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Showing results for tags 'terrain'.
Found 121 results
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I am not finding the best greyscale to edit my regions. Can anyone throw me a bone? Maybe a tiny biscuit? 1025 x 1025. I only have Windows paint on this entirely old as the hills rig. Please help and a huge thanks to all of you, who support this community.
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Hi I'm looking for a Miami Beach/Metropolitan Terrain similar to the ones that are posted SimCity 4, but for SimCity 3000 instead. I'm not very good at terrain editing from scratch and getting it fairly accurate.
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Version 1.0.0
144 Downloads
Rock texture replacement, hope you like it. It's an HD texture so it will only look good if you use an HD terrain mod. Installation: Unzip the "AGC Rock Cliff 03.dat" file in your terrain or rock mod folder (Or make sure it's in a zzz_ folder). You can only use one rock mod at a time, remember to delete the one you have to avoid conflicts. If you like my work, you can make a donation to fund my other projects! (I plan to make 3 terrain mods). https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=WF9FDNHXCHDVU Thanks to the few people who have donated to me. -
Hi all, first time posting here. Big fan of SimCity 3000 from way back and recently picked up the GOG version. I'm wanting to do a challenge run where I start with my town completely underwater. I'd like to do this in a way that the game doesn't consider 'cheating', because that locks me out of certain buildings and achievements. I'm aware that the game considers "terrain up/down" as cheating, but I'm wondering if it's the same for "load terrain". I essentially want to play the vanilla game, just with this wacky map idea. If it "is" a cheat, how do you think I could go about doing this? I'd like to use the largest map, and manually covering it all water would be a huge pain. I obviously don't want to cheat for extra money to cover it all that way either. Has anyone managed to reverse engineer the ".sct" terrain files for the existing towns? 😅
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Version 1.0.0
284 Downloads
The tree line of flora you plant in God Mode is determined by the Flora: Max Elevation Range property in the Flora Tuning exemplar 0x6534284a, 0x7a4a8458, 0x1a2fdb6a (see also this tutorial for more information). If you're using Lowkee's Seasonal Flora Patch, or Lowkee's Appalachian Terrain Mod, then the tree line will be set to 500m above sea level. Compared to the tree line in real life (which is roughly at 2000m in the Alps, for example), this is quite low. This means that if you play on real-world maps, you may find that already no trees will be planted anymore at unrealistically low elevations. You can fix this by manually editing the Flora: Max Elevation Range property in the Flora Tuning exemplar, but this mod gives you a different option by leveraging Exemplar Patching. By leveraging exemplar patching, this mod should be compatible with any tree controller and terrain mod. Included with this mod are 6 different elevations for the tree line: 500m, 750m, 1000m, 1500m, 2000m and 2500m. Choose only one of them, obviously, and remember that these are the heights above sea level, which is 250m by default. (If you want to change the sea level, have a look at my Universal Sea Level Mod). If you have a good reason to have another elevation as tree line - for example you want the tree line to correspond to the snow line of your terrain mod - then you can send me a request to add it, or you can just open the .dat file in the Reader and update the Flora: Max Elevation Range property. Do yourself a favor and install this with sc4pac. This allows you to quickly switch tree lines by resetting the smf-16:universal-tree-line-mod:height variant. Dependencies: memo:submenus-dll (this is needed for the exemplar functionality to work). Acknowledgements Thanks a lot to @11241036 and his great explanation about how tree controllers work, which is what caused me to make this mod.-
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Crazy terrain holes plague custom made lots
TheMurderousCricket posted a topic in SC4 Modding - Open Discussion
Hi Everyone. I was wondering if anyone can shed some light on this... I am trying to create several large lots, the largest of which is 13x20 tiles across. The lot is supposed to be slope-conformant and follow the terrain form. I already made such lots to create forest spaces for example. However, this time, when I place my lots onto the slopes, I get abominable holes and basins like in the picture below. As you can clearly see they always appear in a different portion of the lot. I don't understand what might be causing this... The test lots you see below are completely empty - there are no objects that could potentially cause levelling out of certain portions of the terrain and textures alone don't have such properties! Do they? Below you can also find the settings that I use in order to get a slope-conformant lot (something which worked before). EDIT: I also checked a couple of items that are supposed to be slope-conformant made by other creators and these lots also experience this strange behavior. Whenever they are placed on slopes, even gentle slopes, they instantly trigger this "toilet bowl bug". I believe this is the kind of problem worthy of the CoriBoom team intervention... Something certainly isn't right here. -
Hi this is my first post to the forum. I recently have gotten back into the game and downloaded the Maui region to start my play through on. I like to load all the tiles before a playthrough to snap a image through the stages of my cities growth. While loading all the tiles I came across this one that has the tile not fully showing due to it being a moded region. Obviously this can be fixed by loading in the city and saving it. The problem is due to the hit box to select the city (the one that looks missing) being below the other hit boxes, I can't open it to create the city. I've already tried reconciling the terrain from other tiles in hopes it resets it, but I already have surpassed the games height and i can't raise the terrain after it reconciles. You can also see how high this is from the ui tile selector apearing at the bottem of the neighbor tile. I tried neighborhood connection like power line (Roads, pipes and train tracks can't be built at this height). But it also does not work. I believe because there is no city yet. Also double checked SC4 Mapper to make sure my config is actually zoned since I rezoned everything twice before my playthrough and it is. Thankfully I haven't started a city yet and suck in too much time (5 hours in loading zones). If it's something I have to live with I think I can. But if anyone knows any tricks to select it, maybe a hot key to change between tiles or a mod to allow the opening of this tile. I'd really appreciate it.
