Cloth Maps Editing

from Elemental Forums

Hey all, I am relatively new to some aspects of modding, I have had alot of experience with photo and image manipulation though so some parts of it I already know.  What I am trying to do is use some of those skills and improve the ability to see certain things on the cloth map and the close strategic map images.  I started this off intending to make roads more visible and then to work on some of the other items but am having trouble even locating where these images are.  I have found certain images which I can adjust but none of them seem to appear in game in any way I have been able to determine.  The files that it appears I want to work with are the ones located in   ...\Gfx\HKB\Roads but according to what I currently understand there is very little I can do to convert these into a usable format for me to work with (https://forums.elementalgame.com/384302) unless I have several hundred dollars to spend on a program.  If anyone can point me in the right direction to go, or if anyone has located XML references to the cloth map and perhaps the transparency of decals and overlays on it as that could be another approach to the same issue I'll work it from that angle instead then.

Thanks for any pointers and here to hoping that Elemental becomes the game we have all hoped it could be.

2,318 views 2 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

What I am trying to do is use some of those skills and improve the ability to see certain things on the cloth map and the close strategic map images. I started this off intending to make roads more visible and then to work on some of the other items
End of quote

I've been tinkering briefly with that very thing but didn't complete.
One problem with roads seems to be that their alpha channel is set waaaaay low - like around 15 % - so they simply fade into the background.

Changing that is cake but I haven't been able to figure out which exact kind of DDS file (there are like 20) they needs to be saved as. My very ancient copy of
Photoshop doesn't auto-detect that and I kinda don't feel like spending € 1000,- just to be able to mod the roads for Elemental. =P

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

I actualy don't think the roads files are a DDS file, I believe the roads are actually .hkb backgrounds which means they are Havor files if I understand correctly.  I came to this thought after actually changing some of the look of the roads .png and looking at the .dds files using DDS Converter 2, I would know for certain it I could figure out how to look at those files though.  I mostly come to this opinion because I don't see the arc shaped roads that appear when you have two roads intersecting at near 90' or 45'. 

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