Map Guidelines

Here we share guidelines and info sources for the map modding.

File Formats

In heighmap.png, the water level starts on 14 RGB.
To see special_building locators, you have to start the game normally and then open map_editor via the console command.
heighmap.png can be edited via any image editor like GIMP or Photoshop. It's useful when you need to overlap a map you're using as a reference. BUT be careful overlapping. Proportions of our continents don't always fit the WoW.

Due to you working on the same images, THERE MUST BE ONLY ONE WIP TERRAIN BRANCH. This is done to avoid conflicts. ASK YOUR TEAMMATES FOR THE CURRENT WIP TERRAIN BRANCH.
You must Commit and Push your changes right after you make them. This is done to avoid conflicts with other cartographers.
You must Fetch and Pull changes before starting work. This is done to avoid conflicts with other cartographers.
Make sure you don't work on the map at the same time. Ask other cartographers if they have unpushed changes.

Your main tool is the In-Game Map Editor, your main goal is to make Azeroth pretty!
Map Modding, explains how to tweak pretty much every part of the map, but if you have questions, feel free to ask the team.
How to Add Provinces, if you don't mind drawing (you don't need art skills) new provinces.
Using the Debug Mode and clicking Reload Textures in the console, you can reload files like colormap.dds.
colormap.dds allows to color textures to make regions with unique colors like red deserts of Durotar or Badlands.
We don't base our mountain ranges on WoW. They exist there for the gameplay reason of separating quest locations. Mountains in CK3 isolate realms and hurt game dynamics and shouldn't be welcome.
Don't make tress of high density. They make the game lag when you look at it so players are forced to disable trees at all.

GIMP, a free image editor that allows you to edit pretty much every file format.
Photoshop, if you have it and got used to it, it works too. To edit .dds file you will need this NVIDIA Plug-in.
Interactive WoW Map, a tool that allows you to look at Azeroth from above.

WIP