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Map help


Zousug

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Hey all,

 

I am very new to Project Zomboid map making and was hoping someone could help me out?

I want to just edit an exisiting area of the map but I know I need to make a new one to sit over top..

 

Could any one help me out? *im really not good at drawing stuff in paint programs at all lol) but i cant even drag my .bmp file in WorldEd :(

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I can't offer you much help on the editing existing cells part, but if you don't have a vegetation map for your .bmp it won't let you import it as a map in WorldEd. So, if you have a map called MyMap.bmp, you need a matching resolution vegetation map called MyMap_veg.bmp in the same folder. Otherwise, it just won't let you import it.

 

It would be nice if WorldEd had a popup to tell you this, since it took me a while to figure out when I wanted to put off making a vegetation map until after I finished my base map, but you can just make a temporary vegetation map that's entirely black for now if you want to focus on the base map.

 

(Sorry if this posts multiple times, I had an issue with it getting stuck on "saving" when I hit submit so I had to retry after waiting a bit)

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On 12/31/2021 at 7:38 AM, chromarict said:

I can't offer you much help on the editing existing cells part, but if you don't have a vegetation map for your .bmp it won't let you import it as a map in WorldEd. So, if you have a map called MyMap.bmp, you need a matching resolution vegetation map called MyMap_veg.bmp in the same folder. Otherwise, it just won't let you import it.

 

It would be nice if WorldEd had a popup to tell you this, since it took me a while to figure out when I wanted to put off making a vegetation map until after I finished my base map, but you can just make a temporary vegetation map that's entirely black for now if you want to focus on the base map.

 

(Sorry if this posts multiple times, I had an issue with it getting stuck on "saving" when I hit submit so I had to retry after waiting a bit)

 

ah ok no worries..

Would you be able to help make these two? I have tired a few times but cant get it right.. I made two files but it still wouldnt let me drag em in but i also couldnt get it looking how / close to the exisiting area i want to change.. (I want it basicly the same with a few custom changes.. mainly to the buildings) its ok if not able i get it ^.^

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6 hours ago, Zousug said:

 

ah ok no worries..

Would you be able to help make these two? I have tired a few times but cant get it right.. I made two files but it still wouldnt let me drag em in but i also couldnt get it looking how / close to the exisiting area i want to change.. (I want it basicly the same with a few custom changes.. mainly to the buildings) its ok if not able i get it ^.^

Are you dragging them in from the file list in WorldEd or the file browser on your computer? I forgot to mention I could only get them into the editor if I dragged from the Windows file explorer. Dragging from the file list on the right side of WorldEd only seems to work for adding buildings in my experience. Also just to double-check, are you sure the images are the right resolution? They should be multiples of 300 since a 300x300 pixel square is a single cell in WorldEd. I haven't tried it, but it might not let you import it at all if it's the wrong resolution. Or maybe you can't import it if the image would require more cells than you set up your world for. You could always try using the World -> Resize World menu to increase it to make sure the .bmp will fit when imported. You might also need to have the image files in the same directory as your world's .pzw file, but I'm not certain on that. That's how I have mine set up at least.

 

The only other thought I have is to try re-exporting your images from your image editor in different formats. Either different bit-depth .bmp files or try .png. Personally, I use .png with max compression since it doesn't lose any quality while saving a lot of disk space, and I haven't had any import issues with them. If you're still having issues, I can put together a basic template world and blank base/vegetation maps to see if you can at least load an existing world file.

 

On the editing existing cells side, from what I've read around the forums, I believe you have to completely replace an existing cell instead of modifying an existing one. So you can use the online map at https://map.projectzomboid.com/ to find the coordinates of the cells you want to edit and to use as a reference when making your replacement cells. Unfortunately as far as I can tell you'll have to rebuild the existing cells and buildings from scratch even if you just want to slightly change them. Once your cells are finished (or at least ready for testing) you can follow the "Exporting and Testing the Map" section of the official guide here:

and when you get to the Generate Lots menu, make sure you enter the top-leftmost coordinate of the cells you want to replace in the World Origin box so the top-leftmost cell of your new cells will be placed properly. If you leave it set to the default of X: 0, Y: 0, it'll put your new cells in the far northwest corner of the map. And don't forget to add the "lots=Muldraugh, KY" line mentioned in the guide above to your map.info file so the game knows to overlay your new cells onto the base map instead of considering them their own little world.

