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[Nowekat]

You may download them here:

https://www.mediafire.com/file/cbc5llyvrwq91dd/CityBuilder2.3a.7z/file

This link is updated to version 2.3a. This version allows to use different spacings between the objects within one texture. For further explanation see the last posting here. There are also some minor improvements.

This version also allowes a defined orientation of objects following a colour marking in the texture and also to create alleys even with the Line of Trees object . A program to create the colour markings is also included. So building and trees lines along a street or other struktures are possible.

These programs are meant to create a inBuildings.txt template file for well populated towns with objects of your choice and a suitable texture. You may colorize this and use it as a town texture for your city. But you can also use a given texture.

Sample files and a _readme.txt are included.

Start with a streetnet 1600*1600 meter texture like this. Little gardens are allready auto added with the GardenPainter program.



Running the CityBuilder creates a inBuildings.txt template file for the autopop map and a city texture. Without buildings it looks like this in the autopop map and shows streets, squares, the places for objects and the space between them in different colours.




Using the created inBuildings.txt fills the autopop map with the objects of your choice. With moderate 8000 objects, created in 25 seconds with my ten years old rig, that looks like this:



The density and the relative amount of objects you may control with the CityBuilder.ini file:
-----------------------
;Colours test1.tga: road 0; space 50; buildings 100; places 125; gardens (if used) 135, garden objects 75, special objects 175; trees 200; free space: 255
Buildings.txt ;Used buildings.txt. Naming is free. Special.txt and Trees.txt are fixed names.
1600          ;max y-value texture to populate. Full texture = 1600. When using speed up = 0 better take 300 or so for testing.
5               ;minimum variable space between buildings.
10             ;maximum variable space between buildings.
3               ;minimum variable space between trees.
5               ;maximum variable spacee between trees.
120           ;percentage share of trees relative to buildings.
5              ;minimum variable space between special objects.
10            ;maximum variable space between special objects.
15            ;percentage share of special objects relative to buildings.
4              ;half maximum length/width of objects on/in squares & gardens.
2              ;fixed space between square & gardens objects
0.4           ;maximum jittering x/y position of objects in meter. Maximum = 0.5. No jitter if space = 0
1              ;Speed up 0/1. 
1              ;rotate objects 0/1   

Do not delete a line. There must be at least one space bar afterwards a parameter.
---------------------

For the map i'm working on i use a density of up to 15.000 objects/texture. Towns then must be quite small of course.

The objects definition lists are quite simple:
---------------
House$semi2
23
4
0
0
House$semi
23
4
0
0
House$RailBigStationB
11
6
0
0
House$RussiaRailStationB
6
4
0
0
------------------

Nearly the half of the values is "0" ;-)

After editing the buildings template and changing the position of some objects or adding or deleting some you may create a new Texture.tga with the TextureRetriever.exe, where the changed positions and objects are respected.

Together with the objectset.exe, a autopop.exe with a much higher resolution (see a few posts above), this may help to create more natural looking towns in a quite simple way.

I used png this time instead of jpg for the images, hope this helps.

Nowekat 

[WhiteCat]

This is GOLD Nowekat, TRULY GOLD and it's so funny how few people in the planet will ever realise this, only the mapmakers of SAS1946 which is a subpopulation of the modders of SAS which is a subpopulation of the IL2 modders which is a subpopulation of the IL2 gamers which is a subpopulation of Sim gamers which is a subpop... of Oh MY I stop now

[fatty_finn]

Amen to that!
f_f

[Nowekat]

Danke! That'a nice way to say there isn't much demand in this. Well, IL 46 is a quite old game and every map  is made (Except the maps that are in work of course ;-)) and every plane constructed in this world and above. I'm just a few years to late here. There are other unmoded limitations like the rough hight maps or the ugly zig zag roads. A new town model helps little here. But time will tell. Im shure here and there a map modder can't resist to rework his map or at least playing around with this.

What surprises me is that nobody else developed a better autopop and a citybuilder years ago. There is such an incredible amount of engenuity and readiness for hard working time in this modding world. Filling a template with buildings manually is a pain. I tried this a few minutes and understood quickly why towns and villages often are more then rudimentary. So there must have been a need for a better way from the beginning. I'm not a skilled programer, but the auto placing wasn't a heavy task even for me. The same with the autopop. Biggest problem was a darn shifting mechanism, the IL engine uses when placing textures and filling them with objects. Took some time till i understood that. The rest is just simple transformation of coordinates. Here i had a heavy struggle with rotating excentric objects. But for shure there where much more difficult problems to solve than this when deveoping the mods.

Nowekat

[Uzin]

I think there are still some mapmakers who will apreciate this program.
 The autopop program was a great advantage, but it still requires some fine rtricks, such as not to place objects too near to template boundaries, otherways overlapping could occur.
The present program solves this, as i understood, by implementing the leasr fistance where objectsd can appear.
There are not much mapmakers, nevertheless, their products are used by many.
So do not dispair, lol.