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Ideas for Extending the Maxis Terrain.ini Format
Null 45 posted a topic in SC4 Modding - Open Discussion
I am using this thread to lay out a few ideas that I have for adding new features to the Maxis Terrain.ini file. Longer Display Names Currently the terrain mods listed in the Extend Terrain UI are limed to the single word prefixes for the terrain section names, e.g. [<Prefix>MiscTextures]. This could be handled by adding an optional [TerrainDisplayNames] section, that uses the prefix as the INI key name. For example: [DisplayNames] Arctic=Siberia Desert=Sand Dunes Allowing Multiple Terrain mods to Use Cutaway/Water Textures The game uses a number of hard-coded texture ids: 0x10, 0x11, 0x13, 0x14, 0x15, 0xe0, 0x09187300-0x09187304, and possibly others that I missed. These textures are used for cutaways, water, etc. I have been looking in-game, the Reader, and various mods to see what each one is used for, but I don't know if it is already documented somewhere. 0x00000Z10 and 0x00000Z11 appear to be cutaway textures. 0x00000Z13 is the inshore water texture. 0x00000Z14 and 0x00000Z15 appear to be underwater textures. 0x00000ZE0 is possibly volcanic ash? 0x09187300-0x09187304 is the offshore water texture. As I mentioned in the Show us What you're Working On thread, I recently added some code to the the Extended Terrain DLL that allows me to control the game's terrain texture loading. Currently it only logs the texture TGI values SC4 requests, but it could be used to remap the game's request to a different TGI value. This system was added based on a request for the hard-coded inshore and offshore water textures to be configurable in Terrain.ini. An Offset System to Allow More Terrain Mods to Coexist The terrain mod texture range is limited by the 0x00000ZTT format Maxis used, with several of the TT values being reserved by the game for other purposes. One possible solution to this would be an offset system that allows upper bytes of the id to be used as a prefix to separate mods with the same lower values. As an example, the hypothetical terrain mods A and B would both use the Maxis Tropical texture range with the following beach texture ids. A: 0x00000039 - this overwrites the Maxis tropical texture. B: 0x10000039 - this mod uses an offset of 0x10000000. When the B terrain mod is loaded, the game's request for texture 0x00000039 would be redirected to 0x10000039. Feedback and additional ideas would be welcome. -
I Need Assistance with the SC4D LEX Legacy - BSC Extended Cycledogg Terrain Mods V1
CahosRahneVeloza posted a topic in SC4 - Custom Content
I just downloaded the updated Cycledogg terrain mods bundle pack from here... https://www.sc4evermore.com/index.php/downloads/download/37-terrain-mods-and-tree-controllers/324-sc4d-LEX-legacy-bsc-extended-cycledogg-terrain-mods-v1\ ...and I'm trying to reinstall my custom terrain mod setup as seen here... https://imgur.com/iFBjSDc But looking at the Java Installer options... https://imgur.com/S2THtBz https://imgur.com/S2THtBz ...I can't find the options for CPT_No5_RockTextures_ which I chose the Olympic essentials version for and CPT_No6_ which I chose Meadowshire for. The beach textures I chose is obviously from somewhere else. Anyway, I wish instead of the installer, the package was presented as a structured zip folder so it'd be easier to sift through the options manually as it used to be. I do understand that the installer was created for ease of use. Unfortunately it's not being so for me at the moment. -
Version 1.0.0
380 Downloads
A DLL Plugin for SimCity 4 that adds support for more terrain types. Based on the data in terrain.ini, Maxis appears to have originally intended for SC4 to have 4 different terrain types: Arctic, Desert, Temperate and Tropical. But that feature was cut at some point in the game's development, and they only implemented the Tropical terrain type. This DLL mod adds a region view cheat code that displays a UI for the user to switch between the different terrain types. The available terrain types will be shown using the prefix the terrain mod specifies in terrain.ini. The prefix is the text that comes before the TextureMapTable and MiscTexture section names. Note that the Terrain not a valid terrain mod prefix, TerrainMiscTextures is the section the game uses for cliff textures that are shared between different texture mods. This DLL mod is intended as a dependency for other mods that add new terrain types beyond the Tropical terrain type that Maxis created, it does not add any terrain types to the game by itself. System Requirements SimCity 4 version 641 Windows 10 or later The plugin may work on Windows 7 or later with the Microsoft Visual C++ 2022 x86 Redistribute installed, but I do not have the ability to test that. Installation Close SimCity 4. Copy SC4ExtendedTerrain.dll and ExtendedTerrainUI.dat into the top-level of the Plugins folder in the SimCity 4 installation directory or Documents/SimCity 4 directory. Start SimCity 4. Usage The DLL adds a ExtendedTerrain cheat when in the region view. This cheat code has no parameters and shows a dialog that allows the terrain type to be changed for that region. This cheat should only be used in a region without any established cities, changing the terrain after establishing a city can cause the game to CTD when loading the city. Troubleshooting The plugin should write a SC4ExtendedTerrain.log file in the same folder as the plugin. The log contains status information for the most recent run of the plugin. Source Code and Support Plugin thread: https://community.simtropolis.com/forums/topic/763433-extended-terrain-dll/ The plugin's source code and issue tracker are located on GitHub: https://github.com/0xC0000054/sc4-extended-terrain If you would like to make voluntary contributions to support me in continuing to create more content for SimCity 4, I accept donations via PayPal: https://paypal.me/0xC0000054 Thanks to the few people who have donated to me. -
