Any way to make a custom map?

[Saravanth]

Is that possible? If so, how? What did the devs use to make this one/the previous one?

[Hatsune Neko Gaming]

it is possible but also not. modding the map is by no means easy or easy to explain.

[Saravanth]

I believe you that. But go ahead, Mr. Joestar. I'm listening.

I'd be more interested in creating it mostly from scratch, as I assume the devs did. Do you know at least what programs they used for it?

[Shidan]

The main factor is the "fullmap.tif" file located in the Kenshi\data\newland\land folder. That's the heightmap that governs the actual shape of the terrain. I don't know what the devs used to edit it, so far I've only seen users edit it through an image editor. I'm sure there is software to do so though.

But that will only govern the shape. You've also got to mess with the spawn areas in the FCS as well as "areasmap.tga" file, the biomes in the FCS and the "biomemap.png" file, overlaymap files, foliage spawning in the FCS, weather and seasons, the road system, etc. And that's without even getting into populating the world with towns and NPCs.

And even then you cannot upload the mod through standard means, as many of these files cannot be read from the mod folder. So installation will require users to overwrite base game files, which is far from ideal.

Long story short, you've got to edit tons of different areas of the game, some of which were never made to be edited by modders and don't handle well. Essentially everyone who has looked into it has concluded that it's way more effort than it's worth.

[Saravanth]

Bloody oof. Okay, yeah, I can see how all that'd be quite... janky. Thanks for replying

[alfblack]

oh dang. I am sad devs didnt support that aspect of modding.

[VanillaLover]

You can remove npcs, towns, roads and foliage. You can change spawn areas' names, change biomes' weather, sky color, basic terrain type, resources etc.

So you can basically clear the map and recreate it as you see fit, only things that'll remain are altitude, shape, spawn area borders and biome borders which you can mix and match and connect as you see fit. The biggest issue I have is the ground color, which I didn't yet find a way to change and which basically locks you into same biome setup as vanilla.

[Synopse]

Postat inițial de VanillaLover:

You can remove npcs, towns, roads and foliage. You can change spawn areas' names, change biomes' weather, sky color, basic terrain type, resources etc.

So you can basically clear the map and recreate it as you see fit, only things that'll remain are altitude, shape and biome and spawn area borders. The biggest issue I have is the ground color, which I didn't yet find a way to change and which basically locks you into same biome setup as vanilla.

Have you looked at the ambientmap.png? It can be at least used for simple shading.

[VanillaLover]

I looked at all the maps and files but in all honesty the way some of them work and interconnect with each other is a bit beyond my grasp at this time, and seems to be a lot more work to properly manage than it's worth.

I decided to stick to possibilities offered by FCS for simplicity and so far it's enough for me lol.

Edit. Regarding terrain colour, at first I thought it was governed by the colour chunks found in overlaymaps folder but no. Same with zone files. Honestly I have no idea how to change them at this time and I started to suspect they are hard coded into game in some way.

[VanillaLover]

btw there IS ground colour setting in FCS but it doesn't seem to actually change anything other than grounds' colour as seen from a distance. It doesn't change the colour when the player is actually near it.

[Cattrina]

The new Re_Kenshi app allows non-traditional files to be loaded in the game, but the user of the mod would NEED to also have that app. But with it, theoretically we CAN replace ANY game file.

[VanillaLover]

I think the guy (or team, IDK) behind LitA is attempting to create a map from scratch, no idea if they are going to use Re_Kenshi though.

https://lost-blog.com/world-overhaul/

[Cattrina]

Postat inițial de VanillaLover:

I think the guy (or team, IDK) behind LitA is attempting to create a map from scratch, no idea if they are going to use Re_Kenshi though.

https://lost-blog.com/world-overhaul/

If you look you see rekenshi there on their site you linked as a separate tab XD I might be wrong but I think this project is one of the reasons rekenshi exists.

https://lost-blog.com/rekenshi/

[VanillaLover]

I didn't notice that, you are probably correct. The project looks promising though doesn't it? I looked some more and there are even rumors that the guy behind it got hired by LoFi. Honestly I wouldn't be that surprised, considering the amount of work he already put into modding this game.

