People ... is there any way or trick to generate a terrain from an image ??? (map of heights or water-land --- Thanks a thousand !!!

GG loader is the only way I know of right now.
See this post
https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/215236?page=3#msg2575324

Ty MIke!!!!

I thought there was a way to do highmaps in GG?

You guys have piqued my interest so I started delving into this again. If I come up with a process for those who don't want to invest in AGK, I'll post it here.

I should mention I think I'm close to a solution.

That would be great bolt! Thanks

If I remember correctly, you have to open the .fpm and edit a file in there...

Not what he wants, Mookai, and yet necessary information from you.
it's the m.dat file in the fpm, but there's no standard tool to edit it (other than GG itself), since it consists of 1024x1024 floats + a few metadata bytes.

^ this.
I initially thought it was a DDS file due to the 4 byte structure but preben was kind enough to clear a few things up. Currently working on a simple-ish process for importing the heightmaps without me having to write some kind of program for it.

Actually, it consists of a few metadata bytes + 1024x1024 floats (order matters here, of course) , there was also some peculiarity about the order of heightpoints. I think it was upside down in GG compared to the corresponding image when you look at it. It 's easier to write a program that respects that in converting a greyscale heightmap.
I can tell because I did it once.

Wanna save me some time and post the program you used?

BOTR This is something I've wanted for ages! you're really awesome man.

More on this topic:

2015
https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/212580

2014
https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/207976


Not sure if this still works, but this is what was written:

Who wrote that? I'd love to get a copy of some source that's already done so I can just move on to procedural stuff.

Nevermind. I'll message lee and see if he can release a copy so I can review.

It was done in Purebasic.

Would have to look for it since I abandoned the project as Lee immediately declared that he would put a function in GG which will import heightmaps. Must have been 3-4 years ago. ...

Basically, you just create a 2 dimensional 1024x1024 array of floats.
The last exact 4 MByte of the file are the height data, the difference to the exact size of the m.dat are the number of bytes at the start of m.dat, which are not height data.
It is helpful to read in the m.dat file of an empty flat level at least once - or even a fresh randomized level -, so you get feeling what values represent the default flat level and hight differences.
Then you take your greyscale map and convert the height values with a factor to match, and write the m.dat anew (not forgetting the initial bytes of the file - I think they were word or dwords and are always the same), put it in the .fpm and let GG show you how it looks.
The image file better also have 1024x1024 resolution, or you'll have to make adjustments / interpolations.

Hi all, here is the C code that reads in the m.dat file..... many thanks again to Lee for providing me with this....

This is great! Thanks guys for both responses. Yrkoon - your reply was received loud and clear. It's simple enough. I've already evaluated the code in hex and know what you're talking about with respect to a blank level. Do you know if interpolation is done in the file itself or if it's done to some degree inside of GG? Is he subdividing the values here and using that to smooth the terrain? I apologize if this is a bit more than you might know. Best guesses are fine too

And bored, thanks for posting the code!

I mean basically you have the marker 00004000, then then your single precision floats (32bit, 4 bytes) for the values.
Still, this is all exceptionally useful. The fact is I just have to figure what language I want to do this in. I've spent the better half of this decade working mostly in Linux (I'm chief Linux Systems Engineer - toot toot - @ a fortune 500 co so I'm afforded little time to actually work outside of my usual 'viewpoint').

So the question is do I write something simple for myself in C/perl/python or write up something for windows. If it's something for windows that can be used in a general sense, then I need to look at what can do the job for free or cheap. Then it needs to be something easy and familiar. Still, this saves me time bumbling through minor errors with metadata/etc.

@Bolt Action Gaming :
well usually, there are no "holes to infinity" in the terrain IF YOU SUPPLY ALL 1024 x 1024 heightpoints, and GG normally does the filling in quite ok.
I can only advise against supplying less points, this may cause major havoc with GG. (In the day, I thought the 00004000 was a kind of size parameter and messed around with that, too; it probably is, but with nothing in GG that makes use of it. )
There is one strange condition which can sometimes put you in the "valley of the spikes", i.e., any heightpoint is represented as a VERY high, very slim spike in an otherwise flat environment; it also happened to cybernescence, if I remember correctly, and we could never make out why it occasionally occurs .

