Creating Scale Accurate Geographic based Regions

[archemediesx 65]

Greetings Simtropolis mapping community.

I wanted to raise the question regarding the creation of geographical region maps. in the 'mapping-terraforming' section i found a tutorial about this put together in 2011, but it is unfortunately rather outdated and doesn't necessarily hold up to contemporary processes. I have been independently working towards the goal of taking DEM data and converting it into sc4 maps with varying levels fidelity and success. given the difficulty of the journey (many fruitless days spent scouring google searches and reading 5-10 year old tutorials full of links for websites that no longer exist) i though i would attempt to provide my own tutorial on the process i have undertaken. Before doing so i thought i should do a double check with the community just to ensure i haven't missed anything obvious (Perhaps a 2018 current mapping process for working with DEM's?). 

 

I can see that there has been a lot of discussion to this end including threads and tutorials started by @Izidor44 and @drunkapple, though many of those remain open ended, and that was many years ago. So, if anyone happens to have a contemporary tutorial process for processing geographic based regions i'll be pleased to see it. In the meanwhile i'll keep plugging along with my process i have started and will also be pleased to share it when i have all my findings completed. 

 

Edit: The first video in the tutorial series is complete and starts the process of describing in detail what is DEM data.

 

  Edited August 25, 2018 by archemediesx  
Tutorial link added

[rsc204 21,808]

The process hasn't really changed, although the tools you use may have done. In the first instance you need to get high-quality terrain elevation data from somewhere. Then you'll need to convert that data into a greyscale image/height-map. It's these parts that change, since access to DEM data can change in terms of who provides what, especially if you want it free. Equally, applications that handle such data and the formatting of it also evolve over time. These parts are really nothing that's exclusive to SC4.

Having managed to find, extract/download and convert your DEM data into a heightmap, you can pick up on the tutorial here:

You may find this comment particularly helpful.

Then again, it depends, I used Ordinance Survey (UK) data and worked with Quantum GIS to get my heightmap. How you approach this depends very much on the source data and personal preferences. Obviously the USGS site has changed, but you can adapt if you stop thinking about SC4, since exporting a greyscale heightmap is in no way unique to SC4. When you ask Google a more generic question, you should find answers to get past this roadblock.

Nothing has really changed in terms of the formatting and process, although as with any task there are many different image editing apps to choose between. But other than interpreting how to perform a function in a different photo editor (Google is your friend), the instructions should still be valid.

I'd be wary of thinking that @drunkapple was struggling with the process, his tutorials and releases speak else wise.

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

This topic presents a bit of a quandary for me. Back on 17 June, 2017 I received a Private Message which started with:

Quote

I've been working on importing grayscale images from real world maps into SimCity 4.  The approach I'm using is different than any I've seen described in any SimCity tutorial, but it works and it's pretty simple and easy.

In which a step by step process was presented with the question whether or not I felt it would be worthy of a tutorial here on ST. I gave full encouragement that such a new tutorial would be delightful to have, but then they never followed up and have since gone missing from our site.

Here's a sample they created with their method using DEM data from the Portland area:

The quandary is whether I could share that information or not.

[rsc204 21,808]

29 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

The quandary is whether I could share that information or not.

I don't see the harm after all I think the intention was pretty clear. Worst case scenario, we have to drop it in the event of a complaint. But it's only a description of a process, hardly confidential or copyrightable information.

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

There is one data file they created that maps SC4 grayscale values to the DEM elevation data tho. It'd be the most important bridge between the freeware programs they linked to and the usable output.

[rsc204 21,808]

Ah. well that complicates matters, assuming you've not thought about it, a PM to request permission is a good move.

[archemediesx 65]

Greetings Again,

thank you all for responding. Exciting to see some discussion rolling on the topic. 

@rsc204 You're absolutely correct that the process doesn't appear to have changed in the last decade, just the details. And as it always is, the devil is in the details. 

@CorinaMarie Is that region screenshot taken directly from sc4 or another program? I would be curious what that author considers "fairly simple and easy'. i have been following a path that has been neither. As far as making maps similar to the one you linked by the author, it boils down to a four step process:

1. Gather DEM data

2. Interpret DEM data

3. Image Construction and manipulation of interpreted DEM

4. Translate Constructed image into a SC4 configuration and map

Using what information on those steps i could find floating around and filling in the gaps with trial and error i have been successful at map creation that replicates real world locations. Where I've gotten myself stuck is on the theory crafting and pursuing of a precise scale replica (or at least as precise as the tools available will allow).

the entire process is riddled with a lot of arbitrary limits and inaccuracies. Take step 1 for example. Even with 1/3 arc DEM data i find there can be strange artifacts hidden in the data, mostly from urban environments, but sometimes natural phenomena. 

