Home
Welcome to the online manual for cartographer, a strategic map and party editor for the Mount&Blade game series. It is mean to work as lean reference and quick start guide. Feedback and pull request with enhancements are appreciated.
Get the latest version of the tool at this page. Download the most recent zip and extract it wherever you want, it doesn't require any kind of installing or prerequisites.
To start the software, double-click in cartographer.cmd, a command-line window will appear spitting the inner workings of the program, and from it the proper 3D editor window will spawn. The first time you start it without configuring it will use the example assets included in the package. To use it with your own mod you will have to point it to your own module system instead.
The configuration is done by the means of a tiny text file called cartographer.conf.ini, which you can open with any decent editor. By default it looks more or less like this:
#!lua
-- swyter's cartographer
-- for those entertaining moments when you have to configure something, oh, so l33t!
cartographer.conf =
{
--# use \\ or / for path separators but don't even thing about single backlashes like this one: \
msysparties = "res\\msys\\module_parties.py",
--# set to false if the extra comment at the right when saving parties bothers you, in case you're a neat freak
sprevcoords = true
}
The important key here is pointing msysparties to your own module_parties.py.
Where do I specify my actual module folder, and the map.txt or parties.txt files? You say. Well, the main difference between Thorgrim's Map Editor and this is that cartographer is meant to work directly with the module system, that is, the source *.py files, instead of the compiled *.txt files. And from the source files it can automatically figure out the rest.
Once we've cleared up possible misunderstandings well proceed to navigate to our module system folder to later copy the path from the file browser. I'm my case R:\Juegos\swconquest\modules\tld-svn\ModuleSystem is where my module_parties.py is located.
To configure it just change the default local example folder...
#!lua
--# use \\ or / for path separators but don't even thing about single backlashes like this one: \
msysparties = "res\\msys\\module_parties.py",
... into this, note the double backslashes ...
#!lua
--# use \\ or / for path separators but don't even thing about single backlashes like this one: \
msysparties = "R:\\Juegos\\swconquest\\modules\\tld-svn\\ModuleSystem\\module_parties.py",
... save, and we are done. If your module_info.py output folder points to the right place cartographer will figure out where the actual mod is stored, and will find out map.txt, will open it and after some processing will display it to you. Well done!
Now that you know
If you don't quite get some of the functionalities, or have a killer feature/suggestion/bug report, don't be shy and head to the official thread in the Tools section of the Forge at the official Taleworlds forums, and Swyter will swiftly respond to your demands.
There's plenty of knowledge and little tricks in there since its inception in early 2012, so if you take a look to the previous pages there's a lot of questions which have been asked already. Try to search first to avoid redundancies, sometimes it gets a bit tiring to reply to the same question over and over. Hope you understand!
Have fun!