Ground elevation data

[Nikki Mond]

I'm thinkin the ground elevation must be a number somewhere maybe in the load ini.

If I want to change the relative elevation of a map as it is referenced to sea level, is there not a number I can change to do this? Rather than shave the ground manually.

Or can I raise the water table? I'm hoping this isn't raw data.

[SlapHappy]

The terrain files are definitely in RAW format.

Is this what you mean?

[Nikki Mond]

Where would one find the water table elevation value. If it exists is it even accessable? If the lowest point on a map is 80HL is there any way of globally changing the elevation to make water easily accessable.

[SlapHappy]

Long before the map editor existed I opened up some of these maps using a "free" version of a terrain making utility.

What I found was that the average terrain height varied in relation to the water table. I think Sneaksie already mentioned this.

I didn't see any values about water table height.

[SlapHappy]

I believe L3DT will open the TOW RAW files.

[SlapHappy]

I KNOW this program will open them:

http://geoscape.thegamecreators.com/

[lele]

Where would one find the water table elevation value. If it exists is it even accessable? If the lowest point on a map is 80HL is there any way of globally changing the elevation to make water easily accessable.

Hi, have you try to make ground value into negativ value?

so if you would make into normal time a mountain, than you should make elevation ok, but to make a deepness lake, so you should try to go reverse elevation. Into negative value.

try just with add negatif sign "-".

I don't if it possible, i know just, that river have 1 meter deepness level.

so if this don't possible with graphic editor, try with value manual edit, or edit level map with reversed ground level, so that give positiv and negativ level on level map.

[gliderace]

Hello, all,

I asked this to Support and received some excellent advice. I will recreate that, here, for anyone who is interested.

With regard to water, it is "fixed" at a certain height. In the NearHF.raw file, that corresponds to about 32,32,32 RGB value (dark grey). Therefore, if you wanted to make your entire map at or around water-level, lighten the NearHF.raw to that 32,32,32 value. Lighter values are higher, darker values are lower. Support staff has also advised me to stay away from the two edge values (1,1,1 and 255,255,255).

I hope this helps!

[Knokke]

There are a few freeware utilities out there to import digital elevation models usable in ToW. The biggest difficulty is to find good enough DEM data for the area you're planning to recreate. Usually, the higest resolution data is not available freely, one need to pay for it. But there are a number of FTP sites which allows to download free DEM data (but the resolution quality will be considerably less - although it is still OK and will be satisfying enough for most; that's better than nothing, and it's free!)

You can find such DEM data here:

ftp://e0srp01u.ecs.nasa.gov/srtm/version2/SRTM3/

It is in SRTM format, so it means that you've to use the kind of utilities mentionned above to convert the data to RAW format. The DEM files provided in the link above are in SRTM3 format (90m resolution). It is possible to use SRTM with a better resolution, but such data is usually not free. The 90m resolution is good enough to make the basic elevation of a map, but you'll have to manually edit the terrain in ToW Map Editor to refine the height data where you need.