Version 1.0.0
226 Downloads
Rock texture replacement, hope you like it. Installation: Unzip the "AGC Rock Cliff 02.dat" file in your terrain or rock mod folder (Or make sure it's in a zzz_ folder). You can only use one rock mod at a time, remember to delete the one you have to avoid conflicts. If you like my textures and want to support my terrain/rock/water mod, please consider making a small donation. https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=WF9FDNHXCHDVU Thanks to the few people who have donated to me. -
This is DLL Plugin for SimCity 4 that adds support for more terrain types. Based on the data in terrain.ini, Maxis appears to have originally intended for SC4 to have 4 different terrain types: Arctic, Desert, Temperate and Tropical. But that feature was cut at some point in the game's development, and they only implemented the Tropical terrain type. This DLL mod adds a region view cheat code that displays a UI for the user to switch between the different terrain types. The available terrain types will be shown using the prefix the terrain mod specifies in terrain.ini. The prefix is the text that comes before the TextureMapTable and MiscTexture section names. Note that the Terrain not a valid terrain mod prefix, TerrainMiscTextures is the section the game uses for cliff textures that are shared between different texture mods. This DLL mod is intended as a dependency for other mods that add new terrain types beyond the Tropical terrain type that Maxis created, it does not add any terrain types to the game by itself. Download: https://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/36614-extended-terrain-dll/ Source Code: https://github.com/0xC0000054/sc4-extended-terrain/releases System Requirements SimCity 4 version 641 Windows 10 or later The plugin may work on Windows 7 or later with the Microsoft Visual C++ 2022 x86 Redistribute installed, but I do not have the ability to test that. Installation Close SimCity 4. Copy SC4ExtendedTerrain.dll and ExtendedTerrainUI.dat into the top-level of the Plugins folder in the SimCity 4 installation directory or Documents/SimCity 4 directory. Start SimCity 4. Usage The DLL adds an ExtendedTerrain cheat when in the region view. This cheat code has no parameters and shows a dialog that allows the terrain type to be changed for that region. This cheat should only be used in a region without any established cities, changing the terrain after establishing a city can cause the game to CTD when loading the city. Troubleshooting The plugin should write a SC4ExtendedTerrain.log file in the same folder as the plugin. The log contains status information for the most recent run of the plugin. I am attaching the modified terrain.ini file that I created for testing, it uses only base game textures and has no dependencies. terrain_ini_edited.zip
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Version 1.0.0
321 Downloads
Rock texture replacement, hope you like it. Installation: Unzip the "AGC Rock Cliff 01.dat" file in your terrain or rock mod folder (Or make sure it's in a zzz_ folder). If you like my textures and want to support my terrain/rock/water mod, please consider making a small donation. https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=WF9FDNHXCHDVU Thanks to the few people who have donated to me. -
Appropriate base textures for CPT Terrain Mods?
junspud posted a topic in SC4 Modding - Open Discussion
Wasn't entire sure if this question would be appropriate in an existing thread... But I was wondering, do appropriate Lot Base textures already exist in any common megapacks which correspond to/match the various CPT Terrain Texture mods which use the CPT Terrain Essentials pack? Particularly the 'Olympic' Terrain version. I extracted the terrain textures from within the essentials pack but going through them/using the ini manually to try and match them by eye (or other megapacks) seems cumbersome process which I'm not great at and would take a while, and which could be pointless/avoided if they already exist and are common knowledge. The goal being to replicate what some other terrain mods (like Sudden Valley) have, base texture overrides and appropriate textures to be used on lots/GoFSH script repositories. Thanks.. -
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):
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Hey there ! I tried some years ago to get into SC4 modding but failed. Few weeks ago i tried again but more seriously and managed to make it work. I've made a few terrain mods already, let's start with the Lava Terrain mod ! It includes : - Inshore+Offshore mod. Same texture. As you can see on image 3, the offshore looks too dark, so i use shallow waters for more vivid colors - A beach mod, that i use with the Limitless_Beach dat. - A cutaway mod. It's not that great but it's funny. - Two types of rock mod. Image 4 and 5, brighter or darker type. - And the terrain mod itself. Three textures only. Give it a try and tell me what you think ! Hope you'll like it ! -Vmaz
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What kind of flora and terrain mod do you think would be best for a Japanese themed city? I have been using the Berner Oberland as a terrain mod and have been testing the Central European Tree Controller, Cascadian Tree Controller and the Yucatan Tropical tree mod. Central European Flora Cascadian Flora Yucatan Tropical Flora