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5 hours ago, chromarict said:

Are you dragging them in from the file list in WorldEd or the file browser on your computer? I forgot to mention I could only get them into the editor if I dragged from the Windows file explorer. Dragging from the file list on the right side of WorldEd only seems to work for adding buildings in my experience. Also just to double-check, are you sure the images are the right resolution? They should be multiples of 300 since a 300x300 pixel square is a single cell in WorldEd. I haven't tried it, but it might not let you import it at all if it's the wrong resolution. Or maybe you can't import it if the image would require more cells than you set up your world for. You could always try using the World -> Resize World menu to increase it to make sure the .bmp will fit when imported. You might also need to have the image files in the same directory as your world's .pzw file, but I'm not certain on that. That's how I have mine set up at least.

 

The only other thought I have is to try re-exporting your images from your image editor in different formats. Either different bit-depth .bmp files or try .png. Personally, I use .png with max compression since it doesn't lose any quality while saving a lot of disk space, and I haven't had any import issues with them. If you're still having issues, I can put together a basic template world and blank base/vegetation maps to see if you can at least load an existing world file.

 

On the editing existing cells side, from what I've read around the forums, I believe you have to completely replace an existing cell instead of modifying an existing one. So you can use the online map at https://map.projectzomboid.com/ to find the coordinates of the cells you want to edit and to use as a reference when making your replacement cells. Unfortunately as far as I can tell you'll have to rebuild the existing cells and buildings from scratch even if you just want to slightly change them. Once your cells are finished (or at least ready for testing) you can follow the "Exporting and Testing the Map" section of the official guide here:

and when you get to the Generate Lots menu, make sure you enter the top-leftmost coordinate of the cells you want to replace in the World Origin box so the top-leftmost cell of your new cells will be placed properly. If you leave it set to the default of X: 0, Y: 0, it'll put your new cells in the far northwest corner of the map. And don't forget to add the "lots=Muldraugh, KY" line mentioned in the guide above to your map.info file so the game knows to overlay your new cells onto the base map instead of considering them their own little world.

 

 

i tried dragging from both explorer and the editor..

 

yeah figured id have to redo buildings etc.. just getting the bmp files i can import right *looking same as the current ground / forest* is hard

Edited by Zousug
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12 hours ago, Zousug said:

 

 

i tried dragging from both explorer and the editor..

 

yeah figured id have to redo buildings etc.. just getting the bmp files i can import right *looking same as the current ground / forest* is hard

Well I'm just about out of ideas as to why you can't import your .bmp files then... Maybe use the New World button to make a world with a different name to see if something is wrong with your .pzw world file?

 

Also I have good news about rebuilding the cell data! I found this tool:

 

which lets you read existing lotheader/lotpack data, including the map data for the base map in your /ProjectZomboid/media/maps/Muldraugh, KY/ folder. Then you can select the cells you want to export as 2D images to use as the base and vegetation maps in WorldEd. Unfortunately, it doesn't come with color theme files specifically for exporting the base map and vegetation map data (well, it has a vegetation theme, but that one is green instead of the shades of red WorldEd uses), but looking at the themes it comes with, it doesn't look too hard to implement. I'm gonna try putting the themes together now and I'll post them for you when I finish. At least this way you'll only need to worry about redoing the buildings, unless there's another tool hidden on the forums for extracting the base game buildings, because I haven't found their source files anywhere in the game folder yet.

 

Update: I've gotten the CartoZed themes about 95% working. There are a few issues, such as the empty cells showing up as white on both the base map and vegetation map and some of the newer tiles on the base map show up as black, but it should get the job done without completely remaking the cells from scratch. So all you should have to do is set CartoZed to load the Muldraugh, KY map from your game folder, pick one of these theme files, and then drag a box around the cells you want to export before hitting "Save as 2D PNG" at the bottom. Also I experienced an error with CartoZed when trying to load a second map after exporting the first, so it looks like you'll need to restart it after exporting the base map image before you can export the vegetation version.

