4.259 Map Making [SOLVED]

[stormrider_sp]

22 minutes ago, cata said:

Well almost, problem is it keeps repeating. After adding a few more roads, say four, im faced with the same issue. Yet it's not so clean cut, on the next try it might work and i can save to a Delta map, then after which hight maps cannot be saved again etc.  After only a few Ks of road, i cannot imagine what would be required to make a full map.  Sometimes while trying to save the program will hang "Saving XNT" and become unresponsive. All said and done i was unable to keep working on this map, perhaps map making is not within range of everyones hardware.  It appears to be beyond my scope, whether its the considerable amount of HD space required or understanding how these maps work. But very soon it becomes unworkable and the frustration threshold is reached.   

I found that sometimes, when it appears to hang, it's still processing and can take time to finish.

 

My suggestion that you try to do as much of the work outside of steel beasts map editor, in a GIS program and then only the essential work is done in-game. If like me, you are a low tier user and can't import the data yourself, it's like map editing blindly PBEM style, but it works if you have someone with the pro version and the patience to keep up with you. Also, having a good initial data is very important because it minimizes the amount of post-import work that you need to do and allows you to spend most of the time in GIS, which is more friendly and more forgiving than the current SB UI. Don't waste your time if your initial data is not good enough. I'm talking about good heightmap resolution of at least 5m and at least some fairly accurate vector data. This means that you should limit your expectations to the maps that you can do from the maps that you wish to do because of the data availability.

 

[stormrider_sp]

15 minutes ago, Splash said:

At the risk of, as Twain said, opening my mouth and removing all doubt ...

Have you tried "save as existing" since freeing up disc space?

Maybe I'm not understanding your method exactly, but it sounds like you're creating a new delta with each save? I can understand how that would let you return to a certain earlier "save point" if you're unhappy with a series of changes ... but wouldn't it also create a bunch of very, very large unpublished delta versions on your drive?

 

I've been experimenting with modifying a map (leveling all the roads, changing bridges, flattening under structures, adding lots of roadsigns & infrastructure) and everything saves fine when I use "save as existing". I've only been working on that one map, but saved over it many, many, many times that way as the project progressed. I eventually got it to a state where I "published" it, which reduced the size, but I know I can still make changes by creating another delta from it and editing that one (again using "save as existing" to limit the project to just one humongous file at a time). 

 

Edit: Full disclosure, I do have over 300 GB of free space, although I didn't think that was a huge amount..

 

I'm also very storage limited, specially in my SSD and I think that the delta method is the best in terms of space management. If you are doing many earth works, everytime you save as existing, I think you're only increasing the size of the unpublished map. On the other hand, if after a few modifications or so, you publish the map and creates a new delta, you're effectively compressing the previous data. Idk if the new delta will decompress all the previous work while working on the current delta tho, so I might be wrong.

 

Talking about compression, it's incredible how much a heightmap format like ASC can be compressed. To give an example, on a map I'm working, using 7zip and maximum compression, a 60x60km area went from 27Gbs to about 4.5Gbs split into 3 archives.

Edited April 21, 2021 by stormrider_sp

[Splash]

10 minutes ago, stormrider_sp said:

If you are doing many earth works, everytime you save as existing, I think you're only increasing the size of the unpublished map. On the other hand, if after a few modifications or so, you publish the map and creates a new delta, you're effectively compressing the previous data.

 

Understood. I guess a better question I could have asked was whether cata is publishing his deltas or allowing them to accumulate as unpublished deltas.

[Ssnake]

Every delta that is not published eats the full amount of storage space (50 GByte or so) if high resolution terrain data are involved (road leveling, flattening under buildings). Only when being published does the data compression kick in. So if you habitually save everything under a new name, make sure to publish the result at the beginning of a new editing session, (and now go and check for every unpublished map on your harddisk and publish them, even if they are work in progress. At some point you will probably want to delete all the published intermediary delta maps, of course.

 

Our own work showed that the best practice is to give maps in progress a combination of serial number (e.g. Desert Island 1.0 if it is a base map) and each Delta increment a letter. If you later want to clean up you know that "Desert Island 1.0a" to "...g" can be safely deleted and you keep "Desert Island 1.0h" and possibly save that as a new base map "Desert Island 1.1" if you want to branch off in two directions with the map development, e.g. by turning it into "Desert Island (Winter)1.1" or whatever.

[cata]

67GB on the HD still, maps stored on external drive lots of room there. So i purged the few map copies i had, the base map was 7GBs and the last remaining Delta became a new base map.  I published it, made a new Delta and since then its been working fine, im able to edit. Not all together sure what i did thats different but it has worked so far. Thanks for everyones patience and input on this appreciate it.  

[Rotareneg]

NTFS compression works extremely well on those files, so if you're going to be doing height adjustments on a map you might consider turning compression on for that folder. An 7.6 GB .hnt file created from leveling a couple roads on a map compressed down to 952 KB.

[Ssnake]

...and it will be similar in size once published on non-compressed NTFS drives. The compression ratio will however depend on the amount of changes (if every elevation point were to be modified with a more or less random value, no compression would be possible; typically however most of the terrain remains unchanged except under buildings and along roads).

[Lumituisku]

On 4/21/2021 at 10:40 AM, Ssnake said:

Every delta that is not published eats the full amount of storage space (50 GByte or so) if high resolution terrain data are involved (road leveling, flattening under buildings). Only when being published does the data compression kick in. So if you habitually save everything under a new name, make sure to publish the result at the beginning of a new editing session, (and now go and check for every unpublished map on your harddisk and publish them, even if they are work in progress. At some point you will probably want to delete all the published intermediary delta maps, of course.

 

Our own work showed that the best practice is to give maps in progress a combination of serial number (e.g. Desert Island 1.0 if it is a base map) and each Delta increment a letter. If you later want to clean up you know that "Desert Island 1.0a" to "...g" can be safely deleted and you keep "Desert Island 1.0h" and possibly save that as a new base map "Desert Island 1.1" if you want to branch off in two directions with the map development, e.g. by turning it into "Desert Island (Winter)1.1" or whatever.

Umm won't there be problem with saving multiple names "desert map 1.X"

 

I understood in past that it can happen that file reading happens before dots in scenario files. Isnt that same way with maps?if there's multiple "desert maps 1.X" wouldn't that potentially mess some up on saving progress as may happen with scenarios? Wouldn't just "1X" be best solution?  Without dot.

 

I Lost scenarios to this. I don't want same to happen to others especially with maps

 

 

 

Edited April 23, 2021 by Lumituisku

[Ssnake]

Windows has become more robust with dots in file names, but of course you don't have to use them. Use a dash instead if that makes you more comfortable.