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Hello everyone, it's a wonderful day in Primiera. Primiera's map is a changing. I've downloaded the 25 tiles mod as well as taken on some landscaping projects to extend Primiera's buildable area. The first step is to extend some land on the bottom of the cliff near the south side. This was pretty convenient because I used some soil from the top of the hill - which flattened the hill. Here is the progression of the aptly named Cliffbottom The development includes a subway line with 2 stops. The green space at the end is now turned into a park. This is what the site used to look like: Now let's get to the top of the cliff. I wanted it to be a commercial center and have the first real university (the Campus DLC one). Here it is: I love these atlas statues. I used the medium sized ones on this central plaza but the mod comes with bigger and smaller ones. It also includes a metro stop. The line climbs up cliffside with a stop in the mansions. You can see it in purple below and it only goes to the large subway below and doesn't go all the way to downtown or the CBD. The higher ground across from the large avenue will hold the university. Surprisingly the district grew fast! I kind of like the low rise look, i might put a no high rise policy on it. I will put a video of the university build out after I make it so be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel! There was a bit of land I put even further out but I'm not sure what to do with it. You guys should give me suggestions! Cliffbottom a day later: That's all for now. Have a great day from this Croatian plane and I
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Version 1.0.0
933 Downloads
This is my 3rd tree controller mod, but I also included a HD terrain mod to go with it. low elevations are entirely treed and grass based. There are rocky beaches. Higher elevations leads to higher ratios of conifer, and less grass. Kinda arid med style but plant choice is not accurate to the med, I just went with what I liked. Dependencies same as my previous tree controllers + this new one: -
CTD in one, particular place - possibly a terrain-related bug
TheMurderousCricket posted a topic in SC4 Bugs & Technical Issues
Hi all, I have just experienced a really peculiar bug which causes the game to surprisingly CTD. The crash always happens when I attempt to lay down a zone which runs through the tile that I crossed in the following picture, for the viewers convenience. Regardless of what is being zoned there, the game freezes up for a moment and then crashes. What makes this situation really bonkers is the fact that a slight alteration of this tile's height (for instance, running water pipes underneath), completely solves the issue, making the tile usable again. I keep wondering if the SAM corner over there is not the root of the problem. This particular place could have been a pattern-based, SAM-type gentle bend - I don't remember now. I'm not sure how it works, but perhaps the game interprets that a SAM pattern piece is still there and causes conflict as a result...? I'm gonna try to place more zones in areas like this and perhaps I will be able to reproduce the results (though I certainly hope I would not!). Can anyone shed some light on what is wrong in this particular case? I might actually share the city where this problem appears, should anyone would like to investigate and test it out for themselves. -
NBVC modular marina alignment woes
TheMurderousCricket posted a topic in SC4 Modding - Open Discussion
Hiya Guys, I must say that I am in a world of hurt, trying to piece up a marina, using the NBVC modular marina mod (which I generally find great). While I am perfectly able to level the land pieces that come in this set, I am frequently experiencing trouble, trying to link up water pieces to the land-based pieces. Before you jump to conclusions, let it be known that the seabed underneath the marina is already perfectly flat. I flattened it using SC4Terraformer. Regardless of what I do to the seabed, this is the best I can get: Levelling does not seem to improve the situation, so I'd like to know what would. -
DEM Comparisons: SRTM, ASTER, ALOS, Copernicus DEM Map Renderings
Odainsaker posted a topic in Mapping Community Room
I have done some test renderings to see what quality differences occur in SimCity 4 maps generated from 16-bit digital elevation maps (DEMs) downloaded from several different public sources. This is an expansion deviating off an already lengthy reply post made in a previous thread, "How can I ensure I'm creating a valid 16 png for use with SC4Mapper?" by @Han Solo, but I thought it might be useful for any mapmakers to see these actual comparisons. Many of us will already know the outlines of the expected results, but I don't recall many side-by-side comparisons and hopefully it will be interesting to see them objectively in one place. DEM SOURCES The following four DEM collections are now publicly available as digital surface maps (DSMs) at 1 arc second, or roughly 30-meter, interval postings in GeoTiff format: NASA's Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) Version 3.0 Global 1 arc second (SRTMGL1) NASA and METI's Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) Global Digital Elevation Model (GDEM) Version 3 (ASTGTM) JAXA's Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS) World 3D - 30m (AW3D30) ESA's Copernicus Digital Elevation Model (COP-DEM) global 30m (GLO-30) Individual national services may publicly offer higher resolution data for limited areas, such as the USGS's freely available National Elevation Dataset (NED) at 1/3 arc-second, or about 10 meters, for the United States, and 3 meters in smaller areas. Other countries limit data for commercial licensing or even national security reasons, so you mileage will vary depending on area of interest. JAXA offers purchasable ALOS 5-meter and even 2.5-meter DEMs, and ESA offers purchasable Copernicus DEMs and its original commercial AIRBUS WorldDEMs at 12-meters. Depending on your project, 10-meter, 5-meter, and 3-meter DEMs can either be useful or overkill. SRTM - SRTMGL1 is downloadable from the USGS Earth Explorer (EE). Free registration is required via the EROS Registration System. Within Earth Explorer you will have to filter to the desired dataset: Data Sets --> NASA LDPAAC Collections --> NASA SRTM (SRTM 3) Collections --> NASA SRTM3 SRTMGL1. (Alternatively, OpenTopography provides a direct portal, Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM GL1) Global 30m, without requiring registration.) ASTER - ASTGTM is downloadable from the USGS Earth Explorer (EE). Free registration is required via the EROS Registration System. Within Earth Explorer you will have to filter to the desired dataset: Data Sets --> NASA LDPAAC Collections --> ASTER Collections --> ASTER Global DEM V3. ALOS - AW3D30 is downloadable from the JAXA EORC ALOS Global Digital Surface Model "ALOS World 3D - 30m (AW3D30)" page. Free registration is required via the User Registration page. (Alternatively, OpenTopography provides a direct portal, ALOS World 3D - 30m, without requiring registration. OpenTopography does not include the auxiliary mask files.) COP-DEM - GLO-30 is downloadable from ESA's Copernicus Space Component Data Access Planetary Data Access Catalogue (PANDA). Free registration and then a digitally-signed public access license agreement are required via the Copernicus User's Personal Area: Service Project & Dataset Management Portal. Within PANDA, you will have to filter to the desired dataset: Filters --> select "PRISM Catalogue" --> select "Datasets" --> COP-DEM_GLO-30-DGED. (Alternatively, OpenTopography offers a download portal, Copernicus GLO-30 Digital Elevation Model, without requiring registration. OpenTopography does not include the auxiliary mask files.) (Note that while the official download sites provide their DEMs as grid tile GeoTiffs keyed to simple whole number latitude and longitude grid corners, OpenTopography will crop results to a use-defined map selection area. This lossy selection can make it difficult to merge or overlay different DEMs from different sources if you are not exactingly monitoring the selection coordinates so that all the involved maps align. I usually find it much more convenient when using OpenTopography to instead manually enter selection coordinates that match the nearest simple whole number latitude and longitude grid corners.) BATHYMETRY None of the four DEM datasets listed above include bathymetry. Worldwide available coverage for bathymetry is still very poor due to our limits in canvasing areas with sonar and lidar, and most freely available public DEMs are going to be at 15 arc second, or roughly 500-meter, interval postings. Individual national services may offer better resolutions for limited areas, and you mileage will vary depending on the area of interest. Because of the vast difference in resolutions, care must be taken in cropping, pasting, and aligning them into a land DEM from the above sources with the caveat that the transition from above sea level to below sea level will be grossly imprecise. Thankfully, ALOS and COP-DEM include useful water masks, though GIMP's common graphics editing selection tools help as well. The General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans (GEBCO) offers freely available data most recently released for 2021 as the GEBCO_2021 Grid. GEBCO - GEBCO_2021 Grid is downloadable from their portal, GEBCO Gridded Bathymetry Data Download. Registration is not required. Alternatively, OpenTopograpahy offers download portals for both the Global Bathymetry and Topography at 15 Arc Sec: SRTM15+ V2.1 and the Global Multi-Resolution Topography (GMRT) Data Synthesis, both of which similarly do not require registration. The SRTM+ and GMRT bathymetry DEMs have shared information with GEBCO and at these resolutions they are not significantly different. I have seen that GEBCO has filled DEM holes missing from SRTM+ data and that both have additional small water bodies not found in the GMRT data. (Note that while the official land topography download sites provide their DEMs as grid tile GeoTiffs keyed to simple whole number latitude and longitude grid corners, GEBCO and OpenTopography will both crop their results to a user-defined map selection area. This lossy selection can make it difficult to merge or overlay different DEMs from different sources if you are not exactingly monitoring the selection coordinates so that all the involved maps align. I usually find it much more convenient when using both GEBCO and OpenTopography to instead manually enter selection coordinates that match the nearest simple whole number latitude and longitude grid corners.) TOKYO REGION MAP The map used here for test rendering is a scale-accurate section of the Greater Tokyo Metropolitan Area, generally spanning from the Tone River in the north to Hatsushima island in the south, and from the Fuji River in the west to the eastern shoreline of the Bōsō peninsula to the east. The region is 122,880 m x 188,416 m, required a DEM image of 7,681 pixels x 11,777 pixels, and produced a SimCity 4 region map of 30 x 46 large city tiles. The 16-bit DEM was processed with Prof. Peter Guth's MicroDEM 64-bit build 2016.4.28.199, edited with GIMP 2.10.18, and imported to SimCity 4's Regions folder with @wouanagaine's SC4 Mapper 2013 (v1.0) patched with the NTCore 4GB Patch. The complete region view image was captured and exported with @JeanLucPicard2's SimCity4 Startup Manager (SUM) 3.0, also patched with the NTCore 4GB Patch. SimCity 4 Rush Hour version 1.1.640.0 has been patched with the NTCore 4GB Patch and set to hardware rendering graphics mode. MicroDEM is downloadable from the MicroDEM Home Page on the USNA. Registration is not required. The current standard version for "Complete MicroDEM install" is MicroDEM build 2020.8.20.1 and I have found that the functions of that build still work for