I know I'm dumb, but could someone give me a hand?

[robbo316]

I've only just started doing this, but I've tried to import this height map I found of the USA.



I've resized it to 800 width, but it is actually 1025 wide.
I've changed the water to pure red, but what should I do with the heights of the terrain? I tried dealing with it in RRT3, but I either get insanely sheer vertical sides probably 500ft high, or it's perfectly flat!
Please help, because I'm slowly going out of my mind!
I'm trying to set this for full states with many, many cities, and entrance to the various states only by invitation, and full news stories from 1829 through to today. I spent about 4 hours today trawling through different websites to find important events throughout the last 2 centuries in the US, and around the world; such as every presidential election, and assassination; every war, with battles. I've worked out what these events should trigger, such as the 1929 wall street crash, knocking 12% off your stock value for about 12 years. This is what took so long, and I'd hate it to be in vain with not being able to use a new USA map.

Thanks for anything!

[cheminot]

Oh boy ! I'm at the same spot myself, but with a much a smaller map.
My only tip is to study Oilcan's great guide "MAKING A HEIGTH MAP" or something like that.
Good luck !

[Blackhawk]

As was said you might want to check the height map guide. It's pretty late right now for me so I'm not sure I remember the specifics but it might be that it needs to be in a grey scale map or use red for the water and the rest needs to be in shades of blue (not black). I'm not sure on that but I figured I'd throw out an answer for now until I can answer more or maybe someone else can add to it. (and remember it needs to be a TGA file)

[Wolverine@MSU]

Red oceans are incompatible with a greyscale heightmap. Edit the map to replace red ocean with pure black (RGB = 0,0,0). Great Lakes will need to be painted with appropriate grey colors based on their elevation above sea level relative to the absolute altitude/greyscale factor for this particular map. The 1025 dimension for the longest side is correct, as this will give 1024 map cells. You may need to fool around with the Overall Height Modifier, Mountain Top Height Modifier, and Smoothness Modifier when you import the heightmap to get the look you want.

[robbo316]

Thanks for the replies.

Red oceans are incompatible with a greyscale heightmap. You may need to fool around with the Overall Height Modifier, Mountain Top Height Modifier, and Smoothness Modifier when you import the heightmap to get the look you want.

I tried it with black for the oceans, and it just gave sea level grass! I've tried all sorts of setting on the modifiers; on height I've tried everything from 0.0 - 1.0; on mountains I've tried everything from 0.1 - 1.0; and on smoothness I've tried everything from 0.0 - 25. Anyway, I'll give it another going over tomorrow, if I can't get it right I guess I'll just use the coast to coast map, and just change scenario details and news items.

[Hawk]

There is a base map of the whole USA in the Base Maps section of the archive.

http://hawkdawg.com/rrt/rrt3/map_arch/rt3_base-maps.htm

Scroll down to find it. It's 4th from the bottom.

[robbo316]

There is a base map of the whole USA in the Base Maps section of the archive.

http://hawkdawg.com/rrt/rrt3/map_arch/rt3_base-maps.htm

Scroll down to find it. It's 4th from the bottom.

Yep, my assertion when typing the topic title was right! I looked in that base maps section probably 4 or 5 times and never saw it. Thanks for pointing out my failing eyesight! Now on to listing all the news stories.

[Hawk]

No problem. I hope it helps you out.

[robbo316]

Yeah it does, a lot. I've got the hard work now! I've got almost 50 news stories about presidents, 20-30 about different wars, 25 about state recognition, and 60-70 of just major world news! I'm running from 1829/30 onwards, so it's a fair bit of typing.

[Hawk]

One thing to keep in mind is; the more events you have, the more checking of the event fire status the game has to do. It could possibly slow the game down some.

[robbo316]

Shouldn't hurt too much with 3GHz and 8GB RAM, I wouldn't have thought. But I'll have to go through it and see how it feels. I may get P.O'd doing all of them so I may cut it down.

[Blackhawk]

One thing to keep in mind is that it is pretty difficult to have a scenario last for a long period of time and still stay interesting and entertaining for the player. You said you were looking up the history for the past 2 centuries for some events to write. I would suggest you create a scenario for the first 25-50 years and see how it plays out. If it's still entertaining at the end, then add in more events for a few more years and repeat. You wouldn't want to create a map that takes 200 years but feels like it has nothing left to accomplish after 40 years.

[Wolverine@MSU]

Another way to do it would be to divide the 200 years up into a series of shorter scenarios, kind of like The Age of Steam. You could have a "theme" associated with each "chapter" in the railroading history of the US. I find some of the very long scenarios (>40 years or so) to get very boring in the later stages. I end up frantically building rails, adding trains, buying up every industry in sight, and running the game on fast speed just to get on with it.

[robbo316]

Another way to do it would be to divide the 200 years up into a series of shorter scenarios, kind of like The Age of Steam. You could have a "theme" associated with each "chapter" in the railroading history of the US. I find some of the very long scenarios (>40 years or so) to get very boring in the later stages. I end up frantically building rails, adding trains, buying up every industry in sight, and running the game on fast speed just to get on with it.

That's what I love about forums like this. I would never have thought of that! I'll do a little research into history, which will prove to be no hardship, I love history. Doing this "scenario pack" for want of a better word will take some time as I run my own business and am juggling that with going back through college again!

[Hawk]

Shouldn't hurt too much with 3GHz and 8GB RAM, I wouldn't have thought. But I'll have to go through it and see how it feels. I may get P.O'd doing all of them so I may cut it down.

If you plan to release this scenario [pack], one thing to consider is not everyone has a monster rig, or even one as good as yours.

