Creating Terrain

[NCLawman]

So, I have followed the wiki instructions to create a new terrain.  I scavenged a picture off google map, and turned it into the 8-bit 256 color bmp.  I managed to at least get the bmp picture to show up on the clipboard map.  Obviously, the terrain creator is still nothing but a huge ocean of water.

Questions:
1.  How do I know the size of the terrain created so that I know it fits in the game, clipboard, etc....?

2.  How do I now overlay a grayscale map to input the proper land features / elevations?

3.  Once I am ready to paint (and they have fix the paintbrush bug), must I then paint virtually every pixel on the map?  Or is there a way to generate the clipboard map into the grid of the working map?  I am still at a loss how one can accurately and correctly transfer the bmp map to the main terrain creator map.

There will be additional rounds of questions I am sure as I continue, but since I can't get past these, I don't know what those follow questions will be.  Any help is greatly appreciated.


Thanks,
NCLawMan

[ghostdancer]

First if you are doing a historical terrain don't use Google map. It uses a shaded relief system that makes the elevations look great but will throw off the true elevation of the map.

Best thing to do is get use DEM files (Digital Elevation Maps) and a program to stitch them together.

For DEMs I use Earth Explorer (http://edcsns17.cr.usgs.gov/EarthExplorer/). You can select basically any area in the world and it will give you a series of DEMs you can download. Then use a program to stitch them together. For the PC I use MICRODEM (http://www.usna.edu/Users/oceano/pguth/website/microdem.htm).

Once your gray scale elevation map is stitched together you can blow up the resolution in MICRODEM to 32 (if your system can handle it) and save out the 16384px x 16384px map. My system can't handle it so I end up doing a 14 times blow up in MICRODEM which gives me rough a 7000px by 7000px graphic. Then in photoshop I blow this up to the 16384x16384 size. Then change all the water to black and all the land to white. Put this in your textsrc directory then start AHeditor. Then do an Import Water Bitmap. Save.

Then do an export water bitmap. This will copy over the waterd.bmp and copy over the gndtype.bmp.

The gndtype.bmp is the file that you can then modify and create terrains on in a program like photoshop. First thing to do would be to change all the white land to say beach which is rgb 170,170,170 (make sure you are working in grayscale mode and that your working space is also sGray for Gray and that your spot is Black and White .. if you are using photoshop .. hit CTRL-SHIFT-K).

Then save this file over gndtype.bmp.

Open the AHeditor and all that land area should now be beach.

Of course you have to import the elevation file seperately (1024 x 1024 gray scale) to set elevation.

But basically you can do everything outside of the AHeditor.

waterd.bmp = set the water areas of your map (16384x16384 grayscale)
yourelevationfile.bmp = sets the elevation of your map (1024x1024 grayscale .. file name can be whatever you want)
gndtype.bmp = sets terrains on the land area of your map (4096x4096 grayscale).

On the gndtype.bmp different gray colors equate to different terrains.

Off the top of my head 170,170,170 is beach and 68,68,68 is farm 1, and so on.

The critical tool here is a photo editing program like Photoshop or GIMP.

[NCLawman]

Thank you ghost.  I will work on those suggestions.   
<salute>   


NCLawMan

[ghostdancer]

Off, one caveat in regards to google map. You definitely can use it to create your shorelines. Just don't use it for elevation.

[NCLawman]

Alright, I checked the websites you linked in your post.  Thank you, by the way.  While the first site is fantastically interesting, it would seem that the download would be too detailed.  It would literally takes thousands of downloads to accomplish my map idea.

Unless, of course, I am doing something wrong (which is certainly a very good possibility).  Is there a way to get more generalized topography with which I can create my grayscale?  While it won't be exactly accurate, it will be at least a basic representation of the areas I am trying to build.

For example, if I were trying to map the US (which is only part of the overall map idea), I don't feel I need the exact mountains of the Smokey Mountains / Blue Ridge Mountains, nor do I need the exact Rockies.  However, I would like to be able to place general mountain chains on the maps where the chains reside in real life.  If I can somehow get detailed mountains on the map, that is all the better, but it seems that no program or website will be able to download that broad of a picture.  And, even if it did, would the game be able to load that much.... I imagine it would freeze most systems (but I no computer expert and this is a layman's guess).

Thanks again,

NCLawMan

 

[ghostdancer]

Depends on your scale. I am doing a 512 map of Greece, Crete, Little bit of Yugoslavia, Little bit of Turkey, and very tine sliver of Italy. I think it was 74 downloads.

