SOMEONE NEEDS TO MAKE A GOOD DETAILED MAP FOR FC3!

[rubberduckkiller]

i found this sometime ago and it's amazing http://www.yxklyx.com/thecolosseum/farcry2/Far_Cry_2_World_Map_v8.jpg

someone should really make one for this game! It would be so helpful, i dont want HUD, i really prefer the manual map in FC2

[JRD]

Actually, the author of this amazing map is right here.

We tried to convince him into doing the same for FC3 but no dice!!  :-\\

Feel free to try though........ he won't take credit cards!!  ;D

[mandru]

Part of the problem of attempting to map FC3 with that kind of detail is that in FC3 the nature of the patrol routes change in a completely random fashion. 

In FC3 if you select any specific section of road in a part of the map that is still hostile (under the influence of nearby uncaptured outposts) and travel its length back and forth several times there is no predictable rhyme or reason behind the timing or the types of patrolling vehicles or the enemies on foot that you will surely encounter.  Sometimes you can clear out a roadblock and in the time it takes you to turn to look away and back the game engine will respawn another roadblock in exactly the same place.

Sometimes a glider is perched in a specific spot high on a mountain ledge and then the next time you try to use it again the take off pad is there but the glider is nowhere to be found.  ????

In FC2 If you wanted to drive around in a grenade launching assault truck there were specific patrols on set routes that were always somewhere along their routes where they were supposed to be.  FC3 has a more aggressive nature where instead of you coming to it the game engine takes the initiative and comes after you and it wants to throw everything its got in the effort.  :-D

Beyond that once you've purchased the different regional map upgrades for relics and loot to add to the game map you know where almost everything else is.

[rubberduckkiller]

To both repliers, thank you! i  haven't played FC3 yet(!) need to finish exams first, but I've replayed FC2 at least 5 times :P
and i wanted to be as prepared as possible  :-D so... any thing you think i should know, i'd appreciate the advice :)

thanks again,

[Art Blade]

anything else you might want to know is to be found in stickied topics, such as Tips And Tricks or Useful Outposts or Hunter's List. :)

[fragger]

Hey rubberduckkiller, welcome to the site :)

I think all of us here would prefer a FC2-style in-game map to the HUD, but unfortunately it wasn't to be ::)

Regarding playing FC2 in preparation for FC3, that's a valid idea up to a point. In many ways FC3 is as different to FC2 as FC2 was to FC1 (dunno if you played that one). Some concepts from #2 have been carried over to #3 - lots of vehicles to drive/sail/fly, open-world nature (although the main missions are of a much more linear nature than those in FC2), and safehouses, although securing these involve a great deal more than just wasting two or three mercs. For the most part, it's like a completely different gaming experience. You'll probably love some of the innovations, but some of the other changes may make you cuss. They made me do so :-D

If you enjoy playing FC2, a game dear to the hearts of many of us here, I think overall you'll enjoy FC3. Just be prepared to rethink some of what you experienced with FC2. In some ways FC3 is better, in other ways it most assuredly isn't. The two games are like chalk and cheese, really.

There's a wealth of info and opinion here about it here, if you're willing to spend the time wading through it all :-()

[mandru]

I should have welcomed you too rubberduckkiller.  Sorry about that.  I do love to talk shop and I was too busy getting down to the brass tacks and jumped right over the amenities.  :-[

In addition to the suggestion Art (a top go-to guy here at OWG) made of checking out some of the other threads for a goldmine of info we do like questions here too.  Sometimes too much, as we often end up in something akin to a polite fistfight to see who's able to post replies the fastest.  But we do try to restrict all the bloodletting to game time. 

One thing that I think you will appreciate in FC3 over FC2 when you get into it is that stealth while undiscovered under cover or that breaks the enemy's line of sight when you shift positions and the new feature of throwing a rock to create a distraction really works!  Like anything in the FC worlds it's quirky but amazingly useful once you get the hang of it.  I think you'll dig it.  :-X

[rubberduckkiller]

I must have spent too much time in the mind-numbingly ignorant world of YouTube comments, because I was sure common decency was non-existent in this world we  call the Internet :-D  so thank you for the warm welcome to the site (bookmarked form now on) and the replies.