[Cattrina]

Well, I do not know about that, I have not heard any such news. You can ask Boron, Atlas , TreadLightly77 and Kindrad on the forums. TreadLightly77 is behind the UWE and Atlas the Genesis. Kindrad does the rekenshi. Boron used to do Genesis, but he has his own things now.

[Boron]

I might as well weigh in since people already brought up LitA.

The devs used World Machine to make the map. It's a node-based program for making
procedural terrain based on a 2D heightmap. Personally, I find World Machine pretty outdated and it has a far better alternative (QuadSpinner Gaea), however I use WM for Kenshi because it outputs the correct heightmap dimensions and format with no problem.

The wrong dimensions can cause terrain banding - where a lack of data or bad image compression causes slopes to become step-like (think Minecraft) rather than smooth.

I'll break down the various elements of the map. You've got:

- fullmap.tif
- overlays
- areasmap.tga
- biomemap.png
- navtiles
- blendmaps

Fullmap.tif is the heightmap output by Worldmachine (WM).

The format is a 16K +1 heightmap set to 32km x 32km - the highest possible resolution output by WM. Editing in photoshop is technically possible but it's very difficult to know what you'll get like that. Never bothered to check, but I'm fairly sure the +1 pixel thing is so that you have one pixel that's precisely at the centre of the heightmap.

For the LitA map (which is 75% done), I started by painting a basic layout by hand (blobs in different shades of grey) and then smudging it for a basic layout. From there I ran it through several rounds of thermal weathering, erosion, and other effects in WM. Now I'm in the refining stage, so mostly making smaller areas in WM before overlaying them onto the main map. It's easier to do it that way and create smaller patches with proper detail individually, as working in WM or Gaea at the macro (32km x 32km) scale means you can't see much of the finer detail.

There are two types of overlay maps Kenshi uses - color overlays and "splat" maps. In the Kenshi files, the color overlays are numbered (color.0.1, color.0.2 etc) and the splatmaps are just called "newoverlay.0.1", "newoverlay.0.2" etc.

Both are also generated in WM.

Color maps are simple colors overlaid on top of the world terrain. They're used to tint the terrain subtly. It's why the Cannibal Plains have a red tint while the Deadlands are dark. However, that tint is mixed with the underlying textures.

That texturing is done with the splatmaps.

These use the R, G, B, and A channels of images to tell Kenshi where to use biome textures (e.g. grass, dirt, slope). IIRC

R = dirt
G = grass
B = slope

"Base" textures are used where those channels are 0. "Cliff" textures aren't on the splatmaps, they're done using triplanar mapping (because you can't represent vertical data on a flat image anyway).

Splatmaps (also called texture weightmaps) are generated in WM through a mix of noise and parameters (like the steepness of slopes). You can set up some nodes so that e.g. it'll paint a bunch of blue where slopes are greater than x degrees and randomly paint red or green where the land is flat. That kinda thing.

The A channel of the splatmaps is the exception - that determines where the roads go and is projected in-game after the roads have been designed through the in-game editor.

Areasmap is a simple TGA that uses color indexes to determine where the named biomes ("spawn areas") go. Where are the boundaries of The Great Desert or The Deadlands, etc.

Biomemap is a weird one. Ostensibly, it splits up the biomes. While spawn areas determine weather (iirc), random/nest spawns, and the title of each biome shown to the player, biomes contain foliage and texture data.

However, changing biomemap.png ONLY affects the textures used by terrain features that use terrain mapping (ie using surrounding terrain textures that are triplanar-mapped onto features). It doesn't seem to affect where the textures used on the actual terrain go.

ATM I still have no idea where the "true" biomemap is hard-coded.

Eventually I'll reach out to Chris and ask about it, though for now I have a decent enough solution as a fallback; I simply combined a bunch of existing biomes (and shared the textures) to create a "new" biome map within the borders of the original. Not perfect, but completely workable as I use higher quality terrain textures at the expense of less diversity, anyway.

Navtiles are how the navmesh is split up.

They're generated by Havok in-engine, and they're supposed to be adapted at run-time (e.g. player builds a house). In practice, this goes to ♥♥♥♥ when you've got a whole new world map, so when the map is 100% finished I'll have to manually regenerate each one in-game (there's a button) and then link to the new navtiles folder through rekenshi.

Blendmaps determine how the biome textures blend together at the borders. No idea how those work exactly yet, something to figure out later on. I'm not worried about it atm.