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The Original Shareware (WeMake CDs)(Volume 1.1)(CDs, Inc)(1993).iso
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1991-02-13
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Teraform 1.2
A SimCity fractal terrain former
Copyright 1990, 1991 by David M. Hayden
All rights reserved
INTRODUCTION
Teraform is a utility for the IBM PC and compatibles that
lets you create new terrains for SimCity. These terrains
have, in my opinion, a more natural look than the ones
obtained directly from SimCity. Teraform supports cga, ega,
vga and hercules graphics. Teraform is not a replacement
for the Maxis terrain editor - it has only minor editing
capabilities. However, it can quickly produce interesting,
realistic, and challenging terrains for your simming
pleasure.
Teraform creates its terrains using fractal math. First, it
creates a topographical map of the area. It then selects
three topographic "altitudes" which divide the area into
four regions. Everything below the lowest altitude becomes
a shipping channel. Everything in the next region up
becomes water. The next region is open land, and the last
region is forest. You can change the layout of your terrain
by raising and lowering the altitudes that determine the
borders of the regions.
One of teraform's nice features is it's ability to "smooth"
a terrain. This gives your terrain smooth borders between
water, sea, and forest instead of the square, pre-bulldozed
borders one might expect.
Teraform is copyrighted shareware. Under the shareware
concept, you pay for software only after you have tried it
and determined that you want to keep it. You may try out
teraform free of charge. If you decide to keep it, please
send $10 (U.S.) to:
David Hayden
6208 Collinsway Road
Baltimore, Maryland, 21228
USA
You may distribute teraform freely, provided that you do so
without charge. You may not sell teraform. Shareware
distributors and bulletin board operators may charge a
reasonable fee for operating and duplication expenses.
INSTALLATION
Teraform is distributed in a single compressed "zip" file.
To extract the files, get pkunzip, change directories to
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where you'd like the files to reside (probably the same
directory where you keep SimCity) and execute:
pkunzip teraform
This will extract the following files:
teraform.exe
teraform.dat
egavga.bgi
cga.bgi
herc.bgi
teraform.doc
trip.chr
Please note that you MUST execute teraform in the directory
containing teraform.dat and the ".bgi" files.
RUNNING TERAFORM
To run teraform, change directories to the directory
containing teraform and its associated files and type:
teraform
Teraform displays the message "Now Terraforming" while it
creates a landscape. THIS MAY TAKE SOME TIME. Please don't
panic if nothing appears to be happening. Teraform uses
lots of math creating the topographical map. It may take a
full minute on a computer without a coprocessor, or less
than a second on a fast 386 with coprocessor or 486.
If more than a minute elapses and nothing has happened, then
teraform may have incorrectly identified your graphics
hardware. Teraform tries to determine what graphics
hardware you are using automatically, but it may guess
incorrectly. Fortunately, you can override teraform's
guess. Simply restart teraform with the "/c", "/e", "/h",
or "/v" option to tell it you are using cga, ega, hercules,
or vga graphics respectively. For example, to start
teraform and force it to use ega graphics, type:
teraform /e
When teraform completes the topographic map, it tries to
determine reasonable levels for shipping channels,
coastlines, and forest lines. It then displays the main
teraform screen described below.
THE MAIN TERAFORM SCREEN
The main teraform screen displays a map of the current
terrain, and lists the commands available. The upper left
portion of the screen shows a map of the terrain. In the
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upper right corner is a legend showing what each color or
pattern in the map represents. On the bottom of the screen
is a list of your available commands:
PgUp/PgDn These keys raise and lower the
water level of the terrain.
Raising the water level floods
portions of the land and creates
more water. Lowering the water
level gives you more useable
land.
UpArrow/DnArrow The up and down arrows keys raise
and lower the "forest level."
Everything above a certain level
on the topographical map becomes
forest. Lowering the forest
level creates more forest while
raising it creates less. If you
try to lower the forest level
below the water level, teraform
beeps at you and lowers the water
level with the forest level.
Home/End These keys raise and lower the
shipping channel level. Raising
the channel level creates more
space where ships can navigate.
Lowering it restricts ships. You
should be sure to have a clear
path for ships from your land to
off the terrain.
o The "o" key pops up the options
menu (described below). The
options menu lets you smooth or
save the terrain, invert the
features, set the difficulty
level, and change other options.
q Quit from the program.
As a shortcut, you may also press the first letter of any
item in the options menu to activate that item. The options
menu is described below.
OPTIONS
Pressing "o" pops up an options menu. You can select items
from the options menu in three ways:
1. Use the arrow keys to move the
highlighted bar over the desired item
and press Enter, or
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2. Press the fist letter of the first word
of the desired option, or
3. Move the mouse pointer over the option
and press the left key.
The options menu contains the following items:
New Terrain The creates a new terrain from
scratch. The existing terrain is
lost.
Invert Terrain This "inverts" the terrain.
Forests become shipping channels,
open land becomes water, water
becomes open land, and shipping
channels become forests.
Smooth This smooths the terrain so that
it won't have pre-bulldozed
coastlines when you use it with
SimCity. You will see the terrain
change slightly so that it can be
smoothed, but otherwise, the
picture will not show smooth
borders. Please note that if you
change the water or forest level
after smoothing, you will have to
resmooth the picture before saving
it.
Difficulty This pops up a submenu that lets
you set the difficulty of your
city to easy, medium, or hard.
The default difficulty is taken
from teraform.dat (see below).
Millennia This item lets you set the number
of millennia that terafrom will
spend smashing continents when it
creates new terrains. The default
is 200. Higher values will create
more jagged landscapes, lower
values result in less jagged
landscapes. If you reduce this
value too much, the landscape will
look like a bunch of strange
polygons. This is because of the
way terafrom generates landscapes.
Write Write the current terrain out to a
file. If the terrain hasn't been
smoothed, teraform asks if you'd
like to smooth it. Answer "y" to
smooth the terrain before saving
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it, "n" to leave it unsmoothed, or
press Esc if you don't want to
save the file. Teraform now asks
what to name the city. The name
you type will appear across the
top of the SimCity edit window
while you're running SimCity.
Next, teraform prompts you for the
file name where it will store the
city. After you enter the name,.
teraform saves the city. The file
is written in SimCity's ".cty"
format with all parameters set to
be the same as a new city at the
level of difficulty you selected
("easy" by default). You can load
the new city with the "load city"
command from SimCity's "system"
menu.
COMMAND LINE PARAMETERS
The teraform command line looks like this:
teraform [options] [millennia]
Where "options " can be either of the following:
/c use cga graphics
/e use ega graphics
/h use hercules graphics
/v use vga graphics
and "millennia" tells for how many thousands of years
teraform should simulate continents smashing into each
other. The default is 200. Larger values give more jagged
coastlines but take ore time. Smaller values give less
jagged but less random coastlines.
TERAFORM.DAT
There is a great deal of information stored in SimCity's
".cty" files besides the general landscape of the city. For
example, the amount of funding available, the buildings in
the landscape, the date, and more. Teraform reads this
information from the file teraform.dat, which is actually
nothing more than ".cty" file created by saving a city
immediately after it was started. You can change the
default teraform parameters by replacing teraform.dat with a
different file. For example, if you prefer to play at the
medium difficulty level, start simcity, and generate a new
city at the medium difficulty level. Save the city
immediately, before you put any buildings on it. Now copy
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this new city to terafrom.dat. Teraform now generates
medium difficulty level cities by default.
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