The following application is meant to be a tool for map-making process in video games Cultures: Discovery of Vinland, Cultures: The Revenge of the Rain God and Cultures Gold. It makes it possible to freely view and modify map-related files from mentioned games. Available functionalities are implemented in a way which mimics editors present in other games from Cultures series.
After downloading necessary files from releases section
make sure to put them in game's main directory, so that the downloaded
executable file Editor.exe and game's executable file Cultures.exe are in
the same location. Alternatively you can copy data_l folder from game files
and paste it to directory of newly downloaded application. It is also possible
to launch the editor in different directory, where game is absent. In case of
such scenario you will be asked to specify manually where game is located.
Optionally, if you want to speed up the program startup you can extract
data_l\data_v.lib library to game's main directory. This way, during the
initialization process the application will be able to refer directly to
extracted files rather than search for them in the relatively large library.
Note that when opening the program for the first time it will try to generate
cache.bin file which can take significant time to load. If you want to skip
this process you might be able to find this file online, however due to
copyright restrictions we do not provide access to such file here.
Keep in mind that cache.bin files generated for Cultures: Discovery of
Vinland, Cultures: The Revenge of the Rain God and Cultures Gold will
contain different content and are not interchangeable.
One can, after proper installation of Editor.exe, associate it with opening
*.map files by using the context menu. Opening a map through such a file
association works exactly the same as opening a file through the internal
graphical interface of the aforementioned application. Remember that the
display of terrain and landscapes in the editor might not be exactly the same
as in the game. Always check important aesthetics by opening *.map files in
the original game.
Main Editor.exe application supports viewing and modifying only *.map
files. These are files that contain information mainly about terrain,
heightmap, landscapes, and structures. For more dynamic elements like
creatures and buildings, more complex matters like missions and bots'
behaviour, or more subtle additions like minimap, fonts and texts, which are
all contained in *.cif, *.fnt, *.pcx and *.txt files, it is
recommended to use supplementary Converters.exe application provided in
releases section
and read documentation. Take into account that
these additional files are not directly supported by our editor, and it might
be necessary for the user to install additional third-party applications in
order to properly read and modify text and images.
One subtle convention present in this project is the separation of the art of
making maps (mapping) from the art of creating more general modifications of
game files (modding). We define mapping as the process of editing the
content of the data_l\data_m.lib file and the data_m directory aimed at
making maps. Functionalities provided by the given tools are primarily meant
to give the user complete control over the mapping process. However, an
additional framework is also provided in the form of documentation and code
modules that support most of the significant procedures relevant to modding.
If you want to have access to all procedures related to modding, make sure
Converters.exe and the game's executable file Cultures.exe are in the same
location. Keep in mind that any modification of game files which is not part of
mapping may break backward compatibility with already existing maps.
There exists additional functionality, making converters implementable to
further external projects. The Converters.exe app can be launched via
command line with additional --quick-conversions argument. If this argument
is present, then all further arguments will be interpreted as triplets of
data, and window with user interface will not be initialized. In each triplet,
the first argument is a command name, which can be obtained by running
uncompiled converters.py script and reading textual
output. The second and third values in each triplet are respectively
responsible for input path and output path relevant to the specific
conversion.
This project is a fan-made tool created by CulturesNation community. It is not affiliated with the official legacy of Cultures series. For official developers' website visit Funatics.
Mikulus: Managed project and wrote most of Python code.
Basssiiie: Decompiled important parts of game's engine via Ghidra.
Peti: Tested and documented part of textual scripts entries.
Benedikt Magnus: Helped with landscapes' data interpretation.
Tyrannica: Helped with walk sectors' data visualization.
Proszak: Drew some of the graphics for user interface.
Watto: "Game Extractor" (2004)
Bacter: "Unknown Encryption In Cultures Game" (2010)
Siguza: "Cultures 2 file formats" (2013)
FinFET: "SimplePython3DEngine" (2022)
Remik: "CEngine" (2023)
This program and its source code are distributed under GNU General Public License 3.0,
which can be found in the license.txt file. Cultures itself
is the property of Funatics Software with all
rights reserved as stated in the game manual, and is not covered by the
aforementioned license.