Nevertheless, a custom routine for multipass interpolation and smoothing may come in handy for "outerworldly" scenarios , I had one then and showed some pics of its results in the forum.

uff .. they really made me dizzy with the metadata .... ha ha ha .... but then it's going to be able to do ??? It seems that he was not the only one interested ... several engines offer this tool ....
a hug!

No, GG is unable to do this as it is right now. You need an external program to read in your greyscale data and spit out a m.dat file that has to be
tricked into a - preferably - empty level file, which you then can load into GG and proceed to shape and refine it.

Mazbe you can post your heightmap file so we may be able to show you what it looks like in GG.

Heightmaps are however on the voting list under "Terrain Importer Maker". So for anyone that really needs something like that you can vote for it there.

@BoltActionGaming

Hmmm... the format is pretty unique to GG. Although it can't be wrong to use an easily portable language, but: who's gonna use this on LINUX ?
IF GG had gone Vulcan instead of DX11, then ...
Actually, when I first attended to the matter, that was fueled a bit not so much by greyscale heightmaps as input, but by another, widely used format, an example supplied to me by Pirate Myke, then. If you woul consider to go that direction, a cross platform solution may be a good way to go. I'm still (or rather: again) pondering wether to implement some preview function in OGRE for the converter, in order to reduce the awkward workflow : produce a greyscale - convert it to m.dat format - fumble the m.dat into an fpm - load the fpm into GG - see that it is not quite what one thought it should be -> return to beginning.

working on code to do this and automate process.... will see how it goes....

POC already running here (no gui, little error checking, sparse parameter options)
Checking how to take the awkwardness outof fpm reassembly.

I say linux because I'd just use cygwin to get it functional on windows.
Sorry, I kind of live in cygwin for my day job and I realize that I tend to speak in a fashion that assumes you know exactly what I'm referring to.

But yeah. I mean basically I could use cygwin and GCC/perl/whatever since it's my world normally or I could find some kind of free visual-basic style thing. I don't know what to use to program windows-specific apps these days, LOL. I actually am leaning heavily towards javascript and just making a webpage that reads a graphic and then spits out the m.dat file.

Nothing there to apologize for using Cygwin I mainly use PB for it's richness of functions AND its fine debugger

A web service ?
"pay per conversion" ?
Hmm that makes me think....

I've written code so far to convert color heightmap to a greyscale heightmap and got a process semi-automated (as I haven't finished code quite yet) to rename the .fpm to .zip extract to a temp folder (which also automates the "mypassword" bit. Just working out the height factors etc. Writing back the m.dat file is no problem once I figure out the height calculation. Lots of testing and retesting at the moment, but am enjoying this new challenge.

so I download a greyscale map (the program also can take a color map and convert to greyscale) of the British Isles and grabbed the height info and saved the m.dat file back out and then imported back into my blank test GG map and it comes out as shown in the pic. Its underwater, because I need to add 600 to the heights (totally forgot). Still this is pretty fun.

getting there after adjusting Y scale and height data...

[updated... UK map around the right way (pic 2).... GG is strange ha...]

WOW BOTR this is brilliant well done sir I tip my hat to you

Well, nevermind then lol. Looks like you're 90% of the way to beating me to the punch.

Careful importing height maps especially those from real world can become seriously addictive

Cheers.

@Cybernescence: You are so right, I am totally addicted to this at the moment, I have imported quite a few heightmap images such as faces, nasa images of mercury, mars, hawaii etc. The British Isles map is still my favourite at the moment.

Lot of real talented people hanging around here,great work guys.

Dave

Great stuff guys

I knew that GG brought together people of great talent and really the question that I asked at the beginning has not only confirmed it ... but is completely convinced. Bored ... it really is amazing your achievement. Granada ... Totally agree with you !!!
A tool such as BOTR, which allows a map like the British Isles that has obtained, would be an excellent tool to accompany GG. BOTR, I'll take off my hat before you ... excellent!

