What's the best height map editor you have found for making custom maps in 7d2d?

[4sheetzngeegles]

First thank you two for any advice you can give, and second I apologize in advance for the long read

It's the only way I know how to explain it.

When I am using Nitrogen, there is a blue mask that can be set to stop
generation on a specific area, if it already has prefab.xml populated there.
It will only place pois on the uncovered area. The thing that happens is
when the height map is imported if the starting color is 60 height in 16 bit
grayscale, the resulting color will be 80 height plus. That results in where
the edge of the mask is off by a height variance of 20. So it makes the edge
a straight cliff.

The project is I want to have a navezgane random gen Hybrid. I exported
the navezgane grayscale level in photoshop. Then designed a surrounding
hand painted terrain. I zoomed in to pixle level, I think its 3200, adjusted
and blended, all the way around the area to get, usable slopes. So that
you can play both Nav and expand to the outer region that has different poi
placement rules. I added gradients, to create roads, leading in and out of
Navezgane valley. This made it so I could also adjust the splat map, for roads
to match.

When it is generated with including the mask to that only the out skirts gets new
pois placed, I would then copy the Navesgane prefablist into the finished prefab
list. The terrain is no longer matching at height on the border of the mask.
It has turned in to sheer drop cliffs.

Some of the poi terrain under the mask will also sometime shift so that Pois
are either on a raised platform, or a pit. Personally I get around that by the
hand painted gradients of the roads. But all of the terrain textures, except for
the Desert wall ruin the visual, because they are not seamless and are squares
with an x in the middle. So progressively as I got better with the PS tools I
learned to make my maps, have a low enough angle grade to not have that texture
show and it helps with travel.

To get it close I have to go from gen to play to PS edit constantly to get the
heights closer, be it colorburn, blur, brightness contrast etc.

I was just trying to find out if there is a way to stop the import from adding
contrast to the imported HeightMap. Because it it would save me tons of time and
allow me to make truly usable Hybrid maps.

On the other side, If I just make a 3d map, the poi grouping that Nitogen does
is perfect for me. The map I posted, was strictly designed for, foot and bicycle
only. It looks flat but it isn't.

 

[Riamus]

What you are describing isn't really a heightmap problem, but a POI elevation problem.  Try adding the y_is_ground_level="true" parameter to your lines in the prefabs.xml file (or remove it if it's there).  I've found that sometimes editing the map in World Editor after you have the prefabs added causes this, and it's likely the same kind of situation you're experiencing and is related to that parameter.  The only solution I've found that works completely is to do every POI edit at a single time and not make any changes afterwards, but I've not done very much testing, so there's probably more to it than that.  But in either case, it isn't really the heightmap that's the problem.

As a side note, Teragon can merge two heightmaps and can place a group of POI (like a Navesgane town), allowing you to get something similar to what you are interested in... placing Navesgane onto a map with random terrain around it.  It's a much more advanced thing to try to do and you'd need to learn Teragon well to accomplish it, but it could be done.

 

[4sheetzngeegles]

@Riamus @Cpt Krunch

Here are excerpts from the original height map and the processed height map.
I overlay-ed the Poi layout, to make it easier to compare areas.
The areas that do not have pois are still higher than the original.

This is without applying the mask.
It you have any program with an rgb eyedropper, it will show
you the color difference. I know that terrain adjusts for poi
generation, this is to show and compare the areas without POIs.

I am starting to realize I may not be able to achieve, the layout
I want without, hand placing every poi. I like Teragon options all
except one. The rigid city layout of today's Rwg, vs the the free flowing prior
Rwg version. That is what I like most about Nitrogen.

But the pictures are so you can see directly what I was talking
about.

Original



Processed

 

[Cpt Krunch]

@Riamus @Cpt Krunch

Here are excerpts from the original height map and the processed height map.
I overlay-ed the Poi layout, to make it easier to compare areas.
The areas that do not have pois are still higher than the original.

This is without applying the mask.
It you have any program with an rgb eyedropper, it will show
you the color difference. I know that terrain adjusts for poi
generation, this is to show and compare the areas without POIs.

I am starting to realize I may not be able to achieve, the layout
I want without, hand placing every poi. I like Teragon options all
except one. The rigid city layout of today's Rwg, vs the the free flowing prior
Rwg version. That is what I like most about Nitrogen.

But the pictures are so you can see directly what I was talking
about.

Riamus is spot on in his assessment that this is a POI elevation issue.

Ive attempted (and failed) 3 times to achieve exactly what you are doing here. Im managing the PEP set, and Ive wanted to have a Navezgane Extended for PEP since we started it, long before actually, I talked with Magoli about era far back lol. I can tell you what has worked and not worked.

Start with terrain, get Navezgane map footprint integrated into whatever you are adding it into. Get your heights, annotate water heights at 'old' edges of Nav.

Test run your splat 3 first and get a rough adjust/lay in of that file into new larger splat3. You might consider giving the whole 'old' Nav map a gravel or asphalt border for visual reference.

Test run Nav POIs only. Do X and Y first, make your adjustments to Nav terrain by moving that whole piece with the gravel border as a handle for you to grab in editor, lets you move the whole thing up down left right. Once thats done get your heights, they will be 'globally' high or low at this point, so you can just raise or lower the whole map.

Once you have Navezgane sitting inside the new larger map body, and all of your heights and coords are correct, you are 'Zeroed' for Navesgane.

Any additional changes you make to the rest of the height map as you fill in the new empty regions, go back from time to time into Nav portion of the map and make sure your heights are still lining up.

