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Andrew Cory
Andrew Cory
Join Date 04/2004
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Mars Terraformed

April 21, 2006 6:23:16 AM from GalCiv II ForumsGalCiv II Forums

So, I say to myself: Self, wouldn’t it be great if the Mars in GalCiv2 looked like _Mars_>? Furthermore, what if I could make it look like Mars after some work had been done? Well, it was easy enough to change the space-view of Mars into something more appropriate—I simply found an image and edited it a bit into:


Renamed it mars.png, and dropped it into my "C:\Games\GalCiv2\Gfx\Planets" folder. But when I looked at Mars on the planet screen, the one I do most of my work on, it wasn’t anything special. So after a bunch of trial and error, I found out that if I wanted to make a planet-screen map look like Mars, I would need to create a Mars.raw and drop it into "C:\Games\GalCiv2\Data\HeightMaps". Anyone know how I go about doing that?
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Andrew Cory
ignuss
Join Date 01/2006
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Reply #1 April 21, 2006 8:09:22 AM
from GalCiv II ForumsGalCiv II Forums
No idea. I would just like to add that it would be nice if all homeworlds had .raw-files and not only Earth.
It's weird that all the other major races homeworlds look extremly cool in space and completly generic on the planet view. I would really like to see this in a update/expansion.
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Andrew Cory
kryo
Join Date 05/2003
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Reply #2 April 21, 2006 9:19:46 AM
from GalCiv II ForumsGalCiv II Forums
There is a tutorial about this in the Mods forum (or there should be, the stickies don't always work right it seems). Back during the gamma I made a "real mars" mod that actually fixes the terrain map to look just like the globe on the galaxy map (and changed the terrain types too from prairie, ocean, etc, to more appropriate ones with actual mars-terrain photos).
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Andrew Cory
kryo
Join Date 05/2003
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Reply #3 April 21, 2006 9:26:54 AM
from GalCiv II ForumsGalCiv II Forums
The threads you need are here: https://forums.galciv2.com/?ForumID=348&AID=100170 and here: https://forums.galciv2.com/?ForumID=348&AID=101114

Here's a screenshot from the mars mod I made (the terrain names hadn't been fixed yet at that point, before release they were hardcoded but they can be cahnged now). It's kinda nice too, that the colony always gets plopped smack on the middle of the Tharsis Bulge, near Olympus Mons.



IT's actually quite a lot of work trying to get things just right there, because you have to either adjust the grey levels in teh raw map, or fiddle with the terrain color definitions until you get the colors the way you want...
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Andrew Cory
Andrew Cory
Join Date 04/2004
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Reply #4 April 21, 2006 3:05:58 PM
from GalCiv II ForumsGalCiv II Forums
Hm. Well, tooling around a bit online tells me that I have no idea how to create or edit raw files. That is, I don’t have the tools handy (and they cost money!), nor the skills to know how to use the tools were I to have them. Is anyone else willing/able to take up the challenge and create a terraformed Mars mod? How about Venus; I’d love to see a Terraformed Venus mod...
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Andrew Cory
kryo
Join Date 05/2003
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Reply #5 April 21, 2006 3:27:56 PM
from GalCiv II ForumsGalCiv II Forums
The RAW maps are easy enough, just greyscale the texture you have and save it in raw format (most graphics problems that are more advanced than MSpaint should allow you to do this). I just can't remember the exact format options needed to get the RAW texture in the format the game wants.
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Andrew Cory
Andrew Cory
Join Date 04/2004
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Reply #6 April 22, 2006 3:56:33 AM
from GalCiv II ForumsGalCiv II Forums
*cough*
Please forgive me. My training is in politics; I can use Word and Jstore and Lexis-Nexis like a pro. But pretty much everything else is a big ol’ mystery. So, what’s a grayscale?
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Andrew Cory
kryo
Join Date 05/2003
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Reply #7 April 22, 2006 8:21:36 AM
from GalCiv II ForumsGalCiv II Forums
greyscale = black, white and shades of grey only, no colors.
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Andrew Cory
Strategist
Join Date 03/2006
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Reply #8 April 27, 2006 11:37:14 AM
from GalCiv II ForumsGalCiv II Forums
I have the map I want grayscaled and I can get into the same raw formet as the, but there just seems to be something missing from than in the Earth raw file. I looked at it and there was something about it other than it being grayscaled. my file has every the earth raw file in the height maps folder, but the differance is mine looks like a normal picture that was just changed to black and wite while the earth raw file is, I don't there's something diffrent. Darth Kryo could you look at the earth raw file and tell me what I'm missing, if take the Class_20 pic from the GFX/planets file in the Galciv2 folder and grayscale it you'll see what mine currently looks like. If you could tell me what else I need to do I think it would help a lot and not just me but every else who posted on this board.
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Andrew Cory
kryo
Join Date 05/2003
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Reply #9 May 4, 2006 7:08:06 PM
from GalCiv II ForumsGalCiv II Forums
The raw file for earth is not the same as the texture used on the planet on the galaxy map. It's a different image to begin with, and it's had the grey levels adjusted in it so it looks right in-game (since the coloration it gets is based on grey levels from 0.0 to 1.0 (pure black to pure white as defined in TerrainColorSchemes.xml). And believe me, trying to get that adjustment just right can be a massive pain.
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Andrew Cory
Darth Nihilus
Join Date 05/2006
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Reply #10 May 16, 2006 5:33:11 AM
from GalCiv II ForumsGalCiv II Forums
there is anyway you can send the raw picture of mars that you created into the forums?
so someone can pic it to and drop it to the heightmaps folder?
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Andrew Cory
Andrew Cory
Join Date 04/2004
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Reply #11 May 16, 2006 12:33:10 PM
from GalCiv II ForumsGalCiv II Forums
I’m not sure what you need; all I have is the .png; I don’t have the tools to create a .raw file. If you know how do to do that, by all means save the picture at the top of the screen and use that as your basis to create the hightmap...
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Andrew Cory
Darth Nihilus
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Reply #12 May 18, 2006 1:53:00 PM
from GalCiv II ForumsGalCiv II Forums
opss sorry I thought it's a reply for darth kryo but your mars png is really a nice job!

if darth kryo see this comment so plese read comment No.10 by Master U and reply me
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