Making of NAZRR (Northern Arizona Railroad) Map
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These pages are a supplement to the Making of NAZRR - Blog found at the
  FORUM.
I hope they provide valuable map building tips, or at least enjoyment.
AZ RAIL RAT
HEIGHTMAP CREATION
Step 1 - DEM Manipulation Program
DEMs are Digital Elevation Models, files that contain elevation information that can be transformed into files Railroad Tycoon can
use to calculate map heights.  The simplest program to use to make a good heightmap file is MicroDEM.  There are others, but
unless you get REAL fancy, why bother?  Select the "complete install" and you are off to the races.

IMORTANT NOTE:  Instructions below are written for the ver 15.15.23.1.  The "RT3" version proviides an elevation
table for the bluescale images which provide more accurate elevations.  HOWEVER, you lose the capability to save
images as Targa files.  That conversion must be made in a separate graphic application.

Step 2 - Getting your DEMs
The 1:250,000 scale DEMS work fine for a game map covering up to about half a state the size of Arizona.  Other scales may be
required for large areas of the country.  Go to the USGS Geographic Data Download page (you may have to select the 1:250K tab),
select the "State" index, then the state or states your map needs to cover.

The trick here is knowing the DEM name.  Back in 2004 while making the AZRR map, the "Graphic" link worked and you could
zoom in and pick DEMs quickly.  Now that link is broken and unless you have the index map, it could take a bit of trial and error to get
all files required.

For NAZRR, area covered needed to be from the North Rim of the Grand Canyon (36o30'N), to just south of Vicksburg (33o40'N),
and from just east of Gallup, New Mexico (108o37'W) to just west of Needles, Kal-ee-4n-ia (114o41W).  It took 28 merged DEM files
to cover that area (7 across and 4 high).

The 28 merged NAZRR DEMs

This image is a projection which simulates sun position at 335o azimuth and 45o elevation, about 2:00pm on the first day of summer?
It produces a shadow effect for the image, but cannot be used as the game heightmap.  That takes a conversion to grayscale.

Step 3 - Convert to Grayscale
Right click brings up the Display Parameter dialog - - - - - - Elevation colors allows selection of Gray scale.
  

Grayscale conversion takes out the sun effect and relates elevations from black (low) to white (high).
The Grayscale Image


Step 4 - Reduce and Save (OK, that's two steps)
Crop down using the Map area, Keyboard corners which brings up two dialogs (only one shown) to type in only area required.
 

The Final Image
Saving Image As a Targa (tga) file now makes it usable in the game.  It can be used at whatever size (in pixels) it comes out to or it can
be increased (using MicroDEM or another graphic program) to max height and or width of 1024 pixels.  "Elevation PURISTS" would use a
shader program to turn elevations to the bluescale image with sea levels in red.  Since Arizona will not have an ocean until Kal-ee-4n-ia
falls in the ocean, NAZRR looked just fine using this image.


Sitting on the Grand Canyon South Rim
Doesn't look like much you say?  Please remember, this map covers an area almost 400 miles wide.  At that scale, that's as deep
as it gets folks.  Wait until we get it painted and you see the entire map in the game.


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