[in progress]
This is a guide for those who want to learn how to map (my way of doing it).
I am not a pro, but i do know how to map. This is to get your feet kicking, i do not texturize nor do i perfect a map to its fullest extent, i just do what i feel is necessary and try not to over-do too much.
First, start off by drawing your map. I personally do a lot better with Earth maps, so lets get started on our future project Great Khan. First im going to open up an extremely large world topographic map. Topography helps distinguish hills, oceans, rivers and with a little editing, mountains. It doesnt do everything for you, but it will give you a basic layout of where hills, rivers and mountains should be. Wiki has the exact topo map i use. Google "topographic world" click on images. One with rivers, one without. I'd use the one without rivers to avoid issues, and use your best-estimate to place rivers manually.
There are 2 imports you need, one elevation map, and one land map. the elevation map distinguishes ... elevation. the land map distinguishes rivers/oceans from land.
Now im going to select the area of which i plan to work on.
Now, im going to make sure the sides of my new image has no transparent parts (or this will mess up when i import it to map editor later)
As you can see nothing is transparent.
Make a backup of what you've selected (or just save it), then paste a new verson of your selection (just paste the image again so you have 2). [is not required but sometimes you may mess up and want to start over]
Now we want to turn all oceans into one solid color, and not multi-colors. To do this get the "dropper" from the sidebar (this selects a color you are currently hovering over) now hover over to the light-blue areas of the ocean
- right click then left click the light blue area. Now, im switching the "dropper" for a "color replacer"
Adjust the tolorance (in the upper toolbar) to replace however many colors are related to the colors you've selected. The higher the more it will hog up. dont go too far up because you still want green (land).
Do the same for the dark-blue areas, keep doing so until all blue is removed.
Time to pay attention to land now. First, copy what you have, and paste as a new image. Now, IN YOUR MAP EDITOR SETTINGS, set the size you want your map. This map is not even on all sides, so im changing the settings to: MapWidth=400 MapHeight=300 and im going to ROTATE it 90 degrees. Copy and paste a new image of your rotated map.
Now it's time to finalize my first import. Time to replace all land with a solid color.You need a specific color-code for land and oceans, i wont go through how to do that just look at the images or go to thorgrims thread for issues on that.
Basically do the same thing you did with oceans, except with every remaining color on the map. It should turn out like this:
Make sure you do not have anything but 2 solid colors on this map, otherwise it'll be glitched when you import it.
Resize your image to the map editors settings 400x300. I know it's small just do it. Now go over it with the "color replacer" and make sure that there's 2 solid colors again (by resizing, you allow more colors to bind together, otherwise you cant resize). Replace all non-fit colors with the land color. When you import, you'd rather have more land than ocean, too much ocean is a pain in the ass.
Now we are done with that, save that to the map editor's folder in the mapData file, save it AS .BMP and add a "-c" to the end of whatever the name you choose; example-c.bmp
Go back to the map you've not edited, just rotated (the one you rotated or the one i told you to copy/paste, you should have one or the other).
Greyscale it.
Reverse the colors by clicking on "negative image"
if you dont know, the darker the color the lower the terrain will get in the map. This is the elevation map. the lighter it is, the higher it will be. However, in the topo-map im using, after all this work mountains will be the same color as low-leveled lands - only mountains because on the topo-map WHITE is the color used for peaks, brown for hills, light colors for lower. To change this is relatively easy........ Get your selection tool, the "free hand selection" tool.
Out line the mountains (the dark areas).
dont trip on being 100% - you'll end up posting your own mountains anyway.
Now edit the selected area's brightness.
Now, it gets simple. Blur it, then soften it. Blur it to your liking. As for softness, id suggest the maximum softness. Resize it to 400x300 as you did with the other.
Save this to the "mapData" file that you saved your previous "-c" map. Now open map editor and import.
Not sure why there's ocean on the right side, it's like it takes a portion of the left side and occupies the right.... it does this for me all the time with my method and i've been out-of-practice lately and forgot what i did to fix it. but for now i just do it by hand.
so you have the basic of how im starting off with the map. more when im finished.
