Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Terrain Editor => Topic started by: Voss on January 27, 2003, 04:09:11 AM
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Is there a way to take the terrain we have into the terrain editor and export a height_field? or black and white bitmap (same thing)? Let's say the Baltic map for instance?
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no.
Gatso
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Gotta reinvent the wheel! :)
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Wouldn't do that voss. You can export terrains if you have the source files. Touching the .res files would get you removed.
HiTech
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Didn't mean I was going to do that HT. I meant I'll have to recreate some of the terrains. I like the look and feel of a couple of them, but they're just too small anymore. I guess the ony way is to use screenshots and rasterization, but I'll put some more thought into it.
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if you wanna make a bigger baltic map just get ogres mapmaker
http://www.cris.com/~reaper/mapmaker
then get the USGS Ground cover data
http://edcftp.cr.usgs.gov/pub/data/glcc/globe/gusgs1_2.img.gz
Then go here and dl the the map data for the area ya need
http://edcdaac.usgs.gov/gtopo30/gtopo30.html
Theres config file for orges map maker you can dl. Supposedly it will let you adjust the map size. But it doesnt work AFAIK.
So your map will be 512 x 512
it you dont like that size you can use rasterization then use the akbmp2map.
In akbmp2map you need to set a 1024 x 1024 black back ground, resize the map you rasterize and past in the center of the 1024 x 1024 background.
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Wotan, I'll look into Ogre's stuff but I think there's another method that I'm more familiar with already. The baltic was just an example.
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Originally posted by hitech
Wouldn't do that voss. You can export terrains if you have the source files. Touching the .res files would get you removed.
HiTech
Uh?
Do you mean you'll ban us if we even THINK of trying to crack the .res format to find whats in it?
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Originally posted by BenDover
Uh?
Do you mean you'll ban us if we even THINK of trying to crack the .res format to find whats in it?
What's there to crack? Anyone with any programming knowledge knows that a .res file is a resource file for the program. It contains all of the bitmaps and data for the terrain.
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but it might have some top secret hush hush things in it.....
or do you, hitech, mean you'll do it because it'll be possible to 'hack'/cheat by changing the elevations and such so mountains now become flat grass lands?
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What's there to crack? Anyone with any programming knowledge knows that a .res file is a resource file for the program. It contains all of the bitmaps and data for the terrain.
Uhh...same extension but completely different kind of file.
Wab
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Originally posted by BenDover
because it'll be possible to 'hack'/cheat by changing the elevations and such so mountains now become flat grass lands?
Exactly. I remember in the film viewer in the beta days, if you didnt have a terrain loaded it showed the default beta terrain in the film viewer, and planes flew through the mountains etc...
Some time ago in H2H you could also have a different terrain than others, if you renamed it to that name.
Camo
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Originally posted by AKWabbit
Uhh...same extension but completely different kind of file.
Wab
I don't think so. Think about it. The .res files for AH carry any custom bitmaps, elevation data, terrain type data, plane data and field locations.
They may carry some verification data to be sure everyone is using the same terrain file, but in essence they are resource files (resource files can be used by every programming language).
Beyond that speculation, I'll end this thread here. I don't want to start treading on thin ice with HT. :)
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I still think its a compression format, or something like that
Care to clarrify HT?
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Wotan, I'll look into Ogre's stuff but I think there's another method that I'm more familiar with already. The baltic was just an example.
Voss, alot of the utilitys you show us are great.. very powerful programs.. I like terragen, but if they don't export as .typ and .elv files.. how can we use them?
Orge simply wrote a config file for mapmaker.. Maybe you can examine that config and see if it could be applied to other utilities.
As far as looking at the source files for baltic map... Why don't you just ask Hitech for them... It's no secret how they make these things.
If you could find a program that works with
ASTER (http://www.terrainmap.com/rm24.html#ASTERL1A) DEMs that would be great!.. They much better than the 30 sec arch DEMs we use..
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10Bears, doesn't the map editor take in bitmaps? I still haven't gone through the entire process, but let me outline my planned approach.
1) generate terrain mesh
2) generate black & white bitmap from mesh (Pov-Ray color_map from 0 = rgb 0 to 1 = rgb 1)
3) import bitmap into editor
4) so on...
Will this not work? I don't have any idea what .typ or .elv files are but feel free to enlighten me. If I'm about to hit a brick wall I'd like to know it.
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dp bug...
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Originally posted by 10Bears
Orge simply wrote a config file for mapmaker.. Maybe you can examine that config and see if it could be applied to other utilities.
hmm, i'm sure he wrote the program
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It sure looks like I have it figured out. The placement of the fields and strategic objects will take the most time, of course, but the mesh creation is pretty easy.
I decided to start with islands. I am using the plane object in TrueSpace and then quad dividing it to give me a mesh or patch object with which I can create varying elevations. The plus side to that is you know for a fact that any area you want to place a field or factory in is flat and level. I've been making field and factory areas larger then they need to be so I know I have plenty of space to work in.
So, okay, repeat that for several islands or various meshes. Then I take a plane and scale it beyond the perimeter of the map and set it at elevation 0 and it becomes the water.
Open Pov-Ray and render with the ground plane set for color 0 and the terrain mesh will have the universal colormap as follows:
pigment { gradient y
color_map {
[0 color rgb 0]
[1 color rgb 1] } }
Output should be set as +w512 +h512, if I read the help file properly. The rest should be done in the editor.
Did I miss anything?