Region Importing Help

[logiccosmic 0]

For Reference, I am using the most current version of SC4 Deluxe with the NAM mod, Industry Quadrupler, and a few assorted plugins. I have a Q6600, 4 Gb Ram, and a 4870x2 hardware wise.

Now please forgive my newbishness, it has been 2 years since I played SC4.

I am trying to create a custom region. I create a new region, change the config.bmp to match the new region. I use the Alt-Shift Ctrl R to open up the dialog box, and select the image file, which is already in the proper grayscale. Now my issue:

How can I tell if it is rendering.

Usually nothing happens, I left it on for 20 minutes it seems like, and nothing happened at all with a 2x2 small map.

Any suggestions?

Also, when importing with SC4 Terraformer, do you guys/girls get those cliffs at all the water edges??? Any good ideas on how to fix that?

Thanks for the help!

[Nuck97 0]

I very recently came across this problem.   I had edited a region JPG in a typical paint editor, then tried to render the region.   Nothing happened when I clicked the file. For me, rendering a region is a process that takes at least 20 minutes, depending on the size of the region.  Every time a new city tile is being rendered, the game will switch to that tile and add several silly descriptions as to what it's currently doing, just so you know it hasn't stalled.

After some extensive searching on Google, I found that you can only use an 8-bit greyscale jpeg or bmp file to render a region.  I found the greyscale option in my paint program easy enough (I use free software from PAINT.NET), but there was no option to save the file as an 8-bit jpeg, only 24 bit, IIRC.  Ahh, I just found that website again:

http://www.tdsoftware.co.uk/content/view/13/40/

I highly recommend following everything on there if you have not already done so.  

BUT....I was still in a pickle.  

My JPEG file wouldn't render, and neither would the BMP file when I tried saving it as that.   So, another Google search, how-to convert a picture file into an 8-bit jpeg or bmp.   I can't currently find the forum discussion I'd found, but apparently GIF files are only 8-bit, so I had to save the file as a GIF, close the JPEG file, open the new GIF, and then re-save it (overwrite the orignal) as a JPEG.   I tried to render it, and it worked perfectly!  Currently just shy of 200 thousand inhabitants in my new region.

I hope this helps,

Joe

PS:  To be on the safe side, you should make a backup of your original region file.  At one point whilst doing this, I goofed up and saved a weird blue-scale looking JPEG over top of my original and had to start from square one again. (including customizing certain areas of the map myself)

[tungston 19]

When you select the file, if it doesn't show up in the file box below, you must type in the file name.

Moved to the Mapping Community Board Room.