Real terrain creation supplement in SimCity 3000

Contributor/author(s): Tony Velasquez

Note: this article serves as a supplement to articles already posted at this site. See related articles at bottom for such articles. This article was created by terrain enthusiast Tony Velasquez.

I have designed a couple of the custom terrain maps which are posted SC3000.COM. I did the San Diego Bay map and the Honolulu map. I sometimes get requests for information on how I made my maps. I have written this brief guide as a sort of 'form letter' to send back to such requests.

I found the utilities that I use at:

http://simkingdom.com/english/sc3k/apps.html

It's Alex's SimKingdom although you might be able to find these utilities at other sites. Anyway, the three utilities listed under "Filetype Converters" are what you want. The last one "demtobmp" is the actual one that takes USGS DEM elevation data and turns it into a bmp file that you can import using the cheat codes. Another utility will let you change a saved game into a terrain file.

The readme files with these programs are pretty good and give a good overview of what you need to do. Basically, the archive you want to go to for terrain data is at:

http://edcwww.cr.usgs.gov/glis/hyper/guide/1_dgr_demfig/index1m.html

This will give you DEM files for the entire USA. I don't know right now where to get DEM type data for other countries. I thought I did find an archive for Europe in France but my French isn't that good so I couldn't tell what the site was trying to tell me. :-)

So, you use the map navigation at the USGS site and find the terrain you want. They are broke up into quadrants covering about 50 miles square. They are gunzipped, so you'll need something like winzip to unzip them. If you go to the USGS homepages I think they have links to where you can get unzipping utilities. There are other USGS files for viewing their data which are quite handy to have as they do terrain viewing and enhancement, you might consider seeking some of these out. The viewer in "demtobmp" is pretty basic and B&W.

Once you have a DEM file you want to use, you use the demtobmp utilitiy to capture a section. Then save this section as some file and you are ready for the hard part. Actually, it gets sticky once you get into SimCity 3000 itself because you have to use the little cheat window to give commands. The cheat commands you want to know are:

"terrain ten down" - lowers the terrain ten down.
"terrain one down" - lowers the terrain one down
"i am weak" - lets you use your terrain editing tools for free so you don't run out of money.

There seems to be a strange bug in SimCity where you have to keep typing this right before you select a terrain tool or a new one or else it will cost you money.

"load terrain c:\temp\land.bmp" - this is how you get your bmp into the game. You can give it any pathname or file name, I just gave and example here. Other 'cheats' can be found at SC3000.COM's Underground.

Once you get your land into the editor, you will see there is no water. It is pretty high up and you'll have to tweak it to get it to where you want it. Don't forget you can save it as a saved game if you get something you like. I generally find you have to drop the map 32 squares to get water at the normal level. (ten down, ten down, ten down, one down, one down). Basically, when some terrain begins to turn white or light green, you know you are getting close. Use these commands to get what you want. Be warned, if you lower the land too far, raising it again will not make the water go lower. The whole base level of the entire map will rise, including your sealevel, so you have to go down carefully.

Once you got the water level where you like, you can use the land editing tools to do whatever detail you want, add trees, draw in detail rivers (the DEM files tend to be very general and with low detail). and other stuff.

Once you have this file saved as a saved game, you can use the other utility to change this saved game into a terrain file. Put this terrain file in your /terrain subdirectory and you are ready to play.

I find that once you have this process down and know just how to edit and tweak the terrain in SimCity3000 itself, you can churn out maps really fast. I got to where I could pop out a new map in no time at all. In fact, I made all three of mine, and a few others, in very rapid succession.

It's really easy once you get used to it, it just takes a while knowing how to get the look you want. Sometimes its hard to know what part of the DEM file you want - they can be very dark and undifferentiated. This is when its cool to have one of the USGS file viewers as they can do things like daylight shading and false color imaging to make details stand out.

Good luck and I hope to see some of your work!

See also
Generating custom terrain from bitmaps
Generating terrain from USGS DEM files
Real terrain importation Part I: Get & convert terrain
Real terrain importation Part II: Prepare & import terrain
Terrain generation with Photoshop 4.0
Real terrain importation & file edit tips (Macintosh only)
Realistic space terrain with Unlimited
Notes on scale
Raising elevation by 352 meters