HOW TO: create a historical scenario

[brunom]

After a few creations, I have more or less developed a production-streamline to create historical scenarios. That's the kind of scenarios I like creating - historically and geographically accurate - depicting areas of the world previously inexistent in the archives of Hawk's extraordinary site (this one).

For a few months now, I've been grooming the thought of posting the whole "idea to finished product" process in one thread (sort of a development blog) in this forum.

Hence, this post.. which should really be titled "post #0". Just an intro to what follows.

Hope you readers enjoy.
B

[brunom]

STEP 1
Coming up with an original idea.

I have been attempting (not single-handedly, since there are other European contributers) to even up things a little bit at the archives in terms of EU maps vs US maps. We are trailing behind seriously, but since the geography of Europe is so varied and the sheer number of countries allow for a lot of "national narratives" there is a lot of stuff to work from. Europe also contained two massive wars in the 20th century, which provide flavor for a historical scenario if one wants.

Recently, I worked on a scenario about the eastern area of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and that led my attention to the Balkans, Greece and Turkey. There is already a map of the Balkans in the archives, but none covering Greece (Turkey is only slightly covered in the Orient Express and Express D'Orient maps but will be another project.. later.. perhaps).

Hence the decision to make a scenario for Greece. Next stop, learning a little bit of history and geography on the place.

[brunom]

STEP 2
Geography.

The sort of knowledge concerning Geography that will be needed to create a scenario is two-folded. First, there is the terrain geography. I pretty much sort this very quickly using an Internet source for height maps. Height maps will later need to be worked on using image-editing software, and only after that I can upload them to use in the RRT3 editor. Secondly, there is human geography - that's learning about agriculture, mineral resources, cities and industries in a country. This will be a worry much later, not right now. But I keep my attention focused in the region from now on - everything becomes of interest.

For now, I limit myself to find the appropriate maps and download them. I always use this site:
http://srtm.csi.cgiar.org/index.asp

The files from this source are huge and will take some time to download...

[brunom]

STEP 3
Basic History

Wikipedia is my best friend when it comes to scenario making... This post is about using it. Since I have already searched around when making other scenarios, I learnt a few "key-words" that always work.

The first search needs to be "Railways Greece". From the result, I immediately found out a time-line for the real-life development of those railways. From the article, I made my first decision concerning the scenario - its starting date is going to be 1857. (I went to rename the folder where the SRTM files are stored now to "Greece 1857", this is the name of the project now)

1857 is a perfect date since I know there was a war involving the Balkans which ended around this date (wikipedia just backed me up on this one). Therefore, I will start the scenario at the signing of the truce. Because I am going back over 150 years from present, I have created myself a problem: "where where the borders at that time?".
There is another site I have found from searches for previous scenarios and that lies in my favorites in the rrt3 section: It's the David Rumsey Historical Maps Collection. I'm going to post the link with the result for the search "Greece 1857", which was the one really useful to me at this point.
http://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet ... rch=Search

It was SO COOL to find maps dated as close as 1854. I am definitely on to something here... I downloaded the 1854 one in the best format possible. This will be very handy to place and name towns that are historical accurate. It also clarifies really well the borders for the start of the scenario. Which raises a problem... Greece by then was a smaller country than present times and some key industrial areas were still Ottoman (Thessaloniki in the north of Greece is a big industrial region, I thought it had always been a part of Greece). Apparently, I need to learn more about the history - basically, in which dates did the borders expand.

Wikipedia as a resource again: from article to article, I found myself in this one
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek–Turkish_relations

From that article, I read that in 1881 two new regions will become part of Greece (maybe automatically opening to the player, maybe not, that's to be decided much later - 1881 is 24 years into playtime). A later addition of territory will happen in 1919 (end of the World War - 62 years of playtime, too much I reckon). If I want to make it such a long scenario, maybe I could finish the scenario a couple of years after that 19120, forcing the player for a late game rush to cover the "conquered" territory with railways - but, again, that's a later decision.

For now, I know a bit more of Greece's XIXth century history - it's time to turn that height map into a RRT3 map.

[brunom]

STEP 4
Microdem

Microdem is the name of a program that is fundamental to turn the super detailed height map used by geographers and other scientists into a simplified terrain to incorporate in RRT3. It's free to download and I suppose it is huge for all kinds of land science. I stick to a basic routine and probably exploit only 1% of what the program is capable of, then export the map as a gray scale image. Here's my "three step job":

1. Import the DEM file I downloaded (see earlier post) as a 2048x2048 map. I found that it works better to specify map size beforehand (that's even prior to the import action) - and the size should be larger than the actual map I want to create later on, but not so big as to stall my laptop (Microdem does a lot of math in the background, I gather)

2. Secondly I modify elevation values. It simplifies the whole thing and allows for merging of more than one DEM file as images later on(very rarely will a country or region be totally within the same DEM file). It is important to make it gray scale and it is EXTRA important that all files to be merged share the same max and min height values.