This is a guide for those who want to learn how to map (my way of doing it).
I am not a pro, but i do know how to map. This is to get your feet kicking, i do not texturize nor do i perfect a map to its fullest extent, i just do what i feel is necessary and try not to over-do too much.
First, start off by drawing your map. I personally do a lot better with Earth maps, so lets get started on our future project Great Khan. First im going to open up an extremely large world topographic map. Topography helps distinguish hills, oceans, rivers and with a little editing, mountains. It doesnt do everything for you, but it will give you a basic layout of where hills, rivers and mountains should be. Wiki has the exact topo map i use. Google "topographic world" click on images. One with rivers, one without. I'd use the one without rivers to avoid issues, and use your best-estimate to place rivers manually.
There are 2 imports you need, one elevation map, and one land map. the elevation map distinguishes ... elevation. the land map distinguishes rivers/oceans from land.
Now im going to select the area of which i plan to work on.
Now, im going to make sure the sides of my new image has no transparent parts (or this will mess up when i import it to map editor later)
As you can see nothing is transparent.
Make a backup of what you've selected (or just save it), then paste a new verson of your selection (just paste the image again so you have 2). [is not required but sometimes you may mess up and want to start over]
Now we want to turn all oceans into one solid color, and not multi-colors. To do this get the "dropper" from the sidebar (this selects a color you are currently hovering over) now hover over to the light-blue areas of the ocean
- right click then left click the light blue area. Now, im switching the "dropper" for a "color replacer"
Adjust the tolorance (in the upper toolbar) to replace however many colors are related to the colors you've selected. The higher the more it will hog up. dont go too far up because you still want green (land).
Do the same for the dark-blue areas, keep doing so until all blue is removed.
Time to pay attention to land now. First, copy what you have, and paste as a new image. Now, IN YOUR MAP EDITOR SETTINGS, set the size you want your map. This map is not even on all sides, so im changing the settings to: MapWidth=400 MapHeight=300 and im going to ROTATE it 90 degrees. Copy and paste a new image of your rotated map.
Now it's time to finalize my first import. Time to replace all land with a solid color.You need a specific color-code for land and oceans, i wont go through how to do that just look at the images or go to thorgrims thread for issues on that.
Basically do the same thing you did with oceans, except with every remaining color on the map. It should turn out like this:
Make sure you do not have anything but 2 solid colors on this map, otherwise it'll be glitched when you import it.
Resize your image to the map editors settings 400x300. I know it's small just do it. Now go over it with the "color replacer" and make sure that there's 2 solid colors again (by resizing, you allow more colors to bind together, otherwise you cant resize). Replace all non-fit colors with the land color. When you import, you'd rather have more land than ocean, too much ocean is a pain in the ass.
Now we are done with that, save that to the map editor's folder in the mapData file, save it AS .BMP and add a "-c" to the end of whatever the name you choose; example-c.bmp
Go back to the map you've not edited, just rotated (the one you rotated or the one i told you to copy/paste, you should have one or the other).
Greyscale it.
Reverse the colors by clicking on "negative image"
if you dont know, the darker the color the lower the terrain will get in the map. This is the elevation map. the lighter it is, the higher it will be. However, in the topo-map im using, after all this work mountains will be the same color as low-leveled lands - only mountains because on the topo-map WHITE is the color used for peaks, brown for hills, light colors for lower. To change this is relatively easy........ Get your selection tool, the "free hand selection" tool.
Out line the mountains (the dark areas).
dont trip on being 100% - you'll end up posting your own mountains anyway.
Now edit the selected area's brightness.
Now, it gets simple. Blur it, then soften it. Blur it to your liking. As for softness, id suggest the maximum softness. Resize it to 400x300 as you did with the other.
Save this to the "mapData" file that you saved your previous "-c" map. Now open map editor and import.
Not sure why there's ocean on the right side, it's like it takes a portion of the left side and occupies the right.... it does this for me all the time with my method and i've been out-of-practice lately and forgot what i did to fix it. but for now i just do it by hand.
so you have the basic of how im starting off with the map. more when im finished.