WorldEd_BaseMap.txt WorldEd_VegetationMap.txt

Edited by chromarict
Added info and files on new CartoZed themes
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16 hours ago, chromarict said:

Well I'm just about out of ideas as to why you can't import your .bmp files then... Maybe use the New World button to make a world with a different name to see if something is wrong with your .pzw world file?

 

Also I have good news about rebuilding the cell data! I found this tool:

 

which lets you read existing lotheader/lotpack data, including the map data for the base map in your /ProjectZomboid/media/maps/Muldraugh, KY/ folder. Then you can select the cells you want to export as 2D images to use as the base and vegetation maps in WorldEd. Unfortunately, it doesn't come with color theme files specifically for exporting the base map and vegetation map data (well, it has a vegetation theme, but that one is green instead of the shades of red WorldEd uses), but looking at the themes it comes with, it doesn't look too hard to implement. I'm gonna try putting the themes together now and I'll post them for you when I finish. At least this way you'll only need to worry about redoing the buildings, unless there's another tool hidden on the forums for extracting the base game buildings, because I haven't found their source files anywhere in the game folder yet.

 

Update: I've gotten the CartoZed themes about 95% working. There are a few issues, such as the empty cells showing up as white on both the base map and vegetation map and some of the newer tiles on the base map show up as black, but it should get the job done without completely remaking the cells from scratch. So all you should have to do is set CartoZed to load the Muldraugh, KY map from your game folder, pick one of these theme files, and then drag a box around the cells you want to export before hitting "Save as 2D PNG" at the bottom. Also I experienced an error with CartoZed when trying to load a second map after exporting the first, so it looks like you'll need to restart it after exporting the base map image before you can export the vegetation version.

WorldEd_BaseMap.txt 3.36 kB · 0 downloads WorldEd_VegetationMap.txt 1.17 kB · 0 downloads

oh wow your awsome.. ill give this a try tomorrow thank you ^.^

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On 1/2/2022 at 3:31 AM, chromarict said:

Well I'm just about out of ideas as to why you can't import your .bmp files then... Maybe use the New World button to make a world with a different name to see if something is wrong with your .pzw world file?

 

Also I have good news about rebuilding the cell data! I found this tool:

 

which lets you read existing lotheader/lotpack data, including the map data for the base map in your /ProjectZomboid/media/maps/Muldraugh, KY/ folder. Then you can select the cells you want to export as 2D images to use as the base and vegetation maps in WorldEd. Unfortunately, it doesn't come with color theme files specifically for exporting the base map and vegetation map data (well, it has a vegetation theme, but that one is green instead of the shades of red WorldEd uses), but looking at the themes it comes with, it doesn't look too hard to implement. I'm gonna try putting the themes together now and I'll post them for you when I finish. At least this way you'll only need to worry about redoing the buildings, unless there's another tool hidden on the forums for extracting the base game buildings, because I haven't found their source files anywhere in the game folder yet.

 

Update: I've gotten the CartoZed themes about 95% working. There are a few issues, such as the empty cells showing up as white on both the base map and vegetation map and some of the newer tiles on the base map show up as black, but it should get the job done without completely remaking the cells from scratch. So all you should have to do is set CartoZed to load the Muldraugh, KY map from your game folder, pick one of these theme files, and then drag a box around the cells you want to export before hitting "Save as 2D PNG" at the bottom. Also I experienced an error with CartoZed when trying to load a second map after exporting the first, so it looks like you'll need to restart it after exporting the base map image before you can export the vegetation version.

WorldEd_BaseMap.txt 3.36 kB · 0 downloads WorldEd_VegetationMap.txt 1.17 kB · 0 downloads

this worked great..

 

I got it into WorldEd and exported from there.. came up with a lot of rogue colors though.. how important is it to change that? i know the tutorial says to fix em but just wondering..

Im guessing if an area I want to change was once dense forest I would have to go in on the image and make it dirt before hand?

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12 minutes ago, Zousug said:

this worked great..

 

I got it into WorldEd and exported from there.. came up with a lot of rogue colors though.. how important is it to change that? i know the tutorial says to fix em but just wondering..

