Background map update - discussion

[MandelSoft]

... but what I have a hard time accepting is, that you instead of doing changes to the map data, you tamper with the BG. Much easier, but not the best way, that's my opinion! (...) I think you can do better than "cheat", make it right instead! ...

You are correct that this is the easier way to fix this, but consider the following problems:

• You have the background map provided by SCS. You have the background map for the editor, mostly based upon mapy.cz imagery that is not available anymore. You have your background map. None of these match with each other!. This means that you don't have any feedback within the map editor if a road or a city is at the correct location on the background map in-game, because the background map in the editor is slightly off...
• In some cases, there isn't much room to build a city if you would keep strictly to the borders from real life. This is a problem i.e. in Trieste and Koper (that's a very narrow strip of land that's part of the Slovenian coast), Istanbul (where the narrow coastline would severely limit the representation of its massive size) or Andorra (mirco state). In those cases, you can justify cheating with the borders or coastlines to create the necessary space, and in fact, SCS does this all the time, but you may not have noticed it, because it's mostly subtle.
• We don't touch the location where SCS cities are, as it may make future merges increasingly difficult. So Istanbul has to stay where it is. If your map projection doesn't place Istanbul correctly, you're going to have a problem sooner or later.
• Even if they would match, the UK is built at a different scale. How are you supposed to re-align that precisely? And don't get me started on the aforementioned hard-coded "correction". The only way to make that part correct in all maps, is to rescale the British isles down to 1:19. But that's far from being a trivial task, due to the following:
• If you want to correct the map itself as you proposed, you have to cut down the map and rearrange the pieces. Moving the pieces itself is quite a strain for your PC, but that's not the worst of it. That comes after you've moved everything. Then you have to reconnect everything. Some parts overlap, some parts have to be deleted, some parts need new sections to be inserted, and you may have to deal with realigning road layouts or dealing with height differences. This is a tedious task that will take weeks in the most favourable scenario, but it can easily take months.

With an eager community, ever demanding for more content, which we haven't been able to finish for over a year because merges, patches and whatnot keep on interfering our workflow (!), the background map fix that only takes a day instead of months looks very attractive...

If you want to correct this by yourself, go ahead! I invite you to prove us wrong on our claim that this is tedious! We won't stop you...

I've re-opened the topic again, but if any of you make this discussion degrade into snarky comments or fighting, we may have to lock it again, so please keep it civil and constructive!

[bricksathome]

I just want to stress a point because I guarantee it will be brought up again:

We have three background maps at the moment, SCS's, ProMods' and the style compatible with most other map mods.

As proven by bengt.jensie here in his comparison between the SCS and ProMods maps, in the Middle East region, the ProMods background map lines up with SCS's perfectly. Now, from my perspective, I would call SCS's official background map the 'correct' one, as it appears in the official vanilla game, and seeing as the SCS and ProMods map line up in the Middle East, I would say the the location of the Middle East on the ProMods background map is correct.

However, I acknowledge that the Position that SCS (and now ProMods) use for the Middle East is not the same as on background maps used for map combos.

But, in my opinion, I don't think we should get so much slack for literally copying SCS's background map and editing it slightly - yes, the new background map causes more issues with other map mods, but our background map is identical to SCS's. We have to stay up to date with SCS otherwise compatibility gets more and more difficult each update.

So I understand why people using map combos are upset, but try and understand that we are basically using SCS's background map now, which is the game's official background map.
I'm not going to try and suggest a solution because at the end of the day I'm not going to be the person messing around with background maps, it's not in my skill set, but That's my thoughts on the situation.

[bengt.jensie]

@MandelSoft

I have tried to stick to the facts all the way from my first question here about the map projection,
and I have NO intention to depart from that.

You talk about that you have the ME BG and UI BG from SCS to work from. Let me then tell you,
that using the correct SCS specified map projection, you can make your own ME BG or UI BG.
That's what I have done and covering a much larger area then both SCS's and yours. I have also
supported a lot of mapping teams with ME BGs, all the way from Morocco to Japan and many
countries in between. I supported 09_KZ so that he could rescale, relocate his map, the same
for the SRMap, also the team who now are developing the rescaled and relocated YKS teams
Turkey. They have done the job to deal with their maps in quite a short time.

Regarding UK problem, what you have to do is simply to tick the rescale of UK area in the Map
Editor settings for Promods, then relocate, might even need a rescale, of Iceland. Finished! I
have done that by adding a europe.mbd to my universal BGs and then move the background
area of Iceland to fit under your Iceland data.

I am aware of the fact that parts of Promods were created long before SCS changed the map
projection, as a matter of fact, they did that when they had to rescale ATS to scale 1:20. They
then decided to switch to Lambert Conic map projection for both ATS AND ETS2, but obviously
with different projection parameters. Those two specifications have I used in all my Universal
BGs and the Map Editor BGs I've supported the mapping teams with.

Well, I think I'll stop here now and let you think about the situation. It's of course your decision
what you are going to do. I am just discussing from the experience I have in this and mind you,
I spent quite some time researching to get the knowledge I have today, as SCS isn't that informative
in these cases!

Good Night for now! See ya another time maybe!

