Help making a Southwest map

[KevinL]

After reading about Amtrak's former Las Vegas train route to Salt Lake City, and since California voters passed a bond to create high-speed rail in the state, I would like to create a map that would link Los Angeles to Las Vegas and points further east. The closest map with these areas in it would be the Southern Pacific, but it includes a lot more of the east than I was looking for. Central Pacific doesnt have the SoCal and SoNev areas, and Pacific Coastal doesnt have much of anything of the eastern cities and too much of the North. If any of you map making experts would like to combine these maps into one with all of California, all of Nevada, all of Utah, and all of Arizona, I would greatly appreciate it. Colorado, New Mexico, and some of Texas would be a bonus, but not required.

I plan on starting sometime in the 1980's, and using Coruscate's Casinos in Las Vegas, Amusement parks in Anaheim and San Diego, and maybe my racetrack idea in the appropriate cities, too (Fontana, Las Vegas, Phoenix). The goal would be to link Los Angeles to Sacramento, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, and Phoenix with high speed rail (50+ MPH express speed).

Is anyone interested in helping me with this, and more importantly would anyone play it?

If I end up using the Southern Pacific map as a starting point, what is the best method to remove that maps events so I can start fresh?

Thank you in advance for your help.

[Hawk]

Did your version of RRT3 come with the Map Builder? If not you can download it here.

[Wolverine@MSU]

Kevin, You have a PM.

[Wolverine@MSU]

Here's the heightmapmap. Free to anyone who wants to use it.

1023 x 639 pixels

Coordinates (in decimal degrees):

NW corner: 45.0125 N, 125.3708 W
SE corner: 32.8875 N, 100.0625 W


EDIT: A NEWER VERSION OF THIS MAP IS AVAILABLE HERE:viewtopic.php?f=25&t=1558&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=19

[Hawk]

Wolvy - did you use MicroDem, or did you use the Map Builder?

[Wolverine@MSU]

MicroDem. I had to use an older version though, because the area covered two tiles, and the newest version of Microdem won't merge tiles. They want you to use the "Seamless" USGS server, which only allows small bits to be downloaded at a time.

[KevinL]

Yes I have the map builder, but I'm a complete novice. I figured I could lean on the forum members a little bit and get what I needed a lot faster.

Thank you Wolverine. You're awesome!

I'll get started on this tonight if I can tear myself away from Age of Steam.

[coruscate]

For making maps and figuring out where to put stuff, Google Maps is an RT3 lover's best friend.

[Hawk]

Yes I have the map builder, but I'm a complete novice. I figured I could lean on the forum members a little bit and get what I needed a lot faster.

I was just asking in case you didn't have it, I wanted to let you know it was available. Some releases of RRT3 didn't include the Map Builder.
It does take some getting used to.

[KevinL]

The goal would be to link Los Angeles to Sacramento, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, and Phoenix with high speed rail (50+ MPH express speed).

Does this sound like a realistic goal? I'm thinking 50 MPH should be doable with the higher speed trains available in the modern times.

Should I have limited track, or no unconnected track?

I'm reading the old posts about favorite scenerios and goals to see what people like.

[nedfumpkin]

I would suggest that for now you set your speeds at 50 mph, and play the scenario with no crashes/breakdowns, and spurs for servicing. Put the speeds for express, freight, both in the ledger and see how well you can do, then determine what the goal should be.

When you finish setting it up, restore the crashes and breakdowns, but I would also offer opportunities to reduce the likelihood of them happening via events.

[KevinL]

Oh wow, that is a BLANK map. I dunno what I was expecting but I was used to starting with prebuilt maps.

So how do I use Google maps to make sure I place the cities in the right spot? I started with Los Angeles because its the easiest, but as I head east it becomes tougher to guess the mountains. I cant find anywhere on Google maps to show coordinates.

And how do I figure out where the state boundaries are, and draw them on the map?

Sorry, I'm a total novice, please be patient.

[coruscate]

No problem, I explained the process once, it's not too hard.

First off, do you know how to edit images? I mean at least as far as opening some painting software, and working with layers?

If so, then this is dirt simlpe.

If not then what I described above is your only real hurdle.

1) What you need to do is go to google maps, get rid of that side bar, expand the window as much as you can and find the area you want to model. Then notice how you can change the types of views you see? Change to the one that shows the most actual physical data, I forget what it's called at the moment but it stands out like a sore thumb.

Take a screencapture.

Go to your paint software, lay that capture down as the new image. Then "negative image" that baby so the white is black and black is white.