Yeah, I was prepared for changes from game to game as we saw FC1 to FC2, but it was my fanboy wish since i finished FC2, almost 5yrs ago, that they just make a 1.5 version with predators, challenges and crafting and improved engine and graphic. This being a new game I  fully understand the need to innovate.

Still, a friend of mine and I are counting down the days to our last exam, then like pair of kids, running to the store, picking it up, running home and getting on the game!

Once again thanks, and see you guys around :)

[Art Blade]

heh, nothing wrong with starting in the middle of it and then slip in the welcome and so forth, I like your last comment appreciating that this here is not YouTube :-D

Welcome to OWG, rubberduckkiller.  ^-^

[PZ]

... I've replayed FC2 at least 5 times :P

FC2 is still my favorite game, and with mods it is even better.  FC3 is a good game and there is much in the way of open world experimentation, bit I still prefer FC2.

^-^

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yeah, that's my map, but I think an older version, didn't I get up to version 14 or something? Whatever the latest one here is the newest, as long as PZ has it updated. Boy that's a slow site, too. Anyway, there are a couple reasons I never did one for FC3, the main one being I don't have the time anymore. Well, I suppose I could find it, but it would take away from actually playing the game. The other main one is there are no high resolution map graphics stored in the game that I know of. One of the other guys here can maybe answer if they have found any better graphics while poking around in the game files, but I kind of doubt it. The best you could get would be the map that's already in the game when you zoom all the way in. It would be nice if that could be extracted and you could then make a print of it to reference, but since it's already in game and you can mark all the items on it, there's not a real motivation to do anything more with it. The one thing I don't like about the in game map is the way the roads are drawn. Some of the roads look like they should be main roads but are little more than cow paths and the ones that look like cow paths are sometimes nice wide roads. Not to mention they sometimes fade in and out for no discernible reason.

[Onkel_Hotte]

Well, when I started playing FC3 I also thought about that there should be a printable map, just like the one that was made by Dweller_Benthos for FC2. Thanks again for that - made life in Africa a lot easier.  ;)

But as you can buy the map in-game with all the loot crest locations, it seemed unnecessary.

Nevertheless, I did some fiddling with the available tools (extractor and converter), and this is what I found out so far:
The map can be found in fc3_main.dat, in subdir worldmap, in 4 different resolutions. As they are properly numbered, they can easily put together to a decent big map.

An even higher resolution can be found in the _UNKNOWN\gfx subdir. This seems to be the data for the Compass/Minimap in the HUD. Putting them together to a large map requires knowledge of how they are organized/numbered.
They are numbered like this:
0C61B4AB5A8E5B10.xbt
0C61B4AB5A8E5C60.xbt

If someone knows the trick, how to put them together, you might end up with a map with dimensions up to 20480x20480 pixel.
Hope, this helps a bit...

[JRD]

Trivia: Did you know that Dweller_Benthos crafted the maps down to the latest version (v14?) before playing the game for the first time?

:go

and to show good manners: welcome rubberduckkiller and Onkel_Hotte!  :)

[fragger]

A welcome to you too, Onkel_Hotte :)

Thanks for the info, nice w@&k :-X I agree with the others that a map for FC3 isn't really necessary when you can buy the locations for all the findable goodies. Plus it has the waypoint feature, which I find quite useful not only for getting to a relic or chest but also for determining whether it's above me or below me when I get near it.

[Art Blade]

Onkel Hotte, nice :) +1 :-X

If I'm not completely mistaken you used to be a member of OWG long ago already but somehow it seems you had to register again?

[PZ]

If I'm not completely mistaken you used to be a member of OWG long ago already but somehow it seems you had to register again?

Likely my fault; I purged the member list some time ago using criteria based on posts and last time of visit.

Sorry Onkel, and welcome back to OWG  ;)

[fragger]

That username did ring a faint bell... :-[

[Dweller_Benthos]

Trivia: Did you know that Dweller_Benthos crafted the maps down to the latest version (v14?) before playing the game for the first time?

You flatter me   :-D Some of the initial w@&k was done before I played the whole game, mostly I stole the diamond locations from someone who scanned the printed guide and pasted the results together into one file. I then had the extracted graphics which I pasted together and placed in the diamond locations. Then I started to add locations for patrols and other moving vehicles as I played the game, also adding in locations for hang gliders and ammo dumps. That's why the last version came out a little while later, I was re-playing the game and found a few more ammo dumps I hadn't marked on the first few times through. So, yes, a large portion was done before I played the game all the way through, but not all of it.