I've been working with the Seattle area N48xW113 as a testing region as it contains both sea level and mountainous areas giving about a 1350m height differentiation across the DEM. I've attached a comparison image of an artifact in the data showing a monument sized pillar (i have that map scaled to extended elevation range in SC4Terrarformer for the purpose of this demonstration), but on the satellite data it's simply a loading dock. Oddly enough nowhere in the skyrise section of the downtown do i find any artifacts like this one. My guess is that maybe when that DEM was being collected the dock or highway stretch next to it was under construction and there was a large enough crane to show up on the 30m DEM.

And that's not meant to be a complaint, but simply a measure for the level of observation needed to understand that from the onset every step of the process is going to require interpretation. That's were I've been spinning myself in circles, is figuring out what level of interpretation needs to lean to absolute interpretation, and where to gravitate towards relativistic interpretation to create what looks and more importantly 'feels' like a precise replica. 

The goal of the tutorial I've been compiling is to help other would-be map makers make heads and tails of the four steps and be able to comprehend the nuts and bolts of of the process.

i spent my day today in the think tank focused on the math behind step 4, running test regions based on 8bit elevation levels. i built a complete table of all 8bit elevation scale factor translations from 100m to 5000m.

in 8bit imagery, If one wanted to create a replica of mount Everest they would be unable to represent true grade down to sea level in a single map. Even with the 5000m import, elevation at grayscale level 255 maxes out at 5247.9m, but the peak of everest is aprx 8848m. With Sc4 Terraformer having a ceiling of 6000m and SC4 having a hidden ceiling of aprx 2500m (though this can be fixed with a plugin to match SC4 Terraformer) for editing purposes, the boundaries of maximum elevation slope across a region have been established. While editing in 16 and 32 bit can be conducted, the bottleneck is always the common denominator and even if you have all 32768 gradations of a 16bit image to smooth out a slope, the artificial boundaries either through SC4, or the terraformer create the final constraints to that slope that have to be measured against. With absolute interpretation no longer a viable option that leaves the door open for relativistic options. knowing that the slope would need to encompass 8848m of elevation from sea level, 1/8848 = 0.0001301989150009 slope translation. taking 5247.9 x slope transition = .593117 or 59.3117%. That represents the factor that gradation levels 1-254 would need to be altered by in order to replicate the delta in elevation change. At least in theory that seems sound. it could be crafted in either a DEM editor or image editor based on toolset options. 

Anyways, that's a window into where my though process has lead me today.

 

 

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

25 minutes ago, archemediesx said:

Is that region screenshot taken directly from sc4 or another program?

That image is all the SC4 region tiles in their proper place and saved as a .jpg image from Sawtooth's Region Census program.

While not specifically stated by that person in the PM (who I'll refer to as Mr. G for now) it was implied that's from the N44W121.hgt DEM data which was then converted to an 8 bit grayscale and rendered in the game. I followed G's instructions myself, but I downloaded the area which would include Indiana (where I live). Mine turned out a whole lot flatter than I expected, but I might have needed to adjust the ImportImageScaleFactor in the Terrain Properties exemplar which I'd left at the Maxis default of 3.0.

Thru the week I have an early bedtime so I'll follow up with more on this another time as I'm also quite interested in mapping for the game.

[Cyclone Boom 16,875]

13 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

The quandary is whether I could share that information or not.

Personally I'm of the opinion that we needn't wait for their go ahead here.

Since they had clear ambitions to create a tutorial and were seeking staff approval in the first place, for me this alone proves their intent to fully share the information publicly. Both with any relevant details of the method, along with the data file itself for the conversion (as the key to making it work). So seeing as they've not been active around the site since, my thinking is it's counterproductive to request their permission now. That is after all what they originally intended, with the goal to inform other aspiring mappers here at Simtropolis. There's bound to be people who may wish to recreate a real world location using the accurate height levels from the data. In which case, it'll surely be of potential benefit to others as they wished for.

