Author Topic: Terragen and Tile Setter  (Read 2973 times)

Offline OOZ662

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Terragen and Tile Setter
« on: July 10, 2007, 06:49:13 PM »
I've gone through Denholm's TE tutorial and have just started looking around. The only "bad news" to me so far was the horrid thought of having to lay down every terrain tile. Then I came across this combo. Everything looked fine and dandy until I saw I needed to register Terragen to get the correct file for Tile Setter. I cannot afford $79 just so I can make maps. Is there another way to do this?

I've seen a bitmap "heightfield" technique for the TE before, but I don't know how to do that.

An help would be greatly appreciated.
A Rook who first flew 09/26/03 at the age of 13, has been a GL in 10+ Scenarios, and was two-time Points and First Annual 68KO Cup winner of the AH Extreme Air Racing League.

Offline Dux

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Terragen and Tile Setter
« Reply #1 on: July 10, 2007, 07:51:38 PM »
Ooz, if you're talking about just being able to assign tiles, there's a way to open a TYP file in PhotoShop* if you have it. You'd still be painting pixels by hand, but it beats scrolling through the entire terrain in the TE.


*probably in PSP or GIMP as well, but I'm not familiar with them.
« Last Edit: July 10, 2007, 07:53:52 PM by Dux »
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Offline OOZ662

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Terragen and Tile Setter
« Reply #2 on: July 10, 2007, 07:55:30 PM »
I'm completely clueless as to how to do anything but manually assign each tile by tile in the TE at this point... :confused:

I've got a lot of free time on my hands and was going to begin work on an MA map, but th only thing stopping me is the actual creation of the terrain.
A Rook who first flew 09/26/03 at the age of 13, has been a GL in 10+ Scenarios, and was two-time Points and First Annual 68KO Cup winner of the AH Extreme Air Racing League.

Offline Dux

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Terragen and Tile Setter
« Reply #3 on: July 10, 2007, 08:03:22 PM »
Question to the old-timers...

Didn't the old BMP2Map program have an automatic tile assignment feature? Anyone still have a copy of it? I believe it was made by AKWabbit.
Rogue Squadron, CO
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We all have a blind date with Destiny... and it looks like she's ordered the lobster.

Offline OOZ662

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Terragen and Tile Setter
« Reply #4 on: July 10, 2007, 08:07:22 PM »
They had some talk of that in the Tile Setter thread, I just had no idea what they were talking about.
A Rook who first flew 09/26/03 at the age of 13, has been a GL in 10+ Scenarios, and was two-time Points and First Annual 68KO Cup winner of the AH Extreme Air Racing League.

Offline Dux

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Terragen and Tile Setter
« Reply #5 on: July 10, 2007, 08:17:22 PM »
Just did a quick Google search for it... they had it over at AH-Terrains but that page seems to be down now. Maybe NHawk still has a copy of it somewhere...?

There seems to be another utility out there called BMP2MAP, but it's for creating Quake maps, so be careful to make sure it's the right one.

Anyway... IIRC, BMP2Map would let you import a greyscale elevation map, and based on certain settings that you put in, would assign different tiles based on slope, elevation, etc. This just might be the thing you're looking for.
Rogue Squadron, CO
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We all have a blind date with Destiny... and it looks like she's ordered the lobster.

Offline Dux

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Terragen and Tile Setter
« Reply #6 on: July 10, 2007, 08:24:08 PM »
Ooz, I just found a copy of it... send me your e-mail, and I'll mail it back to you. It's not somewhere that I can give you direct access to.
Rogue Squadron, CO
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We all have a blind date with Destiny... and it looks like she's ordered the lobster.

Offline mrmidi

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Terragen and Tile Setter
« Reply #7 on: July 10, 2007, 10:44:38 PM »
I'm just learning my self for about the 100th time:rolleyes:
I use a grayscale .bmp and tilesetter, I took a color .jpg of the
Galapolose Islands (spelling) and edited it in PS and then used it to set the tiles with tilesetter.
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Offline NHawk

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Terragen and Tile Setter
« Reply #8 on: July 11, 2007, 03:17:13 AM »
AH-Terrains was shut down over a year ago because nobody was using it. I have all of the utilities on a CD somewhere

BMP2Map by AKRabbit imports grayscale elevations and assigns textures/tiles to the terrain. So he'd need to do an elevation file anyway.

