Why are my custom regions not loading?

[Echoes2005 3]

I downloaded three custom regions off of this site and for some reason they don't load correctly when I select them in game. They simply appear as the default plains region. When I downloaded them, each one came in two files: a JPG of the region itself, and the bitmap file for where city plots are. I put each of them in their own folder and put them all in the regions folder (the regions.ini file only appeared when I loaded them ingame).

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

Did you render them in the game? 

Once you've opened their region by name, do Shift+Ctrl+Alt+R to open the file picker thinger. Assuming Windows, you'll then drill down to:

C:\Users\Cori\Documents\SimCity 4\Regions\That Region Name and then double click the .jpg file. Ofc, if your name isn't Cori, then select your own.  

You'll then see two goofy statements per city tile and a generic image of same as it processes them. Do NOT tab away or you'll get empty or partially borked city tiles. Also note that if you have your terrain, water, sidewater, rock, and beach mods installed in plugins it'll use them to properly color the region thumbnails.  

[Echoes2005 3]

I'm getting this error when I double click the jpg.

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

I see the trouble. The original config1.bmp is mis-named. Exit the game, then:

Look in that folder and you might now also have a config.bmp which the game created. Delete that if so and then rename the downloaded one to config.bmp without the 1 in it. The game is really nitpicky about this.  

[Echoes2005 3]

Ok, the map loads now. It took a while since it was a massive map but now I have it loaded. Thanks!

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

3 hours ago, Echoes2005 said:

Ok, the map loads now.

Yay!  

Now, I'll go ahead and mention a couple or three things for later reference.

First, the grayscale image can also be in .bmp format and (I believe, but I'm not 100% sure) .png. As I progressed in my grayscale creation experiments, I decided the .bmp was my fav because it was completely lossless. (Png would be too, but I just didn't experiment with it.) The disadvantage of .jpg for map making is if you want to make minor tweaks (especially along shore lines) they can get averaged right out of the image. Our eyes will never notice, but the computer can tell.

Second, the height per grayscale pixel color increment represents 3.0 meters in the game by default. That's part of the Terrain Properties Exemplar and some maps were created and expected to be rendered using a different setting. By using a larger number, you can render taller mountains. The description of the STEX map entry should mention this if they want you to use a different pixel-to-height ratio. Then if you do use an altered ratio during the render, you can set your Terrain Properties back to normal after it's done.

Third, if you come across map files with .sc4m, those require a program call Mapper. These are vastly superior to grayscale created maps because they allow 0.1 meter elevation changes whereas the grayscale can only handle 3.0 meters (based on the Terrain Properties Exemplar). This allows significantly smoother transitions between adjacent pixels. They can also have the config.bmp settings built right into their map file.