Likewise it seems @archemediesx has noble aspirations to write a similar guide explaining a possible process of making DEM data usable for SC4 maps. As such it might be useful to assist with such research into the technical aspects. Giving credit I feel is worthwhile and the only thing which would be necessary. Also indeed, it's not like this is a commercial venture, but simply for the purpose of a creative hobby.

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

@Cyclone Boom

Ok, cool. That matches my own feelings about it all. I really just wanted someone else to say it before I did. I'll post all the relevant information when I get time. As you know my bedtime is barreling down on me at about a thousand miles per hour and I have less than 500 miles left this evening.

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

The author of this method is @Grumalg. All credit goes to him.

This was a quick back and forth PM while I followed along gathering the freeware programs, DEM data, and then creating my own sample grayscale that I rendered in the game. I'll edit it down to a single quote of G's presentation. (The ----- in between is where it was a separate reply.)

 

On 6/17/2017 at 1:41 PM, Grumalg said:

I've been working on importing grayscale images from real world maps into SimCity 4.  The approach I'm using is different than any I've seen described in any SimCity tutorial, but it works and it's pretty simple and easy.

Since I've seen your clouds->maps tutorial, I thought you might be interested in what I'm doing...

Wanna talk about it?

-----

Well, I can certainly write such a tutorial (I've done a lot of them before)...

But before going to all that effort, I'd like to get the opinion of someone else about whether I have something useful to the general community first.  Seems better than anything I've found online in the SimCity 4 community, but I'd like a second opinion...

-----

Oh, I should mention that it uses 3 freeware apps to make, and the map sources are public domain and cover the whole globe... 

-----

Ok, the source of the digital elevation maps is a site a mapping Freak maintains.  He has an interactive index global map online, and when you click on a region in that map, it sends you all the quadrangle maps in DEM for that region.  The maps are build from space shuttle mission mapping the globe with LIDAR.

You can find that page here:

http://viewfinderpanoramas.org/Coverage map viewfinderpanoramas_org3.htm

Click on it in a rectangle of interest, and it'll send you a .zip containing all the maps for the rectangle you clicked on...

(more to come)

-----

The maps aren't images, but Digital Elevation Maps (DEM).  They are not easily human readable, but in a format a mapping program can easily import.  The .zip you get from that web page has a bunch of .hgt (height) files, named to show the longitude and latitude of each map - names like 'N44W121.hgt'  which means a map who's sw corner is at 44 deg N and 121 deg west

So, next we need a program that can load them, turn the data into an image, convert the image to grayscale, and export it as a .bmp.  It's called 3DEM....

You can get that free for the DL here:

http://freegeographytools.com/2009/3dem-website-is-gone-but-3dem-still-available-here

-----

With 3DEM installed, you can do File - Open and select *all* the individual .hgt files and it'll build and display the resulting map.

It uses shaded colors to give a map a 3d look.  So first we need to turn off the grid lines via Geo Coordinates - Latlong Grid Off.

Next we turn off the shaded relief via Color Scale - Shaded Relief  and set Shade Depth  to 0.

Now your looking at a map that only elevation colored, but not in grayscale..

So we use Color Scale - Modify Scale, which bring up a dialog where you can adjust the color scale.  I've already build and saved a set of grayscale setting for the conversion.  Find that file attached - you can load it and use it...

My-Grayscale-Set.dat

-----

After using the dialog with that set of grayscale values, you'll be looking at a grayscale...

The colors in that set start with 84 and rise to 255 in 14 even steps that 3DEM displays maps in..

Not changing color set doesn't change the blue used for water, but that's a good thing for ease of examining the map...  It can be replaced later with various 83 and down colors for depth.

-----

Once you have the grayscale on screen you export it with File - Save Map Image and write it as .bmp.  

Now there are clearly things we need to do to that map image...  fix water color values, perhaps add rivers, etc.  and of course any cleanup to taste...

I do that with Paint.Net (freeware)  and I also use it to crop and resize the image to the proper number of pixels for the city block sizes I want.  Then I save as  .jpg in 8 bit and set up a region dir with region.ini and config.bmp.

See how you like the results 

-----

3DEM can import a wide variety of DEM file types from various sources...

-----

If you just do a quicky color replace on the water blue with 83 or lower you can do a quick test with fine hand editing to taste...

-----

with /sb without

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Seems to me like a way for almost anybody to get a SimCity version of where they live or any geography they want.   Not all that techy either...