Mapmaker by Ogre imports .DEM files.

Tilesetter by Machnix imports Terragen files, sets terrain tiles creates a CB map and some other neat things.

Tilesetter by me sets both terrain tiles and sub-tiles.

Map2BMP by me creates a rough CB map.

There's one more recent addition that I don't have permission to distribute.

Personally I've gone to using Photoshop for .DEM files and elevation BMPs, the importer that's built into the TE and my tilesetter.
« Last Edit: July 11, 2007, 03:19:17 AM by NHawk »
Most of the people you meet in life are like slinkies. Pretty much useless, but still bring a smile to your face when you push them down the stairs.
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Offline Avaro

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Terragen and Tile Setter
« Reply #9 on: July 11, 2007, 04:04:55 AM »
Not quite sure what your asking. If you asking how to set multi tiles go with MachNix's tilesetter. As for terragen register? lol.
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Offline NHawk

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Terragen and Tile Setter
« Reply #10 on: July 11, 2007, 04:33:59 AM »
Quote
Originally posted by Avaro
Not quite sure what your asking. If you asking how to set multi tiles go with MachNix's tilesetter. As for terragen register? lol.
He's asking about setting elevations using MachNix's tilesetter. And he says he can't afford Terragen which is what the Tilesetter imports.

And you just stepped out onto thin ice with your registration comment.
« Last Edit: July 11, 2007, 04:36:28 AM by NHawk »
Most of the people you meet in life are like slinkies. Pretty much useless, but still bring a smile to your face when you push them down the stairs.
-------------------------------
Sometimes I think I have alzheimers. But then I forget about it and it's not a problem anymore.

Offline OOZ662

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Terragen and Tile Setter
« Reply #11 on: July 11, 2007, 11:56:15 AM »
Wow...that CD makes me drool. :D
A Rook who first flew 09/26/03 at the age of 13, has been a GL in 10+ Scenarios, and was two-time Points and First Annual 68KO Cup winner of the AH Extreme Air Racing League.

Offline MachNix

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Terragen and Tile Setter
« Reply #12 on: July 11, 2007, 12:15:42 PM »
Was going through the website’s access logs and notice some activity on the tile set program and figured I better stop in a see what is going on.

I put up a newer version (v2.4) of the program that has the ability to use grayscale files to set elevations.

tileset.exe (v2.4)
tileset help (v2.3)

The greyscale files have to be 1024x1024, gray scaled (indexed to 256), and saved with “_elv.bmp” extension (ex myterr_elv.bmp).  The tile set program works the same as it did with Terragen files except there is a new checkbox to preserve 0 as water.  Adding a checkmark in this box keeps shorelines from migrating when terrain smoothing is applied.

Even though the program is newer, it is pre version 2.10 of AH and the names of the terrain tiles may have changed.  For example “Grassy Rock” may still point to terr0002.bmp but it may now be called “Swamp” or something else.  I’m on dial-up and don’t want to take the 12 hours to download the latest version of the terrain editor to see what is new so you may need to do some testing.

G.L.

Offline NHawk

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Terragen and Tile Setter
« Reply #13 on: July 11, 2007, 12:26:10 PM »
Machnix...Nice to hear from you again!

Thanks for the update. The tile names don't matter anymore since you can rename them in the TE itself.
Most of the people you meet in life are like slinkies. Pretty much useless, but still bring a smile to your face when you push them down the stairs.
-------------------------------
Sometimes I think I have alzheimers. But then I forget about it and it's not a problem anymore.

Offline OOZ662

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Terragen and Tile Setter
« Reply #14 on: July 11, 2007, 12:28:51 PM »
Now here's the biggest question...where to get a greyscale? :D Do I have to make that by hand? :confused: It doesn't seem like you do with all the things you guys put out.

Really, thanks for the help guys. I hope to make something for the MAs that'll stand the test of time...at least until I grow up. :D
A Rook who first flew 09/26/03 at the age of 13, has been a GL in 10+ Scenarios, and was two-time Points and First Annual 68KO Cup winner of the AH Extreme Air Racing League.