MallowTheClouds Maps

[MallowTheCloud 41]

I use a program called dlgv32 Pro (Global Mapper) 5...

I don't remember where I got it, but it's just a trial version... so I printscreen my information from the program

Alas, with the .hgt files there are usually some missing data around the water, and the ocean/river data is messed up. So, I always have to use satellite data to fill in the water spots.... it gets too complicated for me to explain.

[tijn21 2]

thanx for the info anyway, mallow

 

 

[MallowTheCloud 41]

No problem. If you would like, I could make a tutorial on making international to-scale maps here. Would that benefit you?

[MallowTheCloud 41]

Sorry for the double post... I'm trying to help one of my customers out here...

Attaching guadalajara.jpg here.

Unfortunately, a .zip file was BARELY too big, so I had to make it a .rar file, then change the extension to .txt

I hope this isn't too confusing... what you need to do is change the extension back to .rar ... then use WinRAR to extract the .jpg file.

[tijn21 2]

  Well if it ain

[MallowTheCloud 41]

Alright, time for a tutorial of how I make international maps. I will show an example with Las Vegas. I know it's not international, but it's the same process.


First, the tools:

dlgv32 Pro (Global Mapper) 5
Landscape Designer
IrfanView
iDraw Character Maker
Andy80586's Higher Mountain MOD <---This file needs to be in your SC4 Plugin directory
MS Paint
And of course, Sim City 4


Alright... well first you need the .hgt information. So, you will need to know the latitude and longitude of the given location. We will look this up on Google. One easy way I've found to search is to put the city name, then longitude.

So, for this we will go to Google and search for 'Las Vegas longitude' (without quotes).

The first result shows as Xah: Las Vegas Travelog and right there, it says our coordinates are latitude 36.1941 N and longitude 115.2220 W

Now, we will go here to get the height information. Now, one thing to know about this site is that the format it uses is N15W120, for example. This is the bottom left corner of the data. So, this parts a little difficult to explain... I'll try to break it down.

If your longitude is west, round up.
If your longitude is east, round down.
If your latitude is south, round up.
If your latitude is north, round down.

So, Las Vegas is N36.2 W115.2

Using our above rules, we round up for the W, and down for the N.

So, now we have Las Vegas as N36W116. This is the file we are looking for. Also, keep in mind that if the city is near the border of a longitude or latitude line, you will need two files. For example, let's say Las Vegas was at 36.19N and 115.02W ... see how close the west is to 114.8? You will want both N36W116 and N36W115 for this, then.

Now, we're at ftp://e0mss21u.ecs.nasa.gov/srtm/, so we want to click on the link for United_States_1arcsec ... you have to click the next link which is 1arcsec as well.

Most browsers should have a find tool in them, and often it is CTRL-F ... so use CTRL-F and in the find dialogue box, search for N36W116.

Ah, there it is:



Now, save this file to your disk. When that's done, unzip it and open it with your dlgv32 Pro (Global Mapper) 5 program.

First of all, get rid of the two white boxes (elevation and scale) by right clicking and closing them. Your screen will now likely look something like this:



Now, there are three major changes we need to make here. First of all, see that button in the upper right, that looks like a mountain with the sun above it? Click that to turn shadows off.

Next, we want our own greyscale file, not a color file. So, where it currently says Atlas Shader, scroll down to Add custom shader...

With the height mod, mentioned above, I have found that the perfect shading is this... where it says Height: 0 ... to the right of that there is an Add button. Click that.

Now, as shown in the below screenshot, change the values for RGB to 30 for each. Then click OK to close the color menu.



We have one other to set. Change the text to where it says Height: 4000 representing 4000 meters. Now, select Add again and click on the white color, as shown in the screenshot below.



Now, click OK again to close the color menu, and rename this if you want. Then, click ok. Mine is called Final so this is what my screen now looks like:




Alright, changes one (getting rid of shading) and two (setting greyscale heights) are complete.

We need to change one more thing, the scale. For this tutorial, I have set my screen resolution to 800 x 600 so my printscreens will fit. However, it is best to set your monitor's resolution as high as possible for this step.

What we need to do is zoom in to the Las Vegas area. After all, the full square is almost 90 by 90 km. That would take way too long to render.

So, we need to find at which part of this map Las Vegas is located. Looking back at the coordinates, we see that it's at latitude 36.1941 N and longitude 115.2220 W ...

There are seven tools just to the left of the color settings where we changed our map to greyscale. Using the pointer tool (the one in the middle) and hovering over areas of the map, we can see where this location is:



The yellow box shows the coordinates, and the red circle shows where on the map that is.

