altitude - possible?

[Jouda]

Has anyone tried to create different types of landscapes yet? I mean not just creating terrain textures but adding altitude so that the landscape is no more "flat" (hills and mountains are of different height etc.)?

Theoretically it should be possible (the game graphics is based on Gamebryo which definitely allows this - I've seen it in Pirates! which has got the same engine). But I am not sure if this feature is unlocked or hard coded.

 

[Neomega]

Has anyone tried to create different types of landscapes yet? I mean not just creating terrain textures but adding altitude so that the landscape is no more "flat" (hills and mountains are of different height etc.)?

Theoretically it should be possible (the game graphics is based on Gamebryo which definitely allows this - I've seen it in Pirates! which has got the same engine). But I am not sure if this feature is unlocked or hard coded.

Those are grayscale images. They are editable in a paint program. They are called heightmaps. White is highest, and black is lowest.

 

[Jouda]

Thanks.

Hm, I took a look at the files and it seems like a long way to go Too many files... I have to take a look at map scripts to know how maps are actually generated.

From what I've seen, no terrain can be higher than mountain peaks, right? All right then, I'll see what can be done.
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[Padmewan]

Check out the Civ4-SMAC discussion at Apolyton; they are trying to model altitude as per SMAC. But Neomega is right re: height maps, generally.

 

[Chalid]

There are a lot of heightmaps in the hills folder but actually you need only 15 of them the rest are unused copies. 4 Heightmaps combine to an plot and an half of the surounding plots.

HEre a schematic drawing:
1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 = plots
A,B,C,D = heighmap parts
plot 5 is the plot you actually want to have the hill in:

112233
1AABB3
4AABB6
4CCDD6
7CCDD9
778899

And each heighmap is labeld by the the corners in which a hill will be drawn. (i might confuse the actual labels, but i hope the way they are labeled becomes clear):
01 = hill in the left top corner
02 = hill in the right top corner
04 = hill in the bottom right corner
08 = hill in the bottom left corner
2 hills to the top (left and right) would be 01+02 = 03
hills on every corner : 01+02+04+08 = 15
and so on.

EDIT in the picture above A would be labeld hills_04, B hills_08, C hills_02 and D hills_01