The Iron Coast 04/04/2010 Update XV - Censing the Journalist III

[Battlecat]

Certainly a fascinating look at where you've come from and where you're trying to go here!  I certainly don't have as much history with the game as you do since most of my early work never even made it off my computer!

Love that teaser, it looks great indeed.  Looking forward to seeing what you've got next. 

[Nardo69]

Let's say it like this: You did work on more maps than me with my 2 maps since beginning of 2005 ... 

And yes, I did see the progress you made. You know, after such a long time of playing SC4 a kind of retrospective lies on the hand, thought about it recently, too.

Regarding nature, well, the last pic shows one of those areas I am not goog at all ...

Let's see where this will lead us to (and good look to receive a 2-digit number of updates! )

Take care, don't forget to make backups

and

Happy New Year!


Bernhard 

[Tomas Neto]

Fantastic!!! 

Happy new year!!!

[Jmouse]

As a regular peruser of MDs, I've found there are several elements which tend to grab my attention right from the start. Interesting maps, stunning scenery and some author-created content come to mind.

You've given me another element to add to the list, though. An honest, straight-forward approach! This is where I started, this is what I've done in the past and this is where I'm headed with this MD. It makes me want to be part of the cheering squad that helps you succeed. There are some interactive MDs out there, but you've managed to redefined the genre!

So go for it! Do it! And while you're about it, provide some inspiration to those of us who are still a little too shy to jump in the deep end again. 

Happy New Year and Happy New Decade to one and all...
Joan

[Engorn]

Wow, a very nice start of your MD.

[mightygoose]

Replies


Engorn, Tomas Neto, BuildingUp, sumwonyuno, Yan077 & Connor - thanks for stopping by, your comments are all appreciated.

Tarkus - thankyou for your kind words, yeah working on it has been a long but enjoyable process, seeing my baby brought to life, It has given me time to thoroughly mentally prepare and roadmap what i want to do with this CJ in the long run, something i have never taken the time to do before. I also look forward to the road ahead and i am glad you can be here to enjoy it with me.

Fabian93 - thankyou, i too am watching your journal in earnest.

Derry - good to see you here, your journal is an old favourite of mine that i must admit i have neglected lately, and fingers crossed this one is a keeper.

Arthur - good to see you, thankyou for your words, i know english is not your first languauge so i appreciate the effort you invested to read it all.

Ethan - thanks, just don't stare too long, you might hurt your eyes, and i could do without the lawsuit.

Battlecat - you know, i still have my older machine, i could go and dig up some really really old stuff, if i find a monitor or a HDD enclosure... maybe one for the future eh.

Bernhard - high praise from you sir, do not worry i have everything backed up, online offline and on discs. hopefully my next few updates may help you with converting your maps into playable regions too.

Joan - your making me blush, i think you give me too much credit. but my gratitude is omnipresent regardless. You see, I honestly am learning how to do a proper City Journal as i go, i am just winging it so, rather than disguise that fact i thought i could offer insight into that learning process, to maybe help others do the same.

Now that i have responded to your wonderful comments, i can move on to the meat of the story. This update has been written and rewritten about four times, trying to decide which bits to put in which update. This particular method of mapmaking is as far as i'm aware never been done to the scale at which i have. so while the first of this series of posts gives you a taster, the followers will go into quite some detail. Plus i wanted to sneak another update in before the years end, so here i present to you my third update....

Setting the water

Welcome back, I know a lot of you are probably wondering how I can get on with such a large map. I decided that being that the full map was not a nice rectangle that could be converted easily into a useable region, I would have to play the area as three separate regions in game with the same plugins, and do any mosaic stitching as necessary. Simply because it is my favourite map and it has the most variety the Vagrant Peninsula will be the first of the three maps to get converted.

Now that we have our hand drawn map scanned/photographed nicely into my computer next was to try and translate that into Simcity 4. There is really only one method to convert hand sketches into maps, and it's essentially tracing. The way I chose to do this is not the simplest. You will need a good photo editing suite such as Photoshop, the mapper, the terraformer, patience and some spare time. Here is a brief rundown of the steps.

You need to know your config.bmp size, you need to multiply these dimensions by 64 then add one to each. This gives you the size of your grayscale canvas. So for me it was:

(40,56)×64+x+y=(2561,3585)

Next I needed to figure out what heights corresponded to which colour grey so I booted up the terraformer, created a gradient from ground level down to the bottom of the sea, and exported it as a grayscale image.



Load this up in Photoshop along with your canvas, which you should fill with 100% black and edit the image type to 16bit grayscale. Paste in your scanned/photographed map as a new layer and resize to exactly fit your canvas to the pixel. Using the lasso tool carefully cut round the majority of your landmass; alternatively use the magic wand tool, dependant on whichever seems to be having the best results. 



Once it is all selected, hide that layer and bucket fill the selection with a grey that you know to be above sea level. Try to use the grey closest to that level to give you more flexibility later. You can flit back and forth between terraformer and photoshop if necessary to get the right heightgray (new word, you all get the meaning right).