I am probably the only person that still knows Nitrogen after some admin on here with an inferiority complex chased Damocles away lol. Anyway, the issues you are describing at this step in the map would be similar no what what map gen tool you use, the edges of the masked imported area. There are 100 ways to skin that cat.

I would recommend masking one city/region whatever at a time, then just grab the results from the prefabs.xml and skip the changes to terrain. Then go back and adjust the edges, grab the splat3 if you like it at that point as well.

Main theme here is, Its much easier to adjust small sections as you go instead of trying to consider all the other things you already have leveled in the map. It also makes it much MUCH easier to notice when you Globally lose or a gain a block,which happens ALL THE TIME in 7d2d map making. Losing or gaining a block without realizing and then adding POis by hand can completely destroy a map to the point its not worth trying to fix in 2 or 3 passes of the process, so back up often as well.

Hope this info is useful, Id be interested to see more results as you go.

I never made adjustments for that within Nitrogen, but outside of maybe changing the brush shape it uses around edges from square to round or whatever, you are much better off doing those in sections if you want a natural look.

I worry about biomes and water, players starts etc last and you are good.










 

 

[4sheetzngeegles]

Sincerely, Thank You both

Iv'e been quietly trying to do this since A19. May sound nuts, but I enjoyed

creating terrain that much, trying for an Ideal 3d landscape. It did help me to learn

a lot more about Photoshop, and during that time I learned to  hand paint
transitional biomes. 

You are right, I kept trying it as the complete area vs manageable amounts.

Maybe I should have asked for guidance 5 years ago. lol

Later

 

[Cpt Krunch]

Sincerely, Thank You both

Iv'e been quietly trying to do this since A19. May sound nuts, but I enjoyed

creating terrain that much, trying for an Ideal 3d landscape. It did help me to learn

a lot more about Photoshop, and during that time I learned to  hand paint
transitional biomes. 

You are right, I kept trying it as the complete area vs manageable amounts.

Maybe I should have asked for guidance 5 years ago. lol

Later

Come by the DF Discord and let me show you some much better ways to mask this project. I may also be able to translate some of what you are going for into Teragon, which would allow you both tile and loose POI configs, and might make more sense at the scale you are working. How big are you going overall?

https://discord.gg/Pc8BRWC44n

 

[4sheetzngeegles]

10k, I found it is enough for me, to add different terrain types without it being too compacted.

As an example, I recently got the Rebirth Mod out of curiosity, I liked what I read about the Purge

Its basically Sweep and Clear Nomadic, right up my alley. The 10k map I recently did is the one I use.

I have 24 traders on the map, and have not been able to find one yet.  That was my gauge.

I watched short spurts of people playing, after I got it. They are using a default pregen map, with the

trader in the default place. It may be convenient, but to me its no different than building a base

to exploit the ai. It robs the true potential of feeling alone and lost for a bit.

 

[Riamus]

@Riamus @Cpt Krunch

I am starting to realize I may not be able to achieve, the layout

I want without, hand placing every poi. I like Teragon options all
except one. The rigid city layout of today's Rwg, vs the the free flowing prior
Rwg version. That is what I like most about Nitrogen.

Darn pings don't delete from phone.

Anyhow, Teragon does towns like RWG, using tiles, because that's how the game is currently designed and what most people expect.  You can do individual placement of POI using Teragon, and you can even change town POI into wilderness POI with low distance between them so they are more likely to spawn in a semi-town like grouping.  But that isn't what you probably want.

Considering Teragon is being updated to make maps for Valheim as well, it may be that there will be a new town placement option that doesn't use tiles.  I don't know if Valheim uses tiles, and I didn't know if such an option for towns might happen.  But it is possible.

 

[4sheetzngeegles]

I wish Nitro King and Tera could be merged. One of the defining things and there are many

that I like about Terragon is erosion. You are right about the tiling rule though. The new rules

for 7d poi placement, is too neat and orderly. At least for me. I know it's closer to how cities

would be developed. And believe it or not when I play cities skylines it works. But if I had to choose

I'd play Banished more than skyline by a lot.

For some reason with 7d it just feels too well ordered and too condensed. But it inspired me to mod

so I'm okay with it. Mechanical that's the word I was looking for.

 

[Riamus]

I wish Nitro King and Tera could be merged. One of the defining things and there are many

that I like about Terragon is erosion. You are right about the tiling rule though. The new rules

for 7d poi placement, is too neat and orderly. At least for me. I know it's closer to how cities

would be developed. And believe it or not when I play cities skylines it works. But if I had to choose

I'd play Banished more than skyline by a lot.

For some reason with 7d it just feels too well ordered and too condensed. But it inspired me to mod

so I'm okay with it. Mechanical that's the word I was looking for.

You might try out doing town POI as wilderness and setting the poi_distance to a low number and see if it looks okay for you.  Just don't do too low or there won't be room for roads to generate.  The main issue is that you might not have good grouping that feel like towns.  But you wouldn't know until you try it.  Some decently rough terrain (mountains, hills, rivers, lakes) could help with that.

Just a thought if you want to see what might happen without needing to manually do everything. 

You do also have another option for tiles.  You could make your own custom tiles that are less "orderly" so they feel more like what you want.  You can have more space between POI on them and more terrain stuff.  You would probably need to make a lot of them to get enough variety, though.  But a lot of people might be interested in a tile pack.  Then you could set up a town type in Teragon that uses custom districts so you only get your tiles and not vanilla tiles.