ah yes, ok I used winrar to archive the files. Next release will contain a shorter password. Sorry about that.

just wanted to clarify the terrainscale and terrainyscale allowable values in the .ini:

terrainscale= can be either 0.5, 1.0 or 2.0 -> 0.5 = halve the terrain size, 1.0 = no change, 2.0 = double the terrain size
terrainyscale= can be either 0.5, 1.0 or 2.0 -> 0.5 = halve the terrain height, 1.0 = no change, 2.0 = double the terrain height

Where can one get map images to use? Other than the ones supplied.

terrain.party or I normally just google something like "heightmap images for 3d engines" or similar or more specific like "heightmap of mercury".

okay, thanks

Working on this one. Australia. Not bad first try.

that is looking good MK83.

What a great guy Mike (BOTR), not only a code Maradona but an excellent person ... (or better than Diego! Ha ha ha). It must be said that it is an exceptional tool that greatly increases productivity in GG !!! Now it will be much easier to represent scenarios faithfully to their real dimensions! It is a genius!
Thanks Mike ... and I do not get tired of saying ... congratulations ...
A big thank you!
PD: An emotion to see my country in the video and among the possible templates and others is to say that between us the relationship could be different ... because many do not know how to differentiate that "The Rulers ... are NOT the People ... "(The GG community I think that understands ... I can say that it is not the first time I write the above).
PD2: I clarify ... Argentina is not all that geographical extension, the map represents South America ... obvious Argentina is in it ...

PD3: BOTR do not worry about the details ... already the product as it is is a great TOOL! we can polish the details by working on the map ... or by retouching the images to be processed ...

At your disposal for when you can help



Que gran tipo Mike (BOTR), no sólo un Maradona del código sino una excelente persona... (o sea mejor que el Diego!!!! ja ja ja). Cabe decir que se trata de una herramienta exepcional y que aumenta mucho la productividad en GG!!! Ahora será muchçisimo más facil representar escenarios fielmente a sus dimenciones reales!!!! Es una genialidad!!!
Gracias Mike... y no me cansod e decir... felicitaciones...
Un gran agrazo!!!
PD: Una emoción ver a mi País en el video y entre los templates posibles y demás está decir que entre nosotros podría ser distinta la relación... porque muchos no saben diferenciar que "Los Gobernantes... NO son el Pueblo..." (La comunidad GG creo que eso lo entiende... puedo decir que no es la primera vez que escribo lo anterior).
PD2: Aclaro... Argentina no es toda esa extensión geográfica, el mapa representa a Sud América... obvio Argentina está en ella...

PD3: BOTR no te preocupes por los detalles... ya el producto como está es una gran HERRAMIENTA! los detalles los podemos pulir trabajando en el mapa... o retocando las imagenes a procesar...

Nominated you for a new badge BOTR 'GameGuru Tool Maker' I hope other people in this thread will follow suit I think it would be well deserved you are a true Star and a gentleman thank you so much for all the hard work you do for us

Heh heh ... I was looking for the "User of the Mounth", but the one you, Graphix mention is better because it is eternal!

Yep I lose my banner tomorrow its the 1st so I pass it on don't know who will get it though

@Warlock12-wow, many thanks for the picture (awesome) and all the kind words. I have PM'd you, but also want to apologies for my geographical "blooper". I realized soon after that "Argentina" is part of South America and not the whole of South America (oh dear). Geography was never my strong point. thanks again for showing me the picture. It's great to see the tool actually working on others' PCs and to see some of the results produced.
@GraPhix-I answered in "Product Chat" , but again many thanks for the nomination for a badge. I honestly didn't realize I had 2 of the same.

@All-hope to add more to this app and testing out if "smoothing" and Quad Reduction/Rotation commands that are part of the Blitz Terrain plugin have any affect or only within the BlitzTerrain environment itself. Hopefully , a more GUI interactive tool in the future.

Thanks for this it great,
load any alpha, or heightmap,

Works great for me. Once I get some personal stuff cleared I'm going to be messing with this in depth.

Works great for me. Once I get some personal stuff cleared I'm going to be messing with this in depth.

Hi BOTR - it works on my PC too not had chance to play with it yet

@GraPhix-that's great news. Hope you get some benefit from it.

may be of some use, you can export the heightmaps:

https://tangrams.github.io/heightmapper/

Nice. That one zooms in real close and only exports that section. Great find.
This will make real world landscaping possible.



Thanks again.

EDIT:
Almost have the right size and height of the terrain. This is a real scale floor model of the manor house where at work at the vineyards.

My import settings:
[GG settings]
root=T:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Game Guru\Files
[IMPORTER settings]
converttogreyscale=0
terrainscale=1.0
terrainyscale=32.0
zerolevel=600.0

wow Myke that's blown me away. Terrain looks impressive. Thanks for sharing.

It seems there are 3 more options I can add into the app, see below:

Quad Rotation
This prevents triangles from sticking out the side of steep hills. It calculates which triangles
will stick out and rotates them 90 degrees so they face down the hill and dont stick out.
This improves graphics quality when using low detail heightmaps so you can turn down the
detail of your heightmaps and improve render speed in your games.

Quad Reduction
This reduces the detail of the terrain in areas which are flat. This allows you to add more
detail into areas which need it which improves the graphics quality of your games.

