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Is it possible to mod the geoscape


Phenakist

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Continents can be modded by simply replacing the images, the only limitation is that the number of "continents" (not sure how they call them on mars) has to remain the same.

Could you, or anyone else, explain how you can mod the shape of landmass/regions when there is enough time? I wanted to add Oceania, Falkland Islands and Hawaii into the Geoscape but is hitting a brick wall due to my utter lack of modding nor coding experience. :(

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That's pretty simple, but as a coder I lack that part of manuality to be a good artist. Forgive me about the bad quality of this work, it's only a demonstration :D

So I'll add my personal donut island east of india. Because I want to, that's why. And I'm tired of Commisar Pancake's hegemony over the Xenonaut World!

Tools

I'll use GIMP to do all the image related transformation, but you can use any tool you want, including that discrete program from Adobe called Photoshop.

The files I'm going to edit can be found in assets/earth/continentmasks

Unused files warning

In the said folder there are some unused files which you won't need to modify to mod the continents: the ones named like the continent prefix (eg: au.png, ca.png, ch.png,.. ) and the whole funding subfolder. skip them

Step 1

Add the landmass to landmask_quarter.png

Simply open up this file and add white where you'll need the game to recognise an area as earth and not sea. I wasn't too accurate and simply put a white dot east of india.

Step 2

Update the continent borders to reflect the presence of land in that point.

I'm adding an island to the indochina continent, so I'll edit the ch_ files. Open up ch_edges_quarters.png, ch_edges_quarters_mz.png and ch_lost.png. To make the position of the new island the same among all files, I opened all the files as different layers in GIMP and edited them.

edges_quarters and edges_quarters_mz are the files which are used to display the borders of the continents when you mouseover them; the _mz version is the one used at maximum zoom level so it *should* have more accurate borders.

Step 3

Add the actual island artwork!

The part I'm worse at. But it went ok!

Open the appropriate file from assets/earth (which in my case was 8184geoscape_44.png), and then open as a different layer ch_edges_quarter.png. Make them match in size (scale up ch_edges_quarter to 8184x3416px) and put one on top of the other, matching existing borders. Now, using the continent edges as mask, draw your island on the earth file, then save it!

Step 4

Almost done! This is optional, but needed if you want to avoid having only the default tileset in ground combat

You'll need to edit tilesetmask1.png, tilesetmask2.png and townmask.png to tell the game which tileset are available in the spot you've put your new island. No need to be accurate here, as these files are never displayed in game, nor used to calculate continents positions. A simple big dot in corrispondence of our new island will be enough.

All done!

Now your brand new island (MY ISLAND) is in the game! Enjoy your new base in Donut Island! :D

donutisland.jpg

All edited files can be found here: [ATTACH]4381[/ATTACH]

donutisland.jpg

donut island.zip

donutisland.jpg.3851adcc2de5c2b9bc3384fc

donut island.zip

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That's pretty simple, but as a coder I lack that part of manuality to be a good artist. Forgive me about the bad quality of this work, it's only a demonstration :D

So I'll add my personal donut island east of india. Because I want to, that's why. And I'm tired of Commisar Pancake's hegemony over the Xenonaut World!

Tools

I'll use GIMP to do all the image related transformation, but you can use any tool you want, including that discrete program from Adobe called Photoshop.

The files I'm going to edit can be found in assets/earth/continentmasks

Unused files warning

In the said folder there are some unused files which you won't need to modify to mod the continents: the ones named like the continent prefix (eg: au.png, ca.png, ch.png,.. ) and the whole funding subfolder. skip them

Step 1

Add the landmass to landmask_quarter.png

Simply open up this file and add white where you'll need the game to recognise an area as earth and not sea. I wasn't too accurate and simply put a white dot east of india.

Step 2

Update the continent borders to reflect the presence of land in that point.

I'm adding an island to the indochina continent, so I'll edit the ch_ files. Open up ch_edges_quarters.png, ch_edges_quarters_mz.png and ch_lost.png. To make the position of the new island the same among all files, I opened all the files as different layers in GIMP and edited them.

edges_quarters and edges_quarters_mz are the files which are used to display the borders of the continents when you mouseover them; the _mz version is the one used at maximum zoom level so it *should* have more accurate borders.

Step 3

Add the actual island artwork!

The part I'm worse at. But it went ok!

Open the appropriate file from assets/earth (which in my case was 8184geoscape_44.png), and then open as a different layer ch_edges_quarter.png. Make them match in size (scale up ch_edges_quarter to 8184x3416px) and put one on top of the other, matching existing borders. Now, using the continent edges as mask, draw your island on the earth file, then save it!

Step 4

Almost done! This is optional, but needed if you want to avoid having only the default tileset in ground combat

You'll need to edit tilesetmask1.png, tilesetmask2.png and townmask.png to tell the game which tileset are available in the spot you've put your new island. No need to be accurate here, as these files are never displayed in game, nor used to calculate continents positions. A simple big dot in corrispondence of our new island will be enough.

All done!

Now your brand new island (MY ISLAND) is in the game! Enjoy your new base in Donut Island! :D

[ATTACH=CONFIG]4380[/ATTACH]

All edited files can be found here: [ATTACH]4381[/ATTACH]

Touche!

Could you now move on to Marsian geoscape? :)

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Touche!

Could you now move on to Marsian geoscape? :)

Mmmm, how would you subdivide the land into "continents" in the martian surface? From the basics I've provided it's really easy to scale up to a whole geoscape-alterating mod, maybe even easier if starting from your own files and not editing existing ones!

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