Psiman

Here's a better configuration of tiles, with some good locations for cities using the big tiles.

I've been working on creating a new region from the random map generator. I created a large random map of 50x50 km, applied Gaussian blur using GIMP and then opened the grayscale image in SC4 Mapper. I saw an island that looked like it would be interesting to create a region out of, and used SC4 Mapper to extract the selection as a new region. Loading it on the game, it looks good, but the littoral zone is not ideal - it's too shallow for ports etc, and the ocean itself is also really shallow. It needs a continental margin of continental shelf/slope/rise leading to deeper ocean. So I opened up the original grayscale image in GIMP and also took a screenshot of the region from the SC4 Mapper. Then I precisely cropped the region view from SC4 Mapper, resized it to the exact size of the grayscale image, created a new layer in GIMP, and pasted the SC4 Mapper region view on it. I then reduced its opacity so I could see the both the edges of the island and the grayscale image beneath. Then I drew an outline in black around the island on a new transparent layer. Then I filled in the rest of the ocean with black, to give me a layer filled with black, except for a hole where the island is, plus a few squares around it. I then applied a Gaussian blur to this layer. Following this, I changed its opacity to 64% and exported a new grayscale image combining the original image with the layer of transparent blackness plus hole. Then I created a new region in SC4 Mapper using this new grayscale image and loaded it up in the game. There's now a better defined coast and a deeper ocean. Here's how the region looks. So, the basic map look okay, but it could do with some optimization of the map tiles. So I open up the large grayscale image again in SC4 Mapper and use the Config options to place large city tiles at more interesting places on the coast which would be good places for harbour settlements.

A useful feature of SC4 Mapper is that one can extract a part of a map and create a new region from it. So one could generate a larger map than one needs with the random map generator, and then look for good areas to create a region out of.

Seems like it could take a while... --------------------- Here's another couple of examples of regions created with the map generator, 40x40km, Randomness 0.7>1, Mean Height 0.5>0.25

One can use SC4 Mapper to load a grayscale image and it will show where the sea level will be, or close enough. Here's the view in SC4 Mapper of the grayscale image that produced the region in the first SimCity region screenshot of the thread (above). Here's how it was rendered in the game, as created by SC4 Mapper. It appears one has to open every map tile to get it to render the graphics from a SC4 Mapper file properly, so it's probably better to use the standard method of generating a new region.

I've downloaded SC4 Mapper, and it's easy to use it to load up a grayscale image, whereupon it will show the region with sea level added.

The instructions for creating a new region include a part about how to show where the sea-level would be using Photoshop. Here's what it says: I've been trying to work out whether I can do the same using GIMP, but have not, thus far, found a way. Any GIMP users here know?

Nice terraced effect on the hills!

What's more exciting in the world of map-making now then? I need to work out how to do the blending thing in GIMP, as discussed in the map-making tutorial, in order to see what the sea-level is before generating the map.

Here's the first one. It didn't come out right as I flipped to another window while it was generating, but you get the idea. I agree that it could do with some blurring. Uneven ground like this can be a real pain to build on. Here's the second one. I probably set the randomness too high, or should have avoided using a map with areas of undefined white, as that just creates unrealistic flat mountains.

Thanks. I'll make them as is first, and then try a blur for comparison.

Here are the map tile sizes in SimCity 4: Small city tile = 64 cells Medium city tile = 128 cells Large city tile = 256 cells The "size of region in city tiles" parameter in the generator refers to the number of small tiles. So the default of 2 would be a medium city tile. A region of 5 large maps x 5 large maps would therefore be "Size of region in city tiles" of 20. Here are a couple of maps I've generated to test out. This first one is default settings, just size of region changed to 20. For this second one, I've increase the level of randomness from 0.75 to 1.75.

Yeah, I'm on Screenshot (2067). Doesn't everyone have this?

You can see the negative effect on Land Value alongside the avenues in the screenshot. I'd guess that maybe you haven't reached the Stage Limit thresholds, perhaps because you don't have enough parks and civic buildings, or just because the town isn't big enough yet. You could test by saving the game, placing a bunch of parks near the medium-density zoning, and seeing what happens and reloading.

My thread on the random map generator has disappeared and is in some sort of time travel limbo. It says it's in the Mapping Community Room sub-forum, but it's not there. It also says I posted it on 1 January 1970.. but I wasn't even born then!