-----

The grayscale .dat makes it a sure thing users will get that right. And it's already done for them.  The rest is pretty straight forward...

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The first region I did with it was the area around Portland (I live in southern Oregon and that are has nice geography).  I haven't done water depth work (it's all at 83), not have I etched water in the Columbia river.

See how it looks to you in fairly raw form...

Portland.rar

-----

Look at a google map of that area and you'll see where I need to do water work...  That cratered mountain in the upper right is Mount St Helens and you can see the blown out crater on it...

So, is this approach new to SimCity 4 and is it good enough I should write a tutorial for it?

 

It's likely the two attachments won't be clickable for download since they will reference a Private Message. The .dat file I'll attach as-is and the .rar file I've converted to a more user friendly .zip.

My-Grayscale-Set.dat

Portland.zip

Additionally, I'd found a couple of topics which might be great for making the underwater areas more realistic:

Introducing FantastiCoast

Creating a map from Google Earth [UPDATED]

[rsc204 21,808]

Generally speaking (not having tested it yet), those instructions do seem remarkably simpler than any method I've come across to date. I'll give it a try at some point and compare it to my O/S data, which I happen to know is not the most detailed, so this in theory should be an improvement.

On 17/06/2017 at 1:41 PM, Grumalg said:

I do that with Paint.Net (freeware)  and I also use it to crop and resize the image to the proper number of pixels for the city block sizes I want.  Then I save as  .jpg in 8 bit and set up a region dir with region.ini and config.bmp.

This is one thing I disagree with, I wouldn't save it as a JPEG, because the built-in compression will mess with the detail significantly. OK, not all players will care about that, but you should use a 16-bit PNG if you plan to import your map into Mapper/Terraformer and really fine-tune things.

[archemediesx 65]

8 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

The author of this method is @Grumalg. All credit goes to him.

This was a quick back and forth PM while I followed along gathering the freeware programs, DEM data, and then creating my own sample grayscale that I rendered in the game. I'll edit it down to a single quote of G's presentation. (The ----- in between is where it was a separate reply.)

Thank you for putting that information out there @CorinaMarie. I followed the steps he out outlined to reproduce his results to see what he was working with.

Here's the final image i created with his process

 

I made a skinnier slice of the region vs that preview you have. Allow me to go over the details of what i observed.

1. viewfinderspanorama.org - Is a very straightforward website with the ability to select a landmass just about anywhere in the world. that's a big plus. The archives decompress into about 50mb of hgt data, which given the extent of the of some the cooridinates on some of the grids is not fantastic, but workable. they range from 1 to 3 arc second data based on regional selection. 

2. his link to 3dem is still functional, and the program has basic functionality. I would say the best thing going for the program is its lack of complexity. So many of the other DEM manipulator programs are very easy to get lost in.  Here's some notes on 3DEM: I followed the steps out lined by

a. going to "geo Coordinates' menu and selecting "lat-long grid off".

b. Going to Color Scale and setting the "shader relief" to 0

c. going to "color scale" and selecting "modify Scale"

d. in the modify scale dialog i clicked on "Load File" and selected the downloaded graysacle.dat file that you provided.

e. from here go to "file" then "save Map Image" and in the pop-up selecting a preferred image format I.E. .BMP .TIFF etc.

 

Those were the steps outlined to you. A few notes and missing items:

Step D: his grayscale resets 1m to a 0-255 level of 84. This unfortunately causes a lot of compression. 32% of usable elevation scale (while initially underwater, can be corrected in later steps of the mapping process) is now compressed out of the image. We of course need to correct sea level adjustment somewhere. but i feel that this might be the wrong step to be applying that to. 

Step E: Missing from the instructions: when exporting the image, it will export at the current view dimension. At default this will result in an image file from the DEM only being 1080x864 pixels. in order to scale this to get a more usable image go to "Operation" then "resize overhead view" (F7 button). as you adjust the slider it will let you know how many pixels the image is scaling to. the max is a 2x which will give you a 12002x9602 pixel region. The problem was that i could not go any larger than 1x 6000x4800 pixels, without the ocean taking on the 1m grayscale level effectively wiping out the coastal region. if i went back to the color scale and set sea level to 1m i could get blue to return to outline the coast, but with a loss of detail.