[robbo316]

Shouldn't hurt too much with 3GHz and 8GB RAM, I wouldn't have thought. But I'll have to go through it and see how it feels. I may get P.O'd doing all of them so I may cut it down.

If you plan to release this scenario [pack], one thing to consider is not everyone has a monster rig, or even one as good as yours.

I didn't actually think mine was very good actually! The processor's about 5 years old, as is everything else apart from the power supply and ram. I still get a hell of a lot of lag on a lot of different games that my machine should ace, so I dunno, I think something inside is on its way out.

[Hawk]

Processor and RAM aren't the only things to consider when gaming. You also need to take into account the video chip and whether it's on the motherboard or a separate installed card, how much memory it has, shader capabilities, etc.
With a 3Ghz processor and 8 GB of ram, if you don't have a good video card, or one of the latest on board video chips, then you'll have a bottleneck when it comes to heavy graphic demands, such as gaming will do.
Even with the latest and greatest everything, some games are just coded and programmed so badly that even a super computer will have some lag.

BTW! Yours is a bit better than mine. Here's my specs:

Motherboared - Gigabyte GA-M57SLI-S4
Processor - AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ AM2 - 2.4 GHz
Video Cards - Nvidea GeForce 7600 GT KO 256 MB - Driver Version: 296.10
Hard Drives-Internal (2) - WD 160 GB SATA II 7200 RPM, WD 500 GB SATA II 7200 RPM
Hard Drives-External - WD 650 GB SATA II 7200 RPM
Optical Drives (2) - LG HL-DT-ST DVD-RAM GH22NS30
Operating System - Windows XP Pro SP3 32-bit
Case - Antec P-180 ATX
Power Supply - Sparkle 650-W ATX
Memory - (4) 1024 MB PC2-5300 DDR2-SDRAM Kingston - 667mhz
Case Fans (5) 120mm
Sound Card - HT Omega Striker 7.1
Speakers - Altec-Lansing 5:1 w/sub woofer
Monitors 17"(2) - Samsung, ViewSonic (both CRT)

[robbo316]

Processor and RAM aren't the only things to consider when gaming. You also need to take into account the video chip and whether it's on the motherboard or a separate installed card, how much memory it has, shader capabilities, etc.
With a 3Ghz processor and 8 GB of ram, if you don't have a good video card, or one of the latest on board video chips, then you'll have a bottleneck when it comes to heavy graphic demands, such as gaming will do.
Even with the latest and greatest everything, some games are just coded and programmed so badly that even a super computer will have some lag.

BTW! Yours is a bit better than mine. Here's my specs:

Motherboared - Gigabyte GA-M57SLI-S4
Processor - AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ AM2 - 2.4 GHz
Video Cards - Nvidea GeForce 7600 GT KO 256 MB - Driver Version: 296.10
Hard Drives-Internal (2) - WD 160 GB SATA II 7200 RPM, WD 500 GB SATA II 7200 RPM
Hard Drives-External - WD 650 GB SATA II 7200 RPM
Optical Drives (2) - LG HL-DT-ST DVD-RAM GH22NS30
Operating System - Windows XP Pro SP3 32-bit
Case - Antec P-180 ATX
Power Supply - Sparkle 650-W ATX
Memory - (4) 1024 MB PC2-5300 DDR2-SDRAM Kingston - 667mhz
Case Fans (5) 120mm
Sound Card - HT Omega Striker 7.1
Speakers - Altec-Lansing 5:1 w/sub woofer
Monitors 17"(2) - Samsung, ViewSonic (both CRT)

Just as an aside, I would suggest upgrading to Win 7. I've only found about 3 games that won't work on 7; and that's out of probably well over 100! What's it like using 2 monitors? It's something I've often thought of, but never got round to it, the last monitor I bought cost me almost £200! I see you have 5 case fans, I only have one, would you say it might be better to get some more?
When it comes to games being badly coded, the greatest example of that I've seen recently is Empire Earth 3. Had a lot of promise but I think the programmers had had a night out before they sat down and coded. The demo worked beautifully, so I bought the full game. Oh dear!

[Hawk]

As it stands right now, the cost of upgrading to Win 7 (buying the OS, getting new Win 7 compatible hardware, etc.) and the hassle of installing it and all my programs just doesn't add up to it being worth it.
Everything I have installed and need works just fine on XP. The cost and hassle just doesn't outweigh the need or desire.

Another game that's a good example of bad coding is RailWorks-Trainsimulator 2012. I also have a website and forum for it. http://railworksamerica.com/
I have the game but found it to be less than what I would expect from a simulator. It's more of a train game than a simulator, and it's quite buggy. The coding and programming used just doesn't convey itself to smooth gaming.
Even though I have it, it's not installed. To me it's just a waste of time. If I want to run a simulator I'll run MSTS. Even though the graphics aren't as good in MSTS, the train physics are a whole lot better, thanks to the users that have made it what it is today by all the edits that have been done to the game and rollingstock.
Plus the fact that I have no use for Steam. Not the locomotives but the game distribution website.

I really like running two monitors. I used to have three but one died. It's not so much for gaming but is a big help in web design and other stuff I do.
My wife's computer has only one monitor and I find it difficult to use it, after getting used to more than one. It was tough enough going from three to two.

[robbo316]

I was very iffy about getting win 7, but I managed to find a copy of it (OEM) on Ebay for less than £60. The only hardware I have that's not compatible with win 7 is my sound card ( A very old SB, got to be about 10 years old!), but I'm fairly lucky that my MB has very good onboard Realtek sound. But, I wouldn't have upgraded if not for the extra RAM I bought, because I discovered that XP doesn't recognize more than about 3 Gb.