So, let's zoom in some to this area. First select the zoom tool... the furthest left of the seven tools we have been using.

I'll guesstimate, and zoom in here:



So, my screen now looks like this:



Lastly, we need to know how big this region is. Of the seven tools we have been using, the third is a ruler. Using the ruler, right click somewhere in the image and select the option Use Metric Distance Units.

Now, start at the far left (the farthest left you can go without the left arrow showing up), click, and you can now stretch your ruler to the far right and see the distance on the bottom:



You can see my distance length says 41.4 km. I will assume it's 43 km from the very left part of the screen.


Now, you need to take a printscreen. So, hit the button above your NumPad that says something like Prt Scr/SysRq. You can now close dlgv32 Pro. Now, open IrfanView. Hit CTRL-V to paste your printscreen, and you will now have a screen that looks something like this:



Next, we need to select only the greyscale image... so starting in the top left of the greyscale, click and drag until you have the entire greyscale image only selected. Using CTRL-Y, crop the image:



Now, we need to convert this image to a true greyscale image, so go to the menu Image and go down to Convert to Greyscale. Save this file as LasVegas.bmp .


Close IrfanView and open iDraw. Open LasVegas.bmp and have a look at it. You will want three options under the View menu checked: Show Tools, Show Pen, and Show Pallette.

Your screen should now look something like this:



You can see that there's some missing data (showing up as bright areas). Zoom in, and using the tools do a little touching up to get rid of this missing data. One thing that makes this easy is, right click on the area just next to the missing data. This will select that color, and you can now paint over it with that color. Your picture should now look something like this:



Now, on the pallette, select the option used to see all the colors that are used. If the lowest one is 30 for each RGB, good. This is usually the case in areas near the ocean.

But, Las Vegas is not near the ocean, so the lowest used is 56 of each RGB. That's 26 above what we want... so first, deselect the used filter. Now, double click on the lowest used one (56) and change it to 30 for each RGB.



Now, we need to also subtract 26 from the highest used (168 in this example)... so we need to change that one to 142.



Next, left click on the lowest used (now 30) and right click on the highest used (now 142) so you have both selected.



In the upper right corner of the pallette box, there is a handy gradient tool to fade from your left click selected color to your right click selected color. Click this.



Now, save the file and quit iDraw. Reopen the file in IrfanView.


The reason for this next part is hard to explain. Let me at least try...

Though we changed the pallette in iDraw, the greyscale data doesn't care about the color. It cares about the order of the colors on the pallette. We didn't change the order.

But, what we can do is raise the color depth in IrfanView, then drop it back down to a greyscale. This will trick the file in to making the pallette shift.


In other words, now that we're in IrfanView, we want to go to the menu option Image and down to Increase Color Depth. Increase the color depth to 24 BPP. Now, go back to Image and down to Convert to Greyscale...

Save the file again.

We now have a nice, accurately scaled (elevation wise) version of the Las Vegas area:




There are still two things we need to do, though. One is minor, the other is major.


First, the minor part.

We need to resize the image to an accurate scale. We found earlier that our image should be 43 km. Well, what does that mean? For SC4, we need to multiply km by 64 to get pixels.

So, using the Windows Calculator, 43 times 64 is 2752. We need to make the image 2752 pixels wide.

Still in IrfanView, hit CTRL-R. This will bring up the resize dialogue box. My image is currently 682 pixels wide.

Make sure the bottom left check box (Preserve aspect ratio) is checked. Also, make sure the bottom right (Resize) option is selected. Now, type in the width as 2752 (or whatever you calculated).

My screen now looks like this:



Hit OK and your greyscale is now the right size!


Unfortunately, all the above that I have just explained may be less than half the work, because now we have to add the water.

You see, these .hgt files have a peculiar habit of screwing up sea level. So, areas near the ocean (this is not the case for Las Vegas) will still look strange. Areas higher in elevation (like Las Vegas) will not even show any water. In fact, that's the reason we subtracted 26 from the height, to bring the lowest elevation down to the SC4 sea level.


On to the hard part.

You have to go to google and find a map where the water in the area is a solid color. If you can find one with a scale that's even better. Here's what I found for Las Vegas:



Now, do a printscreen, paste it in to IrfanView, select and crop the image like we did with the dlgv32 Pro image.