Normally i would say that 6x4.8k is a good large image to start with. in the map i created the distance from the coastline to the far side of the mountain at the top of the map (Mt. Ranier) is over 180km. in order to get that distance scale accurate in SC4 i would expect that distance to be somewhere around 11250 pixels from coast to mountain. the DEM data extents are almost double that distance and at half the resolution. Unfortunately i feel that scale accuracy is not viable with this process, if that is an end goal.

While there are limitations here, absolutely this is a successful quick path to producing a simple 'real world location' in SC4. and think we should all thank @Grumalg for providing this for the SC4 community who want to quickly build a new map based on a geographical location.

 

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

1 hour ago, archemediesx said:

We of course need to correct sea level adjustment somewhere. but i feel that this might be the wrong step to be applying that to. 

Does the DEM data have various heights under the water? Or is it all set to some zero height? If the former then those elevations could simply be converted to be in the range of 0 to 83 grayscale. The in game rendered sea level height is a variable property in the Terrain Properties exemplar and is set at 250 meters by default.  The 83 grayscale is slightly under water when using the default ImportImageScaleFactor of 3.0. (3 * 83 = 249) And so 84 is 252 meters. If the latter, then perhaps that FantastiCoast program might be useful.

[archemediesx 65]

6 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

Does the DEM data have various heights under the water? Or is it all set to some zero height? 

None of the DEM data I've come across from the USGS or viewfinder'spanorama has included bathymetric data for sub sea level or lake information. What this results in is that if using a 16bit process the conversion retains relative height to luminosity information to directly maintain elevation above sea level. When using an 8bit process sea level in an image will set to black. And technically speaking the lowest point on an image in an 8bit process will set to black regardless of whether it is at sea level. So the problems with this arise when starting with and following an 8bit path. With that being the case in 8bit i would recommend making full use of the limited elevation gradation while processing the DEM into an image and only making corrections for sea level after. One could use fantasticoast to make alterations and smooth out the water contact areas, use SC4 Terraformer (which does work in Win10) to set a precise Raise terrain based on what elevation is showing below sea grade. Even if someone didn't want to use any more programs, they could simply open the map in SC4 proper, and using the god tool "raise terrain" button 6-7 times to uniformly raise the terrain 240-280 meters. 

 

In my earlier post i posed finding and overcoming limits and found a new one today. I created a new test region based the USGS DEM outside of the Grand Tetons in Wyoming following a 16bit path, and created the following scaled region. it's a 12x16km subsection of the mountain range outlined. the lowland and canyon at the bottom of the peaks sits at 1800m and the high peak on this range climbs to 3592m. for a elevation profile of 1792m

 

 

 

What this test region demonstrates is that while it is possible to maintain precise scale accuracy of topography in conjunction with the spacial relationship, it becomes impractical to do so. With a base elevation of 1800m, the city tiles become harder to manage in rotation and view when in city mode because they sit so high in the view angle. The region is so high that the back corner of the region falls off the viewable display area. While preserving X and Y axis spacial relations doesn't have a detrimental effect on the mapping process, i see now that coming up with a relativistic approach to creating elevation scale that feels authentic but preserves play functionality is something that needs to be considered moving forward. Were this map only going to contain inland areas i think a good compromise would be to maintain the scale of the region, but uniformly offset the height down to about 500m to keep the city tiles low enough to keep them well within the game's view angle. 

 

Edit:

then perhaps that FantastiCoast program might be useful.

I attempted to download those Fanticoast links but it looks like all the files have been deleted from that 2010 post. They were all 1kb files archives that wouldn't open.

 

  Edited August 24, 2018 by archemediesx  

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

9 hours ago, archemediesx said:

I attempted to download those Fanticoast links but it looks like all the files have been deleted from that 2010 post. They were all 1kb files archives that wouldn't open.

Well, phooey. I just checked mine that I'd downloaded April, 2016 and I have the same problem with them. I was still learning the very basics of map making and had tossed them in a folder to look at some day.

[archemediesx 65]

So far progress on the process of making regions has been coming along. I've been attacking both an effort to start mapping and figuring out what information to organize for the tutorial series. Here's a preview of the NW states map i've assembled.

It's a composite of 1/3 arc DEM Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming exported at 16bit depth. At 1731.45km by 887.6km  at it's widest extents. At 62.5 pixels per kilometer that makes for 6,003,282,600 pixels which as it turns out is a bit taxing on my system (Most large edits and saves take around 5-20 minutes). Photoshop can't realistically draw the image at that zoom level so the grayscale resolution looks compressed, but the data is unaltered. 

