Height Map Tricks.

What's a height map you say.
Well its a grayscale graphic that tells your terrain what size it should be in scale and height.

Why do we care well because you can edit the height map in a graphic editor, I use Adobe Photoshop 7 but any editor will work.

Why do we want to edit a height map anyway.
Because it makes the process of map building faster and more accurate.
And in the case of Impossible creatures a 2, 3,4,6 player map a symmetrical map design is the easy way to make sure things are balanced.
I will now explain how I use it.

To help you understand lets build a simple 4 player map as we go.
Open the Impossible Creatures editor (Sigma Mission editor) start a new map medium size 128*128.
Turn on the overlay 32 grid it's under the overlay button.
This will help you edit 1/4 of the terrain.

Next turn on the 3dpaint mode the (second button over from the left) next in the edit modes box (this is on the right side of main editing window)  set the mode to set value, brush size to 24, feather to zero, strength to 100%, height presets to ocean floor.
Now remove 3/4 of the terrain.
Should look something like this pic below.

Next we make the terrain for one base maybe a island or two do what ever you want in the terrain.
One tip if the you do anything on the edges it will be mirrored on all four bases. This will make more sense later on.
Go ahead build, don't forget to check your terrain for amphibian impass, land impass, precise map and can't build overlays.

Here's what I did really fast for this tutorial.

With the terrain done next we export the height map ( it's in the file menu then export height map) I send the the file to my desktop but you can send it anywhere just remember were because we are going to edit it next.

This height map looks like this.

Not much to look at huh.
Now it's time to do the rest of the map using this height map.
Open you graphic editor of choice I'm using Adobe Photoshop 7 so it might be different with other editors.
The first thing I do is zoom in on the height map and set up the grid on it. Next I make a copy of the first layer by dragging it to the add new layer button.
Next I select one fourth of the height map the part that has terrain done. Then I invert this selection and fill with black I do this just incase there are any stray pixels in that 3/4 of the height map that would effect the next step.
Like this.

With that done I unselect that layer.
Then I go to the edit button in Photoshop then transform and then flip horizontally. This moves it to the right side but you can't see the left side. To fix that change the layer property from normal to lighten now you will be able to see the left side (layer one) thru the layer we are working on.
Like this pic below
.

The next step is to merge the two layers (flatten image)
And make a copy of that to a new layer.
This new layer we are going to flip vertically and change the layer property to lighten and then merge the layers.
This one turned out like this pic below.

Now save this file as a 32 bit .tga just like the original height map call it a different name thou as you might want to use the original again.

Go back into the Incredible Creatures editor (Sigma Mission editor) and then import this new height map.
Cool huh the terrain is done.
This one looks like this.

Now if I was going to use this for a map I would do some more tweaking to the terrain as the center lake isn't right I would then repeat the steps we just did on a new height map.

Next I would add the bases coal and geyser spots and play test it.
This will be covered in the next tutorial that I will do...