[WhiteCat]

I will try definitely to use it at least, as I said I think it is gold. I wish there were more mapmakers or that more tools like this existed since long ago, and the tools were easier to use, we would have seen many better maps sooner
It breaks my heart when people post screenshots of carefully crafted planes, with very detailed beautiful paintschemes, but the background is a default IL2 map with zig-zag roads or default cities how can one mentally focus on the details of the plane but ignore the rest? I personally can't
The sim scene is in a weird moment. I only see marginal improvements in the maps & scenaries of BOX games, which are incredibly expensive, and apparently not easy to mod or not moddable. So even if you said, the nature and forests of Battle of Kuban for example are great, it is very expensive, limited in planes and in scenary, and I have seen some effects in those games that look worse than a IL21946 modded (if you choose the right mods)
Besides, I always understood that games like Call of Duty etc would look better because they have very restricted guided path, very small maps, not customizable etc. But in 2018 you have games like Ghost Wildlands that have enormous maps, completely open environment, and believe me the vehicles, light effects, fire, explosions, nature, roads, trees, mountains, fog, rain... I mean, it is so superior to BOX... I get that they are not simulators, and indeed flight models there are very bad, but I struggle to understand that in BOX the flight models take so much CPU / Memory that everything else must be crap.

[Hans-Joachim Marseille]

Thx for this. I will try it out too in DBW. I hope that maybe now some big cities will be made like Hamburg, Dresden, Köln etc. and maybe even first US- cities for the new scenario I'm still hoping for. Also it will be interesting to see how FPS behaves when you put many houses on the map.

[Nowekat]

I'am afraid there will be no flight over a dense populted big city at the moment for the fps thing, but i don't know the limits. And even it seems like the development of faster chips came to an end since some years, this will change. In a few years this will run, for shure.

If you paint a Manhatten street net - best with a 0/90 degree orientation even if this is'nt realistic - and measure out the few skyscrapers in the game, you will create a scycraper Manhatten within seconds. Possibly the Central Park saves the fps.

If ever i fly the red side on a North Africa map i hope i will not meet you ;-)

Nowekat

[mandrill]

Thread hijack alert.

I've got a Berlin map that I haven't yet populated. The problem?.... Berlin. To make it realistic - i.e. to touch all the lakes, canals and rivers that it does in real life - it's big. REALLY BIG.

I have held off on the map because I am afraid it will be un-loadable and unplayable if I populate Berlin itself. Does anyone have any idea about reducing the fps issue?

[Nowekat]

Il 46 map modders truly must be a rare species, but counting the donwloads, erveryone should have this meanwhile. Well, testing needs it time. Nevertheless, here is a again improved version V1.2. The progs understand also given RGB-textures now.

https://www.mediafire.com/file/vyoo13gifbfbn3x/CityBuilderV1.2.zip

Change the texture of your choice to RGB and increase it to 1600 * 1600. Name it "test.tga".
Verify that there are no 255 or 75 pixels. Otherway change them to an other colour.

Paint areas to populate with buildings with 255. If you use many big objects, most of the 255 areas should be as big, otherwise the texture may be populated only partly. Set the tree amount in the CityBuilder.in to "0" or a very low level.

Gimp seems to be sloppy with the colours when saving such rgb files and saves 255 and 75 partly as 254 and 74. So open it again and fix the 255 and 75 areas. When saving again this fitts, but you must check again after every change.

Paint tree or tree areas with 75. Its the same with that colour here.

Dont be shy with the colour, more 255 and 75 would not have hurt, as you will see:



You dont have to paint streets or other areas.

Run the prog.

Have a look to the test1.tga to see where and how tho objects are placed.



You may also change the space parameters in the CityBuilder.ini to adjust the placing.

Use the untouched original texture as your texture and the created inBuildingsfile.txt (Texture only partly populated here).





Here an example with the population markings and a RGB Texture:



Of course population also can be more densely:



Painting areas black as i did it is not nessecary.


A adopted TextureRetriever is also included.

The gardenpainter still understands only greyscale, i think it will not be needet when using a RGB texture.

In the first read.me i mentioned the tile saveness. I used this feature when creating little villages within the 200 * 200 meter tile grid. I thought it would be in the download version, but it isn't. I must have deleted this why ever. Sorry for that. May be i will revieve it later.

Novekat

[Nowekat]

One idea might be to make Berlin very much smaller than it was. Under the point of playability there ist no need for cities spreading over kilometers, i think. Foto textures are not a solution in my eyes. More trees and parks may help, it seems they don't cost as much fps as buildings, but i'm not shure about this. Nevertheless i'm afraid it will be impossible to create a halfway natural looking and playable big city.  BTW, how do you want to create the chanals? I tried to build  small rivers but failed completly.

Novekat

[Uzin]

Foto textures are not a solution in my eyes. More tree BTW, how do you want to create the chanals? I tried to build  small rivers but failed completly.
Novekat

You can make small rivers as objects - piecevise, like for example in my Yugoslavia and Carpatians maps, also Istvan created some.
Phototextures were viable in Warsaw and Minsk, Lodz, Poznan, also at other mapmakers.