3. I export the files as GEOTIFF, gray scale, from Microdem and import them into a image-editing software. It's important to be a program that can save in Targa format (.tga), since it's the only format the RRT3 Editor can understand. Both PaintShopPro and TheGimp will do that, possibly other programs do too. After importing all four DEMS that cover Greece and around, doing a little bit of merging, pasting and cropping, this is my final height map in gray scale:

I save it as targa format, uncompressed (MUST be uncompressed) and 24-bit. That's it... this is now ready to go into RRT3.

[brunom]

STEP 5
Importing the map

Finally, it's time to start RRT3 and get into the Editor. I always get to this step very quickly and to be honest, sometimes it's the last step I end up doing. There's a few ideas, almost forgotten, stored in my computer, that are hanging around this stage. Creating a scenario is much more than just getting a topographic map "sort of" right. You need to have ideas for a plot, a local economy which more or less suits the cargo types allowed in RRT3, the ability to program events in the editor and the ability to paint the map with nice looking colors. I'll state right away that that last ability is my handicap everytime!

Importing the map is sort of the kick off for the real thing!

The editor will ask a few questions when importing.. height modifier, mountains/flatlands modifier, smoothing modifier, actual map size. As a rule, I specify smoothing to 3 or 4. The other variables vary from case to case. In this particular one, since Greece is very mountainous, I made mountains less high, for playability. However, it is always possible to change the overall height or specifically mountain heights in the editor, and on most cases, it's necessary, so it ain't much of a problem at this point.

Once the editor ends uploading the map, it has height correct, but no idea what's land and what's ocean. You got to "paint the ocean area", using the bucket option, and then paint that area with an ocean color, using again the bucket option. My end result was this:

I am not going to get very detailed about using the editor. In this post or in any of the ones to come.. sure there are a few details I'm skipping, there were also a few in the previous posts. But the point is to show the process, not to teach the deails. I really suggest, if you are using this thread to learn how to make a map, to side it with all you can get from Hawk's site as well, using this part in particular:
http://hawkdawg.com/rrt/rrt3/Xtras/Tips_Tuts_Utils.htm

[brunom]

STEP 6
Plotting cities and rivers

If you don't like geography, this will be a long and boring task. In this map in particular, since I know little about Greek geography (I know 10x more now than I did a couple of days before, but even so...), it was really difficult to lay all the significant towns.

I mean, after the first look at wikipedia and CIA map (https://www.cia.gov/library/publication ... te_gr.html), I knew a few key cities. But a scenario needs more than the few large cities that appear in that map. I normally use google earth to pinpoint cities (actually, I use the online version more often - that's maps.google.com), and in case of doubt, I look for the list of cities in wikipedia, to find out current population.

However, as I decided before, this scenario is set to start in 1857. That's way back and prior to industrial revolution in this part of the world. Hence, some modern cities were mere hamlets at the time, and important market towns of the time may have not developed into significant urban centers nowadays. This is where the 1854 map I fetched early comes to hand.. by comparing that one with current maps, I arrived to a conclusion - I was going to mark all cities whose names are written in caps in the old map, and only those (alright, maybe plus one or two). Greece is very mountainous and large chunks of the map will seem uninhabited, but that's life!

While laying the cities, I also plot the main rivers. In this map I am going to delete them later, since I found out they were never navigable, and afterwards paint over their courses to make it "look like a river". However placing the rivers helps with getting geographical references to lay the cities correctly and it also adds some variation to the repetitive task of "find city in map" -> "get geographical references as to where to plot" -> "plot and check spelling of city name" -> "correct spelling of city name" -> "next city" -> "and again, and again"...

During this part, we end up running the map up and down numerous times. I start to get the feel of what the scenario is going to be about, and in this case, I am pretty sure it will be a challenge to lay track, specially to reach the northwest. I really understand why the Greeks are one of the greatest shipping nations in the world - it looks so much easier to sail AROUND those darrn peninsulas than to travel through..

dev_blog_img09.jpg (21.37 KiB) Viewed 5882 times

This is how the map looks at this stage (edit: not quite... I corrected the location of a town in the north, and added another already ). It seems light a topographic map because I applied OilCan's technique on it (see his detailed "how to" guide). Having the map with a "topography look" is really handy when it comes to identify the accurate spot for a city, because you can locate a mountain base, the center of a valley or another geographical reference way easier.

[brunom]

STEP 7
Creating a working economy

The most important aspect of a scenario is that is contains a working and balanced economy. This means having resources available for the selected industries, goods produced having sufficient demand and factories being located close enough to raw materials and markets to be profitable. At the same time, over-plentiful resources or a gigantic market will make the game easy to play, since every enterprise becomes what people around here likes to call "cash cows". It takes some experience to create an economy that is just balanced, and the more playtime you can boast for yourself the better. It also helps to use the brain a little bit, of course.

I like to have my scenarios as realistic as possible and because of that, there needs to be some investment put into research. By now you might have gathered that wikipedia is the main source of info. However, from time to time, I resort to a "second best friend", which is the CIA database. I used it before already (see post 6), but in this particular step (and in this particular setting) I found another gem in there:

This map is actually from 1973, but I will still base my spawning of raw materials in it. I don't think forests, farmland and barren land used for grazing have moved about very much in 80 years. Twin to this map is another with the main industries.

