The Conquer The World design team at BHG has created this document that explains how to get your custom CtW map in the game and create your custom campaign! Those of you with the expansion pack will also be able to create custom scenarios for your campaigns, and more.
Although it does not contain as much detail as I would have hoped, it is still very informative and helpful. I was mainly working "blind" on developing my CTW mod, but this documentation helps to spell out some of the critical steps to take in making things work. I believe it has already helped me work through one of the little "bugs" that I was experiencing.
Thank you BHG for making this available!
rkrempel
Posted on 05/09/06 @ 01:01 PM
On making CTW maps:
1) Don't start with the area map, start with a nice-looking rendered version you pinced from somewhere. (unless you're a decent artist and need not worry about that)
2) Make sure you size it down to the dimensions you need _first_, or you'll run into trouble later on.
3) Convert a copy of the rendermap to something simpler. An easy method is to load it into paint, then save it into a format that has a lot less colors (even down to monochome if need be). After this, start drawing in the areas. It doesn't really matter how at this point, just remember that in the end you'll need a distinct color for each area, that they'll need to be linked and that *anything* that's not part of an area will be water. A good way to make sure each area has a distinct colour is to simply create a custom color for each area with ascending or descending R,G,B values. (this can be done in paint)
4) Lastly, put a single black dot in each area for its capital. Placing more than one dot or placing it on the edge of a colored area will cause the map to crash. Forgetting capitals won't crash the map, the area simply won't be accessible (which can actually be a usefull tool in the design).
If you've done everything right, the areas and rendermap will overlay beautifully. Technically though, they don't have to match. You could, for instance, oversize island groups on the rendermap to make conquest battles there more playable.
Anyway, if you know your way around with bitmaps, all this isn't so hard. Photoshopping skills are probably only usefull in creating that rendermap. Discipline is a definite plus in all this. Save often.