3D Map Question

[ezjax]

Kind of have a unusual non game play question dealing with 3D graphics in particular the way Mansions or Single buildings are rendered on the 3D Map. What I am seeing on the 3D map is Single buildings (Mansions) from the 3DFeatures tile sheet, don’t fall squarely in the Hex that they are drawn in, they seem to randomly drop around the hex, but the Town graphics from the same tile sheet do render squarely within the Hex. I don’t See this happen in the Nap Games and my question is this correct in the civil game.
The following picture may help explain my question better. On the 3DFeatures tile sheet I replaced the pictures of buildings with Colored hex’s. So in the picture the white hex’s you see are Mansions being drawn and the blue and red hex’s are towns. As you can see all the town graphics are drawn squarely in the Hex but Mansions are all around the hex and in this sample even on top of town hex‘s. Why does this differ from the Nap games.

 

[krmiller_usa]

I'm not as familar with the Nappy games but I have done considerable study on the ACW games and even made some maps for Corinth prior to the map and oob files being locked. In the ACW games the towns are part of the terrain map tiles. The mansions, cabins etc are part of the Locations section of the map file. These are bmp pics that are overlayed on the map, they have a see through mask so that the terrain below shows through. I'm not really sure how the building are referenced to the location name but I know the building and the name have the same reference point. For example from Antietam, the gaps to manassas map here is a location line.

23.5045 20.0625 0 0 7 T. Eacher

This line indicates the location is at column 23.5045, row 20.0625
The text font size is 0 and the text is left justified by the second 0
The 7 indicates the text is in black and the bmp in position 4 (7-3) will be used for this location. For a more complete explanation of these lines see the map section of http://www.acwgc.org/ACWCO_Engineering/

If you look at this location you will see +T. Eacher on the map. This is because the text is left justified by the 0, if it was right justified (2) you would see T. Eacher+ on the map. In both cases the + will be in the same spot on the building and this part of the building will be located at the column/row position in the line. I'm guessing this denotes the center of the picture and will vary from one building to another. So by modifying the numbers after the decimal point you can move the building around in the hex.

Hope this explains why the buildings are not always centered in the hex.

 

[ezjax]

Hey, Thanks for the detailed answer, helped me understand a little more about the game Mechanics.

Anyway I was looking into maybe making some 3D Mods but I was seeing the buildings dropping oddly on 3D map and was hoping it was just me.

Thanks