Heightmaps Import at Incorrect Elevation

[MagicSpear 56]

I've discovered that heightmaps don't import correctly into SC3KU (GOG version, if it even matters) for me when using load terrain. Most of the terrain always ends up below sea level, and the terrain ten up/terrain one up commands raise both the sea level and the terrain itself which obviously doesn't help. I've tried modifying my bitmap file every six ways from Sunday, but it seems like no matter how I go about changing them, exporting them, et cetera I'm left at square one. I've also tried heightmaps created by others (e.g. the one found in the tutorial for importing heightmaps into SC3KU by catty-cb), and they too are plagued with this same problem.

The heightmap itself (heightmap.bmp):

The result:

What it should actually resemble (the terrain had been modified post-import here, but it my point still stands):

[CorinaMarie 29,894]

Oh, my! No reply at all here.

Did you ever figure this out? I know I did it successfully one time. While the XP comp that was on is long gone, I do have the hard drive and I could search it externally to maybe find mine if'n you are still wanting to troubleshoot this.

[jimbo_rockford 10]

@MagicSpear 

I was able to reproduce your results using the heightmap.bmp you attached. The issue is with the color palette embedded in the bmp file, not the fact you are running the GOG version of SC3KU.

I opened your heightmap.bmp in IrfanView and saw that it is an 8 bits per pixel file. This indicates that it should be an indexed color image with 256 possible colors, which is the required format for SC3KU. Of the 256 possible colors, your image is only using 36 of them. (https://www.irfanview.com/)

Looking at the color palette in IrfanView (Image -> Palette -> Edit Palette) reveals that the palette is not the full greyscale spectrum from 0 to 255, but rather an optimized palette specific to your image’s 36 unique colors. In the following screenshot, index 30 highlighted in yellow is using RGB(37, 37, 37) and index 255 highlighted in red in the bottom right corner is unused. The index and RGB values would be identical in a palette with the full greyscale spectrum. 

SC3KU reads the palette index not the RGB color value to calculate terrain height. In your case, when you have a pixel with RGB(37, 37, 37) which you would expect to be land, SC3KU reads it as index 30 which is water at 0 m elevation. This is why most of your heightmap ends up being below water! See this post if you need the index to elevation conversion:

 

I used IrfanView to import the full spectrum greyscale palette (Image -> Palette -> Import Palette) into your heightmap.bmp and saved it as new bmp file. Both the palette I used and the new bmp are attached (palette_256grey.pal heightmap_fixed.bmp). The following screenshot shows the new bmp imported into SC3KU. It does not match the second screenshot in your original post because of the terraforming you did within SC3KU.

To further emphasize that SC3KU reads the color index, I also attached heightmap_colorized.bmp that is an 8 bit per pixel image that does not use greyscale rgb values. Instead it uses 256 colors where blues are water (index 30 or less), and orange/pinks are land (index 31 and above). I had to do the colorization in GIMP rather than IrfanView.

Hope this helps!

 

[CorinaMarie 29,894]

@jimbo_rockford

Amazing first post. Thanks for stopping by to provide such detailed help.  

[trar 336]

Seconded, definitely proof that SimCity 3000 lives on even after a quarter century.

[Gernot66 186]

What about an old helpful proggy?

I (still) use the "Map Editor" from anno domini, it runs fine in win11 (except that it argues about a missing buffer but never mind). Apart from raising the terrain you can perform some simple tasks like to tilt the map and more advanced operations like fractal mountains. It's a bit difficult to select regions but if it's just to raise a map perfect. Unlike another old terrain ed i used it displays correctly just that the very basic 3d window needs a lot of time to be updated (the missing buffer i guess but i swear it wasn't faster back then, much slower even).

For your task just "select all" and raise the terrain (unfortunately only) increment by increment.

examples,

first after decades of not using it, "one click" and it's done.

A more "sophisticated" idea, a map i created using a fractal terrain generator for SimCity Classic.

it uses only three colors (1 bitplane in fact but the "channel" i don't need, each is definitively a height difference you can't see this in SimCity Classic but if loaded to SC2000 they show a height difference, for SC Classic it's just channel, sea/river, open land and forest), sure in this colors it will end up extreme but i used gimp to use a greyscale which differs 10 units each (i.e. from 0x808080 to 0x909090). Finally i loaded this rough layout to the mapeditor and it resulted in this quite heavy to play map (you can't build without the bulldozer).

the hills i created by selecting the "forest" with the magic wand, that's why the three colors was ideal, it's else hard to select a region in a generated terrain but this made it easy.

 

the proggy:

sc3maped12.zip

 

the final terrain "Userousu":

Userousu.zip

It's an .sct, means a "real city" terrain, just rename the final map incl. trees and rivers from .sc3 to .sct and you can start it as terrain with your settings.

I forgot the greyscales,

Albobata.zip

Both names "Albobata" and "Userousu" are generated as well.

 

I didn't came far with this "crumbling land".

And now i like to see the frickin' craziest terrains ever