Save this file as LasVegasTemplate.bmp so your screen should now look something like this:




Now, we want to go to Image on the menu, and Decrease Color Depth... Choose Custom and set it to 64 colors. This will make it easier to select the water color later:




Now, save the file again. We also want to find out how many pixels the scale is... see the scale at the top of the image? It says five km. Well, when you select an area in IrfanView, at the top it tells you how many pixels it is. It turns out the 5km scale at the top is 38 pixels wide.

Close IrfanView, and open your LasVegasTemplate.bmp in iDraw.

We want to make ALL the water the same color, but right now there are some words and stuff covering parts of the water. So, using our handy tools, right click on the water color to select it, then draw over the words. Also, we want to paint with a different color over the interstate symbols, in case they share any colors with the water... here are two pics... before, and after:






Now, we want to set the water color to a grey, with 20 for each RGB. So, right click on the water to select the color, then double click on the color to change it:



Next, we want to set ALL the other colors to white. So, the easiest way to do this is to set the first color to white, set the color before the water to white, set the color after the water to white, and then set the last color to white. Then, using the gradient tool mentioned above, fade the white to white... see the images below:





Notice that I forgot to paint over one of the interstate symbols, so I have a ring of dark up near the top of my image. I will fix that by hand painting white over it.



Now, save your LasVegasTemplate.bmp, close iDraw, and open the file in IrfanView.

We want to increase the color depth to 24BPP, and then convert to greyscale like we did with the other file.

We also want to resize the image like we did with the last one. Remember the 5km scale? Well, 5 x 64 is 320, so it should be 320 pixels wide... but ours was only 38. So, we need to find out what scale we need to resize it to...

Using Windows calculator, 320 divided by 38 is about 8.421. So, we need to multiply our image by 8.421... right now the template is 461 pixels wide, and using windows calculator to multiply 461 by 8.421, we get 3882. So, we need to increase this template to 3882 pixels.



Save your image.


Keep in mind, my template is from MapQuest and was at a zoom that makes it to where the water when resized will be very blocky.

If you have your monitor resolution a lot higher, and you find a bigger map at a closer zoom, your water will not be as blocky.


Finally, we need to merge our images. For this we can use our trusty MSPaint which comes with all Windows computers.

First, open your LasVegas.bmp... then go Edit in the menu, and Paste From... . Choose your LasVegasTemplate.bmp and if it says it's too large, do NOT resize your image.


Now, on the left there will be two little image icons under all the tools... select the second one. This will drop all the white to the background.


The next part is easiest to do when you can obviously tell where a river should go. With Las Vegas, I am going to have to guesstimate... What you need to do is drag the pasted image to where the water is in the right place:


IMPORTANT NOTE: Often, the scale of the template map will be off. So, you will almost always have to do some tweaking with the size of the template. Do this in IrfanView. Make sure you deselect Preserve Aspect Ratio when resizing, because sometimes the water will need to be stretched vertically or horizontally.

This is where you have to use your best judgment to get the water in the right place. It will take a lot of trial and error, and may even take some research.


Next, you will want to save your LasVegas.bmp again.

Now, reopen it in iDraw and make sure there's no water in high elevations... on my LasVegas one, I do have to fix one such area:



After fixing those water-in-high-elevation issues (which are rare, I might add)... we are almost done!


Open Landscape Designer. Select Region Name DB and in the bottom right, type the name of your region. Then click the Write Region.ini button.

Now, select Terrain Generator. Hit CTRL-R and open your file (mine is LasVegas.bmp)... it will then ask you to choose a size. Click Nearest Dimensions and then click OK

Now, hit CTRL-O, create your config.bmp file, hit CTRL-C, and quit Landscape Designer.


Finally, open your SC4 game, open your new region, hit CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-R, go to the region folder (likely C:\My Documents\SimCity 4\Regions\), go to the newly created folder of the city we're working on, and select the .jpg file that was created.

This should start the rendering, and you should have your region!!!!


CONGRATULATIONS!!!! You've done it. Wanna see how Las Vegas turned out? The water is a bit blocky, but I didn't have much to work with...

[MallowTheCloud 41]

Duthford is new and improved!!!

Check it out!

[RadioheadFan 1]

Great work on Las Vegas and the updated Duthford, I can't wait to see LV on the MEX, then in my SC4!

RHF

[abcd 5]

Just a question: Is it possible to convert this Las Vegas map into real world scale?

                       And if yes, could somebody do it and include a config?

 

(File is too large, so here's the URL): http://rebel13.com/SimCity/300/clarkcountynevada.jpg

[MallowTheCloud 41]

Date: 4/20/2005 8:54:01 AM
Author: abcd

Just a question: Is it possible to convert this Las Vegas map into real world scale?

