teragon maps

[Riamus]

The roads that are going to the water are expecting bridge POIs and I have them disabled so that would be another reason.

Ah, that makes sense. 

The rivers cut through the land like the Grand Canyon. there is like a 50 or 60 block almost vertical wall to the rivers. they should be limit to the depth they can be and then filled with water. At the moment the water level is the "sea" level so sheer vertical walls on rivers is what you get in mountain areas.

Just looked at the Create Rivers command and saw that you can control this easily by changing the elevation in that command.  Increase it to around the level of your flat terrain (perhaps 1-2m below) and the shoreline will be similar to a lake for at least most of the river.  If the river cuts through a hill, then you'll have steep sides as the river will always be the same level and not increase to go up a hill, but most of the river should follow the lowland areas.  Play around with the elevation to find something that works for you.

 

[bobrpggamer]

Well making my own roads is not happening, I tried to use the edited splat 3 before game initializing the game and I got a map with no biomes. I tried maptoolz and same thing.

Oh well. I guess I will try loading my presets and create another map and add complete roads, seeing how it can do so in the background without it hogging too many resources.

Has anyone have some idea of how the main road settings work (other than complete/incomplete & size)

 

[Riamus]

Well making my own roads is not happening, I tried to use the edited splat 3 before game initializing the game and I got a map with no biomes. I tried maptoolz and same thing.

Oh well. I guess I will try loading my presets and create another map and add complete roads, seeing how it can do so in the background without it hogging too many resources.

Has anyone have some idea of how the main road settings work (other than complete/incomplete & size)

Someone was playing around with settings in Discord for roads, but I haven't tried and couldn't tell you.  I do know you use use Create Road to make a road from point A to point B, which may help you to make something you like rather than the generated paths.

Just a quick screenshot showing a map I made that has rivers going in and out of lakes rather than around them.  It was just a test to see what I can do with it, so biomes aren't set well and it's not very hilly.  Also, I disabled POI for this test, so it looks even more empty.  But it does show that you can have rivers and lakes merged together.  Even though the map could use tweaking before being used in a game, it still looks good.

 

[bobrpggamer]

Someone was playing around with settings in Discord for roads, but I haven't tried and couldn't tell you.  I do know you use use Create Road to make a road from point A to point B, which may help you to make something you like rather than the generated paths.

Just a quick screenshot showing a map I made that has rivers going in and out of lakes rather than around them.  It was just a test to see what I can do with it, so biomes aren't set well and it's not very hilly.  Also, I disabled POI for this test, so it looks even more empty.  But it does show that you can have rivers and lakes merged together.  Even though the map could use tweaking before being used in a game, it still looks good.

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Seems you like the desert oasis look. I like the hill in the center of town. I had a good map with forest terrain inside a large town but I cannot seem to get it again.

When I do rivers, it seems that they do not connect to the lakes like yours does so I don't bother with rivers anymore.

It still bums me out that I cannot make my own roads, I spent 8 hours making them and it destroyed the map.

 

[bobrpggamer]

Well I got another cool map going, roads are OK.

The problem I have with diffusion biomes is that the sky and light change to much when on a vehicle. This may be due to my 2 diffusion range but the wasteland comes and goes to much. So I am going to go without the wasteland with diffusion and just have desert as low range diffusion with the water.

I have an idea on how to edit the roads again. The roads that are maptoolz exported out are spotted gray instead of the usual red and green so I will make a brush with a cloned section of the map and stroke a pen path. I hope it works, but it probably won't.

 

[Riamus]

Seems you like the desert oasis look. I like the hill in the center of town. I had a good map with forest terrain inside a large town but I cannot seem to get it again.

When I do rivers, it seems that they do not connect to the lakes like yours does so I don't bother with rivers anymore.

It still bums me out that I cannot make my own roads, I spent 8 hours making them and it destroyed the map.

I didn't change my biomes for this test and the ground level is lower than what I normally use, which is why so much is desert.  Normally I wouldn't have anywhere near that much.  As for doing rivers that connect with lakes, here's what you need to do to get that:

Move the Subtract Height Map command (the last command in that section, NOT the entire section) below Create Rivers and above Create Flat Water Map.

You may need to adjust water levels, but you have the possibility of creating rivers connecting with lakes as the lakes will be created after the rivers so the rivers won't be routed around the lakes.

 

[bobrpggamer]

Sounds like a good Idea. Thank you.

 

[spud42]

using real world height maps is cool but doesnt work if you try to use too big an area like i did with the whole of Tasmania.

the map gets too compressed in the xy axis but not in the z axis . its very hard to get flatish areas without destroying the height map you captured.

picking smaller areas like a city or a few square miles/Kms of terrain will be better.  will have a go soon as i have free time. 

getting some good ideas from you guys so keep it up..