2) Go back to google maps, and change the view to the road map; screen capture. Take that image back to your new image in your paint software, and lay it down as a new layer, do the same for the other views on the google map, then save that file in your paint program's own format so you can still have all these layers later.

3) Step three is just grunt work, using these layers as your guide you edit the original image until you have a height map created from satellite data. The best thing about this map is because you made it by satellite, you can check it by google maps, zoom in on areas and use the shape of mountains, valleys etc. on your map help you find out where you are on google maps, so you can label an populate the map right.

I hope that helps, if not you can always just use google maps to help you figure out the rought placement of cities.

By the way, you want to be in windowed mode in Railroad Tycoon 3 while you work through all this, you want to switch between your internet software and RT3 to get the job done.

[Wolverine@MSU]

After I got home yesterday, I had a chance to look at the heightmap in more detail and realized that I cut off the bottom of California, and it stretches across most of Kansas to the east and up through most of Oregon in the north. I would be glad to revise it and post a new on if you can give me the exact Lat/Long coordinates for the northwest and southeast corners, and the size (in pixels) of the longest side you want. I have a spreadsheet that, given the size of the map and Lat/Long of the corners, will calculate the X,Y coordinates of major US cities (by state). I've found this to be very helpful in placing cities on the map. Rivers are another thing, and perhaps Coru's suggestion about using a Google map overlay would be helpful here. Given the size of the map, I assume you are only going to place the major rivers. Appropriately scaled Landsat images could (with a bit of work) be assembled to make the .gmp overlay for coloring the map.

[KevinL]

Coruscate, that's how I've been using Google maps so far, clicking on "terrain" and trying to judge by the mountains where the city should go. But as I get out of my home area, the details get fuzzy. I found I can use Wikipedia to get the Lat/Long of a city and that helps a little.

Wolverine, is there any way to take an existing map such as Southern Pacific and add or subtract areas I want? I really dont want to have to paint the mountains, trees, and deserts by hand, as I'll never finish this. I have ADD. Setup has never been my strong suit, I've always been better at play-testing and troubleshooting the finished product.

My desired area would be the Northern border of California, Nevada, Utah, and Colorado. The Eastern border would be straight down the East side of Colorado, which would include some of Texas. The Southern border would be whatever includes all of California, Arizona, and New Mexico, which will probably include some of Mexico too. The Western border would be whatever gives me some California water visible, straight down. The Southern Pacific map is the closest, but it includes more of the East than I want, and nothing of the North.

If its possible to combine Central Pacific with Southern Pacific, and cut off everything East of Texas, that would be perfect. Or take one of the full USA maps and cut out what I dont want.

[coruscate]

Coruscate, that's how I've been using Google maps so far, clicking on "terrain" and trying to judge by the mountains where the city should go. But as I get out of my home area, the details get fuzzy. I found I can use Wikipedia to get the Lat/Long of a city and that helps a little.

That's why it helps to make your height map from the google map, but even if you can't, all you need to do is make sure you've placed enough visible markers (mountains, rivers) that you can compare your own map to the map on screen, then just zoom in.

Wolverine, is there any way to take an existing map such as Southern Pacific and add or subtract areas I want? I really dont want to have to paint the mountains, trees, and deserts by hand, as I'll never finish this. I have ADD. Setup has never been my strong suit, I've always been better at play-testing and troubleshooting the finished product.

You'd have to repaint after making your map anyway, so I'd skip thinking about painting it and just make your map playable. Every time you save a map the graphics degrade, everyone that's worked hard on a map has seen it. Trust me, it gets ugly after a while.

[KevinL]

So, what's the best way to create state boundaries?

[coruscate]

Same way with the cities, try to "paint" and measure distance by any kind of features you can recognize. The harder you try the closer you'll get to the actual. At least well enough for a symbolic game.

[Wolverine@MSU]

Unfortunately there is no way at present to extract the heightmap data from a scenario map. It's there, and should be able to be extracted (the way PJay did with the groundcover overlay), but so far nobody has done it. I'll work on getting a heightmap to your specifications, and see what I can do as far as coloring it and adding some cities and rivers. May take a week of so with the holidays upon us.

[Wolverine@MSU]

Here's a revised heightmap that covers the area you asked for.

Size: 1023 x 639 pixels

Coodinates:

NW corner: 42 N , 125 W
SE corner: 31 N, 102 W

I'll be working on a "Base Map" with cities/rivers that I'll post when it's done