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Land

Land is pretty simple. It covers the land surface and the sea floor. Shaders for this are standard opaque shaders, no need to get out WDump to check. All land is contained in livingmap.w3d .Original LWM subobjects are:
              

Code

LM_01, LM_02, LM_03, LM_04, LM_05, LM_06, LM_07, LM_08, LM_09, LM_10, LM_11, LM_12

The land is split into such a set of objects because extremely high vertex counts and large textures make SAGE choke. Therefore, EA split them up. Each subobject corresponds to a .dds file that can be found in Textures.big (livingmap01.dds to livingmap12.dds).

In terms of replicating this, there are a couple things to pay attention to

• Armies on the map cannot vary their z-height. Therfore everywhere you want armies to path on the map should be at equal elevation
  
• The map edge extents control, to some extent, the camera zoom. If possible, stick to EA's original rectangular world, as the viewing is optimized for it.
  
• Ocean borders. Though this is discussed more extensively on the following page, the ocean object is seperate from the land object and has distinctly different shaders and textures. Therefore, plan your coastline to have a minimum of fjords and the like. If you want your map to look as good as EA's your coastline has to be defined by the mesh, and defining, say, Norway's coast by mesh would need thousands of polys.
  
• Depth: the map object with the lowest z-extent will define the object placement grid for armies and regions. Though you can easily offset this in code, it's a good thing to keep in mind.
  

Land Code

Specifying a new living map in code is relatively easy. In livingworld.ini, find the following code
              

Code

MapObject = LivingMap

And replace with the name of your W3D.

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