Creating a Land mod

[Barken]

Hey guys, I'm planning on creating a land battle mod. Only problem is, i've never modded DEFCON and need a bit of help getting started.

My plan is to make the icons land based (ie battleships into tanks, subs into skud launchers) ((don't know what to make carriers though, imput would be nice)). Airbases, silos and radars would stay the same.
I would like to use the same map as the original, just land based units can cross alaska to russia and greenland to europe (yes a stretch, but need more land movement).

First off, i inverted the colors on sailable so i could put the seabased units (unmodifed) onto land, but when i hit ready to start the game, it does the count down, right after 1 when the game is about to start, the game crashes.

My question is, how could i go about doing the mapping for the game so the water cant be used, and only land (except for greenland to europe) can be used.

Input on any of the ideas presented would be welcome

[trickser]

by inverting the sailable map, you made land to water and water to land. But u forgot that other files depend on the original water/land distribution. that would be travelnodes and ai-markers. furthermore to make travelnodes work (when modifed to be inside the new water) u can not have islandes(lakes). All sailable areas (the continents) have to be conneted.
next thing is the plaement of units, its determind by the 6 territorry files. without modifiing your ships will stuck in the unsailable regions. But i wouldnt care before you can start the game without crashing.

to narrow the origin of you problem:
start games without CPU players (just you), to avoid problems with ai-markers
always use same resolution and color depth as the original files.
instead of inverting sailable map, make everything sailable and add unsailable areas slowly step by step.

good luck

[Barken]

hey tric, how do you modify the travel nods? I see the file and i don't understand what it does/etc..

[trickser]

its some white dots on black, the nodes. Thier purpose has something to do with pathfinding, so when you send a ship from pacific to atlantic, it will go south of SA for example.
I never created a map mod myself sucessfully, but the few who know exactly how to do it dont hang around here unfortunaly.

all nodes have to be in the sailable area; every node needs to have a direct line of sight to at least one other node (direct line of sail, thats it)

but that might not be enough to make it work
try sticking to original resolution (800x400?), colordepth (black and white, not greysacle), nodesize (just 1 pixel)

also since the resolution differs from the other maps, it might be tricky to figure if its really placed inside the sailable area.


btw, what i have said about all water has to be connected might be bullshit, but it will help avoiding errors in the first turn.

[Barken]

Ok, so i made sailable all white (ie, no land) and started up the game with no AI. It worked perfectly, but i was unable to place any land objects (radar, silos and airbases). But this could be a plus..

[Ace Rimmer]

You have to have "land" to place any land units.

[trickser]

no, you dont. thats something i already tried. placing units depends just on the europe.bmp, africa.bmp etc. Bright (almost white) is for land units and greyish is for ships. I had no problem placing silos on sea and ships on land by just moding these files.
The only problem i had with this, cities wouldnt appear in the area defined for placing ships.

[Barken]

Yeah, same issue, no cities.

[trickser]

How about a checkerboard pattern?

[sfericz]

Senator should be commended for helping with these Mod questions. Every time I see something mentioned in here, Senator is right on it to help.

[Eagle1_Division]

I once was on the idea of making a land mod, in response to the first post, I used the carriers as APC's, bombers could be anti-tank infantry and fighters could be G.I.