Im guessing if an area I want to change was once dense forest I would have to go in on the image and make it dirt before hand?

I'm glad you finally got it to work! And yes, if you want to replace a forest, you can change the grass tiles to dirt or pavement in the base map. Just don't forget to paint black over the area in the vegetation map or you'll end up with trees growing in odd places.

 

Also about the rogue colors, yeah it's probably best practice to replace them, although from my experience they just show up as empty tiles in WorldEd/TileZed, and I would assume in-game they act like the black void you can't cross at the edge of the map. I couldn't figure out how to change the default color in the CartoZed themes (the defcol option didn't seem to change anything even though it was defined in the base themes), so you should replace the white areas with something else. Black works fine in the vegetation map since that just means there's no trees or grass there. For the base map, I use black in some of the cells around the edge of my map since it isn't perfectly rectangular and I don't recall getting errors about it, but it's probably better to use a valid color. There are probably some small areas of rogue tiles where buildings sit in the base game since CartoZed hasn't been updated to read the newer tiles (most recent version I could find was 2016), so any of the ones it missed got filled in with either black or white. From my testing it seemed that most of those problematic ones were up near Louisville.

 

If you're feeling adventurous, you could copy your texture .pack files from Zomboid/media/texturepacks to CartoZed/texturepacks and use TileZed's .pack browser to find the names of the newer tiles and add them to the base map theme file, but honestly it would just be faster to manually fill in the rogue colors with a valid one in your image editor. I think most image editors these days have a select/replace all by color option anyway.

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2 hours ago, chromarict said:

I'm glad you finally got it to work! And yes, if you want to replace a forest, you can change the grass tiles to dirt or pavement in the base map. Just don't forget to paint black over the area in the vegetation map or you'll end up with trees growing in odd places.

 

Also about the rogue colors, yeah it's probably best practice to replace them, although from my experience they just show up as empty tiles in WorldEd/TileZed, and I would assume in-game they act like the black void you can't cross at the edge of the map. I couldn't figure out how to change the default color in the CartoZed themes (the defcol option didn't seem to change anything even though it was defined in the base themes), so you should replace the white areas with something else. Black works fine in the vegetation map since that just means there's no trees or grass there. For the base map, I use black in some of the cells around the edge of my map since it isn't perfectly rectangular and I don't recall getting errors about it, but it's probably better to use a valid color. There are probably some small areas of rogue tiles where buildings sit in the base game since CartoZed hasn't been updated to read the newer tiles (most recent version I could find was 2016), so any of the ones it missed got filled in with either black or white. From my testing it seemed that most of those problematic ones were up near Louisville.

 

If you're feeling adventurous, you could copy your texture .pack files from Zomboid/media/texturepacks to CartoZed/texturepacks and use TileZed's .pack browser to find the names of the newer tiles and add them to the base map theme file, but honestly it would just be faster to manually fill in the rogue colors with a valid one in your image editor. I think most image editors these days have a select/replace all by color option anyway.

haha yeh dont want trees spawning in the base lol..

 

Ok ill go in and edit the image to change color and set my dirt area etc..

 

thank you for all your help

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2 hours ago, Zousug said:

haha yeh dont want trees spawning in the base lol..

 

Ok ill go in and edit the image to change color and set my dirt area etc..

 

thank you for all your help

You're welcome! Hopefully you won't run into any more problems going forward. :D

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On 1/3/2022 at 12:32 PM, chromarict said:

You're welcome! Hopefully you won't run into any more problems going forward. :D

So... ran into a issue...

 

the orig files i exported with that prog you gave me work fine.. but when i edit them to have the dirt road / ground for me to build on and save it i cant seem to import them again lol...

 

Compound and compound_veg are the orig.. compound2 and compound_veg2 are the edited ones... im sure i did something wrong but... using paint.net to edit the images..

any help would be great (and sorry)

 

Compound_veg.png

Compound.png

Compound_veg2.png

Compound2.png

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2 hours ago, Zousug said:

So... ran into a issue...

 

the orig files i exported with that prog you gave me work fine.. but when i edit them to have the dirt road / ground for me to build on and save it i cant seem to import them again lol...