The current Italy terrain is also a 512 map. By 512 map basically the map size is 512 miles by 512 miles. Now if you do the whole U.S. remember that while it will be visually represented on the clip board map and the terrain the distances for the pilot would still be 512 miles x 512 miles. So the scale of the U.S. would be about 1/5 (it is about 2600 miles from New York to San Francisco). So with a faster LW plane (say at least 300 mph) basically the could fly from New York to San Francisco in about 2 hours in your map. In real life it would be like 8 hrs 40 minutes non stop.

Just wanted to make you aware the terrain size of AH maps and how scale comes into play when creating something.

As for a gray scale elevation map of the whole U.S. (something more rough but of the entirety) I am not sure off the top of my head. You can do a search on DEMs looking for one. Or possible a search for elevation map of the United States.

Here is a shade relief one. Possible you can use it to set the shorelines and then reconstruct the elevation. The problem with shaded relief is that the elevation maps use varying values of white to black (gray inbetween) to determine elevation. So if you have shaded relief if shows the sun from not directly overhead but to the side and inserts black shadows that plays hell with elevation.

[NCLawman]

Yes, I know completely that the scale will be incredibly off as far as time-distance.  What I am trying to do is make a reasonable representation of the 6 main (populated) continents of the world.  I have an idea for balancing out the three teams on the world map that I think would make the map interesting and a fun battle.  (My intent is to exclude Greenland/North Pole Area and Antarctica).  But the main gist is to create a map representing the 6 (inhabited) continental land masses, then spread some cities, strats, and bases around to make it fair for the 3 sides and at least in the general realm historical representation even if not entirely accurate (especially in time and distance constraints). 

For Example:

Team 1 - North and Central America, + Australia
Team 2 - South America, + Upper Asia (Russia)
Team 3 - Lower Asia (China, Japan, India, Middle East) + Africa + Europe

Then I can populate the land masses with bases, and strats and cities.  And, while I can't accurately reflect...say NY ...  I can at least put a AH strat city in its place.  Likewise, I may be able to put a V-base and Airfield down at Fort Bragg/Camp Legune area of NC and so on.  Put a port roughly where Norfolk, San Diego, and HI would be.  Of course I would have to put HQ at NORAD (rather than DC) to keep it from being an easy target and NORAD more closely resembles what HQ in AH does.

Maybe in Russia, but a port up where Vladivostock (sp) and / or Djarney (sp) would be. etc...  Use Moscow (HQ)

Europe ..  Could put in Paris, Berlin (HQ), Dooseldorf, etc....   

Again try to make a fair representation of the shape of the world land masses, but in a scale that would be AHII playable.  Obviously, no one wants to have time accurate flights from Europe to the US and likewise, WWII bombers could not make a worldwide flight.  But in this AH representation, I would hope they can fly from one side of the map to the other.  I do think it would be interesting to create a map that CV groups would be needed (or better suited -- though goons would do for the determined sort) to invade different land masses across the ocean (i.e.  need a CV group or two to cross the Atlantic and get a foothold in the US or in Europe - depending on the team).

Unfortunately, I am thinking this is going to be entire too large a task and well beyond my skills.  If you think there is an easier way to accomplish this, I am open for suggestion.  Or, if you think this is a good idea and can help, I will send you what I have and you can possibly create the elevations.  I can go back and add the textile terrains, bases, strats, objects, etc.  I would be more than happy to have any help, suggestions, or co-authors/drawers whatever.

Obviously, my ideas is too in depth to explain in a brief post, but I think you can get the general idea.  Is this something you think can be accomplished in an AHII map? And if so, would you or anyone be willing to help in this feat?

[Strip]

Couple of issues/points...

Do you want this to be a SEA only terrain? By having three teams I would say no.

Its very difficult to have a MA a terrain that will work with realistic land masses, especially one with whole continents, large bodies of water and land masses. The general guideline is each base must be within 25-30 miles of an enemy base for small travel times. Even at one fifth scale you will still have two or three (or much more) sectors between some of the continents. Your idea would be better suited to a SEA terrain for use in a scenario/FSO/snapshot setting. I would personally enjoy it in a MA setting but HTC has strict rules about MA terrains.

I am working a terrain with the west coast of the US mainland hopefully to entice a FSO/Scenario event. We shall see tho....

<S> Good luck on your map making quest.....if you need any specific help PM me sometime.

