Help please

[Cire360]

Ok so i've been fooling around in sim city 4 now for awhile, built a few regions, some with mega cities, some with smaller cities.  Now I wana do something that should take me a while to do, but i'am really having problems getting started.

I know that others have begun work on recreating cities such as new york and what not, I want to recreate my area.  Through alot of searching i've found that 1 tile is rougly 16m2.  The biggest problem is actually finding a map of my area, that will actually show me some type of grid system so that i can attempt to match it as closely as i can.  I've been fooling around in google maps but for the life of me i can't get it to display a scale grid system.  I realize that i won't be able to match my area perfectly but i'd like to at least get close.  Google maps seem to be pretty good reference as they provide me in amazing details, streets, topology (think i spelled that wrong), and just about everything that i need to get the job done, sadly however theres no freaking grid!

I'am curious to as if anyone else has undergone such a project and if so what tips can you provide me.  Also has anyone worked out the full size of a region in miles or kilometers, i've worked out the math for small, medium and large citys, just a matter of adding up the correct city sizes i guess.

Anyhow any tips on getting grid maps, as well as any other tips ya'll can offer me would be GREATLY apprecated.  Hope this is in the right location, if not can a moderator please move it, thank you.

++Cire

[catty]

Hi Cire360

I can't help   

but am going to move you to the map-making section of the forum, hopefully someone there can give you some pointers.

Catty (Moderator)

[whatevermind]

This is one of those things that there are a million ways to go about doing, but hopefully I can get you some starting points and you can figure out what works best for you.

First, if you're making real world regions, one of the most common ways to get the terrain done right is to use DEM data to generate the region image.  USGS is a gold mine of DEM data, especially of the US.  I tend to use their Seamless Server, since it allows you to select the area you want and download only that data, instead of having to get entire quadrants.  They are far from the only source though.  I find it's always best to grab more area than you need, much easier to trim off excess later than find you're missing some feature you wanted.

Getting the DEM data into a region image that you can import requires special software for this purpose.  A good one is 3DEM since its free and easy to figure out - but there are tons of programs out there that you can choose from.

At this point you have converted real world DEM data into a grayscale image of what you want your region to be, so the next step is scaling the map.  DEM data is real world, and inherently to scale, but that scale doesn't match SC4 scale.  Figuring out the appropriate scale is one of the harder parts, and the more realistic you want the scale, the harder it gets.  If you're only looking to make a region that resembles a real world location, you can be loose in your scaling, and just size the grayscale image such that it is an appropriate size to create a region from (ie the correct dimensions to be recognized by the game).  If you want a more or less exact match, then you need to pay attention to distances and find something real world to scale off of.

As for scale in SC4, you might find this useful.  But as you guessed, you'll need to do some math to figure out the exact dimensions of the region size you want to use.  Keep in mind though, that 1 pixel of your grayscale image = 1 square in game (16 m2).  I'd think the easiest way to get your scale correct is to find an easily distinguishable geographic feature that can be measured in multiples of 16m, and make sure it takes the appropriate number of pixels on your grayscale image.  As for measuring real world objects Google Earth's ruler tool is great for this.  If you can figure out a system of using Lat/Long coordinates, this also is a great way to scale by locating real world objects in Lat/Long and scaling your grayscale until those objects sit at the right coordinates (x,y) in your image.

Once you have a correctly scaled grayscale image, you'll need to trim it to make sure the dimensions are correct for importing the image.  You also at this point need to make sure you have your config.bmp ready to go and matching your grayscale image.

My next step is generally to load these images into SC4Terraformer.  During the import image process, you choose your scale factor, which sets the vertical scaling of the region.  If you're not too picky, you can guess at a scale until you get one that looks good.  If you want an exact representation, you can work out what scale you need to use mathematically, as shown here.

At this point, you should be looking at a real world region represented in SC4TF.  Save.  Here you can do any tweaking you want, or open the region in SC4 and see what it looks like in game (note it will have the SC4TF colors until you open and save each city).

That's the basic steps, at least in what I do.  dobdriver is the resident expert in real world maps, and he occasionally leaves tidbits about his methods on here.  I'd highly suggest looking into how he does things if you want perfect real world regions.  Izidor44 also does a lot of work on real world maps.  Spend some time looking around the forums here, there is a lot of info on creating regions and the various tips and tricks and programs involved in the process.

Grid maps are a rare beast these days, unlike the old days of paper maps.  Google Earth has a grid feature (in the View menu) that superimposes a Lat/Long grid on the view.  Old paper maps (or digitized versions of same) are also great for this.

Hope that helps.  I know I flew through some parts, and if you're completely new to this, it will be overwhelming.  I've been at this for years and I also tend to create real-world-based regions, not perfect replicas, so my methods are both a bit sloppy and thoroughly seated habits at this point.    Still, hopefully this gives you a starting point to work out your own methods and get the regions you want.