I spent some time researching what the limits are that i have map around. I patched all the programs with the 32bit 4gig patch to ensure they could access the maximum amount of memory which did increase their functionality by a signification amount as memory access seems to be bottleneck. Going from largest to smallest limitations:

SC4 Mapper i was able to build a region 284km by 284km using the mapper. that is a 71x71 large city tile map. 71squared = 5041 large cities. I have a feeling no one is going to find the time to build that much terrain. But then again, Why not? right?

SC4 proper has a nasty little limit with it's Horizontal and Vertical Scrolling. describing a map as a set of four corners, NW, NE, SE, SW, when starting from the NW corner and scrolling to the NE corner the map won't visually scroll past 31 tiles. A similar limit hits the Vertical scale when going from the NW to the SW corner hits a visual limit of 61 tiles. While a map bigger could be generated with SC4 mapper, portions of that map would be inaccessable, and unable to even render in-game textures for the region view. Below is an example of the effect of the horizontal scroll limit with a 38x38 large city region. Areas that are out of view are shaded in black. because the map scrolls at an angle the bottom of the map is accessable but the top is not. As the map became longer so would the area of inaccessability along the eastern edge.

One could make irregular shaped regions that skirts the edges of this scrolling limit, but it would be held in check as it got larger approaching the 71x71 scale limit of SC4 Mapper.

The final limit arrives with using SC4 Terraformer. i was only able to get a 110.59km by 110.59km region to remain stable in the program. this is a 27x27 large tile region. 27squared =729 large cities, which is still a very ridiculously large region to work on.  While regions could bypass this limit to increase size, losing SC4 terraformer's better toolset at working precisely with minimum and maximum and scaling height values does limit the approaches that only using SC4 Mapper would create. 

The good news is that i know what all the boundaries that i'm working with are, i can start actually working on defining some region maps. Western states are much more unweildly than eastern states given that their is no way to represent them as regions with a 1:1 ratio with all the described limits. in order to make them into usable maps beyond city and county sized chunks appropriate ratios will have to be applied to preserve visual scale of landscape while compressing the scale into a region that can actually fit inside of the 31x61 SC4 scroll limit.

I just about have enough of the information compiled to get started on part 2 of the map making tutorial so that should be humming along shortly.

 

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

4 hours ago, archemediesx said:

SC4 Mapper i was able to build a region 284km by 284km using the mapper. that is a 71x71 large city tile map. 71squared = 5041 large cities. I have a feeling no one is going to find the time to build that much terrain. But then again, Why not? right?

I believe you also have to account for how much memory will be needed once you actually start building a city and the amount used by plugins that are loaded. It seems I recall reading that 40 x 40 large tiles was considered a maximum and even then that is so large it'd take forever to build on every tile. Let's assume one could perfect a large city tile in 24 hours of play time and that they played 8 hours per day. That region would take a wee bit over 13 years to build.

From a practical standpoint I'd suggest 10 x 10 or 12 x 12 large tiles would be a good balance between largeness and practicalness.

 

4 hours ago, archemediesx said:

SC4 proper has a nasty little limit with it's Horizontal and Vertical Scrolling.

There's some good techy info by @Tarkus in this post about region size and the scrolling issue you discovered.

 

4 hours ago, archemediesx said:

I just about have enough of the information compiled to get started on part 2 of the map making tutorial so that should be humming along shortly.

Sounds good. I shall await your next informative post.

[rsc204 21,808]

2 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

I believe you also have to account for how much memory will be needed once you actually start building a city and the amount used by plugins that are loaded.

Absolutely, because being a 32-bit application, there is a finite limit on how much memory the entire thing can handle, which is around the 3GB mark. Still I look at it another way, it's amazing to think we can push the game as far as we can, considering it was designed to run on a PIII 500 machine with sod all RAM.

[archemediesx 65]

I ended up recording material to combine steps two and three together and decided to split them up in the end. so the good news is that episode 2 is complete and i already have a good portion of the next episode completed. i wanted to keep this tutorial series thorough for those who want to pick up the mantle of map building, but had to start at the beginning as i did. So the videos are focused on the 'what' more than the 'how'.