So, once I apply this information to my map, I end up with a draft of a working economy. Of course, it won't work perfectly at this point, but it gives me a general idea "based in reality". I still need to work out some issues - namely, availability of Iron and/or steel, which I think I will "import" via the main harbors of Patrai, Piraeus (Athens) and Thessaloniki. I also haven't seeded any coal mines, although Greece has several lignite fields - I want to investigate when were those fields discovered and first commercially explored, and make them pop at those exact dates. This, though, is for future work.
I normally save my progress naming files from 99 to 00 (if we work in decreasing numbers, the top of the list corresponds to the more recent save - I also picked up this technique from an expert in this forum, but unfortunately I can't remember who now, so credit goes "uncredited" in this detail) and I add a comment to them, when it is a stepping stone one. Here's my save list as I finished this step:

[brunom]

STEP 8
First train in the scenario

To be completely honest, sometimes I run a train even earlier than this. When in doubt, I start the map in sandbox mode and lay some track. That helps me to understand the terrain a little better, and specifically to try out mountain passes and the like. In this map, however, I didn't do that, so this step is truly "the first train over here".

Having decided to follow that initial idea on importing steel in the main harbors, I went and placed those ports by hand. Sometimes, when it comes to ports and warehouses, it's better to plant them like this, specially when they are a key source of raw materials. Then I decided to add ports in all village towns (basically, any town with coast, in Greece, is a fishing village) - these will supply small amounts of goods (which in this scenario I consider both "fish" and "contraband") and demand lumber (for the fishing boats).

Bottom line is that, at this point, the map is "playable". It still isn't a scenario - for that to become a reality it still needs the territories to be defined and access to them programmed into events. It also needs to have a ledger (status page) and win conditions defined and programmed. Basically, it needs ALL the programming... but it's a nice draft of what is to become. Normally, this version isn't still posted in this forum, but because this thread is a "developer blog", here is a "econ to test" version of Greece 1857.

[Hawk]

I finally took the time to read this whole thread. Very interesting!
Good looking map too, even in its infancy.

[brunom]

(thanks for the thumbs up, Hawk)

NOT-A-STEP

One of the things that annoys me the most in the editor is that the oceans/lakes paint cannot be undone, unlike the color paint. What you can see in the image below is the unfortunate result of a misclick. When this happens, the map basically turns to trash, and this is the main reason why a map creator REALLY needs to save often.

dev_blog_img11.jpg (24.44 KiB) Viewed 3690 times

This time in particular I was looking for a depression in the northwest part of the map, as I noticed a lake was supposed to be somewhere in there - that lake is part of the border between Greece and Albania - I was painting borders... To find a depression and paint it, I had the "fill-under-given-height" tool, and, suddenly, it all became a huge lake. I must have clicked to fill with the mouse pointing at a mountain top... the result was dramatic. I think I raised the sea level some 2000 m !!

This post isn't about progress in the scenario. Lol, it's about retrogress
However, while it isn't noticeable in the messed-up-map I post here, I reviewed some cities placement and included more locations. That was the result of my first "game" in this map, where I found that cities were too spread out and in low numbers. Even so, I am very content with the result so far. The map is enjoyable to play, the mountains are "passable" and the economy is fine. It needs tuning, of course, but so far so good.

B

[brunom]

STEP 9
A beta version...

So, once the economy is tuned well enough and I played once or twice in the map, still event-free, I get down to programming. Playing the map once or twice is really useful because it's how I come to understand the "natural" conditions of the map, which is to say, how easy/hard it is to make money.
Of course, other players will fare much better, some won't do as well, but since I consider myself an average player, I like to use my own performance as guiding for this.

In this map, money flows rather easily, specially if the player owns industry in Athens. That raised a problem: the scenario will run for roughly 60 years, which means most companies will be wealthy beyond reason way before time runs up and territories will open up at historically accurate dates, meaning I can't take away that money from the players as they want to expand (normally, high entrance fees into new territories can sort this problem).
So, I needed a way around this... which I found based on the fact that Greece was poor and not industrialized in the 19th century. I'll keep cargo production lower than normal, make track and locomotives much more expensive (all steel is imported in this map, so it makes sense!) - This will delay the player. Hopefully, that and the historical framework will keep him/her busy instead of bored.

Having decided that, I went again to wikipedia and looked for a history timeline. It exists... perfectly laid down to my needs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_o ... ek_history
It's a personal taste of mine, to include historical entries and, whenever possible, to make them significant to gameplay. In this case, local history was rich enough and I didn't look for worldwide news (international stuff as the American civil war, the Eiffel tower, communism in Russia, big natural catastrophes, etc spring to mind).

In this post I won't attach the present version of development. That's because what there is at the moment is already playable - playable enough to get some help from the community in here, at least.. When that happens, I send it for review/testing in the appropriate forum, hence this thread: viewtopic.php?f=25&t=2898