 

[Riamus]

using real world height maps is cool but doesnt work if you try to use too big an area like i did with the whole of Tasmania.

the map gets too compressed in the xy axis but not in the z axis . its very hard to get flatish areas without destroying the height map you captured.

picking smaller areas like a city or a few square miles/Kms of terrain will be better.  will have a go soon as i have free time. 

getting some good ideas from you guys so keep it up..

Yeah, any area that is too much greater than the map size is going to start to look weird and usually become to rugged to play on.  Doesn't mean you can't make it work with enough effort, but sticking to a heightmap that is less than 20km2 will usually work best for a real world location.

That said, I'm trying to do the state of Michigan for fun.  And there is the Australia map that looks great at least in screenshot.

 

[bobrpggamer]

I do not know about anyone else but its not enough to strike out the bridge prefabs in the POI list and uncheck the ones in advanced, because I still get them. I have to delete all bridge lines from the prefabsi.xml to make sure they do not show up.

 

[Riamus]

I do not know about anyone else but its not enough to strike out the bridge prefabs in the POI list and uncheck the ones in advanced, because I still get them. I have to delete all bridge lines from the prefabsi.xml to make sure they do not show up.

As long as you have the bridge lines commented out in the Read POI Property List, it should be enough to prevent them from appearing.  Without those lines, Teragon shouldn't try to place them, just like removing any POI from that list (or from an Import POI Property List command) will prevent a POI from appearing.  If it still appears, that seems like a bug that others don't seem to be seeing.

Here are a few maps from Teragon that I made using an imported heightmap.  They look really great, though coasts (ocean, lake, etc.) aren't always correctly defined - probably because the heights of those coasts are too close to that of the water or even under the level of the water so the heightmap isn't clear enough.  Still, they look great.  I wouldn't want to try driving around the Oahu map, though.  Maps are Oahu, Hawaii, lower peninsula of Michigan, and the third I don't remember where it was from.

Tricks for Importing Heightmaps

• Heightmap size needs to be the same as your map, so resize it if necessary.
  
• I have seen heightmaps that file properties and image editing software state are a specific size, but if I watch the Console while generating a map, Teragon states the size of the imported heightmap is something else (always a lot smaller in the ones I've seen, but it may vary).  This will cause Teragon to crash even though it should be the correct size.  I am not sure the cause of that incorrect sizing, but if you are crashing, look at Console when hitting Run and watch the import line to see what size it lists.  If it doesn't match the size of your map, it will crash every time.
  
• Heightmaps should be in grayscale and will work in 16bit and 32bit.  Not sure about others as I haven't tried any others.  You can convert a map to the right type using various image editing software.
  
• Some heightmaps will have the base land height at close to 0 height, so you will likely need to make adjustments to the flat water map to get the water where you want.  You can use Scale Heightmap to raise the base land height to a more reasonable height.
  
• If possible, try to use a heightmap covers close to the same area as your map.  Even though I have maps here of Oahu and Michigan, they wouldn't be very playable because even a tiny town will take up a huge part of the map.  One town tile is 150m2 and on a 4k map, that's only just over 27 tiles across the map.  So, considering the size of Michigan, one single tile that has maybe 4 POI on it would be the equivalent size of around 10 square miles or so, which is so grossly inaccurate that it would really feel wrong.  It also means terrain features feel exaggerated such that you are going over extremely rough terrain in game where it would be relatively smooth in real life (look at Oahu below and imagine driving on that map).  If your heightmap is no more than 2-3x larger area than your in-game map, it will feel more natural and accurate.  But that does mean a much smaller area to have as your map, which takes away a lot of noticeable features (you wouldn't recognize 20km2 area of Michigan as being Michigan, for example).  But the map will feel better when you play it.
  
• Set Rotation to 90 for the Import Heightmap command to avoid the map being rotated 90 degrees.
  

Also note that the time to generate a map if you import the heightmap is significantly faster than normal.  I can generate a map using an imported heightmap in 30-90 seconds rather than 5-15 minutes (time varies based on things like amount of lakes and such).  If you like a map, you can export the heightmap and then import it to make adjustments to things like towns and POI and water and even rivers or roads without having to spend a long time recreating the heightmap each time.  It can save you a LOT of time once you have an overall terrain that you like, so starting with just a basic terrain map with nothing on it first until you get something you like, then exporting the map, you can then import it and try a variety of changes without waiting as long.