 

 

How to Create a Geographic Based Region in SimCity 4 - Episode 2: Interpreting DEM Data

 

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

@archemediesx

Very nice and thorough.

[HerrKung 3]

On 2018-08-22 at 6:38 AM, archemediesx said:

Greetings Simtropolis mapping community.

I wanted to raise the question regarding the creation of geographical region maps. in the 'mapping-terraforming' section i found a tutorial about this put together in 2011, but it is unfortunately rather outdated and doesn't necessarily hold up to contemporary processes. I have been independently working towards the goal of taking DEM data and converting it into sc4 maps with varying levels fidelity and success. given the difficulty of the journey (many fruitless days spent scouring google searches and reading 5-10 year old tutorials full of links for websites that no longer exist) i though i would attempt to provide my own tutorial on the process i have undertaken. Before doing so i thought i should do a double check with the community just to ensure i haven't missed anything obvious (Perhaps a 2018 current mapping process for working with DEM's?). 

 

I can see that there has been a lot of discussion to this end including threads and tutorials started by @Izidor44 and @drunkapple, though many of those remain open ended, and that was many years ago. So, if anyone happens to have a contemporary tutorial process for processing geographic based regions i'll be pleased to see it. In the meanwhile i'll keep plugging along with my process i have started and will also be pleased to share it when i have all my findings completed. 

 

Edit: The first video in the tutorial series is complete and starts the process of describing in detail what is DEM data.

 

Great tutorial archemediesx!

I want to watch part 3 and 4

 

Working on a map of my hometown to import into SC4. But I have problems when importing the map with rivers that not get recognized and areas around lakes that isnt supposed to be water. It seems to recognize occeans just fine though. 

Also used this site https://tangrams.github.io/heightmapper/ to get grayscale terrains maps, and it actually gave me more accurate result than USGS data when importing into SC4.

Hope you make the other two videos soon.

[HerrKung 3]

Is it easier to do this with the Cities Skylines game or SimCity 2013? Using terrain.party? As SimCity 4 is rather old now

 

 

[archemediesx 65]

Well, no excuses for falling off the map.

No excuses for bad puns either.

I realized i had most of part 3 already produced and posted it in the fall. I still need to complete the final tutorial and i have a script in production so i should be able to get the final tutorial out shortly enough. It will cover the actual conversion portion of taking image data and making it look like a map. So for posterity, here is part 3 of the creating Geographically based regions tutorial series. 

 

 

[Odainsaker 2,134]

This is a bit of a late, zombie resurrection of an older thread, but this additional info may be useful...

On 8/29/2018 at 12:39 PM, archemediesx said:

The final limit arrives with using SC4 Terraformer. i was only able to get a 110.59km by 110.59km region to remain stable in the program. this is a 27x27 large tile region. 27squared =729 large cities, which is still a very ridiculously large region to work on.  While regions could bypass this limit to increase size, losing SC4 terraformer's better toolset at working precisely with minimum and maximum and scaling height values does limit the approaches that only using SC4 Mapper would create. 

Although these tools are unavailable in SC4 Mapper, we still have access to such tools in MicroDEM.  They are found in the Edit menu dropdown under Single Grid Arithmetic tools:

Set Z Range to a Constant:  Choose a min and max z range, and then assign a single z value that they will be set to.  This can flatten or remove elevation, creating uniform plateaus or valley floors.

Expand Given Z Range:  Choose a min and max z range, and then assign new min and max z range to re-scale them to.  This will expand or truncate a particular band of elevation without affecting all other elevation.

Multiply Z Values:  Enter a value by which the z axis will be multiplied.  This re-scales all elevation to be uniformly expanded.

Divide Z Values:  Enter a value by which the z axis will be divided.  This re-scales all elevation to be uniformly truncated.

Raise/Lower Z Values:  Enter a positive value by which the z axis will be raised, or a negative value by which the z axis will be lowered.  This uniformly raises or lowers elevation, and can be used when designing SimCity 4 maps to raise or lower terrain relative to the game's fixed sea level.

 

Updated versions of MicroDEM can also save DEMs as 16-bit GeoTIFF files, but first you must indicate that you want your data in 16-bit format:

File -->  Save DEM --> Save DEM Bits --> Integer 16

Then save as a GeoTIFF:

File --> Save DEM --> GeoTIFF

 

[jbkone 14]

Were you going to do a part 4 @archemediesx?  I'm following along.