Expand Map Size

[freakinfuzzball]

Hello everyone, is it possible to expand the size of a pre-existing map? Does the Game base map size on the dimensions of the texture? Some mods have quite small maps like Mayberry, but then there's Harbor City and Manhattan which are huge. My goal is to keep the map I'm using intact, but add more space on all 4 sides to add new features.

Is this possible by just editing the map texture to be larger?

Thanks

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[mr matt5432123]

every map is the same size, you just are sometimes only limited to a smaller portion, the map texture is centered in the middle of the map, and just repeats when it reaches the end of a side, the reason you don't see the repeated parts is because you are limited to seeing only a portion of the map, in order to have more of the map playable, you must add on to a texture that's already made and import it into the editor, then, you must widen the map boundaries more aswell.

[freakinfuzzball]

every map is the same size, you just are sometimes only limited to a smaller portion, the map texture is centered in the middle of the map, and just repeats when it reaches the end of a side, the reason you don't see the repeated parts is because you are limited to seeing only a portion of the map, in order to have more of the map playable, you must add on to a texture that's already made and import it into the editor, then, you must widen the map boundaries more aswell.

Okay so I make the bigger texture, import it. Where to I adjust the map boundaries?

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[itchboy]

The maximum map texture size is 8192x8192. You cannot go any bigger than that, and the texture size must be in multiples of 12.

When handling such a large texture, your PC will lag out in the image editor (paint.net, GIMP, even Ps) if your PC is not a high end rig. Usually, you'd need 4 gig and up, and at least a recent GPU. Having a multi core (3 or more) CPU helps as well.

I have modded textures on weak computers, and your time is spent with actually waiting for your edits to register within the program, than actually making new content. Every paint bucket, line drawn, section selected and even scrolling lags out in my case which is why its taken years for me to even get one single street, let alone a full city.

[Pottyscotty]

On 5/3/2017 at 3:15 AM, itchboy said:

I have modded textures on weak computers, and your time is spent with actually waiting for your edits to register within the program, than actually making new content. Every paint bucket, line drawn, section selected and even scrolling lags out in my case which is why its taken years for me to even get one single street, let alone a full city.

As a low-end PC user, I can 100% agree with this. You do need something that can handle it, otherwise, as Itch pointed out, most of your time will be spending waiting for the different processes to finish. This is extremely difficult if you plan to make a full/freeplay map.

[MikeyPI]

Even with a High-end PC this tends to happen: The trick is fairly simple: Break it down into sections, make a "map" but break it down into an acceptable size for your performance cap whatever it may be. From there you work on each segment as though it's an independent selection.  I find it best to simply work with "generic" placement guides first (IE keep it to like 16 colors using lines to denote locations of crap or paintbucket fills to tell u where something is supposed to go. Make sure everything aligns correctly when you merge the layers down and paste them together into the full-scale map.  

Once this is done then you open each segment within your paint program and simply fill in the blanks till you have a proper looking section, rinse & repeat for each segment until they are filled in.  
Merge the layers down on all your segments so you are working with a single texture file (Save it as something else but keep the original preferably layered sections of the map in case you have to mod it later).
Lastly re-compile each segment of the full map back into a fullsize texture.  When this is done you should have a decent looking map that shouldnt need too many edits so long as you aligned everything well in the original "base" raw-color format of the segments.

This method isnt fool-proof but it's certainly better than trying to make a full-scale texture, particularly if your paint app is not 64-bit enabled.