Apolyton Project 2: High Resolution Map of the World for Civ 4

[OmniGod]

Well after a 5 year hiatus, I've decided to get back into the map making business... I see that ctp2 is still going, maybe not as strong as it was but glad to see it is still active. So I've been looking at the new changes to Civ 4 in regards to maps and I have to say not too shabby. The BMP to WBS convertor by Rhye seems to be a gold mine as was the previous bmptoctp2. Thanks again to Loc for that one, oh so many days ago

One thing I'm not too happy with is this peak thing. What happen to good old mountains, which were passable. A world map should have ocean, coast, plains, hills, mountains and peaks. Is there any way that anyone has found to add mountains, it would be greatly appreciated.

But either way I'm on my way to making the 5 required maps to make a civ4 map.

If there are any suggestions for good websites that contain the Bonus Map stuff... last time I only found a low resolution map that generalized... I'm hoping for more this time.

Hopefully my last map of 21600 x 10800 which was critized for the block low res rivers, size and some general estimation errors will be improved on in this new generation of civilization mapmaking.

April 9th - EDIT: I've decided to work within the confines of the game for the moment, just so I can get something accomplished. Editting game files is definately not my thing, so I'll watch and wait until someone else comes up with the mods I would so love....

Due to the data I've found the map with be 43200x21600

Step 1: Height Map (Elevation)

1) Peaks
2) Hills
3) Valley
4) Coast (Shallow Water)
5) Ocean (Deep Water)

The Palette used follows Rhye's Colour Scheme.

Because there are only Peaks and Hills to work with for height, the map is not exact since peaks theoretically should only be at the tops of mountains... (alas there are no mountains). So for game play, I think I will vary the hill and peaks to create artificial depth in the map.


April 10th - EDIT
Step 2: Terrain Map

Well if one map wasn't enough for the weekend I've completed the Terrain Map aswell. See the images below for a sample.

1) Desert
2) Plains
3) Grassland
4) Tundra
5) Ice

The Palette used follows Rhye's Colour Scheme.

April 16th - EDIT
Step 3: Features Map

1) Forest
2) Jungle
3) Oasis
4) Flood Plains
5) Fall Out

The Palette used follows Rhye's Colour Scheme.

Step 4: Rivers Map (Height + River Course and Calibre)
Step 5: Bonus Map (Height + Goodies)

Downloads:
Now hosted on Apolyton
http://civilization4.net/files/modding/omni/

[OmniGod]

Step 1 - Part A:

As you can see from the National Geophysical Data Center GLOBE Map there is a huge range in elevations. A hill doesn't make sense for all but the white peaks...

[Locutus]

Yay!!! Welcome back!

I'm crap at mapmaking so it would be great if you could do another one of your fantastic uber-gigantic maps

This was exactly what I was hoping for when I worked with Rhye and Jon on the BMP converter, but I could never have dreamed you'd be the one to do it again

[OmniGod]

Thanks... so anyway to add mountains? How about a 3rd water tile, say coast, shallow water, and deep water? I like depth in the game...

[Locutus]

You can mod in any new terrain types you want, just add them to the XML files... Not sure how it would work with random map generation, but this isn't going to be used for random maps anyway.

[SystemError]

Since i love history, a huge accurate Earth would be sex squared!^^

[OmniGod]

Alrighty... well after a few days of searching the web I've made the first of the 5 maps needed to make a super map.

I would like to thank
NGDC - Surface of the Earth, 2 minute color relief images
NGDC - 2-Minute Gridded Global Relief Data (ETOPO2)
NGDC - The Global Land One-km Base Elevation (GLOBE) Project
The Blue Marble

I know there are some general errors about the map including why is there so many hills in Africa, but it's because I can't isolate hills from mountains or hills from plateaus with the current choices. Nor is Wilbur working to my satisfaction to improve the map.

If you look closely at the map you'll notice that the rivers are included as coastal... this is for people who would like to use a very small area of the map, major rivers would act as coastal waterways and the secondary rivers could be added... or this is a guide line for redrawing rivers on a overview map...

This elevation map won't be released for usage until the first 3 steps of this project are completed. Thanks.

Oh and the map is actually a 43200x21600 66.5Meg .tiff file and the image below is zoomed to 12.5% of max and created in Photoshop CS using a indexed colour scale. The scale was created using Rhye's colour scheme for BMP to WBS.

[OmniGod]

I wish I could add more images to a single post, but here is another for my friends across the pond.

[Ijuin]

I agree that there should be a mountains terrain to simulate the Earth's mountains between 1 and 3 km height (taller ones would be the impassable peaks). I would give it something like 0/2/0 production, +2 hammers with mines, capable of having most of the mineral resources, cities can not build on top of them, and 50% defense bonus.

[OmniGod]

Here is the first of two previews of the Terrain Map - First up North America

[OmniGod]

And the second for those across the pond.

[Adagio]

To show more images in one post, just upload the images to photobucket.com and post the images with an [ img ] tag here (photobucket automaticly gives you the needed tags)

[Kinjiru]

Thanks for your efforts Omni. Very much looking forward to the results!

[OmniGod]

Well... version 1.0 is competed....

It includes Elevation Map, Features Map and Terrain Map at 43200 x 21600. Even in Zipped TIFF format the maps are 36, 13 and 16 Megs respectively... and the limit for uploads is only 10 Megs...

I would like some feed back on the map but I need to distribute it some how... anyone got a spot for it?

[Locutus]

Feel free to email it to me if your ISP can handle it, I'll upload it to Poly for you...

[OmniGod]

It was soo much easier when I was CTP2 Database Guy.... well those were the good old days

It's 2:31 EDT now... let's see how long it takes to send this 63Meg email :P

[Locutus]

Your own fault for giving up that position

I doubt sending a 63 MB email would work very well, cut it up in pieces of ~15-20 MB max and send those in seperate mails, or both your ISP and Apolyton's server will reject it for sure. In WinZip you can go to Actions > Split (Shift-H) and split your zip file in multiple smaller parts of a given max size.

[OmniGod]

I've sent you the file list and location Loc... but for everyone else there is the Terrain Map for download.

[OmniGod]

Now hosted on Apolyton... thanks Solver for the quick upload.

Any comments or questions...??

[Theseus]

WHERE??!!

(very cool that you are back at this, Omni...)

[OmniGod]

I'll add the dl down here too.. but it is in the first post at the end for future reference

http://civilization4.net/files/modding/omni/

[Immortal Wombat]

Has anyone tried this? I can't read the tiff in any image editor I have tried. Photoshop 7 claims there is a problem parsing it. But Winzip has no problems extracting it, so I don't think it is a download/compression corruption.

[Maquiladora]

It takes a very long time, but I could open them in Photoshop CS2 (9) and Irfan View 3.97.

[Immortal Wombat]

Thanks Maq. Irfan View works, so it looks like the file was just too big for the version of Photoshop I have. Blah.