SimCity 4 mapmaking purposes. However, be aware that I have found that the currently offered updates with later builds break much of that functionality, and so I have NOT applied any updates suggested by the "Update program EXE" page nor any updates from within the program's updater. GIMP is downloadable from the GIMP - GNU Image Manipuation Program homepage. GIMP is currently now up to version 2.10.30. SC4 Mapper 2013 (v1.0) is downloadable from SC4 Devotion's LEX. Free registration is required SimCity4 Startup Manager 3.0 is downloadable from SimCityKurier: Modding-Tools. Registration is not required. NTCore 4GB Patch is downloadable from NTCore. It also comes bundled with the Network Addon Mod. Registration is not required. The in-game images have been captured with custom terrain mods applied. I have used the Gobias' Sudden Valley Terrain Mod (v1.0), option High Altitude, edited with @ilive's iLive Reader 0.9.3 to shift the snowline and treeline of the mod on the in-game Mount Fuji to roughly correspond to the snowline of the real-world Mount Fuji by changing the "TemperatureRangeFactor" exemplar value to 0.56 and the "Flora: elevation scale range" exemplar value to 3000. The rock mod is @shokthrpy's SHK HD Rock Mods, option 03. The beach mod is @_marsh_'s HD White Sands Beach Mod. The water mod is Gobias' Gobias Water Pack 1 (v1.0), option GB Bodensee Water. Although I have not planted trees in these images, the tree controller is @blunder's Cascadia Tree Controller With MMPS. I do not claim that any of these mods or their combinations best represent the Tokyo area, only that they instead suited my particular taste at the time. Sudden Valley Terrain Mod (v1.0) is downloadable from SC4 Devotion's LEX. Free registration is required. SimCity 4's hardware rendering graphics mode is required for use. SHK HD Rock Mods is downloadable here from Simtropolis' STEX. Registration is not required. SimCity 4's hardware rendering graphics mode is required for use. HD White Sands Beach Mod is downloadable here from Simtropolis' STEX. Registration is not required. SimCity 4's hardware rendering graphics mode is required for use. Gobias Water Pack 1 (v1.0) is downloadable from SC4 Devotion's LEX. Free registration is required. SimCity 4's hardware rendering graphics mode is required for use. Cascadia Tree Controller is downloadable here from Simtropolis' STEX. Registration is not required. iLive - Reader 0.9.3 is downloadable here from Simtropolis' STEX. Registration for the STEX is not required. Ilives Reader (v0.9.3) is also downloadable from SC4 Devotion's LEX. Free registration for the LEX is required. Alternatively, Dropbox download links for iLives Reader Version 1.5.4 can be found on the "iLives Reader 1.x Official support thread" at SC4 Devotion. An extremely large region map of Tokyo is not necessarily the preferred map for these renderings, and it just happened to be the one I was working on. However, it did have some fortunate features: a high and smoothly symmetrical mountain, a broad plain, lowlands just at and even below sea level, a complex waterway system with a variety of shore and edge types, a major city with large and tall structures, and ongoing major landform changes in the form of costal land reclamation. There will be lots of conditions to inspect. With everything collected and identified so that others can recreate the experiment, let's finally see the rendered results. I will show the complete regions and then various focal areas. Each focal area will include renderings using all four public DEM sources, in order of when the DEM datasets were generally made publicly available. I have set SimCity 4 to display at 1920 x 1080 resolution and taken screenshots at that resolution. Images were converted to the lossy JPG format for upload to Imgur at a reasonable size. Region images were reduced 25% in size for display, as free Imgur will automatically resize large images down to a maximum of 5,000 pixels width. The Simtropolis Forums will resize embedded large images to maintain forum layout, so you may have to expand the images to see some details. FULL REGION VIEW SRTM - SRTMGL1 Note the striping visible as green and yellowish bands in the lowest/flattest elevations. This is likely from a known flaw in SRTM data traced to uncompensated oscillation in the space shuttle's boom holding the detector and is most noticeable on relatively flat topography, which here just happened to be a contrasting contour color transition. Selective blur filtering in GIMP can probably remove them. ASTER - ASTGTM Note that while the shorelines and rivers look very clean, there is very little of the lowest elevations shown by the default SC4 Mapper color coding as a yellowish white. ASTER has been noted as having comparatively high deviation from direct elevation measurements at elevations below 7 m. ALOS - AW3D30 COP-DEM GLO-30 (Oddly, in all four maps the bathymetry of Lake Kasumigaura at the bottom corner is misaligned, as is this bathymetric tile in general throughout though to lesser degrees in other parts of the map. The tile comes from GEBCO, though the issue also exists in tiles of this area from other sources, most of whom use shared data.) MOUNT FUJI SRTM - SRTMGL1 Note that SRTM was originally first released as 90-meter DEMs, which have since been reprocessed with later techniques to create 30-meter DEMs. ASTER - ASTGTM Note the pockmarks around the darker contour color bands of Mount Fuji. ASTER data is generally noisy, the noise apparently coming from its earlier stereoscopic imaging process that created a high spread of variations in its elevation data even on identical, contiguous slopes. That noise shows as a uniform spread of small depressions and lumps. Selective blur filtering in GIMP can reduce them. ALOS - AW3D30 Note the striping in on the snowy sides on the upper portions