Real World Map creation

[Kodi]

Is this, somehow, possible at all ??.... Or is it still a case of "wing it and hope for the best" ?.....

I have been looking for a map of my home country, the Netherlands. There are quite a few but non of them are really flat, which is deffinately required if you ask me. So i thought i'd try the Map Editor for the first time and start trying to make my own flat map of the Netherlands (well, just Noord-Holland for a start).

Having had quite some fun with it i did come to conclusion that, without some sort of quide to position the towns at their, more or less, real world positions, it seems almost impossible to get a satisfactory result.

I could not even find some sort of grid as a map overlay to have atleast a rudimentary way of placing towns, rivers and roads relatively to eachother. (a grid should be one of the first aids to the creation of a map, shouldn't it ?...)

I placed a Google Earth Map of the area next to my windowed Map screen but in the end everything remained way off. I suppose maybe with the 10th go i might be able to finally get a more or less satisfactory result.

Anyway, how do you guys create a map that is supposed to represent a part of the real world ? Is ther really no grid available for this TpF2 Map Editor ? Perhaps maybe as a mod ?.....

Thanks very much for any hints/tips !

[juliejayne]

There are a couple of maps on the workshop of the Netherlands. They look like the Netherlands and have Dutch town names... check out https://youtu.be/kTlGkoA3KeQ

But for realism the scale is off.

25km square is all that the game allows. Barely enough to do Den Haag to Delft... my next project.

[General Tso]

I've never used it. But this might help with what you are trying to do.

https://terrain.party/

[Kodi]

Originally posted by juliejayne:

There are a couple of maps on the workshop of the Netherlands. They look like the Netherlands and have Dutch town names... check out

Yes, i know about the Netherlands maps in the workshop. I tried them all but non of them is really flat. They all have very soft sloping 'hills' with deep lying waterways and ditches. Not like typical Netherlands landscape characteristics at all. Didn't really understand that, thought maybe a truly flat map is not even possible... Until i tried the Map Editor myself just yesterday... If you just take the un-generated standard map it's as flat as a dubbeltje ( 10 cents' coin ;-). Love that ! Atleast for the Netherlands where one can always see the horizon.

So, which exactly is the map you are using in the video ??.... Does it not come from the workshop here ?... It's not a TpF1 map of the Netherlands that you converted to work in TpF2, is it ? (i do seem to recognise it but not from the TpF2 workshop....)

I'm looking for a good, real flat, map of the Netherlands so i can make use of the amazing wagonload of fantastic Dutch Locs, EMU's, DMU's, rolling stock and other typical Dutch mods ( no windmills or bulb fields yet but they'll come, i'm sure..;-) Thanks very much to the TpF2 modding company !

Let me know which map you are using, Ok ? Thanks !

(i'd still love some hints/tips about creating a map according to Real World situations )

[Kodi]

Originally posted by General Tso:

I've never used it. But this might help with what you are trying to do.

https://terrain.party/

Thanks General but i'm not sure what to do with it..... it's for City Skylines ??....

It truly is a wonderful map, even better than Google for my purpose, but how does one convert the capacity of this wonderful map into the TpF2 Map. By eye only ?.... Maybe if you have a 'carpenters eye' but it's already clear i certainly do not have that.. ;-)

Thanks General, going to see what i can do with it anyway !

[General Tso]

As I mentioned before. I have never done this (but I think I know how it works). First you use the web site to create a height map. Then you import it into Transport Fever 2 and use it in the Map Editor.

Here's a video that explains how to import a height map. If this one doesn't help you. There are also other ones available on YouTube. You can just do a search for them.

https://youtu.be/F1cLt3CqWj0

You will still need to add your own cities and roads.

[juliejayne]

Stealth17Gaming is the guy whose Youtube I posted.... Ask him, if it is not listed in the first video of the series. He is a nice guy.

But you are correct, imo, that they are not very accurate. The Terrainparty, can be a good but the conversion process and adding the details is a chore. Waterways are the hardest, as the Netherlands has a lot of them. Also a lot of Dutch land is below sea level. Hard to do directly by map conversion as it makes it into water.

For myself I plan on starting with a flat map, as you suggested and then simply adding height manually as needed. But that is just me.

[Havan_IronOak]

Having created real world maps using terrain party for City:Skylines I thought I'd add my 2 cents worth...

Yes, you can import height maps into TF2 but the scale is a bit of a problem. The largest map you can get in Terrain party is 60km on a side and that's not enough to get more than about 1/10th of the Netherlands.

