importmap command wrong. Try it again and make sure it is forward slash. 3)No map and nothing happens. You typed the map name wrong, the map is not in the correct directory or most likely, the map size does not correspond to the current CtP2 map size.

To find out the size of an input map, open it with Notepad Plus (highly recommended but any text editor will work). The first line is the map size. NOTE: While this looks like a normal text file, it isn't. So don't change any of the comma-delimited fields.

Watch your map sizes carefully while manipulating and converting them. A 70x140 map is actually 70x70 tiles in CtP2 (thus the reason for having the -1 switch in the BmP2CtP2 program).

Or can you explain me how i can make the bmp with the bmptoctp2.exe into a ctp2 map file.

Thanks for any help i can get!

My e-mail is : NComp@gmx.net

Looks like our posts crossed in transit. I believe you should have all the info you need now. If not, let me know what part you are still having problems with.

If others are having problems understanding, converting, etc, please speak up. This is second nature to me so I might leave out key areas which need explained better.

I have been able to resize 80% of the core area of the map down to 672*336, and have been able to import that map to CTP2.

Anything smaller than that becomes too "smashed" to show any detail [unless you are just going to cut out a section of the map, like the Mediterranean or the Far East, to craft your scenario].

Thank you very much for all of your assistance.

:|

This is a DOS program and has to be run from a DOS Prompt. There are many ways to get to the DOS Prompt. The 2 easiest (to expain) are Start, Programs, MS-DOS Prompt or Start, Run and then type in 'DosPrmpt.pif'.

I'm not at all sure what they are, but they're very welcome. When I tried painting terrain with the old Coral Reef color, something exactly the same as Grassland appears instead, but it has its own characteristics and stats, which you can change by editing the Terrain.txt file. Ditto for Special2, but I'm not sure what the right color for that is if you want to import it. According to the text file, Special2 currently looks like Desert. Can one change what these look like by changing the Tileset Index line of the Terrain.txt file? Hmm.

It may not be exactly what you requested, because I wanted to make a map that would exactly correspond with the gigantic size (70 by 140). This meant it had to be square, so I had to include all of Scandinavia and not so much Atlantic Ocean. However, the map is in a very rough state (you need to convert the rivers, connect the dots on where rivers didn't come through too well, and tidy things up generally) so if you want it some other way let me know. It should only take me an extra 10 minutes of so to pop another one out having a different cut on Europe, now that I've gone this far. (The main difficulty is to make sure just the right amount of river comes through for the proper scale- I have a way of widening or narrowing them before I convert to CTP2 format).

That is very interesting and perfect timing. I was looking at the map code for the Samuri map tonight trying to figure out how they made the bridges. It was done with tile type 25 so they have indeed added 2 new terrain types since the beta (or they just failed to inform me of the new types when they gave me the map codes). You have always been able to manipulate the terrain characteristics but it required understanding bit switches and hex. (I found this out in my first map conversion tries when I created a map which let settlers walk on the water). When my boat couldn't enter the tile the bridge was on, I figured they had done this exact thing. Apparently, they have gone one step farther, and you can now manipulate these tile types via the terrain.txt file. In terrain.txt, I see where you can manipulate the movement types (much easier than hex) but I don't see how they get a different graphic on it yet. My guess is that it is done internally or via the ZFS file which will take it out of our reach, for now. At least it has given us a new area to play with and explore which I intend on doing.

BTW: I was playing with converting your map tonight also (first time since beta) and ran into the same things. That is actually why I decided to find out how they made the bridges in the Samuri scenario.

Harlan, please send it to me at: Newhouse@heliconnc.net

Thanks!

Well, if I can figure out how to error-proof it, it might be. One of these days, when I have more time, I might try that.

Got the map and saved game file and loaded both up, no problema. Soon as I did, one of my boys (9 yo) was hanging around and glimpsed your map as I called it up in CTP and he says your map was "major terrific". He is into AOE, CTP1 and has been tooling around with CTP2 lately and wanted to sit and work on editting those polar patches along the Nile.

Anyway, the map is great! It opened just fine without any special settings. Same with the game. Thanks very much for the best Europe map I have seen in the Civ Genre!

Here are some other details you might want to know about, or questions I have (that you might not want to know about

1. The game opens with 8 civs though I have my setting for 18. May I change the 8 to some larger number somehow?

2. Same for the map.. do I change this someway or is that fixed?

3. I take it that cities can't be placed directly? That is, to make a city, one has to place a settler and then "settle"?

4. I'm sure more things will occur to me as I get into it more. I plan on editting this map some to spruce up rough edges and then make it available here as Harlan's Grande Map of Europe. I'll send a copy to you so you can look at it and make any additional changes you see fit before I do.

BTW, you became an immediate celebrity in my son's eyes when I told him you were the creator of the Alexander scenario. When a 9 yo kid abandons AOKings, Backyard Football, and NFL2000 for a TBS game, that is quite the trick!

Need to put up our xmas tree before I make more progress.

This was from opening the editor at the start of a new game. Then in the editor I "load map" and choose the Harlan map. All the CTP2 civs appear and you can choose whichever ones you want to place on the map, up to 18 (from what I gather).

Right now I am just editing the map. I will try some play tests after I get this map pruned.

quote: Originally posted by Savant on 12-10-2000 02:31 PM This was from opening the editor at the start of a new game. Then in the editor I "load map" and choose the Harlan map. All the CTP2 civs appear and you can choose whichever ones you want to place on the map, up to 18 (from what I gather)

Okay that's what I figured... just be careful from all the testing on maps that I've done with what Activision gave us you can't start as any civ if you place cities, or settlers. You'll be forced into player1... which sorta sucks.... sure you can select all the civs at the start of the scenario, but once it opens... your player 1....

And if someone should choose to be a civ other than the "Savants", what would they do?