EDIT:

@bricksathome

To be honest, I think that SCS has an old Mercator UI BG in the game, as their map data isn't that
far from the specified map origin, so they won't get any distorted effects. But Promods, up in the
northern Scandinavia and down in the Middle-East are starting to feel the distortion when going
north of the 65th latitude and south of the 37th latitude. The further west or east of the origin the
more rotated the map will be. Promods lives on the edge, so to speak!

If you don't know anything about Lambert Conic conformal map projection, this picture might give
you a clue on what I'm talking about.

Lambert_conformal_conic.jpg (146.71 KiB) Viewed 880 times

[Shiva]

Regarding UK problem, what you have to do is simply to tick the rescale of UK area in the Map
Editor settings for Promods, then relocate, might even need a rescale, of Iceland. Finished! I
have done that by adding a europe.mbd to my universal BGs and then move the background
area of Iceland to fit under your Iceland data.

I have not checked if iceland uses 1:15 scale or not. And what should it be rescaled to?
But, regarding UK, remember the screenshot I posted?
Should ProMods skip/delete Norwich?
Is even the redone Felixstowe inside 1:15 or does it have parts outside on the 1:19 scale?

Could the only solution accepted by all, be that SCS makes an alternative bigger background map?
And how big should that one be?
European continent? Almost all of it is done by SCS
European continent + the whole Mediterranean Sea?
Or maybe even as big as Afro-Eurasia ?

[bengt.jensie]

@Shiva

Do this little experiment. Make yourself a tiny mod with only one file in it, namely SCS's original europe.mbd,
placed in the folder map, /map/europe.mbd. In a profile with ONLY Promods main mods, run the game and
take a screenshot of the World View map of UK and Iceland. Then add to that profile at the top, above Promods,
that little mod. Run again and what do you see in the World View now?

[Plum™]

egarding UK problem, what you have to do is simply to tick the rescale of UK area in the Map
Editor settings for Promods, then relocate, might even need a rescale, of Iceland. Finished!

Do you have any idea how much work a UK and maybe even Iceland rescale would be? The Northern rescale was a bit of work already and that was just 3 parallel roads. Rescaling the UK would mean pretty much building it up from scratch which would be a crazy amount of work for the 2-3 active developers there. And then Iceland as well? All for a background map? I will say though if SCS decides to rescale the UK when it decides to rebuild it may 'fix' this issue for us but that may be a while away.

[bengt.jensie]

@Plum

Please, read what i say. You won't have to rescale UK, including Ireland AT ALL!
It's solely a question of taking care of Iceland after that tick, SCS will do the rest.
If you further have created Iceland in 1:15 too, I assume it will mostly be needed
a movement of Iceland! Go check it out, do the trick I gave to Shiva and see what
happens.

EDIT: NOTE, Promods UK MUST still be in 1:15 for it to work!!!! SCS's UK is still
in 1:15. The game engine rescale is ONLY for display in game World View and
Job View

[MandelSoft]

You act as if rescaling Iceland would be something trivial. But it's far from that.

The easiest part is to move the island to a correct position. Just renumbering all sectors involved should do the trick for the initial move. But that's where the problems start...

You'll have to drag Iceland apart. It will be fragmented into a lot of different pieces because changing from 1:19 to 1:15 means all roads in between cities are 27% longer. So as a map designer you need to ask yourself the following questions:
- Where do I make the cuts and how many? Any strategic cut-off points available?
- With what am I going to fill these gaps? Just a road? New scenery? Extra towns, perhaps
- How much time and effort is this going to cost me and is it worth my time?

This will leave a lot of gaps to fill with something. Now reconnecting the roads from point A to B near each gap isn't enough; then these gaps would stick out like a sore thumb due to lack of detailing, so you need to take time to detail these connections to make them look proper. But say everything goes to plan and you can close one gap a day. That would just be one gap out of dozens!. That will take weeks at best, months at worst.

And on top of that, it doesn't solve the Norwich problem. So what do you propose to deal with that?

Again, I invite you to to prove us wrong. Demonstrate it! Show it to us! I invite you to come up with a concrete plan how you should do it. Not just "rescale Iceland", but a plan where you would make the cuts and how you would fill the gaps that it would leave. Go on, try it. I'll wait...

[1337robloxkid]

I’m just gonna pretend I never saw that.

[bengt.jensie]

@MandelSoft

You act as if rescaling Iceland would be something trivial. But it's far from that.

The easiest part is to move the island to a correct position. Just renumbering all sectors involved should do the trick for the initial move. But that's where the problems start...

No, rescaling down is demanding on the machine and as you said it will create gaps to fill, very true. But as I
said in another post here just above yours, it might not be a matter of rescaling, just moving. Can you tell if the
scale used when creating Iceland was 1:15 or 1:19? If 1:15 you might get away with just a move, if 1:19, you
probably will have a totally different rescaling problem, not getting gaps to fill, but data to remove! Mind you
that total UK area, including Iceland, I think, HAS to be in the 1:15 scale for the SCS implemented display
rescale to work.

And on top of that, it doesn't solve the Norwich problem. So what do you propose to deal with that?

You have one TINY anomaly at the very eastern part of Felixstowe, the delivery point there. Move that inside the
rescale area and your good to go. Norwich lies even slightly west of Felixstowe, so do the same there, small
movements and all is well.

Please, check this out thoroughly and then tell me what you find out.