 

[bobrpggamer]

As long as you have the bridge lines commented out in the Read POI Property List, it should be enough to prevent them from appearing.  Without those lines, Teragon shouldn't try to place them, just like removing any POI from that list (or from an Import POI Property List command) will prevent a POI from appearing.  If it still appears, that seems like a bug that others don't seem to be seeing.

Here are a few maps from Teragon that I made using an imported heightmap.  They look really great, though coasts (ocean, lake, etc.) aren't always correctly defined - probably because the heights of those coasts are too close to that of the water or even under the level of the water so the heightmap isn't clear enough.  Still, they look great.  I wouldn't want to try driving around the Oahu map, though.  Maps are Oahu, Hawaii, lower peninsula of Michigan, and the third I don't remember where it was from.

Tricks for Importing Heightmaps

• Heightmap size needs to be the same as your map, so resize it if necessary.
  
• Heightmaps should be in grayscale and will work in 16bit and 32bit.  Not sure about others as I haven't tried any others.  You can convert a map to the right type using various image editing software.
  
• Some heightmaps will have the base land height at close to 0 height, so you will likely need to make adjustments to the flat water map to get the water where you want.  You can use Scale Heightmap to raise the base land height to a more reasonable height.
  

Also note that the time to generate a map if you import the heightmap is significantly faster than normal.  I can generate a map using an imported heightmap in 30-90 seconds rather than 5-15 minutes (time varies based on things like amount of lakes and such).  If you like a map, you can export the heightmap and then import it to make adjustments to things like towns and POI and water and even rivers or roads without having to spend a long time recreating the heightmap each time.  It can save you a LOT of time once you have an overall terrain that you like, so starting with just a basic terrain map with nothing on it first until you get something you like, then exporting the map, you can then import it and try a variety of changes without waiting as long.

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Its cool not having the biome diffusion transitions on a real world heightmap. I think these maps would be ruined using diffusion.

 

[Riamus]

Its cool not having the biome diffusion transitions on a real world heightmap. I think these maps would be ruined using diffusion.

Yeah, I tried diffusion on the Michigan map and it just didn't look right.  Granted, most of the snowy areas aren't snow except in winter... it would probably be better if I raised the level of the snow a bit, but I wasn't really looking for perfect accuracy.

 

[bobrpggamer]

As long as you have the bridge lines commented out in the Read POI Property List, it should be enough to prevent them from appearing.  Without those lines, Teragon shouldn't try to place them, just like removing any POI from that list (or from an Import POI Property List command) will prevent a POI from appearing.  If it still appears, that seems like a bug that others don't seem to be seeing.

This is a prefab.xml from a map that has // in front of bridge (all teragon prefabs) prefabs and all advanced unchecked.

 

[Riamus]

This is a prefab.xml from a map that has // in front of bridge (all teragon prefabs) prefabs and all advanced unchecked.

Not sure.  I don't make many road maps because of the time it takes, so I can't really test that.  Maybe someone else can look into it to see if they have similar issues.  But I haven't heard of anyone with such problems if they comment out any prefabs, including bridges.  It is possible no one has said anything, though.

 

[bobrpggamer]

Yeah, I tried diffusion on the Michigan map and it just didn't look right.  Granted, most of the snowy areas aren't snow except in winter... it would probably be better if I raised the level of the snow a bit, but I wasn't really looking for perfect accuracy.

I wish the settings for "environmental biome map" would have Min/Max diffusion transitions Like:

Desert: 20 - 25

Wasteland: 25 - 30

Forest:  30 - 80

Snow: 80 - 256

 

[bobrpggamer]

I have beautiful new 10K map (IMO) with rivers connected to lakes.

Prefab.XML has all remnants of bridges deleted and spawns have been changed to be near at least 3 wilderness POIs in the forest and not in the desert, as that would suck from overheating.

Thank you Riamus for the tip.

If anyone wants It, I can add it to my Onedrive for download.

 

[Evil_Geoff]

Unfortunately I am not a fan of voice apps like discord, so I will hope he sets up a forum eventually.

The Discord servers I frequent are very rarely used for voice chat.  There might be a channel or two for game server players/streamers, but almost all information sharing is done in text channels.  Just sayin'...

 

[bobrpggamer]

The Discord servers I frequent are very rarely used for voice chat.  There might be a channel or two for game server players/streamers, but almost all information sharing is done in text channels.  Just sayin'...

Thank you Evil_Geoff.

 

[Evil_Geoff]

If anyone wants a Washington, DC area height map, I have this one for an 8k map.



NOTE:  This heightmap was made for 16 bit grayscale, and is not 180 degree mirrored.