Is there a chance you would adjust this map for TF2? Love it!

Really nice work! I'm very picky about committing myself to spending a lot of hours playing a map... this one looks very challenging and realistic. So much attention to the terraforming details! The routes will require very careful planning and constructing but will be spectacular, from the short trial I've done so far. I accept though that I may need to try this map out on something other than hard setting - the 'hardness' kind of being built-in already :)

Wow this map is amnazing... it drops few fps, but it is worth of that. Realistic and challenging.

Perfection.

Thanks!

@Enrico
You can do this yourself - using notepad, open the file:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\workshop\content\446800\796639420\maps\themountainpass\map.lua"

...and remove all lines under the "industries =" section that begin with "{pos = "

Save it, and you should find it'll auto-generate industries now.
It won't necessarily generate many of them though... the auto-placement doesn't work too well on very steep maps like this.

Could you make a version of this with random industries?

I just cant keep away from this one... great map.

Been playing on this map for the last 31 hours to discover I've been playing it wrong.

Still great.

@princekolt
The most important factor in any of this, which I notice quite a few workshop maps miss, is to make sure you're always working in 16-bit greyscale, not 8-bit (as is default in most basic image editing packages) - otherwise you'll only get 256 height values to work with and your resulting map will show unpleasant "stepping" effects. 16-bit will give 65536 height values, which will give a smooth result.

@grimdanfango That's really cool. And I know what you mean. I sometimes scavenge through terrain.party to find interesting heightmaps for Cities Skylines, as sculpting them manually is very difficult. I'll look into World Machine to learn more about it as well.

@princekolt
Thanks :-)
Well, it'd be more accurate to say it was based off of several carefully tweaked and layers noise functions, which I then "explored" to find an interesting looking spot to frame, and then toy around with curve functions to get a pleasing overall shape to the slopes.

The real-world-ish heightmap-look comes more from the erosion functions applied in World Machine than the underlying noise itself. The only thing that niggles me is the fact that it doesn't really model drainage/flow over long distances, so what valleys it forms are usually quite straight and localised. I really hope some day to put something together that can actually model an underlying shape with flowing, winding river valleys that lead down from the hills all the way to the sea.

@grimfandango Wow I'm impressed that this is a nois-based map. I could swear it was based off some heighmap! Well done!

@princekolt
The two I've made so far, I've used a combination of World Machine, and some curve tweaks applied in SideFX Houdini. I use Houdini mostly because I'm familiar with it from my day-job, and it's easy to build procedural tools with it. The bulk of the "look" in the two maps I've put out has been from World Machine's erosion tools.
This map was largely derived from a random noise function. The River Delta map was based on a combination of a similar noise function combined with some roughly hand-painted landforms to define the coast and river, and major hills.

Can you list the tools you use to make maps? =)

@Northern Rider Tom
Afraid I have not, as yet. It's certainly on my to-do list... poked around a bit with a script to create river drainage maps, to try and push the results into World Machine to add in fine-detail erosion, but haven't come up with anything I'm all that happy with yet. I'll hopefully get something interesting together sooner or later.
Will probably make them a bit more generic but procedurally-generated, without hand-placed towns/industries... and maybe aim to make a batch of similar ones, instead of just one single hand-crafted map.

I really enjoy the map, have you made more? The only other one I know of is The River Delta Redux if you have more I'd love to play them.

@rumsey433
Yeah, I know... eventually I mean to get back to this map and at least fix up the industry placement a bit. I literally built it the first day Transport Fever was released, and didn't entirely understand how the industry chains would affect the flow of the game.
In the meantime, you can remove all the entries from the "industries" section in the map.lua file, and it'll auto-generate industries instead - likely more of them.

Awesome map..industry is a little spread out too much, but overall, a lot of fun. Could you make more maps like this? I love the fact you make them look and behave in such a realistic way. Its hard to get or even make maps this awesome with the game RNG. I don't know how you do it, but we need more! :) Thanks again for a great map!

Really difficult because the industry chains are so spread out. I really like it, though. Perhaps an easy variant of this map could be made as well?

It could do with a couple more industry loacations but otherwise a good challenge

This is a great map. However my pc is not good enough to handle large maps. After 80 yrs it's lagging as hell, thus, would you pls make a small one of this map. Actually I love the bay area, is it possible to cut the bay area and make it a small map?Thx

I really like this map! It's a tons of fun just focusing on building winding tracks in the mountains and dealing with the elevation change. Thank you so much for this fantastic map!

@grimdanfango Ok thanks! I just wanted to clear that up before I tried changing my network more, but I think is probably my fault :P

@princekolt
I haven't changed anything (I don't think there's anything I could chance)
It should function exactly the same as vanilla maps. I've not tried air transport myself yet, so I'm not sure what factors affect it.

This map is really really good! Just one question: Is air transport in any way changed (reduced) for this map? I had the idea to setup 3 airports and service them through local rail, but no one seems to want to use aircrafts at all.

Hi, this map is really kinda challenging! Tried it on hard from 1850 and took me a lot of hours to find out, that trains in this year really cant get the "short" food chain working :-) 70 horse carts made it tho :D

After 40 years (i know im sloooow ... ;), im finaly profitable enough to build some nice tracks.

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=822044470
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=822044496

almost "flat" line at height 510m (here comes Glacier Express), and height difference between 2 stations is 8m.
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=822046056

Very nice map, I'm afraid i will be sticked to this map for 10s of hours.

