[T1] Perfect Terrain Heightmaps

M

[meph]DooM!

Contributor
Veteran X
(These probably won't be of much use, but I'm sure there's somebody out there who might like them)

Here are the perfect heightmaps for the classic CTF maps. The data was ripped directly from Tribes, not a semi accurate guess like KP's ConvTed :). There's not much to say that isn't already on the info page, so I'll just link to it and post a few images so you can see how nice and crisp they are, even as 20 color .gif's.

INFO PAGE

broadside:
__broadside.gif

dangerous crossing:
__dangerouscrossing.gif

desert of death:
__desertofdeath.gif
 
I added some more:

A Dish Best Served Cold
Bastard Forge
Canyon Crusade Deluxe
Cloak of Night
Hildebrand
Ice Dagger
Jagged Claw
Reliquary
Simoom
Tesseract


Some screenshots (plus a dinky heightmap)

Simoom:
__simoom.gif


Canyon Crusade Deluxe:
__canyoncrusadedeluxe.gif
 
Oh, my, God. :D

I wish these had been around like 1.5 years ago, but hell, this is still cool. :)

Is it possible to either get access to your method or make requests?
 
Probably for making Tribes 2 classic maps or something, he's been playing around w/ OllyDbg and T1 lately finding out some cool crap.
 
It's a kinda retarded method. I managed to find the function where Tribes does.. something to the terrain data, so I fire up a map, breakpoint the start of that function and grab the memory location. Then I just dump the entire block of memory that the terrain resides in to a file (noting the first value in the terrain data to search for later) and open up the dump in a hex editor, search for the initial value, select X*X*4 bytes, paste that into a new file, and presto, I have a file of 32 bit floating point heights.

After that it's just a simple program to turn those into 16 bit values and there you go. If you don't feel like trying to get the exact list of instructions from me, I can do requests rather easily, it just takes ~5 minutes.
 
for those who are clueless like myself, you are looking at an overhead view of the map, a la the C screen only slightly different, and the dark spots are the bowls/valleys and the brighter spots are the peaks.


OR i could have that backwards

OR i am still clueless
 
TreW_SoulJa said:
for those who are clueless like myself, you are looking at an overhead view of the map, a la the C screen only slightly different, and the dark spots are the bowls/valleys and the brighter spots are the peaks.
Click to expand...

correct (altho i thought u could just export these regularly cause i do remember exporting the height maps from starsiege and putting them into tribes 2)
 
If you can export them regularly I have no idea how, as Tribes stores them as weird azz .dtb files and I've never seen an "export heightmap to bitmap" function.


Their only real use is importing Tribes terrains into other games really. These will just insure that if you want to do it, you are using the most accurate data possible so.


Here's a picture of the DX heightmap made with KP's ConvTed to help visualize the heightmaps better (it creates the heightmap with the buildings in the bitmap).

dx_zoomed_bright.png


I zoomed it in and made it brighter to help see the contrasts. You can see the two bases and the bridge going across to the middle, and can even start running routes in your head once you recognize all the major landmarks :p

Many of the original T1 maps have a load of redundant data and just take place in a tiny square of the heightmap (see RC, IR, SH)
 
thanks doom i decided to give unrealED a wack to recreate t1 classical maps for T:V... evidently it uses this same technique to create the elevation... i could probably do it myself but probably not as good tho....

~ultraraptor
 
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