Smoothing
This removes jagged edges on in accurate heightmaps by averaging the height of each
point with the points around it.

I did some testing this morning and using these options changes the size/values in the M.DAT file. See pics below. The one on the left is without the 3 options i.e. set to 0. The second pic is with all 3 options set to 1.

Will do some more testing on each individual option and add these options to the .INI file. Really want to put a GUI in and maybe a preview window to show the terrain without having to start GameGuru.

I'm also looking into other stuff to see if anything can be done with the vegmask/watermask DDS/.DAT files.

Next release will be v1.1

Enjoy the day

Today, I have uploaded version 1.1 of the heightmap tool. Should be the same link as before but here it again just in case:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8xlwsP3Xc3OenZoT3Awd2ZLRzg

Password is shorter than before. Please use "youshallnotpass" without the double quotes and in lowercase.

The 3 options below have now been added to the .INI:

terrainquadreduction=0 -- > reduces the detail of the terrain in areas which are flat. Change to 1 to take affect
terrainquadrotation=0 -- > prevents triangles from sticking out the side of steep hills. Change to 1 to take affect
terrainsmoothing=0 -- > removes jagged edges on in accurate heightmaps. Change to 1 to take affect

you can either manually add these in or delete the old .INI file and run the app which will mean you will have to select the GameGuru install folder again.

Hope this provides you with a lot more flexibility than the last version.

this is awesome BOTR I really thing its time we had a 'Plugin' option on GG's Menu and some way to make these wonderful apps plugins.

we could have a section in the store for these brilliant apps you make

@GraPhix-would be pretty neat to see that happen in GameGuru. Alas, I don't see that in the near future if at all.

Thank you, will check it out.

Wow we already have version 1.1 !!! BOTR is more efficient than The Fun Pimps !!!!

Nice one mike ,another great tool thanks .

Dave

@Granada/warlock12-thanks, I hope to add more functionality/features/options when and where I can, especially a 3D preview of the terrain.

BOTR, I'd settle for a system of toggle boxes and text boxes to modify config

For those who are interested, I got excellent results from:
terrainscale=1 (took me a bit to realize this was "1:1 in game guru")
terrainyscale=4.5+ (gives Appalachian style hills).

Does need some smoothing, didn't mess with the 3 new settings you added yet.

So far, really excellent work. Looking forward to watch this develop further.
One thing that did help me is before importing from terrain.party's output, I took it into paint.net and auto-balanced the b&w which made them stand out more and thus made the mountains/etc more pronounced. It seems like the B&W in the hm2mdat program tends to dim things down a bit so I figured that'd help things along as well.

@BoltActionGaming: thanks for the tip, I will have another go with terrain.party. Glad your getting good results. Yes I found also using 1:1 and 4.5 for the Yscale produces really good results. Maybe try the new options to help with smoothing.

That will be cool .

Dave

Any suggestions on the water level? I tried 500 and it seems close, but not quite.

I tried 450 for the water level in the .ini file and got the result below with one of my heightmaps and I can actually walk through the water without dying:

think I will add .tga format to the drop down list for the next release. cleaning up code ready for the GUI implementation. shout now if you want to see anything that hasn't been requested above i.e. toggle/text boxes.

So just an FYI, I'm finding settings of about 6.5-7 to be the bees knees on terrainyscale.

Also ~450 is about perfect for water level.

Still haven't messed with other settings but to be honest after importing several impressive maps (mt. shasta, grand canyon, etc) from terrain.party I found those settings were generally sufficient unless I was looking for something really dramatic in terms of height (at which point I jump it to 10 for terrainyscale).

@BAG-yes I found those settings also to be pretty good.

for version 1.2, I quickly added a progress bar and will get a fully functional GUI implemented so you don't have to keep editing/saving the .INI file. added .tga format also.

You have me shivering with

ha love that film.....

very basic GUI dumped onto the screen at the moment, will get it fully functional then play around with positioning of gadgets etc. then once happy with GUI layout will work on getting some kind of terrain preview put in place and maybe add in other extras e.g. background color picker and anything else I can think of. what fun

for the GUI, I thought it would be more flexible for the user to have the options and image preview in separate windows from the main window which will be the terrain preview window. Once I get this right after lots of faffing about with gadgets etc and getting the right look, I can get down to the main code and get it all interacting with the GUI. Won't be doing too much on this today as have other commitments this afternoon but enjoying experimenting with new code techniques.

getting there with the GUI and preview (I think).

That is coming along nicely.

Awesome work!

Very cool Mike .

Dave

Oh man, looks great!

will upload v2.0 soon. just doing some final testing.

Cool

and here is the link to the program:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=135s_VwgfJjmFjbTZWhx3tn9q0rTuW1p0

Added a "zeroiswater" check/tick box which treats all values at zero height as water. Leave blank if you want to have all zero values as terrain.
You can load in an image of any size e.g. 256x256 , 512x512 or larger and it will scale it to 1024x1024.

More work still needed on the preview of the terrain but it's a start.

password is same as before "youshallnotpass" without double quotes.

can't get it to run.

It does work in windows 8 mode.

Hi Mike!
Great idea for tool!
I have not been on the forum for a long time, and have not seen this thread before.
Good job. Develop this tool, great help here for creating a landscape and huge time saving with this tool.
I have not tried it yet, but I will now fix it and download it to try your tool.