Strip

[ghostdancer]

Yes you can do it. However, I think you will have to hand draw the elevations for the continents. Which is not hard, It is just tedious.

1) First create your waterd.bmp (16384x16384) map. This should just be black and white. The black is the water and the white the land. So you can go out to the internet and fine decent map of all the continents. Forget all the detail on them, you just want them for the shorelines. So fill in the land with white and then color the water black. This needs to be grayscale.

2) Then take that map and save it gndtype.bmp and resize it down to 4096x4096. This is the BMP used to set terrain types (beach, forest, farm, etc.). For now just color the whole land mass to 170,170,170. This will set the terrain of all the land to beach.  This needs to be grayscale. You will come back to this map later and start painting in different terrains.

3) Take the gndtype.bmp map and resize it down to 1024x1024 and save it as clip board map. The clipboard map should be the same name as the terrain ... yourmapname.bmp and put that in textsrc directory. This way when you are working in the editor you will have your clip board map as a reference in the map window. Oh, it is very important not to have the terrain name or clipboard map to start with capital letter. AHeditor (at least the previous one really doesn't like caps).

4) Now take that clipboard map and save it as elevation map. Size needs to be 1024x1024. You will pain this map to create elevations. White is the tallest (the max elevation you set when you import it) and black is sea level. You then have 253 steps in between the two values:

black = 0,0,0
step 1 = 1,1,1
step 2 = 2,2,2

and so on until

white = 255,255,255

So if you are not worried about exacting detail should be easiest enough to paint.

After you create your elevation map save it as a bmp ... yourelevationmap.bmp and hit the import feature in AHeditor, select it, set the max alt (don't go greater than 32,000 ft .. probably best to set it the elevation of mtn everest) and import it.

Btw, save after each step. Also best to save and then exit and then restart AHeditor. It can be rather quirky and sometimes (at least with 2.13) some people have had issues with hitting save but it not really saving until after and exit. Constantly saving is a good thing.

5) After all this go back to your gndtype.bmp and start painting terrains. The colors for each terrain type are noted in the readme.txt file. Save your changes to gndtype.bmp and next time you start the AHeditor you should see them. Beware of color shift though depending on your program you are painting with. For example if photoshops working gray mode is not set to sGray and doesn't have its spot color set to black and white when you save to bmp it will shift the grey values on you.


The other parts of creating a terrain are pretty much the same so far as on the wiki about creating bases, spawn points, TF (although there is a bug where TF should not have a number greater than 99 .. cause issues).

[ghostdancer]

SEA terrains are much more exacting in requirements than MA terrains. By this I mean that the elevations actually need to be more exact to be accepted. Also the distances involved would not be accepted for use in the SEA.

[NCLawman]

Couple of issues/points...

Do you want this to be a SEA only terrain? By having three teams I would say no.

Its very difficult to have a MA a terrain that will work with realistic land masses, especially one with whole continents, large bodies of water and land masses. The general guideline is each base must be within 25-30 miles of an enemy base for small travel times. Even at one fifth scale you will still have two or three (or much more) sectors between some of the continents. Your idea would be better suited to a SEA terrain for use in a scenario/FSO/snapshot setting. I would personally enjoy it in a MA setting but HTC has strict rules about MA terrains.

I am working a terrain with the west coast of the US mainland hopefully to entice a FSO/Scenario event. We shall see tho....

<S> Good luck on your map making quest.....if you need any specific help PM me sometime.

Strip

Thank you, Strip for the input.    (no sarcasm intended).  

Yes, my intent was to design this for eventual submission to HTC for a Main Arena map rotation.  I agree that it may be a difficult sell.  One of the ways around the 'reachable' by any country' problem is the way in which I have divided the land masses between the countries (as noted above).   In this example, I will use the country names (Team 1=Bish, Team 2=Knight, Team 3=Rook) for demonstrative purposes....

Bish (holding North America, Central America, and Australia) would be able to attack and reach Knights via Central America and Rook Via Australia
Knights (holding South America and upper Asia - Russia) would be able to attack Bish via Central America and Rook through both Europe and lower Asia.
Rook (holding upper Asia and Africa) would be able to attack Bish at Austria and Knight at Russia.

Subsequent CV engagements can take place and between rooks, knights, and bish in the Atlantic Ocean and suffer respective Atlantic coastline invasions.  Likewise all three counties have access to the pacific ocean for Pacific based  CV engagements and invasions.

