SC3K Terrain and water.

[Cool_Z 1,547]

After rediscovering that we had pretty nice tools to import buildings in the game (yes, we do!) I wondered what else coumd be done and started digging into the game files.

I found some files that define water and terrain color... and started playing with them. I focused on the water for now because the thing I like the less in SC3 was the blue/violet color of the sea.

Here's what I did for now :

The shallowest waters can be tweaked to show some sand (or rock if we chose so) but there are only a few pixels to be used for that on the color file and the transition can look a bit crude at times. I'll investigate more tomorrow and look at the map border color palette too.

What do you think ?

[CorinaMarie 29,934]

6 minutes ago, Cool_Z said:

What do you think ?

That's wonderful. It's like finding out there are more things to "mod" than I previously knew.

 

While you are poking around (or I'll test it sometime) have you tweaked the SC3U.ini file? There is just one variable in it.

[Navigation]
ScrollMarginFactor = 0.005787

As a Margin Factor I'm guessing it has to do with either how close the mouse needs to be to the edge to start scrolling or how fast it goes. I read in post somewhere that if you are drawing roads and bump the edge you wind up on the complete far side of the map nearly instantly.  I haven't tested any of that yet.

[Cool_Z 1,547]

Just now, CorinaMarie said:

That's wonderful. It's like finding out there are more things to "mod" than I previously knew.

 

While you are poking around (or I'll test it sometime) have you tweaked the SC3U.ini file? There is just one variable in it.

[Navigation]
ScrollMarginFactor = 0.005787

As a Margin Factor I'm guessing it has to do with either how close the mouse needs to be to the edge to start scrolling or how fast it goes. I read in post somewhere that if you are drawing roads and bump the edge you wind up on the complete far side of the map nearly instantly.  I haven't tested any of that yet.

Oh that's interesting to see (yes maybe the scrolling is a bit too fast)... let's experiment 

[CorinaMarie 29,934]

On 6/4/2017 at 10:44 PM, Cool_Z said:

I found some files that define water and terrain color... and started playing with them.

That, ofc, made me curious. I finally found which file you tweaked. Mine is just a proof of concept rather than something nice looking like you've done:

[Cool_Z 1,547]

Looks... refreshing 

 

Here's where I am now with the terrain, I wasn't a big fan of the brown/purple terrain and the grey/violet snow...

Terrain is not as straightforward as water because there's an angle factor, and also the bmp files aren't used by the game anymore, you have to edit a file with a hex editor.

[CorinaMarie 29,934]

So, back on topic: The file that @Cool_Z tweaks for the water is: C:\GOG Games\SimCity 3000 Unlimited\Apps\Res\Dirt\PALETTE\PALWATER.BMP. I don't know which ones need to be Hex Edited for the Terrain, but in that same folder are some other files which look terrain-ish.

[Cool_Z 1,547]

The files for terrain are PALLAND.BMP ArcticLand.bmp CarribeanLand.bmp and DesertLand.bmp

But... they are actually not used by the game, they're regrouped in the 455A72B1_LandPalettes.IXF file

These are not just gradients, from top to bottom it defines the color, but left is for a flat terrain and right is for slopes (the more inclination, the more the color is picked on the right).

 

Oh and you might have noticed there are only four terrain files, but the game proposes five terrains... means the fourth one is in the main file but not as an individual file.

There's also another  for the underground view PALUNDER.BMP

 

You'll also have two files for the borders of the map : PALEDGED.BMP and PALEDGEL.BMP

 

PALBASIC.BMP contains info for the zones colors

 

DATA1PAL.BMP and DATA2PAL.BMP are the gradients for the dataviews

 

I haven't tested what DATA3PAL does yet.

 

 

Edit : Here's a test I made with a color palette full black on the left and full white on the right

Note how the flat land is dark and the slopes ar clear (the game adds some grass overlay... I have to find where this is.

[CorinaMarie 29,934]

2 minutes ago, Cool_Z said:

I haven't tested what DATA3PAL does yet.

It looks similar to DATA1PAL.BMP tho only about half light blue and initially I thought 1 & 3 were for the river, lake, and ocean water with 3 being for the shores. I viewed the correct file in Windows Picture Viewer and it looked like a straight, vertical black line so that's why I tried the others first. When that failed to pinkify the water I then opened the correct file in GIMP and zoomed way in to see it was 1 x 256 pixels and had shades of blue when made big enough to see.

With regard to those IXF files, I'd like to be able to edit them in their native db2 format rather than Hex Edit them like I did for the news ticker. I did grab the IBM DB2 Express-C, but haven't installed it.

[catty-cb 4,413]

30 minutes ago, Cool_Z said:

....Note how the flat land is dark and the slopes ar clear (the game adds some grass overlay... I have to find where this is.

Alien cities anyone 

[Cool_Z 1,547]

6 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

It looks similar to DATA1PAL.BMP

I just noticed it is the same size as 1 and 2... (but windows made the thumb much bigger... weird), so it is certainly for data display too.

[CorinaMarie 29,934]

11 hours ago, Cool_Z said:

the 455A72B1_LandPalettes.IXF file

Would you mind to specify which hex locations need to be tweaked? I have a brilliant idea (which I won't go into here cause I don't want to sidetrack this topic again) in which I need all perfectly flat land to be 0xFF00FF. Not that I want my city to look all pink (tho I love that color), but I need it so it'll be transparent in my project.

Disregard. My plan is for the plain SC3000 and it doesn't have the .IXF file. It looks like it does use the .BMP file for the terrain colors so I can tweak that myself.

[Cool_Z 1,547]

1 hour ago, CorinaMarie said:

Would you mind to specify which hex locations need to be tweaked? I have a brilliant idea (which I won't go into here cause I don't want to sidetrack this topic again) in which I need all perfectly flat land to be 0xFF00FF. Not that I want my city to look all pink (tho I love that color), but I need it so it'll be transparent in my project.

Disregard. My plan is for the plain SC3000 and it doesn't have the .IXF file. It looks like it does use the .BMP file for the terrain colors so I can tweak that myself.

Yeah forgot to mention that, SC3K uses the bmp file while SC3KU doesn't

[Yohane Architects 127]

On 6/5/2017 at 5:25 PM, Cool_Z said:

Looks... refreshing 

 

Here's where I am now with the terrain, I wasn't a big fan of the brown/purple terrain and the grey/violet snow...

Terrain is not as straightforward as water because there's an angle factor, and also the bmp files aren't used by the game anymore, you have to edit a file with a hex editor.

What is the code for that palette and where is it in the hex format?

[Cool_Z 1,547]

7 hours ago, Yohane Architects said:

What is the code for that palette and where is it in the hex format?

The main land (the same we had in SC3) is the one corresponding to the PALLAND.bmp file. Is it included without any modification in the 455A72B1_LandPalettes.IXF file. (these files are in the SimCity 3000 Unlimited\Apps\Res\Dirt\PALETTE folder)

It starts at the 5004 adress. If you're not sure you can search for the BMP header (42 4D 38 C0).