[WorldBuilder] Unofficial Updates / Modifications

[Zen Blade]

Jebus,

Any word on whether cropping looks doable?

thanks,
-Zen Blade

 

[JeBuS27]

It looks like the process to crop a map would be to take the current map instance and copy plot data to a new map instance. So theoretically, yes, it's doable. There's a bunch of other stuff I need to do to WB before I get to that, though.

I should have a new version out in a day or two. Cropping is on my to-do list, but no guarantee it'll be there in the next version.

 

[historix69]

Is it possible to change the WorldBuilder to support 360x180 as Map-Size (for a Giant Earth Mod, 1 hex = 1°x1°)?
How do You change the max values? I tried it by editing the World-Size in xml-file but it didn't work?

Does anybody already has experience how game-performance will scale with very large Map-Sizes?

 

[JeBuS27]

There's basically almost no chance of getting even 256x128 to load without crashing Civ, so anything twice as large... well, I'd say forget about it.

 

[historix69]

There's basically almost no chance of getting even 256x128 to load without crashing Civ, so anything twice as large... well, I'd say forget about it.

Does it crash before or after adding a World-Size of 256x128 to "CIV5Worlds.xml"?

 

[JeBuS27]

The xml for world size doesn't matter when loading a pre-made map.

 

[NoNoYesNo]

Hi,
I have a simple but total necessary request IMO.
Is it possible to load an image in the background of the WB, so that its
possible when starting maps from scratch, just to have the hexes over it and
be able to edit it. Zooming is maybe a problem, cause the image would have to
zoom with the map, but to have the background image in max zoom level would
be enough.
thx

 

[JeBuS27]

That's another item on my to-do list. The biggest problem with doing it the way you suggested is that I don't have control over how the map view renders. So making it transparent is probably not going to happen. However, putting the image over the map is doable, and giving that a transparency control should be doable.

 

[JeBuS27]

So I've been fighting with the Firaxis code for a few days now trying to get an overlay image to work for NoNoYesNo's request, with no great success. The way the map view is rendered seems to preclude me from drawing anything over it without it flickering severely or severely degrading framerate (and thus, usability).

So, I'm going with a simpler solution, which will just open a new window that you'll be able to set an image on, and that new window will be transparent. Drawback will be that you'll probably have to manually size the window yourself to match the underlying map. But with a customizable zoom control on the map, at least you'll be able to see the whole thing at once and compare it to the overlayed transparent image.

I've attached a screenshot of how it looked in an earlier build. It's one of those gigantic 5400x2700 Blue Marble images overlayed onto a 128x80 blank map.

 

[JeBuS27]

Here's a shot of me using an underlying image of Europe to trace the coastal outlines.

Spoiler :

This was done with the WB window at 50% transparency and Window's built in image previewer in the background. All I did was use the "Tiny" Paint tool with Grassland and go along the waterline.

I'm leaning towards this being the way it functions in the next release. There will be both zoom and opacity controls added to WB so that you can pan and zoom as necessary to match to an image you have open in the background. How does that sound to you folks?

 

[Zen Blade]

looking good.
of course... I might just be saying that because I want a crop tool... and the sooner this tool is finished, the sooner you might start working on a crop tool.

 

[JeBuS27]

looking good.
of course... I might just be saying that because I want a crop tool... and the sooner this tool is finished, the sooner you might start working on a crop tool.

I won't hold that against you. Crop is definitely the next on the list. This just took personal precedence.

 

[VRBones]

Would making the original image window transparent mean that youstill have to <alt+tab> between windows as you can't click on WB to add squares while the transparent window is over top of it?

Can't wait for even that though. Having to swap between 2 windows fast enough to get a feel for the map is a bit tedious.

Oh, and thanks for the debug window staying open. Makes debugging map scripts SO much easier.

 

[JeBuS27]

Right now I have it so the WB window itself goes transparent. It's the whole window that goes transparent though, not just the map. Sort of an all or nothing deal. So you can still click on it while seeing the background map.

 

[Garett20]

Sooooo............. How do I install it?

 

[JeBuS27]

I'll give you a hint, the instructions are in the zip file, on the download page, and in the first post of this thread.

 

[Garett20]

Um, when I open it it just says: civ 5 worldbuilder has stopped working...

 

[JeBuS27]

Well, I need a test dummy for the next release, so try this one. It has a setup.exe in it.

There's a possibility the transparency may cause the map display to be screwy for DirectX9 / WinXP users. But, with a sampling size of 1 person reporting that problem, I really can't be sure until someone else confirms it.

 

[VRBones]

Right now I have it so the WB window itself goes transparent.

Awesome, that's what I was hoping for. Installed and works a treat. Haven't used it much yet, but it would seem that a hotkey to toggle between transparency and opaque would be nice (but probably not before some of the other requests).

<< -- Win7 x64 pro, dx11

 

[JeBuS27]

I've updated the zip in my previous post with a new version that fixes a bug involving zooming beyond the smallest bounds and crashing the map viewer. I should note that these are pretty much 'beta' versions and won't be placed on the download page until I get enough feedback to satisfy me that it's stable.