Thinking Big - Torq's landgrab - choose a territory

[su_liam]

Three questions.

First. What is the projection of these maps? Would it be possible to get this in an equal-area cylindrical projection(Gall-Peters would do fine)? Actually, anything equal-area would be fine.

Second. Can we get maps in the same resolution and area coverage as the previous ones but without the ownership grid and numbers? Especially heightfields, but I'd really appreciate the river map in 780x636 covering the same extents as map1bump and map1.

Third. Would it be possible to create higher resolution images of the individual areas? I'd like mine in 4096x4096 in Lambert Azimuthal Equal Area projection. I can think of worse things than trying to emulate HandsomeRob's work. For instance, failing...

My major priority would have to be the second question. There's little enough HF to work with even without the big number in the middle. Also the rivers are pretty critical. Higher resolution and specific projections would be a real sweet extra, but hey!

EDIT: Oh yeah, 16-bit HFs. Definitely 16-bit HFs, please

[Redrobes]

My major priority would have to be the second question. There's little enough HF to work with even without the big number in the middle. Also the rivers are pretty critical. Higher resolution and specific projections would be a real sweet extra, but hey!

EDIT: Oh yeah, 16-bit HFs. Definitely 16-bit HFs, please

Yeah I am feeling just a touch frustrated with this too. Monks has very kindly uploaded a 64Mb file but I have not decoded it yet - I don't know if its suitable or not yet as it sounds different to the one that Ravs has been trying to get to me. As soon as I have HF data I will make it available. I can do HF2 or a pair of greyscale bitmaps but probably more too if I go and get Wilbur. We should not have started mapping until the HF and projection were sorted out which is going to be a nightmare to fix up later. Rivers & general terrain are never going to line up accurately given that the starting point was so inaccurate to start with. I won't start any mapping until I have it and if it means that it generates a different borders and rivers to my neighbors then that will just be unfortunate.

[DarkOne]

I have to agree with Redrobes. Height maps are very important before mapping can start, especially when it comes to borders. I just giving rough borders for the North Western Kingdom, doing my best to see where a river may go or hill/mountain ridges are from the world maps we have.

Also if no one wants area 4 I can take it, as the distances per map gets very short at the northen boundaries. Gives me more terrain to work with even though little urban centres will be in the northen half of the top row of maps.

[Badger]

Yeah I am feeling just a touch frustrated with this too. Monks has very kindly uploaded a 64Mb file but I have not decoded it yet - I don't know if its suitable or not yet as it sounds different to the one that Ravs has been trying to get to me. As soon as I have HF data I will make it available. I can do HF2 or a pair of greyscale bitmaps but probably more too if I go and get Wilbur. We should not have started mapping until the HF and projection were sorted out which is going to be a nightmare to fix up later. Rivers & general terrain are never going to line up accurately given that the starting point was so inaccurate to start with. I won't start any mapping until I have it and if it means that it generates a different borders and rivers to my neighbors then that will just be unfortunate.

Guess I'll hold off until we get some bugs worked out .... ya'll tell me when I can start mapping ... and I'll start mapping

[Torq]

I think we are seeing different priorities which is natural and to be expected. If your style of mapping means you need an accurate heightfield and projection data so that you map meshes seamlessly with Neon's world map, then that works for you. I want to stress that that is not a requirement. Many of the mappers in this project are ignoring projection and inventing their own height maps and thats equally cool. Still others are using mapping styles that dont rely on height maps at all.

I think we need to make this clear, becasue noone should feel there is a right or wrong approach to this project.

Del, it a question of style, not a bug that needs to ironed out. Redrobes is adopting an approach to his map that is admirable and realies on accuracy. That is not a universal requirement. You start mapping when you need to start mapping.

Torq

[Torq]

Here is the latest landgrab view. Nearly all the real estate is gone. When it is I think we can safely say we've got through the first satge successfully. Then it just remains to be seen what we produce.

Torq

[Redrobes]

I have the World map in 16 bit

Here is a download of it as a pair of bitmaps. The 'minor' will only be useful to those people who can use 16bits. To get into 16bit take the major one, scale by 256 and add the minor one. I can try to provide a 16bit PNG if you like but I don't have anything to check it with. If you have a specific but common file format then let me know.

The ZIP

Its about 50Mb so only download it if you need it. I will work on a color texture of it and I am hoping to get hold of the kingdom area in high res to convert too so we can each have a height map tile.

[su_liam]

I'm trying to bone up on my java2d stuff. I'm not working on anything near as sophisticated as what you're doing(my attempt at implementing precipiton erosion was just sad), but I'm trying to find little learning projects to get my hand in. One of the projects I've been working on is a little app to convert 16-bit RG targas into 16-bit grayscale pngs or tifs. I recently found out landserf reads images as 32-bit RGBA so I've already added that to my goals. It looks like now I'll have to add separate bmp files.

By the way, thank you.

EDIT: Yes, please make a 16-bit png. Simplifies my life ginormously.

[Badger]

Here is the latest landgrab view. Nearly all the real estate is gone. When it is I think we can safely say we've got through the first satge successfully. Then it just remains to be seen what we produce.

Torq

lol.. my name seems to be longer than 600 miles... Torq, feel free to use my shortened name "Del" ...

[Redrobes]

Right with a 16 bit height map I have rendered it out at 8K x 4K. Thats a big file so be easy on my webspace But for people who are doing Google Earth or want a reasonably high res world map then this will do for now.

Color Map

Su-Liam, ill work on trying to get 16bit PNGs. I think ImageMagick Q16 will do that - you might have to test it for me tho. I'll prob do that tomorrow as I have to give a demo.... Del

Hoping that Monks can get me the region image as a 16bit file at high res.