Blue Marble based BMP's to convert to any real world maps

[hr_oskar]

It's possible that I should be posting this in the Utility Programs forum but I wanted to bring this to your attention anyway.

I got to know Rhye's BMP to WBS converter a few days ago and it occurred to me that it would be a good idea to find a hi-resolution image of the entire world and prepare a BMP file ready for conversion with Rhye's excellent little program.

What's the use of this? Given that there are already a number of good maps of the entire world, the purpose of my BMP files is not so much to make a full world map but rather to allow mapmakers to cut out *any* section of the world they want to make a map of, then convert it. This is great when you want a map of an unusual region or with an unusual combination of regions (say, South America including Western Africa). Then you just open my BMP files, cut out the section you want, then use Rhye's converter.

My BMP files are based on NASA's Blue Marble composite satellite image of the entire planet, 2048*1024 pixels (see attachment and screenshot).

Briefly about the limitations of this:
On the satellite image, ice, mountains and deserts have a number of white colors in common. Mountains in particular do not have distinct colors, since some are very green because of vegetation while others share many colors with deserts or tundra. The result is that there will be occasional patches of desert in the tundra and vice versa, and that mountain ranges are either partially or completely lacking. Same thing goes for forests and jungles. Some coastlines are also slightly distorted or may become distorted after the WBS conversion. Also no rivers or bonus resources are placed on the map at all. What all this means, basically, is that after the conversion you'll still have to edit your map to make minor correction to the coastline, the terrains, and of course to place rivers and resources.

Anyway, despite the limitations, what you'll get is a very quick rough map which will save you the hours and hours of work needed to make maps from scratch.

Quick instructions on how to use this:

1. Get Rhye's converter and learn how to use it (a nice .pdf help file is included)

2. Access each of the BMP files (height, terrain, feature) and crop the images to get the exact map you want; obviously you have to make sure you crop them using the exact same co-ordinates in all three.

3. Save the cropped images as separate files, then convert them with Rhye's converter. Steps 1-3 will take about 5 minutes and produce a nice sketch of a map!

4. Edit your WBS file with the worldbuilder or whatever map editor you like to make minor corrections and place rivers and resources.

World height map
World terrain map
World feature map

Finally, a big thanks to Rhye for his excellent converter tool!

 

[hr_oskar]

All right, finally some images to illustrate this... I quickly made four maps using my BMP's and the method detailed above. As I said this only takes a few minutes, compared to the hours spent on making a brand new map from scratch. Note that those are four independent maps, not four screenshots from the same map.

I cut out three fairly random sections of the world map and the fourth image is of the full world map.

On closer look you'll see that all of them could use a little fine-tuning; in particular, land bridges and straits usually need to be corrected.

 

[hr_oskar]

Another very useful thing is that once you've cropped out the region you want to use for the map, you can try out various map sizes without any effort at all. Here are three screenshots of maps in different sizes (35x33, 90x85, 180x160) from the same source BMP's, of a part of Oceania (displayed in Mapview).

 

[Jon Shafer]

Actually, although Rhye did make a number of modifications and improvements, I was the one who wrote the utility.

 

[hr_oskar]

Oh, sorry Trip, I didn't know that... well in that case: a big thanks for your utility, it's something I've been dreaming of having ever since I started making maps for Civ2! !

It was always frustrating to start making maps in the conventional editors, then realize after a lot of work that I couldn't fit in some critical region or island unless I'd redo the map from start. It makes a huge difference to be able to work with a source image and easily add or remove regions to the map or try it out in different map sizes.

 

[Aquilius]

Are there river, bonus and route maps in production? Would be great!

 

[hr_oskar]

I think a resource map would be worth making... can't say about the river maps because I don't know how they turn out after resizing. Would need to experiment more with that.

The thing is that the conversion of river maps is a bit complicated with a number of different colors depending on the course of the river and the type of intersection... what I should try is to see what happens if I just one color to make a couple of straight lines. The rivers definitely won't be perfect from the start but it's always a help to have a rough river map on the initial map I guess.

As for the resource map, I'm a little worried individual pixels on the big world map might not come through in the conversion, or that if I place big spots of multiple pixels, you'll sometimes get big patches of one resource in some regional maps. Anyway, I should just try it out I guess...

 

[Shqype]

Thanks for this, it will make the task of creating maps so much easier! And to think I was actually going to draw it out by hand on graph paper and then do a square to pixel conversion,

 

[Rhye]

Actually, although Rhye did make a number of modifications and improvements, I was the one who wrote the utility.

yeah he's the author of the core. Me and other 2 just improved it. Probably people get my name because I was the one who posted it in the forums

 

[SoCalian]

Is there anyway to combine all of them into one BMP?

 

[Rhye]

you could just merge the bitmaps. But what's the point if no computer on earth would handle it?