I need somebody to make 10km x 10km, accurate to 10m (so 1000x1000 pixels) terrain maps.
Each pixel would use the RGB bytes individually. The R byte would be the altitude, from -127 to +127. The G byte would be the terrain type, 0 to 255 corresponding to a list of things like woods/grass/sand/water, and the B byte would correspond to the level of the water on the map. If you wanted to make each of these individually, I can write a quick app to merge the 3 into a single image.
The terrain would look something like this (but 10x the size), obviously quite simple:
Fractal patterns are very helpful, as if you look at real height maps on Earth you can see how fractals are very common.
Now, the super tricky part. Any tile can be rotated any direction when rendered, to avoid excessive redundancy, and tiles must be able to transition between each other. The transition part isn't too bad, as 1 generic transition tile can be made that I can programatically generation the tiles on each side, but I would need those transitions for the maps.
Phase 1 for the project could get by with 10-100 pixels maps instead of the final 1000, and they wouldn't need to be nearly as good. The code on my end will be the same, so the map size doesn't matter until final release. However, I'll need the 15 or 16 tiles for perhaps 8 terrain types. Coast, light woods, heavy woods, clear, rough, mountains, swamps, and hills. Unique tiles could be created occasionally, for say a town, or specific kind of terrain feature, but most would be pretty generic.
So in many ways, this would resemble so many tiled games out there, but my tiles are MUCH bigger, and FAR less detailed.
Some neato things that could be done:
- Change height maps for a terrain map, instant hills or plains!
- Add water to an existing map, without needing to modify the height map
- Any terrain type can be changed to any other, so that heavy forest could become an underwater kelp garden without changing the map imagery
- Even underwater will be mapped out
This will be a long project, but if a few dozen of the smaller phase 1 maps could be knocked out quickly, it would remove the production stall I have now. I may not buy 1000 of the 10km maps in a month, but I may by 1000 over a couple years at a steady rate.
So, anybody want to send me a quote for:
- Phase 1 maps, pick a size between 10 and 100, even please, and let me know how much per map based on my criteria. Plus, an ETA on how quickly you could knock these out.
- Phase 2 maps, the 1000x1000 maps, same cost/rate of production.
- Optionally, some world maps, about 4000x2000 pixels, where each pixel represents one of these maps, or a group of them (like pick randomly between all these clear maps in this folder). This would be an entire planet, and done in the same way as the 10km regional maps.
- Phase 3. Make lots, and I mean lots, of 10 meter wide hexagon textures, probably 100 pixels or so in size, representing every type of terrain with lots of variety. This is a way down the road though.
Bonus if you can do anything with algorithms, like what fractal terrains pro creates.
This is a personal project. I want to create a system to create worlds, map them out to 10m, and allow games to be run across entire planets. Damage will be tracked for each 10m cell. Weather will be tracked, day/night, seasons, etc, etc.
As realistic looking as possible, not so much stuff like zelda.
It'll be used as a back end mapping system for 2D/ISO real time, 2D/ISO turn based, and if I can get some models and terrain 3D games. All done using XNA.
I'll probably never sell this for money, and just give it away when its done, just a heads up.
Everything you produce for me will be released under some creative license, for anybody to use. You will get the credit however.
If you have any questions feel free to email me at bad_syntax at cooltexan.com with any questions, it is a wacky request that may have confused some
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