Thanks grim for your work!

Thank you! I'm playing and this map makes fun, but I'm struggeling to transport raw oil from the oil fields to the coast. For a short time I got the transport working, but after I made a small change of the rails (no time chinge) the route stoped. I can't get it work anylonger. Is there still a time limit of 15 minutes like it is in train fever?
Is there anyone who has a working oil transport in this map?

Thanks a lot! <3

@Kirky
Sure, I just uploaded it here:
https://www.transportfever.net/filebase/index.php/Entry/2554-The-Mountain-Pass/

Any chance for a GOG-user download link?

@clarkejohn353
I do rather like how coastal areas look in this game. Crazy really that the default map generation can't even create them!

After this and The River Delta, I think I might try to make my next map a coast-heavy one... maybe mixed with a bit of an archipelago. Shame there's no "tropical" map theme :-) Surely that has to be next on the DLC agenda given we have temperate and desert themes already.

Only just downloaded fantastic effort dude. there aren't enough coastal maps on this game lol

woah

The Coastal Area looks amazing!

Hey! Since you're asking for map ideas...
I'd really like to see one of these:
1) The Oslo Fjord. This region of Norway has pretty good variation. The fjord itself promotes the use of boats. The eastern side (Østfold) is pretty much flat. lots of farmland, and islands south towards the Swedish border.
The west side (Vestfold) Is more hilly. Some farmland and industry.
I just think it would make a great "long-type" map with good diversity.

Other than that I'd like to see my home region, the Lofoten isles. Lots of mountains shooting straight up from the sea. There are no railways that far north, and I always wondered what it would look like if anyone ever built one there. Great for ships and small aeroplanes.

Won't be expecting anything though. :) Keep up the good work +1.

Just posted a brand-shiny-new custom map, if anyone's interested:
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=805773929

Thank you very much for a very interesting map with sensible/realistic hand placing of the industries in logical places. I am currently working on getting bothe the food industry chains running, next are the forests and sawmills.

@rage2014
Thanks for the suggestions - I think I'll try and work some more sensible areas of flatland into whatever I make next. I like the idea of mixing some cliffs into it. That'd mean I could keep some more approachable terrain, while still breaking up the expanses a bit and forcing some meandering routes.

@grimfandango

Thanks for the contribution. I was asking myself on how you achieved the smoothness int he bigscale map and saw your comment about world creator.

Here are a couple of ideas for scenarios:

1) 1:4 aspect ratio. From East to West: Plains - High Mountains - Plains - Lake - Plains.

2) On a smilar fashion: High Plains - Cliffs - River - Ciffs - Mountains - High Plains.

Regards

Have you thought about doing Russia? A really great combination of terrains, big flat areas with some mountains, then you head allllll the way east and run into some seriously challenging terrain in Kamchatka. A little bit of everything, and especially fun if you want to put all the industries in their historical places, so people have to run lines from the Urals to Moscow to get the steel industry running.

Awsome man, my favourite Transport and Train Fever by far. Also pretty chanllenging

Great map, thank you for sharing Grim!
Seeing your beautiful work made me eager to try to make a fantasy map instead of another one based on heightmaps.
However, I don't have the time to learn the tool that you mentioned at the moment, so I'll stick with elevation maps for now. Well, if only the Devs would release the bloody map editor...

@BruceLeeFanboy

I'm not using scan data. I've tried it before in Skylines, and while it's just about okay for a city builder if you hunt around for a good spot, I didn't bother for this - I personally don't reality is an ideal source for Transport Fever, because reality tends to be a bit generic and flat most of the time.

This is from World Machine. It's a bit of a complex tool, but I work with procedural vfx as a day-job, so I thought I'd try and learn it. It's very good for tweaking and tailoring elevation curves and applying realistic looking erosion.

I prefer montain pass and shermanhill type american railway.

Continuous uphillroad(but not steeper than mountains, so track laying will be easier)
mile train possiblities, farawayer town to town and facilities.

Thanks again for the help grimdanfango, I've been having some luck.

The heightmaps I'm using though are ~10m and aren't scaling up like I want resulting in a terrace effect. I've tried using Wilbur but still no luck. Your map seems pretty smooth for its dimensions.

Where have you been sourcing your DEMs?

Does anyone have any ideas for what they'd like to see in my next map? It'll probably be a little while before I get around to making one, but I thought this might be good to tailor something a bit more to others' tastes... maybe with a little less focus on sheer-sided mountain valleys :-)

Easiest way is go look at the files for a map you've already downloaded, like this one. That's all I did.

Thank you very much!

I'll keep tinkering when I get home and hopefully figure it out with your advice.

@BruceLeeFanboy
Took a little working out for the industry placement. Basically, you need entries with this format in the map.lua file:
{pos = { 13480.0, -272.0 }, angle = math.rad(45), fileName = "industry/oil_refinery.con",},

- the coordinates you can work out or generate using the same tools as for town placement. Basically, 4x the pixel coordinates, offset so that the center of the image is {0, 0} rather than the bottom left corner.
- the math.rad is the orientation. 0 means the road connection points straight south, 90 is east, 180 north, 270 west (and anything in between)
- the fileName denotes each specific type by its literal filename, found in:<steamapps>\common\Transport Fever\res\construction\industry\

Industries are very sensitive to terrain and existing road connections... they'll often not appear at all without tweaking and re-checking a few times.
Hope that helps.