In my example, each country has two main land masses.  Though arguably, Team 1 (Bish in this example) may have the toughest defense being that Australia is relatively small and on the other side of the map from mainland USA.  Team 2 (Knights in this example) have a difficult front given they are divided by Europe and Africa.  Team 3 (Rooks in this example) likely have the best go at it as they are not split like the other sides.  But then again, that is why the teams rotate positions on the map.  Bish may get a tougher fight this week, but Knights may have it next week.  

And, like I said previously, I am looking for any assistance and input to make this an do-able and interesting battle map.  I am open to suggestions and discussion to make it a worthwhile project.  I appreciate your input and would look forward to continued suggestions to make this a Main Arena map candidate.

<SALUTE>

[NCLawman]

Thank you, Ghost, I will give that a try.   

[Strip]

Thank you, Strip for the input.    (no sarcasm intended).  

Yes, my intent was to design this for eventual submission to HTC for a Main Arena map rotation.  I agree that it may be a difficult sell.  One of the ways around the 'reachable' by any country' problem is the way in which I have divided the land masses between the countries (as noted above).   In this example, I will use the country names (Team 1=Bish, Team 2=Knight, Team 3=Rook) for demonstrative purposes....

Bish (holding North America, Central America, and Australia) would be able to attack and reach Knights via Central America and Rook Via Australia
Knights (holding South America and upper Asia - Russia) would be able to attack Bish via Central America and Rook through both Europe and lower Asia.
Rook (holding upper Asia and Africa) would be able to attack Bish at Austria and Knight at Russia.

Subsequent CV engagements can take place and between rooks, knights, and bish in the Atlantic Ocean and suffer respective Atlantic coastline invasions.  Likewise all three counties have access to the pacific ocean for Pacific based  CV engagements and invasions.

In my example, each country has two main land masses.  Though arguably, Team 1 (Bish in this example) may have the toughest defense being that Australia is relatively small and on the other side of the map from mainland USA.  Team 2 (Knights in this example) have a difficult front given they are divided by Europe and Africa.  Team 3 (Rooks in this example) likely have the best go at it as they are not split like the other sides.  But then again, that is why the teams rotate positions on the map.  Bish may get a tougher fight this week, but Knights may have it next week.  

And, like I said previously, I am looking for any assistance and input to make this an do-able and interesting battle map.  I am open to suggestions and discussion to make it a worthwhile project.  I appreciate your input and would look forward to continued suggestions to make this a Main Arena map candidate.

<SALUTE>

NCLawman,
     It is great to see people getting in the mix of things and putting the new terrain editor to good use. It should mean an influx of new terrains and fresh content in the MA's. Having said that I am concerned that you may put a lot of effort into a map that might not be accepted. HTC wants a MA terrain to have very specific attributes, setup, and layout. If you look at most of there MA terrains they have very even landmass, field spacing, and equal number of fields. My best advice would be to talk to someone at HTC and get an opinion. Explain to them what you want to do and if they would be likely to accept a well done terrain. Where you go from there will depend on the answer they give you. For me the amount of work involved is not worth taking the risk of it not being accepted.

Again, this not meant to discourage you or imply any disrespect, I just dont want to see your efforts used ineffectively.

Strip

[NCLawman]

Strip,

I understand completely and I appreciate your advice on the issue.  If, I can get through the first few phases of map/'terrain making, I will do just what you suggested and call them.  I want to be able to at least send them a rough draft of the map and elevations. It is much easier to describe my idea with some visual cues.  I feel that if I just describe it, the answer will be, "no."  However, with some visual representations, they may be able to look at and 'see the vision' and very well may approve the idea and give some advice to make it work. Ya never know, they might even like it enough to take over and make sure it is good 

Anyway, thanks again to both you and ghost.  I will keep you posted on the progress (though I must admit time is limited).  I hope I can get the initial map set, from there it is just populating the strats, zones, and fields.

Thanks,

NCLawMan

[Fencer51]

First if you are doing a historical terrain don't use Google map. It uses a shaded relief system that makes the elevations look great but will throw off the true elevation of the map.

Best thing to do is get use DEM files (Digital Elevation Maps) and a program to stitch them together.

For DEMs I use Earth Explorer (http://edcsns17.cr.usgs.gov/EarthExplorer/). You can select basically any area in the world and it will give you a series of DEMs you can download. Then use a program to stitch them together. For the PC I use MICRODEM (http://www.usna.edu/Users/oceano/pguth/website/microdem.htm).

Hey Ghost,

When you use Earth Explorer, what database do you select.  I don't see the DEM filetype listed.

Thanks!