of Mount Fuji and which seem to run in orthagonal direction with the SimCity 4 city tile lines. I do not know if they are caused specifically by the DEM or the terrain mod, but they do not appear with the other DEMs. COP-DEM - GLO-30 Note that with much of the noise and striping gone, crevasses running down Mount Fuji's smoother snowy slopes are now strongly defined. (Frustratingly, a visible city tile seam appears across the middle of Mount Fuji on the most prominent facing side in all four images. I think the source of this seam comes from the extreme elevation difference between where one tile ends and the other begins, even between contiguous DEM pixels, on extreme slopes. I have seen it in other high, snowy mountains. A solution is to change the position of city tile seams by altering the config.bmp so that they fall on less extreme slopes. It can also be masked by darker terrain colors, forests of dark trees, and even direct editing of the edges with God Mode terrain shaping tools.) MOUNT FUJI SLOPE AND SUMMIT SRTM - SRTMGL1 ASTER - ASTGTM ALOS - AW3D30 COP-DEM GLO-30 BASE OF MOUNT FUJI SRTM - SRTMGL1 ASTER - ASTGTM Note again the pockmarked or pitted appearance of numerous shallow holes and lumps created by noise in the DEM. ALOS - AW3D30 COP-DEM GLO-30 CENTRAL TOKYO SRTM - SRTMGL1 Note the relatively rough outlines of the coastal edges. ASTER - ASTGTM Note again how SC4 Mapper's default lowest elevation colors are lost as ASTER doesn't well capture these lowest elevations. This is unfortunate, for historical urban design patterns in old Edo and early Tokyo can be divided between the "High City" of the aristocratic mansions and estates centered around Edo Castle on the higher elevations, and the "Low City" of the commoners built on the lowest elevations, reclaimed lands, and canals along the waterfront and Sumida River. ALOS - AW3D30 Note the cluttered river lengths. ALOS does include a separate mask image as an auxiliary file to assist in editing water bodies and channel, but I have not done such manual editing here. On the other hand, ALOS does include numerous islets, rocks, and shore structures missed by the water masking of other datasets. At least for this area, ALOS has the most up-to-date data as can be seen in the reclaimed disposal islands of Tokyo Bay. COP-DEM GLO-30 Note that the Copernicus DEM has the clearest waterways, and the DEM includes a water mask image as an auxiliary file as well as water transparency in the DEM itself. Also note that the reclamation island in Tokyo Bay is not as extensive as that in ALOS, suggesting the data here may not be as recent. IMPERIAL PALACE SRTM - SRTMGL1 ASTER - ASTGTM Note the shallow lumpiness resulting from both baked-in building filtering and noise. I had found that in GIMP 2.10.18, a Selective Gaussian Blur with a pixel radius of 5 and a max. delta of 0.001 was effective at removing most of the lumps without erasing the visible details on the slopes of Mount Fuji. ALOS - AW3D30 Note that major buildings and even urban street corridors are readily apparent. Free ALOS DEMs were based on a commercial 5-meter DEM and 2.5-meter imagery that have been reduced for public release. That high resolution, however, had cleanly picked up enough building surfaces that even the reduced DEMs yield identifiable building mesas in SimCity. I do not yet know what level of filtering will be needed to eliminate them for SimCity, especially as such filtering would need to be strong enough to eliminate the building mesas yet also not so strong as to inadvertently erase the moat walls of the Imperial Palace. COP-DEM GLO-30 Note that there is not as much human structure clutter as the ALOS DEM. Where the ALOS satellite had a resolution of 2.5 meters, Copernicus DEM is based on data from the TanDEM-X and TerraSAR-X twin satellites, which produced a 12-meter resolution WorldDEM. Moreover, while ALOS and ASTER use imagery to calculate visible surface heights from photometric displacements, Copernicus and SRTM were based on radar ground measurement, which to a limited extent penetrated through some of the sponginess of ground clutter like vegetation and human structures. All the datasets then use some filtering and corrective offsets, with varying fidelity and effects. TOKYO HARBOR SRTM - SRTMGL1 ASTER - ASTGTM ALOS - AW3D30 COP-DEM GLO-30 SHIMIZU SRTM - SRTMGL1 ASTER - ASTGTM ALOS - AW3D30 COP-DEM GLO-30 Note that Copernicus did not pick up or has masked away the breakwater. TONE RIVER SRTM - SRTMGL1 Note how with SRTM much of this area in SimCity becomes underwater with numerous tiny pools. This is actually a lowland area, with parts of it devoted to farming or rice paddies, but not the extent shown here. ASTER - ASTGTM Note how ASTER generally does not utilize the lowest elevation color banding of SC4 Mapper. It also lost all trace of the rice paddies, ALOS - AW3D30 Note that in ALOS the lowland rice paddies have, and some of their individual rice paddy separations are visible as stripped berms. COP-DEM GLO-30 Note Copernicus's water masking has correctly revealed Lake Inba-numa and even the narrower Shintone River paralleling the much wider Tone River. RICE PADDIES SRTM - SRTMGL1 ASTER - ASTGTM ALOS - AW3D30 COP-DEM GLO-30 CONCLUSIONS SRTM - SRTMGL1 is based on much older collected data, primarily an 11-day space shuttle mission in 2000, so recent changes in topography may be missing. Water body masking is very rough, with imprecise shorelines and missing islets. SRTM was previously publicly released as 90-meter DEMs, later reprocessed and released as 30-meter DEMs. I find them still relatively blurry compared to the latest options, and I have noticed large scale striping in flat areas. Interestingly, I recall drunkapple/dobdriver once posted that he used SRTM DEMS in his maps and he described issues with water edges and shorelines. As