My way to create a terrain LESSON 2

[+Gepard 11,295]

LESSON 2: Preparations

 

Now it will be time to prepare our Terraineditor (TE) and to fetch the

files which are neccessary for working with it.

But before we do it, i think i should explane you some basics of a

SFP1 (WOV, WOE) terrain.

 

1. The terrain is allways a square

2. All datas are given in metric system

3. The terrain has a high data field which define the position and

altitude of hills etc.

4. Over the high data field are layed out single tiles of terrain texture.

With this tiles you must puzzle together the terrain. All available terrain

texture tiles together are the Texturetileset.

5. .... Ehm, sorry i have forgotten it at the moment, but no problem

we will get it running without No.5.

 

Okay. Before we can work with the TE we must have access to the

terrain texturetileset and to the High data field. From where we will get

it?

 

Step 1.1: Terrain tileset extraction

The terrain tileset is part of the file GermanyCE.CAT. Also we must

open this file with SFP1E extraction utility and extract all terrain tiles.

You can identify this files by name

It begins with GermanyA1.bmp end end with GermanySG75A.tga

Extract all of this files ( but no _HM.BMP files, they are not

neccessary).

The extracted files you will find in GermanyCE folder. Move them into

your Kashmir/texturelist folder.

All file in this folder are neccessary for TE working, not for the game

itself. The bmp files are normal terrain tiles, the tga files are for "water"

tiles. (rivers, coasts, sea)

 

Step1.2: Tileset preparation

The TE is working only with bmp files in size 256x256 pixel. What

means, that we must convert all tga files into bmp files.

Open the tga files with paint program and save them as bmp file.

If you want to work with a high res tileset which you has downloaded

from Internet you must resize all tiles into 256x256 pixel.

I know it is a boring job, but without this procedure TE will not work

properly.

 

Step 1.3: The Texturelist

The Texturelist define the terraintiles for the TE.

Be happy, that TK has sent us the texturelists of SFP1, WOV and

WOE with his last version of the TE. When i began terrain building i

had to make the texturelist myself.

Open your terraineditor folder and copy the file TexturelistWOE into

your Kashmir/texturelist folder.

 

Thats it for the terrain texture.

 

Step 2:Now lets go to the high data field.

You can create a random high data field with TE, but i had never done

it. I prefer real high data. Such data you can find in the Web.

This are GTOPO30 data which are basing of radar satellite altimeter

measurement. You find them at following link:

 

http://edc.usgs.gov/products/elevation/gtopo30/gtopo30.html

 

This site is selfexplaining.

 

Download the area of the world you are interessted in and store it in

backup folder or where ever you want.

 

What you has to do with it i will tell you in LESSON 3, which will

follow soon.

Edited March 6, 2008 by Gepard

[gillg 4]

Gepard, well done mate. I am currently working on a japanese terrain but cannot get all the 4 tiles to work in TE. I have managed to export the HFD of each ttile and cut and paste them to fit together but cannot import them without a single HFD file. Because if you check out the tile in the USGS site, it takes 4 tiles to make. At the moment i am unable to link these 4 HFD's together. I look forward to your next lesson.

Cheers

[+Gepard 11,295]

This is advanced terrain building. I will explain it in a later lesson.