Comments - rascalnag

That sounds like a conflict between the font of this mod and the font of CWE. You can delete the font in this mod's folder and then CWE should take over with its font, which should fix the problem. If not, it would at least rule out this mod causing it.

Sorry for the back and forth, but I neglected to consider that there would still need to be multiple plugins to account for each de-alpha'd colormap. What I suggest instead is simply deleting the colormap_water.dds file in the /map/terrain folder in the mod version you are using - that will cause it to default to the normal, de-alpha'd colormap_water.dds and remove all contouring. In full, go to:

<your Victoria II folder>/mod/<version of BC you play with>/map/terrain/colormap_water.dds and delete that file. Sorry for the confusion, just want to avoid making a bunch of slightly different plugins to do the same thing.

Actually, wait, forget that nonsense, unless you want to go that route. I can just make a watermap without anything in the alpha channel, which is what I use to generate the contour. No alpha info, no contour, and that can be a simple plugin I can post. I'll make it tomorrow!

So, this isn't something that would fit nicely into a plugin since it would require changes to the water.fx file, which would then overwrite any sea color plugins (or vice versa). But if you want to get rid of the contouring, you just need to make a couple quick edits to the gfx/FX/water.fx file in the version you are using (or just the color plugin if you are also using one of those). So that would be Victoria 2/mod/<Belle Cartographie or Plugin>/gfx/FX/water.fx. I recommend using some editor to see line numbers (Notepad++ is great) but you can manage without it.

If you are using the dark sea plugin, go to that file and delete lines 503 and 504. If you are using the blue plugin or no plugin at all, go to the file in the blue plugin or main mod version you're using and delete lines 496 and 497.

Lastly, regardless of which version you are editing, you'll see this not far below those lines you just deleted:

return OutColor * saturate(contour_darken * 0.6 + 0.4);

change that to:

return OutColor;

That's all! Just save the file and start the game with the selected mods you normally would it should work without contouring. Technically speaking, you could get away with just the last change to that return statement. But it's better practice to get rid of the stuff on lines 467 & 497|503 & 504 so there's not useless old code sitting there running for no reason.

Apologies for the long wait. You only need to select one version in the launcher. If you are playing HPM activate that one in the launcher, if HFM then do that one, and if vanilla just pick the normal one. If you are playing with a mod that uses an HPM/HFM/Vanilla map, then you can also pick the corresponding version of this and it should work fine. Just don't activate more than one at a time and be aware that the non-flat version will overwrite custom terrain textures with parallax enabled ones. Lastly, you can pick one of the plugins and activate one at a time alongside whichever version of the main mod you are using.

Sorry for the delay. It should be compatible, since that uses a vanilla map. To install, just download the latest version and move the contents of that file to your Victoria II/mod folder. You can find this by going to your steam library, right clicking on Victoria II and going to Properties->Local Files->Browse. If you want, you can put the contents of one of the plugins in the same folder as the rest of the mods. Then in the launcher pick the vanilla version of Belle Cartographie and whichever plugin you wanted.

Sorry for the late response. You only need the latest version, then you can add one of the plugins if you want. Then just pick the HFM version in the launcher.

Yes, though the quality of that combination depends on how the map used by the mod compares to the version of this you activate with it. If the Modern Age uses one of vanilla, HPM or HFM’s map, then when activated alongside the corresponding version of this, it will work perfectly. But if it alters the continents/islands, the contours will no longer match to the coasts and become unsightly. But it won’t hurt to activate it and try! You can also activate the dark or blue plugin in addition if you like, but that’s optional.

Years ago I remember using this mod to prettify my first SoC play through, absolutely fantastic! Glad to see there’s work on it continuing. I had a question about its compatibility with other stalker titles and modifications - do you know if it would play nice with the upgraded X-ray monolith engine Anomaly uses? I was interested in trying to bringing some of this into Anomaly. Just personal tinkering though, don’t intend to release anything. Thanks for any info!

It depends, does your mod use the Vanilla, HPM, or HFM map? If it does, then there should be no problem using the corresponding version of this mod, otherwise the contours will not match up. Just note that if you use custom terrain texture sheets that the non-flat version will overwrite them with vanilla, parallax enabled textures. Other than that, as long as I'm credited (just a mention of this mod and my username will suffice) feel free to use it :)

Either one of the dark or blue plugins can be activated alongside the HPM version of the mod.