his maps largely were all uploaded before SRTM 30-meter DEMs were publicly released starting in 2014, he may have been using the 90-meter DEMs. ASTER - ASTGTM has more recent data than SRTM and better water body masking as it has been collected and updated since 1999 and was the first worldwide dataset made publicly available at 30-meter resolution. A separate water body mask can be downloaded. Potentially, ASTER can have finer details than SRTM, however, ASTER data is exceedingly noisy and will require significant user filtering. I have found in GIMP 2.10.18 that a Selective Gaussian Blur with a blur radius of 5.00 and with a max. delta of 0.001 has so far yielded greatly improved results for my own purposes. Compared to the other datasets, ASTER reportedly has significantly height variability issues compared to GPS ground measurements for elevations below 7 meters above sea level, and this is quickly seen in SC4 Mapper as the lowest land elevation colors are noticeably less applied. I have also found major islands in the DEM shifted to the wrong locations, or even missing entirely. Lastly, MicroDEM has had the most errors for me with certain downloaded ASTER DEMs, either showing blank maps or wrongly offset landforms, which I have managed to correct by first opening and then resaving the downloaded affected GeoTiffs in QGIS. ALOS - AW3D30 is generally more recent still and, being derived from a 5-meter DEM and 2.5-meter imagery, has better height accuracy and water body masking than both SRTM and ASTER. Some river channels are hard to distinguish as they reach sea level, but a separate water mask is provided to assist in editing. Human structures such as large buildings are particularly prominent, especially in urban areas with large clusters of tall buildings, and will require significant user filtering, though I do not know yet what filtering options would be best. Reportedly, the finer resolution skews elevation data broadly adjusted for tree canopies to be somewhat lower than the other comparable datasets, as the finer resolution is actually picking up more open areas between trees. I have also noticed striping on some extreme slopes. Japan's ALOS satellite may have been damaged by meteoroids and has been rendered dead in space, so it's dataset spanning from 2006 to 2011 will not be further updated with new imagery and some areas may have lesser coverage. COP-DEM GLO-30 is the most recently released (2020), being derived from the 12-meter commercial AIRBUS WorldDEM collected and updated since 2011. It reportedly has the current best height accuracy of the four DEMs listed here. It's water masking is also very accurate and a separate water mask and even water transparency within the DEM are provided. However, it doesn't capture as many islets or finer shoreline details as ALOS. Being radar-based rather than radiometer stereo mapping, it definitely does not suffer from the overall noise of ASTER or much of the human structure clutter of ALOS. I do admit I found the PANDA registration process the slowest and most cumbersome, actually requiring an account registration approval review that took me 24-hours. However, once acquired the DEMs will require the least cleanup editing for use in SimCity. Use the Copernicus DEM. Actually, more specifically, I have been using Copernicus DEMs manually edited with additional shore and islet information from ALOS DEMs. The previous DEMs were good for their time, and, when SimCity 4 was released, SRTM 90-meter at 1/3 the resolution shown here was actually the best publicly available option, but they are now becoming outdated as newer, higher resolutions DEMs collected by higher precision instruments and processing techniques have become available. __________ Somehow, someday, I have to finish and upload this map. -
Super confused, need help! (Ploppables and Terrain Mods)
PenaGelada posted a topic in SimCity 4 General Discussion
Aight so! im new to the modding aspect of SimCity 4. and is it difficult to understand.... i already got NAM and i think i got it right, my main confusion is on what plopables are exactly? where in the game to get them after getting the mod? and how do i change my grass color? and how to activate different textures? thank you in advance -
Making my terrain mod play nice with tree controller and modding both
monkeywater posted a topic in SC4 Modding - Open Discussion
So this thread is mostly to track my progress as I play with my terrain mod, and tree controller to get them to go well together. I have done this before, however now i find myself forgetting how i did it, so 50% of this is to remember what I did for next time, 50% is to give back to community and solicit feedback, and 50% is because it will force me to organize myself as I do this and post sexy pictures of tests. Also I will probably ask questions of those more skilled than me who have helped in the past. (thank you to @rsc204 @11241036 @matias93 @CorinaMarie @Cyclone Boom who helped with my last tree controller here. This is intended to be much better) Things that will be covered over the coming days, months, and probably more -adjusting cliff slopes on my terrain mod and when they show up -making trees not grow on cliffs -building my own tree controller again, all hd but with more diversity of trees this time and hopefully some realism. -
Version 1.0.0
275 Downloads
Rollercoaster(of Love) 9 individual small map tiles to join cities in your region, that are terrain-ed to create a roller-coaster, with ample room for streets, road and rail, and their on/off ramps. Simply copy the tiles you want to use, put them in your game's Region folder and import them to where ever they're needed. Comes with 2 height rises, base maps for whole regions, and a demo-map with NAM. Enjoy, and Happy Valentines Day! Don't forget to comment and like if you haven't already!
