Exporting RT3 Maps to other games?

[AlternativeQuality2]

Hi all! I'm new around here, but I'm told you guys are the people to talk to regarding modding, map and asset creation for RT3. I've loved the game since I was a kid, but one particular part of it I enjoyed was the map setups; the challenge of building your way up mountains and across rivers at the lowest cost possible is usually quite the fun one.

To that end, I've wanted to find the means to export RT3's maps to fool around with in other train-related and terrain-based simulation games (Transport Fever, Cities: Skylines, Soviet Republic Workers & Resources, etc.). Unfortunately, I'm a complete amateur at using and/or writing code, and my attempts at using things like the gmp2bmp tool on your site haven't worked out; specifically, the .bmp files produced aren't compatible with any software I can find, and they can't be converted into .tif heightmaps that most more modern games use. I was wondering if any of you would be willing to help me out?

[Gumboots]

Hi.

This is one of those things that is undoubtedly possible in theory, but a bit of a nuisance in practice.

The .bmp image is just for the terrain painting, and has nothing to do with the actual height map. I know where the height map information is in the .gmp file, and I know how to read it, but the format is a bit unwieldy.

See this post for more information: viewtopic.php?p=47683#p47683

This will allow you to get the heights of all vertices on the map. Offhand I don't know how you would convert that to a .tiff, because that's something I've never had reason to look at, but it should be possible.

[sbaros]

What I think is most convenient to do is not to mess around with .gmp files, but ask the creators of the maps in question to send you directly the original bitmap height-maps they used. The only non-fictional map I have created covers the South Balkans, and I ll be glad to provide you with the height-map.
For fictional territories I employ a random height-map utilising suitable -i.e. convincing- COREL Photo Paint random colour patterns and import it into the RR Tycoon map editor. I haven't yet worked out any method to "insert" lists of randomly-rolled settlements in the .gmp file. For the time being, I insert manually at randomly-rolled coordinates the corresponding place-names generated with this tool:
https://railstuff.000webhostapp.com/Ortsnamen-rib.html

[Gumboots]

There are no separate height maps available for any of the default PopTop maps, or any third party maps based on them. The only way of getting height information for any of those maps is by extracting it from the .gmp.

Maps I made from scratch were taken from .tiff's, via MicroDEM, so the .tiff's are available for those (standard DEM sets, available online).

[sbaros]

I think there is no problem for maps of real-world areas, since height maps seem to be readily available for the entire planet. Fictional places will need the above treatment probably.
I am unsure of the scale interpretation between various applications however. The shapes of real-world areas will look OK, but distances may be incorrect. My map for the South Balkans turned out to represent kilometers instead of the default miles in the Tycoon environment. What I did was to modify locomotive speeds and replace "miles" with "km" in the language file, but this may not satisfy other users. Scaling the maps up or down will be necessary in many cases.
The height scale may have to be manipulated too, in order to make maps "playable" in the target application. I made several trials-and-errors with my fictional test-map before achieving a realistically surmountable terrain.
Terrain itself constitutes a small part of the scenario for any game. Other features, like settlements, industry, vegetation are totally incompatible between different games and will have to be worked out from scratch.
All things considered, I guess the most efficient thing to do is use each game's own map-making tool.