There IS this heightmap that I found but you'd need to convert it to a 16 bit greyscale version. If I were better at GIMP than I am, I'd do it but perhaps someone else can?

https://external-preview.redd.it/dDHbyoar0zU-qOtJ7BqUuHYlaT_C5RdO5hCv1bqWYAo.jpg?s=52bd6a5202b7e239b5fa1581c3dd80374b4d5d84

But that's just the first half of the problem. The second (and trickiest) part is that you need a good map overlay mod and I'm not sure that there IS one for TF2 This would allow you to download a googlemap and use it as an overlay to help in your positioning of towns and highways and such

For what it's worth here's the guide I developed for creating real world maps in City Skylines. Some aspects of it will apply to this game as well https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=774855825

[Kodi]

Originally posted by General Tso:

As I mentioned before. I have never done this (but I think I know how it works). First you use the web site to create a height map. Then you import it into Transport Fever 2 and use it in the Map Editor.

Here's a video that explains how to import a height map. If this one doesn't help you. There are also other ones available on YouTube. You can just do a search for them.

Thanks very much, General, that's truly wonderful indeed. In my case though there's a problem, we don't have any height whatsoever in the Netherlands. Hehe. When i put the square over the Netherlands area i want a map of the zip turned up empty with just a txt file : sorry, we could not find any height data in this area. ;-)

You will still need to add your own cities and roads.

Yep, and that's just what i'm looking for. An overlay as a guide for placement of roads, rivers, cities, etc. Must say though, i didn't exactly count scale into the picture just yet.... Aware of that now i figure it's not possible at all. So i'll just continue with what i was doing, placing cities, roads and tracks etc more or less according to a RW map on a heavely scaled down format.

It does look like great fun to create your own maps and i am very happy i can start it off on a completely flat map !

Thanks again for your help, General, much appreciated !

[Kodi]

Originally posted by juliejayne:

Stealth17Gaming is the guy whose Youtube I posted.... Ask him, if it is not listed in the first video of the series. He is a nice guy.

Speaks very good English too. ;-) (obviously he must be dutch..)

I saw another video of him and there he works on the North- and South-Holland parts of his map and then i recognised it. It's available here in the TpF2 workshop ( [High Quality] The Netherlands-1850 ). Didn't try it because there's a very big, odd lake covering about half of South-Holland..... Huh ??!!... And there's no 'Noordzee-Kanaal' neither. Really not sure what he means by that. Pity, otherwise seems to look very nice.

Thanks very much for your help, juliejayne, much appreciated !

[juliejayne]

Originally posted by Kodi:

Originally posted by juliejayne:

Stealth17Gaming is the guy whose Youtube I posted.... Ask him, if it is not listed in the first video of the series. He is a nice guy.

Speaks very good English too. ;-) (obviously he must be dutch..)

I saw another video of him and there he works on the North- and South-Holland parts of his map and then i recognised it. It's available here in the TpF2 workshop ( [High Quality] The Netherlands-1850 ). Didn't try it because there's a very big, odd lake covering about half of South-Holland..... Huh ??!!... And there's no 'Noordzee-Kanaal' neither. Really not sure what he means by that. Pity, otherwise seems to look very nice.

Thanks very much for your help, juliejayne, much appreciated !

Yep, that large lake.... the Dutch filled it in and it is now farmland and a few towns. A lot of the Netherlands has changed a lot since 1850.

[Kodi]

Originally posted by Havan_IronOak:

Having created real world maps using terrain party for City:Skylines I thought I'd add my 2 cents worth...

Thanks, Havan, interesting video! Nice trick with the screenshot and overlay ! I'll think about if that might help me in my queste as well, although we are stuck with the scale problem in TpF2.

A grid would help a lot already, possibly your screenshot/overlay trick might help here.

Thanks for the hint/tip, Havan, much appreciated!

[Kodi]

Originally posted by juliejayne:

Yep, that large lake.... the Dutch filled it in and it is now farmland and a few towns. A lot of the Netherlands has changed a lot since 1850.

Ok, that's what he ment ! Sorry, didn't think as far as that. I'll see if i can find out around what time the lake was turned into farmland and use the map from that time on. Not overly happy with such a large map though but i'll have a look anyway.

Thanks for enlighten me about that lake ! ;-)

[Kodi]

Sjeezz.... the lake was called "Haarlemmer Meer" and was drained in 1867. I should bow my head in shame because i live only 15 miles from it and didn't think about it..... Arghhh! I should get out more! Thanks again juliejayne ;-)

[Kodi]

Got one more question if i may : after having created a map and saved it, then worked on it normally 'in the game' and save it, we cannot load this 'in game' map version back into the Map Editor and edit it some more, can we ?

I know we can edit it just the same in Sandbox mode of course but it seems to me that f.i. creating large bodies of water by hand works better in the Map Editor as it does in Sandbox mode.

Thanks!

[juliejayne]

To be honest, I am not sure. But I intend to try it. But sadly I am playing via/on Nvidias Geforce Now servers, as my poor little PC cannot run TPF2.
Using the servers, some things are not possible, as saving, saves to their server and I can't get a copy off there. I can only play further.