Need Help Making Large Tiles for Region

[Max4k 721]

I see how it all works and it's double the size.  This is great.  Whatever I did last night, the 32x32 I created, the map seems 4x in size.  The Aurora map I've been working on for the past month, I can now fit all 3 Airports and still have tons of room how I want the layout of this map.

I know how this mapper program works now.  Before I think I clicked 1st option and it was asking for a directory path and got confused and used the grayscale file and things got messy from there.

I saw some Houston and Hong Kong files that had grayscale files associated and now I see how you can load things up. 

[Cyclone Boom 16,875]

Glad you got it working now!

It sounds like you've got a good grasp of the mapping process and with the tile sizing, but I'll just post links to 3 tutorials I made on the subject. Complementing the info already posted by the contributors to this thread, it might also be useful for anyone else who finds this discussion in future.

As follows:

• Tutorial: How to edit the Config.bmp file using SC4 Mapper
• Tutorial: Rendering a Grayscale Map using SC4 Mapper
• Grayscale Maps as Related to Config.bmp Dimensions

 

[Max4k 721]

It's weird how it all started, lol.  This is my first map and region for playing this game in general.

I kept coming up with ideas how I wanted the layout of the City map and how everything will be like a central point to connect to other Cities, but I kept running out of space and the game was forcing me to expand in areas I wanted for something else.

[Max4k 721]

I'll post photos in future in my progress thread as things expand. 

 

This is a pretty taboo subject, but realized  how important of a role the Swastika is in this game.  It's a very unique symbol that has some very sacred mathematical geometry involved.  It's very old over 20,000 years old and predates the Pyramids.  Without going into politics, it's a shame over the last 100 years this symbol or anything closely resembling this symbol is considered evil and banned.... and we are not even told the true history of this symbol.

[Max4k 721]

On 9/6/2020 at 4:40 AM, SIM-ple Jack said:

 

There's your map. Run it through SC4Mapper, and your done. https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=2880

You can edit this grayscale in PS to add water, mountains, etc.

 

 

I somehow managed the impossible and topped drunkapple's biggest size map The Big Island at 701 files and was reading there is a Los Angeles region at 734.

Not sure how I pulled this off, but I managed to make a whopping 37x33 tile region with 1,221 files !!!  This is definitely the Holy Grail for SC4 Regions that covers the North New Jersey, NYC and CT Metro Tri-State area.   Everything loads up great but I have to do some major Terraforming to match things up.  Pretty much all the geography matches up and I know where I am using this website - https://www.usgs.gov/search-map?search=DEM

 

The .png is too large and 30mb, so I took a screen shot what it looks like.  I have been able to save tiles and decided to name everything in a BINGO formation.  Starting from the first North East city block, I call it A-1.  Since there are only 26 letters in alphabet and I have 33 tiles, I just repeat past Z, to AA-1 and for 33 it's GG-1.  And its like 37 blocks each for south, the naming scheme will be A-1 though A-37 , though GG-1 though GG-37

This is soo psycho but I'm determined to do it, hopefully nothing gets corrupted along the way.  This could easily take me several lifetimes to complete, so I dunno it's physically possible to complete.

 

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

21 minutes ago, Max4k said:

This could easily take me several lifetimes to complete, so I dunno it's physically possible to complete.

Complete one tile per week and you'll have it done in less than a quarter of a century. Heck, you could complete this two or three times over in a lifetime.

[Max4k 721]

I did suffer a few crash to desktop though.  Able to save a tile but then return back to region crashes.... but if I save before hand everything saved when launching game again.

After I saved a few tiles, it does not crash anymore, so going to save some more and see how things go.

Another issue is I have to do major major Terraforming to fix things up.  Everything looks like water marshlands, but it's perfectly outlined, so I know how to fix things up....only problem is soo many City files, it will take eons to save each one.

The USGS site has a perfect Typology layer for the map and I can read everything fine to fix the elevation in areas, but will take time just to terraform..etc

[SIM-ple Jack 17,444]

4 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

Complete one tile per week and you'll have it done in less than a quarter of a century. Heck, you could complete this two or three times over in a lifetime.

God built the world in 6 days. Korver has it down to about 3 weeks now.

[Max4k 721]

I'm going to screw around some more down the road...not now.