 

Compound and compound_veg are the orig.. compound2 and compound_veg2 are the edited ones... im sure i did something wrong but... using paint.net to edit the images..

any help would be great (and sorry)

 

Compound_veg.png

Compound.png

Compound_veg2.png

Compound2.png

No worries! Also I figured out your problem. You're getting a bunch of rogue colors because you probably have anti-aliasing enabled, which blends the colors together, resulting in colors between grass and dirt that WorldEd doesn't recognize. I zoomed in on your road and noticed this:

1280608529_blendedpixels.thumb.png.6cb84bd9920e2fc9d7682a2667874a70.png

See how some of the pixels are a brownish green instead of being entirely brown or entirely green? That's the issue.

 

Here's a more clear example of what's happening:

anti-aliasing.thumb.png.15ed778154d0f12d5936ac3811796e47.png

 

As you can see with the top squiggle, it's trying to blend the new pixels into the old when anti-aliasing is enabled. If you disable it using the drop-down next to the brush fill type at the top, it draws like the bottom squiggle, which is what you want for WorldEd since it won't mess up your pixel colors.

 

If you don't have anti-aliasing enabled, then you might just not have your brush opacity (I think Paint.NET calls it hardness?) set to 100%, which means it isn't completely replacing the old pixels you draw over.

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On 1/3/2022 at 12:32 PM, chromarict said:

You're welcome! Hopefully you won't run into any more problems going forward. :D

 

 

ah ok ill give that a try thank you.. and sorry again i feel silly :( lol

Edited by Zousug
removed odd text
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16 minutes ago, Zousug said:

Ok so i re-did the images making sure anti-aliasing is off etc.. but still having the same issue, unable to drag it into worlded.. *really feeling stupid now lol*

 

these are the new edited images...

Compound_veg2.png

Compound2.png

What export settings are you using in Paint.NET? If I open the base map in GIMP, it says it's using an indexed color palette instead of standard RGB colors, which might be the problem.

 

Quick Edit: Try exporting in 32-bit mode instead of using auto if you are, that seems to default to 8-bit which loses precision.

 

Second Edit: I just realized you named your vegetation map Compound_veg2.png, but it should be Compound2_veg.png to match the base map being called Compound2.png. So that might be the problem and the indexed vs RGB color palettes might not be the issue after all.

Edited by chromarict
Added some info on export formats
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19 minutes ago, chromarict said:

What export settings are you using in Paint.NET? If I open the base map in GIMP, it says it's using an indexed color palette instead of standard RGB colors, which might be the problem.

 

Quick Edit: Try exporting in 32-bit mode instead of using auto if you are, that seems to default to 8-bit which loses precision.

 

Second Edit: I just realized you named your vegetation map Compound_veg2.png, but it should be Compound2_veg.png to match the base map being called Compound2.png. So that might be the problem and the indexed vs RGB color palettes might not be the issue after all.

wow... ok so i renamed the veg one and it works.. *face plams* ty for putting up with my annoying issues hahaha

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Just now, Zousug said:

wow... ok so i renamed the veg one and it works.. *face plams* ty for putting up with my annoying issues hahaha

Haha, don't worry about it. I made a couple mistakes when I first got into mapping recently too. Like I took a while to figure out I can't even import a map into WorldEd if I have no vegetation map at all. I just wanted to ignore vegetation and focus on the base map first and it took me almost a day to figure out I had to at least make a blank vegetation map to be allowed to import anything. It's a bit easy to overlook stuff in the official guide since it's so much useful info condensed into one really long forum post. I swear I've read the thing at least 10 times already trying to make sure I don't miss anything, but I'm sure there's something in there I'm still overlooking. :P

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7 hours ago, chromarict said:

Haha, don't worry about it. I made a couple mistakes when I first got into mapping recently too. Like I took a while to figure out I can't even import a map into WorldEd if I have no vegetation map at all. I just wanted to ignore vegetation and focus on the base map first and it took me almost a day to figure out I had to at least make a blank vegetation map to be allowed to import anything. It's a bit easy to overlook stuff in the official guide since it's so much useful info condensed into one really long forum post. I swear I've read the thing at least 10 times already trying to make sure I don't miss anything, but I'm sure there's something in there I'm still overlooking. :P

yeah iv read it a few times and still doing my head in *im trying to work out making new mod for items etc at same time*

One thing i dont remember reading.. how do i add outside items *I.e fence and gate* to the edge of the compound area?