Sabía que GG reunia a personas de gran talento y realmente aquella pregunta que hice al comienzo ha logrado que no sólo lo confirme... sino que esté completamente convencido. Bored... realmente es increíble su logro. Granada... Totalmente de acuerdo contigo!!!
Una herramienta como la que está realizando BOTR, que permita un mapa como el de la Islas britanicas que ha obtenido, sería una herramienta excelente para acompañar a GG. BOTR, me saco el sombrero ante UD... excelente!

@Bolt Action Gaming

Notwithstanding LOTR having done well, think a little bit more before laying off. Once you have a heightmap in GG format im your computer's memory, there's more than just putting it out directly as m.dat

well ... and hello

https://steamcommunity.com/app/266310/discussions/0/3182216552779051546/

i recently got this on a deal and i hope that it can get me through a broke winter without too much brainrot ... i've been around since simons basic more or less and lda($D000),0 , but as for gameguru i still have to try my first hello world game so to speak ...

my first idea was greyscale bitmaps yea, 256 levels of height 00-FF should be more than enough and if the file format is known not too hard to inject into a mapfile but i dont even know if theres separate map files or not .. but my idea first is to re-create the place where i live , well a part of it, i found a nice tool here

https://www.daftlogic.com/projects-google-maps-area-calculator-tool.htm

which tells me the area i want is about 1km² .... i also found a nice site here :

http://nl-be.topographic-map.com/

they clearly seem to have the datasets i'm looking for .. now i suppose there's no copyright on design-by-mother-nature but that doesn't mean they will be willing to part with the set ... if i can get that as some flatfile it has to be injectable, right ?
problem is also nowhere on the site it lists a contact address ... so i'll try a catch-all, if that doesnt work i'll try locating the owner with some divining and witchcraft ... if i can get their goodies and that goes into your tools here, realistic feeling maps up the wazoo

but i have no clue if they will answer, if anyone knows any other place that has similar datasets and might be willing to part with them for the greater good, drop a note on the steam thread or here pretty pl0x with sugarrontopz AND
i probably should take that to another thread but since its in the same "im too lazy to do it by hand and dam that computer was built for computing" category ... a huge texture, say

i take a screenshot from google maps on the area i want, then cut out the exact square, is there any way to stick this to the map ... as colours / texture i mean , the point would be for instance all the roads would be totally in place and the little houses on the flat texture would be placeholders, right ?

because i'm lazy
maybe someone already has something like this or maybe its a omg-noob-rtfm-and-click-alt-f4-to-continue-question if the program itself has the option but like i said, i just got it, go easy on an old man here

looking forward to some fiddling anyway

thanks in advance for any answer or pointer and everything already answered here !!!

Welcome! Well, I'm sure we'll be glad to have another coder around here in any respect.

I think you might be looking for something like http://terrain.party - it has real-world heightmaps.

a little glimpse of the heightmap import tool. options/configuration etc to add shortly.

Realy cool mike ,nice work again .

Dave

This is so flippin' cool! I am really looking forward to this. Does anyone know what the actual real-life size of the default map is? I know it's been asked and answered a long time ago, I just don't reacall. The reason I ask is that I just watched you shove an entire country+ into an area that can't be much larger than several city blocks!

Unless BOTR is also named Mike, then I suspect you're attributing credit where it isn't due

I'm looking forward to trying this tool out. It would let me cut right to the meat of what I want to monkey with (procedural generation).

Nicely done.

thanks guys. this is a lot of fun and I'm hooked.
I will be giving version 1.0 away free and once it's a bit more stable will attach a link. I still have some more code to add such as config setup stuff (GUI/Drag 'n Drop?) and also add in some error trapping on potential vulnerable code as well as maybe having an installer put in place.

have a good day

Fantastic work well done Mike my little map generator might work with this

thanks GraPhix: weird, looking at your variation map generator this morning.......

ah my favourite game in GameGuru....