Invert the selection and pick a large feathered brush with a lower, darker heightgrey, border your landmass to give some basic shallows. Save this file as your working map, then delete all layers apart from your canvas, save this file as a PNG file, this is your first test region. Boot up the mapper and then create region using this PNG. My result was:



Go back to the working file in Photoshop and select a lighter heightgrey than your land grey, using a large feathered brush gently apply some low hills. Start experimenting after about 120 minutes I had got what was starting to be some semblance of my original map or so I thought.



Next time we will come back to Photoshop where I learnt some hard lessons in how I had bitten off significantly more than I could chew. Although again I haven't really shown you anything particularly exciting so here is one last shot showing that the terraformer can make beautiful pictures....



Have a happy new year, although shadow assassin & csgdesign are already well into 2010.

[rooker1]

Great to see the Goose at it again.
You definately have my attention!

Robin 

[Battlecat]

Well regardless of how long it's potentially going to take to build, it's a great looking region already!  There are some interesting details in there, I'm looking forward to seeing what they'll look like once you start working with them! 

Here's one thought for you, what about using the SC4 Terraformer tools to do the next phase of bulk terraforming now that you've got the rough edges of your region in place?  That pale green area you've created as of the last working shot would be a pretty good indicator of where you want the mountains to go.

[mightygoose]

Replies

Rooker1 - great to se you here, i hope this is worthy of your attention.

Battlecat - my computer can handle a region this large in terraformer but it lags to a point where it becomes pointlessly ineffective to try and do anything. i would also like to point out that the vagrant peninsula region is actually fully terraformed now anyway XD.


Well here we are with another Update, ok replies are abit thin on the ground but i am undeterred. It seems that from now on updates here will be 2-3 days ahead of ST thats just the way things are going to happen, no particular rhyme or reason. this update may seem rushed but that is a perfect dichotomy to the amount of work put into this mammoth project for just the pictures you see here. well lets get to it shall we.


Landformer

Well I said I'd show you why I had bitten off more than I thought I could chew. So this update will not be as verbose as the majority of the others, I'll simply leave you to enjoy a series of pictures taken over the course of 36 hours work terraforming the region. There were ups and downs, which I will talk about at the end. But till you get to the bottom enjoy...

PLEASE NOTE: that each numbered map image has been reduced from 2591 pixels wide to 400 so the quality here does not reflect full image quality.

Firstly, I thought I was having issues with height. You can see in maps 3 and 4 that I had grossly underestimated the contrast required for mountain, then again in 5 & 6. By 9 & 10 I realised something must be amiss. It seems in the SC4mapper I was importing 16bit PNG greyscale images as 8bit greyscales, which meant the terrain was being greatly compressed. 11 & 12, and 13 & 14, were mainly tonal correction work to bring the terrain back into kilter, now that I was importing via the 16bit button. The final tile I consider to be over correction so the region as it stands is map 13.

However some final alterations and changes are required in game so although I have the map, its not ready for release or upload yet and probably won't be for some time. I have not yet opened every tile, although am in the process. To round off this rather shallow and picture heavy update I present some mid terraforming test eye candy. These images are all very raw and don't represent how I envisage the final product looking.

Anyway see you next week for a very much longer post XD

[deathtopumpkins]

Very interesting look at how you made those maps, MG... I didn't expect the process to be quite so time-consuming, which is probably why I typically just stick to downloaded maps.

And even for being only very raw images, I really like that scenery. 

[b22rian]

Oh i Love this a lot Goose...
especially the way the terrain looks..
But of course the hand made maps are grand 

brian

[sumwonyuno]

I gave up on figuring out creating a greyscale map that had both correct elevations and accuracy for my region.   

The in-game pictures, especially that mountain, look very nice. 

[Jmouse]

This is all quite fascinating, mightygoose. There are many good - and great - MDs posted here, but too often, all we ever get to see is the finished product. I really enjoy the opportunity to study the nuts and bolts of the various creative processes, though. I appreciate the opportunity to see what the author sees from time to time.

The results of your labor look good from what I can see. The terrain mod you're using is a favorite, and I'm especially fond of that optional beach mod.

The Iron Coast is shaping up to be a very interesting MD, and I await the next installment with much anticipation.

Later...
Joan

[Battlecat]

That's a lot of iterations to go through for terraforming!  Looks like a pretty cool region already, I'm looking forward to your next update.

[bat]

That's a really fantastic MD, mightygoose! Your pictures of your terraforming are wonderful and nice region pictures! Looking forward to more...

[Yan077]

I'm very fascinated by your working method, the results are wonderful 

[BuildingUp]

It's absolutely brilliant! Awesome work man! 

[oktoberfest]

by god man! Thats impressive! 

[ecoba]

Wow, John. This work is just breathtaking. The amount of time you're spending to get your region just right is really amazing, and i know that once development sets in it will get even better.

I hope to see the next update up next week as you mentioned.

Ethan

[kwakelaar]

An interesting read, and the map is looking very good.