Espees BIG heightmaps - Mountains, rivers and rough terrain!
Posted: 04 May 2010 04:50
Greetings from a old school gamer who started with Sid Meyer's Railroad Tycoon back when CPUs had quaint numbers like 386, 486, etc. and spent a good deal of his non-computer recreational time lugging his trusty Nikon 35mm film cameras around the American west, documenting big-time freight railroading on the pre-merger Union Pacific, Southern Pacific, Burlington Northern, and Santa Fe. While the original game was a pleasant diversion at home, my discovery of OpenTTD with the ability to play LARGE maps and the NARS railset added a whole new dimension to the game. Those tenderless steamers dragging stubby boxes around a 256*256 map just didn't light a fire under me the way watching a trio of SD45s pulling a 30-car coal train around a loop of track winding around a mountain ridge with a fourth SD45 cut in behind the caboose. 
However, even with the considerable improvements in the terrain generator (and those who put in the work certainly deserve a round of applause for their efforts), I have never been able to get the effect I really wanted, which was that of natural looking, prototypical terrain offering a realistic challenge for challenging long distance freight operation suitable for North American style railroading.
Some time ago, I started playing around with an old version of an inexpensive graphics utility, Paint Shop Pro V5.02. My goal was not so much as to try to emulate a particular prototypical location (i.e. a map of a given area) but to adopt the model railroader idea of "selective compression" to include a realistic LOOKING map that emulated the type of geographic features one would find in western North America: high mountain passes, glaciated valleys, rugged coastlines, and narrow winding canyons forcing the player to put some thought into routing his (or her) rail lines, not merely terraforming a big ditch at zero elevation across the map. In particular, I wanted to used my chosen utility to emulate the appearance of real geological events.
At first work proceeded quite slow, as hand-drawing mountains, rivers, and shorelines was rather tedious. However, I found that by using various mathematical functions in PSP such as Boolean ADD, SUBTRACT, and averaging tools, as well as gaining more skill with the various brushes and other tools, I was able to build a series of simple maps showing different geological features, then combine and merge several maps to get the appearance of folding, faulting, erosion, and glaciation that one would find in real life. I was content that in my own crude, unsophisticated way I had developed a method to produce heightmaps that are at least "geologically correct" in showing a terrain that exhibits the effects of real geologic processes over millions of years, if not representative of a real-life location.
Over the last year, I have tested a couple dozen of such maps in my own gameplay. Due to my interest in large maps to simulate the wide open spaces of the American/Canadian West, I have concentrated on the larger sizes, from 512*512 up to 2048*2048 (I find that 1024*1024 and 1024*2048 are the best trade-off between desired size and performance of my present gaming system - an HP Duo Core 2 laptop that also doubles as my work system). These maps are quite playable based on my own testing, and a sample map posted in another forum was downloaded with pretty favorable reviews by others, so I would like to post a couple here and get some feedback.
Given that a lot of people have put forth great effort to resurrect a piece of abandonware and develop a "sim game" that stands favorably against the best, I wish to make my small contribution to the efforts. Anyone who can use my heightmaps is welcome to include them and distribute them in their own scenarios along the commonly accepted practice here. I would just ask that I receive the appropriate credit - "Heightmap by Espee" would be fine by me.
I will describe and attach heightmaps in following posts...
However, even with the considerable improvements in the terrain generator (and those who put in the work certainly deserve a round of applause for their efforts), I have never been able to get the effect I really wanted, which was that of natural looking, prototypical terrain offering a realistic challenge for challenging long distance freight operation suitable for North American style railroading.Some time ago, I started playing around with an old version of an inexpensive graphics utility, Paint Shop Pro V5.02. My goal was not so much as to try to emulate a particular prototypical location (i.e. a map of a given area) but to adopt the model railroader idea of "selective compression" to include a realistic LOOKING map that emulated the type of geographic features one would find in western North America: high mountain passes, glaciated valleys, rugged coastlines, and narrow winding canyons forcing the player to put some thought into routing his (or her) rail lines, not merely terraforming a big ditch at zero elevation across the map. In particular, I wanted to used my chosen utility to emulate the appearance of real geological events.
At first work proceeded quite slow, as hand-drawing mountains, rivers, and shorelines was rather tedious. However, I found that by using various mathematical functions in PSP such as Boolean ADD, SUBTRACT, and averaging tools, as well as gaining more skill with the various brushes and other tools, I was able to build a series of simple maps showing different geological features, then combine and merge several maps to get the appearance of folding, faulting, erosion, and glaciation that one would find in real life. I was content that in my own crude, unsophisticated way I had developed a method to produce heightmaps that are at least "geologically correct" in showing a terrain that exhibits the effects of real geologic processes over millions of years, if not representative of a real-life location.
Over the last year, I have tested a couple dozen of such maps in my own gameplay. Due to my interest in large maps to simulate the wide open spaces of the American/Canadian West, I have concentrated on the larger sizes, from 512*512 up to 2048*2048 (I find that 1024*1024 and 1024*2048 are the best trade-off between desired size and performance of my present gaming system - an HP Duo Core 2 laptop that also doubles as my work system). These maps are quite playable based on my own testing, and a sample map posted in another forum was downloaded with pretty favorable reviews by others, so I would like to post a couple here and get some feedback.
Given that a lot of people have put forth great effort to resurrect a piece of abandonware and develop a "sim game" that stands favorably against the best, I wish to make my small contribution to the efforts. Anyone who can use my heightmaps is welcome to include them and distribute them in their own scenarios along the commonly accepted practice here. I would just ask that I receive the appropriate credit - "Heightmap by Espee" would be fine by me.
I will describe and attach heightmaps in following posts...
, terraforming costs medium or high. These will require the player to plan adequate power and plan grades accordingly, not just building willy-nilly up one slope and down the next. I also recommend forcing your trains to be serviced on a regular basis, to keep breakdowns from tying up your network. This should provide a bit of a challenge for those of you who are accustomed to playing on billiard-table terrain. 