If someone wants those FC3 maps pasted together for a print out, I could probably do that pretty easily, if someone wants to extract the files and post them to mediafire or something. As I recall, the format used in FC2 was some sort of modified DDS file, that you needed to strip out a header section to make it a normal DDS that can be read in photoshop. Is this true of the current graphics?

[Onkel_Hotte]

Likely my fault; I purged the member list some time ago using criteria based on posts and last time of visit.

Sorry Onkel, and welcome back to OWG  ;)

Hm, I was pretty confused to see my registered date to be 01.01.2013, with this reply to be my 1st post here. I guess I was too busy playing FC3.  :-D

...

If someone wants those FC3 maps pasted together for a print out, I could probably do that pretty easily, if someone wants to extract the files and post them to mediafire or something. As I recall, the format used in FC2 was some sort of modified DDS file, that you needed to strip out a header section to make it a normal DDS that can be read in photoshop. Is this true of the current graphics?

No need to do that w@&k again, as I got a blank map (without any Icons) of the highest resolution right here. It's 10240x10240 pixel, ~11MB, PNG-Format. If someone wants it to start his own map, just let me know, where to put it.
Just if you think you can solve the riddle with the cryptic named mapfiles you could put some w@&k into it...

[Dweller_Benthos]

If you have the full map, what is the need to decipher the file names?

[Art Blade]

as I understand it, those "riddle" file names comprise the second layer with all those icons that are missing on the blank map he has got.

[Onkel_Hotte]

If you have the full map, what is the need to decipher the file names?

Sorry for the confusion: With highest Resolution I meant the highest level of Resolution for the 'map-map'. The 'minimap-map' with the encrypted filenames has an even higher resolution (I presume 20480x20480).

[Dweller_Benthos]

OK, I see. Hmmmm...... probably the most w@&k would be converting the xbt files to something photoshop can read. Is it the same procedure as in FC2? Where you have to strip 32 bits form the header to get a DDS file? That was the tedious part as I recall. Once that is done, getting them to line up shouldn't be too hard, I bet even the auto photo merge function in photoshop would be able to stitch them together, but the lack (I assume) of overlap might trip up that process.

[Onkel_Hotte]

...probably the most w@&k would be converting the xbt files to something photoshop can read...

Nope, that's the easiest Part, with Robmaisters tools, linked here: http://modding.fc3wiki.com/Texture_Resource you'll have them converted to dds in next no time.

... I bet even the auto photo merge function in photoshop would be able to stitch them together, but the lack (I assume) of overlap might trip up that process.

No overlaps needed, as they have exact dimensions. They come together as tiles.

As I stated earlier: The file descriptin is the Problem.
1. The Files for the main map are named like this:

3_0_0.xbt; 3=highest res; 0=row 1; 0=column 1
3_0_1.xbt; 3=highest res; 0=row 1; 0=column 2
...
3_1_0.xbt; 3=highest res; 0=row 2; 0=column 1
...

I've already put them together - no fuzz at all.

2. The Files for the Minimap in the compass (has an even higher reolution than the main map) are named like this:

5A09D4261F0E926B.xbt
5A09D4261F0E951B.xbt
5A09D4261F0E967B.xbt
...

The scheme with row and column doesn't seem to apply here, at least I cannot see it. If this riddle is resolved, you might end up with a real big map...

[Dweller_Benthos]

Unfortunately, the link to the actual utility is dead.

If there's no over lap, then Photoshop might have a problem stitching them, as it looks for overlapping areas to line up each image to the next.

Nvidia has some DDS utilities including a windows file previewer. It will show a preview of the file in an explorer window, so you could get all the files in one place then then preview them en masse to see which ones go where. A cludgy way to do it and labor intensive, but about the only way I can think of at the moment. Importing the files into a layout program like Corel Draw or Adobe Illustrator would allow you to move them around to see what goes where, but also a labor intensive way to do it.

Found a copy of the converter on a Russian file sharing site, hope there's no virii in it. If it works, I'll see what I can come up with.

Wait, what's the procedure for extracting the file from the FC3 game files?