I managed to make things work using a 25x25 city tile region and does not crash, when returning to region, and the config file shows 100x100 24b .bmp

The one I used above, the config is 132x148 24b .bmp  , but noticed the mouse hover does  not go to the top right corner of region and stops a few tiles before from multiple angles, coming from bottom to top, or far west, traveling east.    The other corners of the region are ok to access.

I grew up 20min from NYC, and would be pretty cool if I could do an exact replica of my town using 2-3 of those city tiles.   Just looking at Long Island and how it's captured looks badass and fun thing to do.   I'd probably do like 20% of whole region to see how things look.

I'm using CAM - Rural install version, so not sure if it would run the same way considering how massive region is. , as in if I were to do Manhattan, would I get the skyscrapers using this version of CAM.

What I really like about this 37x33 size is it captures Ashokan Reservoir perfect by Kingston New York.  It has things on it's own tile, but the 25x25 version, it puts both on 1 tile....  so this is why I really like this 37x33

 

 

https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9641814,-74.1502091,17447m/data=!3m1!1e3

 

[Max4k 721]

I redid the area again and shifted things a little more west now.  I got rid of part of Rhode Island and now have bit more Pennsylvania.  I also have the original Woodstock 1969 concert farm in Bethel NY  

I found the sweet spot with config resolution using  125x133 24b, and everything is fully rock solid, no crashes at all.  The only problem is I still cant really access the top left corner, but that ok and was never fully interested in Connecticut.  Also, there are bunch of smaller red boxes along bottom and right, but that ok.

 

 

I've got a bunch airport stuff, warehouses and airports of @mattb325 stuff.   OMG, this seriously is the best region to screw around with airports.  This region has a ton including Newark, JFK , LaGuardia , and smaller well known ones like Teterboro Airport.

Here a list of airports in area --  https://www.google.com/maps/search/airport/@41.1475945,-73.9426815,10z

 

It's going to take eons, but Ive got George Washington Bridge and Tappan Zee Bridge located.   I still have to do some major teraforming and elevation fixing, along with matching up the Hudson River between maps

 

 

 

>

Here is the Geo layer, with detail.  If I had a 4K monitor, I could capture better area and then just crop it

 

[Odainsaker 2,134]

This looks to be a vast and fascinating map to play on.

 

On 7/25/2021 at 7:54 PM, Max4k said:

The one I used above, the config is 132x148 24b .bmp  , but noticed the mouse hover does  not go to the top right corner of region and stops a few tiles before from multiple angles, coming from bottom to top, or far west, traveling east.    The other corners of the region are ok to access.

On 7/27/2021 at 4:53 PM, Max4k said:

The only problem is I still cant really access the top left corner, but that ok and was never fully interested in Connecticut.  Also, there are bunch of smaller red boxes along bottom and right, but that ok.

There is an apparently built-in limit in SimCity 4 as to how far we can scroll in region view.  Horizontally, that scrolling limit seems to be reached when the map exceeds 30 large tiles in width.  The effect is that city tiles in the extreme right topmost corner beyond that limit in region view will either in minor circumstances be visually clipped or in major circumstances be completely unseen and inaccessible.  For those who have not seen this effect, this is what it looks like:

 

Region of 30 x 30 large tiles:

 

Region of 31 x 31 large tiles:

 

I do not know what algorithmic magic determines where is the maximum cutoff extent, but I have made narrower maps of 26 x 40 and 29 x 42, and taller maps of 30 x 48, only to see that the corner cut off was still within a few pixels of the same place as in a map of 30 x 30.  There is a also vertical scroll limit which may depend on the width of the map used, with @archemediesx having reached a vertical limit of 61 large tiles for a map 31 large tiles wide, while @Tarkus on SC4 Devotion mentions creating a narrow but fully accessible map of 2 x 63.

I have also seen that, at least for me, certain extreme dimensions can introduce a scroll jittering motion at different magnitudes at the edges, as if something was repeatedly hitting a barrier and recoiling.  I settled on a map of 30 x 46 for myself as it had a minimum of these issues.