And if yes, could somebody do it and include a config?

(File is too large, so here's the URL): http://rebel13.com/SimCity/300/clarkcountynevada.jpg

quote>


Yes it is. I will do it for you, and you or I can release it on the STEX. Is that ok?

The reason I say this is because you have found a much higher quality map of Las Vegas than the data I used.

[abcd 5]

Date: 4/20/2005 11:33:57 AM Author: MallowTheCloud

Date: 4/20/2005 8:54:01 AM Author: abcd

Just a question: Is it possible to convert this Las Vegas map into real world scale?

&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; And if yes, could somebody do it and include a config?

(File is too large, so here's the URL): http://rebel13.com/SimCity/300/clarkcountynevada.jpg

quote> Yes it is. I will do it for you, and you or I can release it on the STEX. Is that ok? The reason I say this is because you have found a much higher quality map of Las Vegas than the data I used.

quote>

GREAT, if you do it, i think it's better when you release it on the STEX! Thanks for doing this!

[tijn21 2]

thanx a lot mallow!!!!

 

 

it looks like you put a lot of time in this tutorial! Can

[MallowTheCloud 41]

Las Vegas has been released, and is slated to show up soon!

[RadioheadFan 1]

Looking good Mallow!

RHF

[MallowTheCloud 41]

West Mallorca has been released, and is slated to show up soon!

Northeast and Southeast Mallorca are now also released.

[RadioheadFan 1]

Excellent set of maps Mallow, Mallorca is very interesting terrain and I'm sure other ST members are enjoying it this second!

RHF

[MallowTheCloud 41]

My new map request pack has been released! Look forward to the international version in a week or so!

[Dan DeVille 0]

You're new us maps is corrupted. I can't unzip it because of this.

[MallowTheCloud 41]

Date: 4/29/2005 9:03:37 PM
Author: Dan DeVille
You're new us maps is corrupted. I can't unzip it because of this.

quote>

Yep, I know. I'm trying to fix it, but it seems ST doesn't like uploading it.

I'll continue to try until it's fixed. Thanks for paying attention!

[RadioheadFan 1]

Very cool idea Mallow, I can't wait for the international version!

RHF

[the_crispbread_witch 0]

Great tutorial!

But I don't understand one thing, when using the Andy80586's Higher Mountain MOD, where is sea level, is it 30?

Thanks!

[RadioheadFan 1]

I believe that the mod changes sea level from 83 to 23, but Mallow would know for sure.

RHF

[MallowTheCloud 41]

Date: 5/11/2005 7:17:01 AM
Author: RadioheadFan
I believe that the mod changes sea level from 83 to 23, but Mallow would know for sure.


RHF

quote>

That's exactly right (or at least what I've found from experimentation).

I say 30 for lowest land and 20 for water because if you put the lowest land at 24, SimCity will smooth the edges so the water is way bigger than it should be. And, I put the water at 20 to make it deep enough for ports.

[the_crispbread_witch 0]

Thank you RHF and Mallow!

My own experimentation would suggest that sea level is around 25, but I'm not sure, could be the SC4 smoothing. I'm making some land to be just above water and it's quite tricky.
(I'm making my own map in PS, not from USGS)


I might share my discoveries later on in a new thread.

[MallowTheCloud 41]

My new international map request pack has been released!

[tijn21 2]

Terrific job!!!

You deserve another award.....can

[Boggy1 45]

I seem to be having a problem with your Long Island map.

I just spent 2 hours rendering it, and all I got was a big, blank, Ocean.

What went wrong?

[MallowTheCloud 41]

Date: 6/19/2005 11:48:41 AM
Author: boggy1
I seem to be having a problem with your Long Island map.

I just spent 2 hours rendering it, and all I got was a big, blank, Ocean.

What went wrong?

quote>

You have to put the import.dat plugin in your plugins folder before you begin rendering.


Thanks for the comment, tijn!

[Boggy1 45]

I did put it in. But, which plugin folder do you mean? The My Docs or My Comp one?

[MallowTheCloud 41]

Date: 6/19/2005 3:37:57 PM
Author: boggy1
I did put it in. But, which plugin folder do you mean? The My Docs or My Comp one?

quote>

I didn't think it mattered... but it may. I always put it in the My Docs folder. I dunno whether you did or not, but make sure it's not in a subfolder. In other words, don't put it in:

...\SimCity 4\Plugins\Import\import.dat

Make sure it's rather in:

...\SimCity 4\Plugins\import.dat