I found a useful height map editor to use in combination with mapgen:
http://hme.sourceforge.net/
The software isn't perfect (I had a lot of crashes), but it has some nice features.
Things it can do:
- Option to display the height map in colors or shades of gray
- Generate a random terrain.
- Place a height, over the terrain (freehand lines).
- Dig (escavate) into the terrain (freehand lines).
- Add (elevate) to the terrain (freehand lines).
- Put your own objects (such as volcanos, rivers, mountains, craters, etc.) in/on/over the existing terrain.
- Multiple brush sizes.
- Flood Fill
- Tolerance based fill
- Smooth the terrain.
- Sink the terrain
- Rise the terrain
- Selection based tool, so you can affect only an area.
- Zoom in and out, 16 levels.
- Rotate, and flip/revert the terrain.
- Minimap, for ease of navigation.
- Variable grid sizes.
Here's just a quick example of a randomly generated relief from the height editor in 2049x2048 pixels scaled down to 384x384pixel for mapgen without using all the rest of functionality this programm offers.
You can produce really fantastic results once you get the hang of it.
Another Tool, which is better than hme-editor: sc4terraformer, which is a standalone tool.
http://www.simtropolis.com/stex/index.c ... t=Programs
http://www.simtropolis.com/forum/messag ... erthread=y
To get good results use a 513x513 gif or bmp and a 8x8 config.bmp
Use the export function for 16bit pngs (global tools) and autoadjust colors in Irfanview (Shift+U)