Map Generator

[Guybrush]

I was just fiddling about with the MapGen. I got it from AMI Trains and they say one "Ampz" made it.
It's a nice tool, but I was wondering if it was possible to inhabit the generated map with objects. When I generate a map now I get a heightmap without anything in it, though it looks exactly like what I Photoshopped. I can make all kinds of adjustments in the game menu, as you know, but to implement those paramters I'd need to generate a new map through the game's own menu, which will not be the heightmap MapGen made for me.

I'm all about meticulously fiddling about with custom maps, but placing each tree of by hand is taking it too far, even by my standard. Also, I don't believe I can put in any other style tiles than what the heightmap comes with.
Would be sad to see such a nice tool as MapGen rendered powerless by the game it works for. So, anyone have anything useful on this?

[Spacek531]

The mapgen does exactly what you said it does: it creates a heightgen from a photo that you created.

It does not:

[*]make trees
[*]make towns
[*]make industries
[*]change terrain tiles

You have to do all of those things yourself!
All of those things can be done using the tools that the locomotion scenario editor provides: you can make towns, forests, industries, and change the land tile type. It may take a little bit to find all of those tools, but they're there!

Keep experimenting and don't give up!

[Guybrush]

Oh yeah, I'll plant them one by one if there's no other option. But aside from that I like making my own maps, I'm also a lazy b******.

(Edit: Censored? Really? That's just the proper, albeit a little old, English word for illigitemate child.)

[Spacek531]

I can tell you're too lazy to find the 'plant forest' option.

[Guybrush]

Well, I'll be.
I just booted up Locomotion to see if maybe I had a version where the buttons for forests and tile selection were buggy, and now I keep running into all kinds of options I was looking for.
Thanks for the voodoo-magic, I suppose.

I guess I'm finally getting too old to be playing games 'till 5 in the morning...

[Lochris]

Is there any chance that mapgen will be updatet in the future, is the author still active? There are some issues to fix, particularly the fact that the generated landscape has always the starting year 1900. This leads to the problem, that in the scenario editor all towns will have no modern buildings.

Another question: Has anyone have a list of the numbers of the ground types? It says "Other numbers may also work", and e. g. the brown grass is missing.

[Spacek531]

There are options to change all that. All scenarios, when they are created, start off at 1900 until you change it. The window that has the date and other stuff is able to be opened. The program is a landscape generator. It's not a landscape+towns or landscape+trees or anything like that. Almost the entire stock of tools for locomotion require 2 or more programs to fully utilize, and this is one of them.

[Lochris]

I know that you can open the window and change the start year. But taht will do what it's called, the start year! That only affects the scenario that is created, not the landscape. If you build a city in the scenario editor, it will only use the buldings from the year 1900. There has to be another variable in the landscape for the year. I tried to find it (Created two flatlands in the scenario editor with different years and compared them with a hex editor) but no usable results...