Thinking Big - Torq's landgrab - choose a territory

[Redrobes]

My major priority would have to be the second question. There's little enough HF to work with even without the big number in the middle. Also the rivers are pretty critical. Higher resolution and specific projections would be a real sweet extra, but hey!

EDIT: Oh yeah, 16-bit HFs. Definitely 16-bit HFs, please

Yeah I am feeling just a touch frustrated with this too. Monks has very kindly uploaded a 64Mb file but I have not decoded it yet - I don't know if its suitable or not yet as it sounds different to the one that Ravs has been trying to get to me. As soon as I have HF data I will make it available. I can do HF2 or a pair of greyscale bitmaps but probably more too if I go and get Wilbur. We should not have started mapping until the HF and projection were sorted out which is going to be a nightmare to fix up later. Rivers & general terrain are never going to line up accurately given that the starting point was so inaccurate to start with. I won't start any mapping until I have it and if it means that it generates a different borders and rivers to my neighbors then that will just be unfortunate.

[DarkOne]

I have to agree with Redrobes. Height maps are very important before mapping can start, especially when it comes to borders. I just giving rough borders for the North Western Kingdom, doing my best to see where a river may go or hill/mountain ridges are from the world maps we have.

Also if no one wants area 4 I can take it, as the distances per map gets very short at the northen boundaries. Gives me more terrain to work with even though little urban centres will be in the northen half of the top row of maps.

[Badger]

Yeah I am feeling just a touch frustrated with this too. Monks has very kindly uploaded a 64Mb file but I have not decoded it yet - I don't know if its suitable or not yet as it sounds different to the one that Ravs has been trying to get to me. As soon as I have HF data I will make it available. I can do HF2 or a pair of greyscale bitmaps but probably more too if I go and get Wilbur. We should not have started mapping until the HF and projection were sorted out which is going to be a nightmare to fix up later. Rivers & general terrain are never going to line up accurately given that the starting point was so inaccurate to start with. I won't start any mapping until I have it and if it means that it generates a different borders and rivers to my neighbors then that will just be unfortunate.

Guess I'll hold off until we get some bugs worked out .... ya'll tell me when I can start mapping ... and I'll start mapping

[Torq]

I think we are seeing different priorities which is natural and to be expected. If your style of mapping means you need an accurate heightfield and projection data so that you map meshes seamlessly with Neon's world map, then that works for you. I want to stress that that is not a requirement. Many of the mappers in this project are ignoring projection and inventing their own height maps and thats equally cool. Still others are using mapping styles that dont rely on height maps at all.

I think we need to make this clear, becasue noone should feel there is a right or wrong approach to this project.

Del, it a question of style, not a bug that needs to ironed out. Redrobes is adopting an approach to his map that is admirable and realies on accuracy. That is not a universal requirement. You start mapping when you need to start mapping.

Torq

[Torq]

Here is the latest landgrab view. Nearly all the real estate is gone. When it is I think we can safely say we've got through the first satge successfully. Then it just remains to be seen what we produce.

Torq

[Redrobes]

I have the World map in 16 bit

Here is a download of it as a pair of bitmaps. The 'minor' will only be useful to those people who can use 16bits. To get into 16bit take the major one, scale by 256 and add the minor one. I can try to provide a 16bit PNG if you like but I don't have anything to check it with. If you have a specific but common file format then let me know.

The ZIP

Its about 50Mb so only download it if you need it. I will work on a color texture of it and I am hoping to get hold of the kingdom area in high res to convert too so we can each have a height map tile.

[su_liam]

I'm trying to bone up on my java2d stuff. I'm not working on anything near as sophisticated as what you're doing(my attempt at implementing precipiton erosion was just sad), but I'm trying to find little learning projects to get my hand in. One of the projects I've been working on is a little app to convert 16-bit RG targas into 16-bit grayscale pngs or tifs. I recently found out landserf reads images as 32-bit RGBA so I've already added that to my goals. It looks like now I'll have to add separate bmp files.

By the way, thank you.

EDIT: Yes, please make a 16-bit png. Simplifies my life ginormously.

[RobA]

I'm trying to bone up on my java2d stuff. I'm not working on anything near as sophisticated as what you're doing(my attempt at implementing precipiton erosion was just sad), but I'm trying to find little learning projects to get my hand in. One of the projects I've been working on is a little app to convert 16-bit RG targas into 16-bit grayscale pngs or tifs. I recently found out landserf reads images as 32-bit RGBA so I've already added that to my goals. It looks like now I'll have to add separate bmp files.

By the way, thank you.

EDIT: Yes, please make a 16-bit png. Simplifies my life ginormously.

I believe Wilbur will allow you read in a fractint (RG-tga) and save it as a 16 bit png hf...(and vice versa...)

-Rob A>

[Redrobes]

Yes, please make a 16-bit png. Simplifies my life ginormously.

Mwahahahah I have it !!!

Thanks to Monks, a free terragen to tif converter, a few custom programs to get to raw and image magick to PNG16 we have what IM reckons to be png16 files.

I havent checked them and I know the scaling is not perfect but heres some links. Again - they are big so only get em if you have to - and I wouldnt rely on saving the file from your browser window, use its "save link as" option or else it might drop it from 16bit to 8bit.

World
Region

Monks reckons that the Region range = -3607.4 to 8142.3 ft. I have scaled it so that it takes the full white range for maximum accuracy so you will have to adjust accordingly. And I have clipped it a bit so if the max range is within the border then it will be out also. The image size is 6144x5120 which is 6x5 x 1024x1024 tiles cut to the edges of the Torq's array.

[Badger]

Here is the latest landgrab view. Nearly all the real estate is gone. When it is I think we can safely say we've got through the first satge successfully. Then it just remains to be seen what we produce.

Torq

lol.. my name seems to be longer than 600 miles... Torq, feel free to use my shortened name "Del" ...