Ryandor.com

Hi folks. I've been meaning to put this up on the web forever. I thought I'd share my custom color table with you. It makes UOL or Map Generator much more powerful. The page primarily talks about UOL, since that was what I was using when I created the color table, but I now use Map Generator exclusively. You should be able to use it with either of them, whichever you prefer. These pages were quickly thrown together and do not go into as much detail as they could about many things. Feel free to experiment and post ideas and results.

Here's the link to the information. http://members.cox.net/sdfo/UOLAltitude.html

Hope this helps someone.

-kirax2

P.S. Here's a sample: this is Ilshenar's Altitude.bmp after being run through my new color table, which represents every altitude in UO.

Thanks for sharing this!

The reason UOL and MapGen2 broke the altitudes out into major terrain types was to make it easier to edit altitude.bmp (so you could tell, for instance, when you were modifying the height on the mountains). Of course the downside to that as you pointed out is that by doing that, you basically limit the number of total altitudes available because each terrain type is potentially duplicating altitudes.

But you are absolutely right. altitude.xml and terrain.xml are basically just default configurations. You can modify those files freely to make different default configurations, custom color tables, add new terrain types, etc.

This will be handy for people who need the versatility of having an unlimited number of altitudes. I can see it especially being useful with map2bmp as you pointed out on your site.

Thanks again!

P.S. I'd be interested in the results of any experiments with using mul2bmp to make maps and then converting back to mul. Theoretically, it's possible to make an altitude.xml, terrain.xml and conversions to make a perfect copy of a MUL map file. But it would be so much work to set the config files and transitions up that no one has done it yet.

_________________
-= HellRazor =-
Shattered Sosaria is coming!
http://www.shatteredsosaria.com

Thanks for your comments, Hellrazor! Actually, I have used mul2bmp with my modified Altitude.xml file several times to convert portions of existing maps, and the altitude portion works perfectly. The first time was when I'd done a lot of work on the mountains for a map of Greece I was working on. When a bug in Photoshop screwed up the most recent copy, losing several hours of work, I was frustrated, to say the least. All I had was my most recently compiled version of the map. I decided to try re-creating it using map2bmp, but substituting my color table...and it worked like a charm. The altitude bmp was re-created perfectly. More recently, I used it to save a mountain I'd created in Dragon a long time ago (first compiling the old file with Dragon, then using map2bmp to create the Altitude.bmp). I also recently used it to transfer a small portion of the UO map to my own. I wanted a part of Ilshenar, but it was too low. I used UO Copy to transfer it to a blank map, adjusting the height, then map2bmp to create an altitude file. I cut out the portion I wanted, pasted it into my own map, and voila! Once again, it worked great (but you do have to be careful when adjusting the altitude not to allow buildings and mountains to go too high, of course).

I do want to emphasize that you cannot expect a perfect copy of your terrain map without a LOT of work on configuration files (especially things like coastlines). With the variety of terrain available, I doubt it's possible to get a perfect match within the 256 limit of UOL or Map Generator. However, every single map tile must, by definition, be between -120 and 120, and every one of these altitudes is represented in this new Altitude.xml. Therefore, it is possible to create a completely accurate altitude bmp from any existing UO map at all without any adjustment to configuration files.

While I understand the reasoning behind the original configuration of the UOL altitude.xml, as a map maker, it drove me crazy. However, because they designed the program to be flexible, I was able to fix what I didn't like. My solution also lets one see whether one is editing mountains, land, or water; in fact, it lets you see a greater variety of types of land than the original UOL (as I discuss on my website). Once you begin to apply actual altitude adjustments, it's no longer possible to differentiate (unless you use layers), but once it's adjusted, hopefully you won't need to differentiate so much anymore, was my reasoning.