Regional Water-Terrain Level

[mrbisonm 1,620]

I just downloaded and rendered a marvelous map , but one thing I didn't like, the terrainlevels are way too high for my use of the region. I would love to add a river and some lakes to that region. 

Now I am wondering since I saw something in the (.ini?) file (the region configeration file within each region folder), if it was possible to lower the terrain or lift the waterlevel in the whole region at the same time without going through each citytile and use the terrainleveler in the godtool sections. That would take an eternity with a region of 80+ citytiles.......

When openening the (.ini?) file I saw that it said:

 

[Regional Settings]

Name = Somewhere East of Reno

Terrain type = 1

Water Min = 60

Water Max = 100.quote>

What does the terraintype= stand for and what about the Water MIn=  and Water Max=.....? Anything I can do there to raise the regional waterlevel or lower the regional terrainlevel?

Help would be appreciated explaining me the meanings of the (.ini?) file in a more detailed matter. Thanks.

mrbisonm

[Vandy 110]

Hi, Mr. B.

I don't have an answer for you on the .INI values but take a look at this mod:

BLaM Sea Level Mod

I believe it might help you in what you're trying to do.

Regards,

Gary (Vandy)

[mrbisonm 1,620]

Thanks Gary, but this doesn't really help since the height I would like is just between two of those modfiles......The BLAM mod only gives you a choice of 4 waterlevel heights.

But thanks for mentioning it, much appreciated.

Fred

[masochist 111]

You don't use the SC4 Terraformer, do you? If you do, there are options in there to raise/lower both sea level and land level. It might help you accomplish what you want, but you might want to make a back-up of the region first.

And for the record, I'd change the land level before changing sea level. It just seems to work better.

[tungston 19]

The numbers in the ini file won't change anything for the region. Plus I don't know of anyway to change a terraformed region.

[mrbisonm 1,620]

Oh Geeeez..........That is encouraging, tungston....lol....Well, it looks like I have to lower the terrain manually citytile by citytile. What are these things in the .ini file for then if they don't change anything?????

No masochist, and I don't use the terraformer, I don't even have it on my computer. I downloaded it once, tried to make it function and nothing worked for me, so....bye bye SC4T. One question though about the Terraformer, can it change the waterlevel on existing regions?

Oh man....imagine manually lowering 80some citytiles........better take a week vacation.

Hey thanks folks for your help.

mrb

[NetPCDoc 1]

Hello mrbisonm,

I have not researched this particular area - but it seems that the region.ini values do reflect choices made when you genereate a new region from the SimCity Region view. And manually changing the "Name =" value in the Region.ini file will actually change the region name in the game.

If you aren't using custom terrain - you could just keep regenerating a region - until you get the land/sea levels that you want?  When using a custom bitmap - you may be able to go back and re-work the bitmap (if you have the appropriate tools/software) - so that the rendered terrain is at the correct land/sea level.  The first tool to come to mind is the  SC4 Terraformer - that uses it's own version of a bitmap to make region wide changes of this type.

-NetPCDoc

No detail is too small to be micromanaged.

[mrbisonm 1,620]

Thanks NetPCDoC for explaining the .inifile content , also thanks for the help, but I started to lower the region citytile by citytile.....(oh boy). Yes, I am using a custom map and I won't go through the trouble again to download terraformer again and don't get to work it.

Thanks you all, I will just be patient and keep on lowering all 80+ tiles..........see ya next month ()

[CaptCity 4,694]

For anyone curious...

I once played around with those properties in the region.ini file a while back and discovered a few things - nothing earth-shattering, though.

As NetPCDoc pointed out, changing the 'Name =' will change the region name any time.

Changing the 'Terrain type =': a '1' will make a new region all water. A '0' will make it all land. This will hold for any tiles that have not been saved. Once saved and a city file is created, tiles will remain at whatever they were when saved while any unsaved tiles can still be changed. I guess this could be used to place islands in a water region, or lakes in a land region to save a little terraforming time.

As for the Water min and max, I never noticed any effect when trying different values for water tiles, but land tiles would be different shades of green when changing the settings. Maybe something to do with 'soil type'?

Oh well, just a few observations... for the curious...

[mrbisonm 1,620]

Well, that surely answered my questions about the .ini file. Thanks.

mrb

[NetPCDoc 1]

Originally posted by: CaptCity

As for the Water min and max, I never noticed any effect when trying different values for water tiles, but land tiles would be different shades of green when changing the settings. Maybe something to do with 'soil type'?

quote>

 

That's not "soil type" - the various shades of green are showing different elevations.  Seems to go (low to high) from a sandy (tan) to grassy (lush green) to scrabble (or rocky).  And, if I remember correctly - this pattern will repeat  - based on where you are between the points that the God Mode Raise Terrain (Lower Water) and Lower Terrain (Raise Water) Tools step to.

-NetPCDoc

No detail is too small to be micromanaged.