Need help with Map Editor

[Pangeas]

Thanks Ballbarian! I'll give it a shot and will post my successes and questions in the appropriate location

[Endoperez]

Visual borders aren't necessary for province neighbours, but the map editor can guess the correct neighbours better if the provinces' borders are drawn in red.

[Gandalf Parker]

some added notes:
Make sure to make the white "dots" only ONE pixel big. Dont let your paint program put a nice round dot on the province. It needs to be the absolute smallest size.

Doing the borders in red to let the program setup initial neighbors can be handy. But dont sweat it if you hate the look. You can change the border colors to anything you want when you upload the map for others to play on (in fact, you can even delete them completely)

[lch]

Endoperez said:
Visual borders aren't necessary for province neighbours, but the map editor can guess the correct neighbours better if the provinces' borders are drawn in red.

I call shenanigans. Red province borders might help a human to recognize them easier, but it would certainly surprise me to see that it had any effect on the map editor. It just looks for white dots. The neighbor finding algorithm seems to be VERY basic, from what I've seen in tests: Draw a circle around a province dot. Connect all other white dots inside the circle as neighbors. So there is a hell lot of possible improvement. I've got Python code to accurately find province neighbors from map files on non-wrapped maps, plain Delaunay triangulation. I was about to extend it to handle wrapped maps, but then other things took over and I didn't complete it. Is there interest in the Python code?

[Gandalf Parker]

Johan has said that the Dom3 internal tool for map editing does prefer red borders for more logical recognition of neighbors. Apparently it does not have to be completely red (255 0 0) but I didnt play with it to find the limits.

But the game-play program does not use borders at all.

[Endoperez]

What Gandalf said. I haven't tested it, but I've heard red is supposed to help.

[lch]

You live to learn. If it comes from JK then I guess that it's a reliable source. I'm still in favor of Delaunay, though.

[Ballbarian]

I can confirm that this is the case and I have even emulated it in my own neighbor finding algorithm.