Unfortunately the over-map cannot be separated into a standalone shader - the contours are generated by referencing a gradient of transparency that radiates from the coastlines on the colormap_water.dds, which I have to do manually in image editing software for any mod with different coastlines/islands/continents. The parallax and shadow effects also rely on information outside the shader, as they use a heightmap I've encoded into the alpha channel of the vanilla terrain texturesheets. It's a better candidate for a standalone since the worst that happens is, in the case of a mod like GFM which replaces the texturesheets with their own version, you just overwrite that with the vanilla texturesheets with the alpha channel. But because I need to include those .tga files, it can't be a perfect standalone shader mod. And if I reduced it to the flat version, then it would basically be an identical package to the standalone shader file available on MMMM right now. I definitely would like to find a way to make some aspects of the mod more separable so I don't have to do as much work to reproduce it for other mods, but I don't have a good solution for that at the moment.

If blood and iron's map is the same as vanilla's, HPM's or HFM's map, there should be no problem, otherwise the contour effect may not match up well. Also, if there's different texturesheets for the terrain types in Blood and Iron, you should use the flat version of the mod.

Another person had a similar problem and was able to resolve it by deleting the cache folder in Documents/Paradox Interactive/Victoria II/HPM/map - could you try this and start the game with the mods enabled again (Would just be HPM, plus one of either the flat or normal HPM version of this mod, and optionally one of the dark or blue plugins)? If it doesn't work after that, please let me know any details of how it is crashing/not working. Thanks!

PoP usa un mapa que es similar al mapa de vainilla, así que creo que la versión de vainilla de este mod funcionará. (Espero que mi gramática sea aceptable, utilicé mis conocimientos de francés con el Traductor de Google porque pensé que Google traduciría un idioma romance mejor que el inglés.)

At what point does it stop working - during loading or later? If it happens during loading there’s probably an issue in the shader the slipped under the radar and it’ll be a quick fix, will need to do some digging otherwise.

Thank you!

Are you able to link an image of the problem on imgur? Also, what's your full mod setup look like, and which version of this mod did you use (both in terms of number version and normal/opaque/flat etc)?

No problem! Glad it's no longer giving you trouble!

No problem!

For all users with AMD cards, first of all, apologies for the problems you have been experiencing. Secondly, I believe I have a fix for those problems! Turns out my sloppiness with setting shader compiler targets came back to bite me - mixing vs_1_1 with ps_3_0 is silently converted to avoid problems on my Nvidia card, but AMD cards don't cover up my mess and the shader just gets disabled, causing the invisible map as seen in the first reporting comment. I have changed the vs_1_1 to vs_3_0 to match the ps_3_0 now, and will have the fix up for you all soon! Thank you for the initial report and system spec info benito, it was invaluable!

Definitely seems like an AMD specific problem at this point. WIll plug in my old AMD card and see what happens!

Not sure if you receive notifications of any kind for your guest post, but if you can, could you share your specs? I've managed to find a few people dealing with the same bug and am trying to establish a pattern that might contribute to it. Thank you for any info!

Doing some tests now.

Looking into this now!

Full versions with parallax are compatible with any mod that does not change the terrain texturesheets. Check the other mod's map/terrain folder; if it has a texturesheet.tga and texturesheet2.tga that are different than the one in the vanilla, victoria ii/map/terrain folder, then you will have to get the Flat variant of the mod. HPM, for instance, does not change these textures and is fully compatible with my mod. I'm not sure about pop.

Hmmm, I'm not sure if it's possible. It may be that a larger flag texture in gfx/flags to start with will mitigate the problem. When it comes to the rendering pipeline, I unfortunately only have access to the shader files and the texture loading is not handled there, only sampling from already loaded and compressed textures, and the flag.fx shader does not have anything in it that would suggest it is being degraded in quality there. I'll look around but I don't currently have any leads as to what might be able to fix it.

I've uploaded the opaque version; hopefully it matches what you wanted!

Okay, I'll try to have a version of it up this weekend then! :)

Do you mean *with* an opaque map, basically the more vibrant look but without terrain? It wouldn't be too difficult, just would require some tweaking of the shader. I'd have to add an alternate version of the mod to the page, but that's no big deal. I can work on it this weekend if that's the kind of map you want.