First map

[royalitalian]

What are the general step from start to finish when creating a map. Right now with my limited knowledge I am going to guess take base game map flatten it, make it all grass, remove bushes trees and buildings. Than I can start making the map bigger and add in my DEM. Also "use graphicsmagick command line tool to "auto generate" infoLayer files as 32,768 pixel resolution images, you cannot create or edit those in GIMP, its just too large." what will this do? Infolayer files are for fields and stuff right?

[royalitalian]

Also based on the PMC guides, it says size changes are made in XML which is the document with the code correct? Kinda remember messing with it in the past but want to double check. AAnd how do I calc the exact size I need map is going to be 40.1 km by 40.1 km. so not sure how you calculate that into meters and pixels.

[Snake Man]

What are the general step from start to finish when creating a map.

I'm cheating because I already know from our private chat that you're doing a real world data terrain

BTW you don't have to say, privacy and all, but is it american, european or other region terrain?

First thing would be to decide the location, if you're doing your real life farm then that decision is easy.

Next up is the terrain size in kilometers, if your real life farm is small then its easy because even a small terrain can cover your whole farm, but if you are a large scale farmer who does tens of thousands of acres/hectares (ok shouldn't slash these, one hectare is like 2.4 acres so not exactly the same heh) then you might not be able to fit the whole farm into a farmsim game size terrain.

Choosing a terrain size is a whole complex topic, in general here at PMC Headquarters (heh) we support large scale terrains whether it being Falcon 4.0, OFP/ArmA or Farming Simulator games. I would never recommend to anyone to make little girlie men terrain size like 2km. Oh and speaking of sizes, many years ago I decided not to do those cliche sizes anymore which farmsim community has this blind belief that they are the only sizes anyone can do, these false belief sizes are 2km, 4km, 8.1km and 16.3km and of course 32.7km but other than me nobody has ever done one so it doesn't really count. So don't choose 2-4-8-16 kilometer size terrains as those are so overly done, there are so many other sizes to choose from.

So in short; 1) location, 2) terrain size in kilometers.

Overall though for beginner editing guy, bookmark PMC farmsim website as that is your home for information about terrain editing and playing farmsim. Obviously PMC Tactical Forum as well, check new posts regularly

My website has four different terrain tutorial sections:

FS17 terrain editing tutorial

FS19 terrain editing tutorial

FS22 terrain editing tutorial

FS25 terrain editing tutorial

So a lot to read and more will be coming in the weeks, months and few years ahead in FS25 life time

Oh and feel free to search PMC Tactical Forum for new info and then post a new topic if you cannot find the information you're looking for.

Also to grow your knowledge check out my dev diaries, these are not tutorials but everyone reading these through will definitely learn many things, even if its not to repeat same mistakes I did

FS19 Dev Diary

FS22 Dev Diary

FS25 Dev Diary

Got wealth of information on those dev diaries. These are not required read in order for you to learn how to edit farmsim terrains, but definitely if you want to really get good at it they are highly recommended.

take base game map flatten it, make it all grass, remove bushes trees and buildings.

Here is tutorial: Create Sample Terrain, is a good base terrain project to start build on.

Please note as I'm typing this in 2024-11-21T23:07:00Z with Giants Editor v10.0.1 being out the "new mod from game" is not working, this is a bug and hopefully giants will fix it soon. So right now, today, its slightly more difficult to create base terrain source files as there is no click a button automated way for it.

As an emergency, I could make you those base terrain source files, but only as emergency, I don't do "BLANK SAMPLE MOD MAP EMPTY MAP MOD" garbage like everyone else seems to at least judging by mod website uploads, there are just hundreds of these useless crap terrains floating around, eeww.

Or maybe I can come up with somewhat decent step by step tutorial how to create base terrain source files manually, I'll see what I can do today but no promises.

Than I can start making the map bigger and add in my DEM.

DEM stands for Digital Elevation Model, in short "heightmap". Most people in the community throw that 'dem' term around not even knowing what it means. Heightmap is the grayscale PNG image where elevation data is stored, its the heightmap grid, usually 2048 x 2048 or 4096 x 4096 pixel resolution PNG image for decent size terrains (giants 2km ones use 1024 x 1024 but even giants switched to 2048 x 2048 now in FS25).

You asked in chat how do you make terrain larger, well its not exactly that easy when going for a very large size but heightmap size * unitsPerPixel is what defines terrain size, which also has to be configured into TERRAIN_CLASSNAME.xml main config file on the first line "map height" and width values, which is in meters. One kilometer is 1000 meters (thousand meters).

I wrote a tutorial HOWTO Create 16.3km Terrain which is step by step guide for that specific size.

Also "use graphicsmagick command line tool to "auto generate" infoLayer files as 32,768 pixel resolution images, you cannot create or edit those in GIMP, its just too large." what will this do?

That was my reply in chat private messages when you asked about creating a very large terrain. In GIMP already way back in the ArmA 3 editing before I got into farmsim I learned that images much larger than 20480 x 20480 pixel resolution tend to be too large to edit, that was of course with layers so dunno how large image you could actually do as single RGB color.

When I created PMC King Corn 45km and I believe PMC Korkscrew 40km terrain as well, I had to use GraphicsMagick to automatically generate those huge RGB 0,0,0 (black color) images, I didn't even consider doing it in GIMP as it would be slow (for me) in the first place and as said I don't think GIMP can edit 32k res image.

Infolayer files are for fields and stuff right?

No, there are farmland (small), indoor mask for snow coverage on/off, then bunch of "level" images for lime, plow, sprayer, roller, some stubble shred stuff, navigation collisions and tipping collisions (tipCol).

See also:
FS22 terrain fieldGround

FS22 terrain infoLayer Level GRLE

FS22 terrain densityMap infoLayer resolution mapUS

Whoah that was a long reply, hopefully it was not too much to get things going

BTW edit: after proof reading this reply I realized this is just absolutely insane overflow of information, sorry about that

[Snake Man]

it says size changes are made in XML which is the document with the code correct?

Terrain size is defined in TERRAIN_CLASSNAME.xml config file, I use "terrain_classname" as an example because most terrain devs use different class names. Usually its "mapUS.xml" if you're doing "new mod from game" in giants editor.

AAnd how do I calc the exact size I need map is going to be 40.1 km by 40.1 km. so not sure how you calculate that into meters and pixels.

Well you shouldn't focus so much on the size like you must get X or Y or Z, you need to fit your home farm there, so as I posted above how large is your home farm, does it fit to <whatever-size> terrain.

40km terrain would be 40,960 x 40,960 meters (yes kilometer is thousand meters but computer terms that is 1024 byte thingy).

You seem to have a focus on 40km terrain so please let me know if your home farm only fits to this exact terrain size or why is 40km so important to you?

If you're american then one kilometer is 0.6213712 miles. So "ten miles" would be 16.09344 kilometers. And in this example 40km would be 24.85485 miles, make it twenty five miles rounded up.

[royalitalian]

Just saw and was able to read through the start of your response, and I am sure there is a lot I will have questions on or ask for more information on, but to answer the first question it is american based. I won't say where in america because I plan on keeping the map private among me and friends. If it gets to a state that I like I will upload for public but that will be a LONG ways out. I will read instead of skim through your comments tmr evening or this weekend when I get a chance to dive into starting. Got a quiz tmr and been focused on that not sure what I have coming next week before break so... That being said thanks boss. And I look forward to the help and guidance from this community!