Consider this the readme.txt
After an unheard of amount of work I've completed an RC of the COMPLETELY redone map conversion system. I never did get an Icon for it.
With this system you get a ton of new features and bug fixes.
For one, this sucker will handle maps of crazy size. Sure it might take awhile, but it'll handle bitmaps of over a gig. Just let it sit overnight. :D
It allows you to set the tree and grass density on sliding scales from "Jungle" to "Barren" (as shown below, but keep reading
). It WILL NOT generate trees in water, regardless of texture color. Same for grass.
Generating Geovents completely overhauled. For some very odd reason, it only randomly choose which geo's to place, so not all your green dots were being made into geos, that has been fixed.
But this raises one of the bugs. I do NOT put the geo texture on the map yet. (YET!!) That's going to require some major coding and I want to save that for after the inital debut of the program.
This also puts geo's under water, so it would be sweet if SY was able to make these spit out bubbles instead of smoke :) Maybe a new type of geo, current geo type +1 for bubbley geos. :D
Compression can be set from 0.01 to 3.00. And yes, my compression and the original compression match perfectly with number of tiles used.
You can still invert heightmap, but I removed the lowpass system (or rather, didn't program it) as I figure no one is using it anyway.
Max height and max depth can be set as usual, but in a great effort of math I display the estimated greyscale to depth range. So, for example, the max height you set at 260 and the depth you set at -50, the shoreline is somewhere between grey 41 and 42. Color coded even. Or, given the other way around, you can tweak your height and depth to corrispond to what you made your height map with.
One of the things I do not do is clean up the temp files it uses to generate the map. If a bug is found I want to replicate it PERFECTLY. So I'll need the information regarding everything you did to create the map. I have tested it thoroughly, but no software is without bugs. The program tries to use the least amount of memory at any given time, so if you're converting a 30x20 map the program will be using around 23 to roughly 300 megs of memory for the conversion. More optimization is planned for RC3 and it will be faster and require less memory. (Getting it working was priority one this time around.) So now even you low memory people can convert maps!! :D When compared to the old system it uses well over a gig of memory for even moderate sizes.
With the conversion model I put together the size of the maps can be virtually unlimited, I can even bypass Photoshops 30,000 pixel limit if I wanted to.
And finally color depth. Use 24bpp when saving your BMP's ALWAYS. Sure you can greyscale and save your heightmap at 8bpp, but I've found this ruins the quality of the pixels, so saving it as 24bpp is best. Image dimension requirements do not change.
And I try my best to print out progress, but with EXTREMELY large maps the processing tiles stage is quite extensive (it looks at 32x32 pixel tiles at a time). Trust me, leave the program alone and it'll do it's job.
Now onto the screenshots!!
The program showing off all its glory!!
You want a jungle!? I'll give you a jungle!
Now, the SAME map, with just a more barren setting.
See, it works
Do you want it?
http://www.epicedit.com/maps/SharpMap.zip
Keep me updated!
-Buggi
ps. The first person to ask for a "preview mode" will lose all cool points until the end of time.
RC3 will also have the option for METAL ground stamps (for you hardcore TA converters). I may even pull geo's out of the metal file. Or, better yet, pull geos out of the metal file and put IN metal stamp locations into the metal file. Geo's can be in a new "enhanced features" file. Still don't know how to add a feature to the game though...
I also want to multithread it... but that's a whole different monster.
So be warned.