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11 hours ago, Zousug said:

yeah iv read it a few times and still doing my head in *im trying to work out making new mod for items etc at same time*

One thing i dont remember reading.. how do i add outside items *I.e fence and gate* to the edge of the compound area?

You could make them part of your main building in BuildingEd or make them as a separate "building" consisting of only fences and gates. There's also a fence tool on the toolbar in TileZed I think that lets you draw a line of fence parts, but I'm not sure how to add a gate to it. I really haven't done much in TileZed besides use it to open BuildingEd and the tileset browser. I'm pretty sure TIleZed does have a mode that just lets you place any tiles for doors, furniture, etc. in it, but I haven't messed with it enough to figure it out yet.

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8 hours ago, chromarict said:

You could make them part of your main building in BuildingEd or make them as a separate "building" consisting of only fences and gates. There's also a fence tool on the toolbar in TileZed I think that lets you draw a line of fence parts, but I'm not sure how to add a gate to it. I really haven't done much in TileZed besides use it to open BuildingEd and the tileset browser. I'm pretty sure TIleZed does have a mode that just lets you place any tiles for doors, furniture, etc. in it, but I haven't messed with it enough to figure it out yet.

ah ok.. so i need to try and work out the size that dirt area is gonna be then -.- lol thanks... not sure how going find that out haaha

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15 minutes ago, Zousug said:

ah ok.. so i need to try and work out the size that dirt area is gonna be then -.- lol thanks... not sure how going find that out haaha

I was just about to tell you I had been poking around in TileZed when I got the notification saying you quoted me lol. It should be much easier than my earlier suggestions of either making the whole compound area one giant building or making separate buildings for each section of the fence. There's a fence tool on TileZed's toolbar that makes placing the fences super easy, but you'll have to go back and manually place the gates by selecting them in the Tileset browser in the lower right corner and clicking wherever you want to place them. They seem to all be located in the fixtures_doors_fences_01 tileset. If you draw them in the same layer, the gates should automatically replace the whatever fence section you place them on so it shouldn't break the entire fence.

 

I don't know if there's a "proper" layer to draw in since the only options in TileZed are floor, floor overlays, or vegetation. If you have issues with other tiles appearing through the fences or being completely replaced by them when they shouldn't be affected, you may have to paint them in a different layer. I noticed when using the street line painting tool, sometimes it would act weird and overwrite the automatic grass to road blend tiles unless I put the lines in TileZed's vegetation layer even though they aren't actually plants. It seems to work fine doing that as far as I can tell, and it shows up correctly in-game so I don't think there's anything wrong with doing it that way,

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14 hours ago, chromarict said:

I was just about to tell you I had been poking around in TileZed when I got the notification saying you quoted me lol. It should be much easier than my earlier suggestions of either making the whole compound area one giant building or making separate buildings for each section of the fence. There's a fence tool on TileZed's toolbar that makes placing the fences super easy, but you'll have to go back and manually place the gates by selecting them in the Tileset browser in the lower right corner and clicking wherever you want to place them. They seem to all be located in the fixtures_doors_fences_01 tileset. If you draw them in the same layer, the gates should automatically replace the whatever fence section you place them on so it shouldn't break the entire fence.

 

I don't know if there's a "proper" layer to draw in since the only options in TileZed are floor, floor overlays, or vegetation. If you have issues with other tiles appearing through the fences or being completely replaced by them when they shouldn't be affected, you may have to paint them in a different layer. I noticed when using the street line painting tool, sometimes it would act weird and overwrite the automatic grass to road blend tiles unless I put the lines in TileZed's vegetation layer even though they aren't actually plants. It seems to work fine doing that as far as I can tell, and it shows up correctly in-game so I don't think there's anything wrong with doing it that way,

oh cool ill check it out.

 

thank you ^.^

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