 

__________

 

Although you don't mention Manhattan as being a focus for your region, you might still consider rotating the scope area of your region to match the gridiron of Manhattan to the grid of SimCity.  It will make any attempt to build a Manhattan-like city infinitely easier should you someday choose to do so, and there is really no other north-south alignment in this region that would so completely dominate SimCity playability like the Manhattan grid.  Rotating the map would even make it easier to recreate the airports at Newark, JFK, and LaGuardia.  Planners had tilted Manhattan's grid 29° to the east of true north, so you could rotate your map 29° counterclockwise to bring it back into an alignment that can be easily fitted into SimCity.

 

I don't think you specifically mention this vast project being scale accurate, and it certainly doesn't have to be, but as an exercise in map sizing, if we consider that each large SimCity 4 map is 4,096 m x 4,096 m, and we create a region of 30 x 33 large tiles, we should have a region of 122.880 km x 135.168 km.  A quick mock up of most of your scope area using Google Earth Pro with rotation to roughly align Manhattan's gridiron looks like this:

 

A followup step would then be to overlay a grid representing SimCity city tiles to see how map features fit into potential city tiles.  It would be unfortunate to have a city tile border perhaps cutting the Liberty Island or the the Empire State Building in half.  Maybe it is convenient when building to have both shore ends of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge within the same tile, but then maybe it becomes more important to fully fit in the runways of JFK.  A lot of juggling and hard choices might happen here, and I have found it convenient to overlay in a paint program a semi-transparent checkerboard layer sized to represent SimCity city tiles to broadly work out those choices.  One possibility, which just manages to get the Statue of Liberty and the Freedom Tower within the same large tile by nudging the previous map a small bit to the east and to the north, looks like this:

 

After finally settling on an exactly defined and aligned area that will maximize preferred opportunities in game, it is next just rote process to pull that same area out of any available DEM data.  But at least all the pre-planning and decision-making has now been done.

I hope that some of this is useful.

 

[Max4k 721]

There are a few tutorials on this site that mention DEM data and 2 programs, but one of the links is invalid and can't really go though tutorial without the 2nd program, but all seems outdated now I assume.

I notice things start to bend and warp once in the region matching things up.   Finally got to locate my town on this region and it would kinda take up 2 tiles, but this is a really sophisticated area of NJ and it's massively dense in population, it would be impossible to fully match things up.

Unless maybe break the original map layout and break it down into 4 different regions

[Odainsaker 2,134]

Ultimately, these are the programs that are required, and they are all freeware:

MICRODEM -- This mapping program is used to convert DEM data, such as that downloaded from USGS, into a image file that can be used in a graphics editor.  There are many paths and options to do this in the program, but they are not intuitive as this program was not made for casual users, let alone SimCity players.  Making 8-bit grayscale images is the most familiar to SimCity players, but the latest 64-bit version of MICRODEM can also make 16-bit images for those using maps with high detail or extreme elevations.  Unfortunately, the 16-bit path does not have much familiarity or guidance for SimCity fans.  What options to use is largely determined by the size of your project, the quality of your downloaded data, and the level of detail you want to maintain.  An alternative suite to MICRODEM with similar functionality is QGIS, formerly known as Quantum GIS.

GIMP -- This graphics editor program allows you to edit the map image created by MICRODEM into a format importable to SimCity.  The later versions of GIMP include 16-bit image manipulation for higher detail and extreme elevations.  Any common and robust graphics program will actually work for this, such as Adobe Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro, and while the menu layouts and keystrokes may be different for each program, they are all being utilized to do the same thing:  crop, resize, rescale, paint, paste, and cleanup images like you would with any other photo.  For a time, Adobe Photoshop CS2 Version 9.0 was openly available from Adobe and has 16-bit image capabilities.

SC4 Mapper 2013 -- This program by @wouanagaine takes the image you have sized and edited from the graphics programs, and creates from it a SimCity map that can be played upon in game.  SC4 Terraformer also by wouanagaine has similar capability and extra tools to further edit maps in 3D, but it cannot handle some extremely large maps that SC4 Mapper can handle.  It may be necessary to additionally use the NTCore 4GB Patch on both SC4 Mapper and SimCity 4 to handle extremely large maps.

 

[Max4k 721]

This great info, will keep for down the road.  I'd like to learn more of those advanced Real Highway pieces before doing this region.  There are some pretty advanced highway systems in this area.