I have recreated the complete Automation gameworld as a Transport Fever 2 map (some of you may have seen the odd post on the Discord #gameworld channel over the past months or years).
The gameworld was first built with cities, roads, rivers, mountains, industries etc. as it would be in 1850 (the earliest starting year in vanilla TPF2) and then played until the in-game year 2016 to bring it fully to life.
Gameworld - Final (empty) map download
Here is the most recent Transport Fever 2 scenario (map) file for download (V10):
Unzip the downloaded map scenario file into the Transport Fever 2 ‘scenarios’ folder (under ‘userdata’: Game File Locations [Transport Fever 2 Wiki]), start a “Free Game” and select the map via “Play Map” at the top right.
Gameworld - Heightmap download
Transport Fever 2 allows the export of a heightmap, here it is:
TPF2 has the limitation that all regular water is assumed to be at sea level. To have rivers look like they are flowing down hills and mountains, water textures were painted on the map. Some cities will therefore expand over these ‘rivers’ (= water textures) when growing. I tried to place vanilla fences next to those ‘fake rivers’ to keep cities from doing that, but that may not work all the time.
One thing to decide before finalising the map is how the Archanan basin should look like. Lore says, it is dry - drier than the other countries (except Dalluha).
In the beta1 version, I kept the default ‘green grass’ for Archana as well, but there are two other viable options to paint over another texture.
For some context, I’ve always seen everything south of Mara as more Iran/Kazakhstan/Ozbekistan/Mongolia than anything European, so take that as you will. I like the darker grass look best.
I also have a map from 3D pieces. Please tell me how to pack the map into one zip archive, and put together the data from the App data and the levels folder?
Alright, poll is closed with 57% to 43% in favour of the brown grass look.
However…
… since the result is close, I think I’ll do both. Things down south will get a more brown-ish (steppe?) look whereas I’ll keep the more northern and colder parts (dark) green-ish (tundra?).
I’ll play around with things this week and hope to have some nice pics to show next weekend, along with the final base map file. (No other feedback received.)
Until then, two more polls about the future progress.
Progress sharing
First, what are your preferences in being kept up to date about the progress? In any case, I’ll post updated save files every couple of decades.
This all here is interesting, but occasional posts with pictures suffice for me
Occasional narrated ‘state of the world’ videos every few decades would be nice
I’d watch (semi-)regular videos explaining detailing the progress across the map
How about the following… (please post your ideas below)
0voters
Use of mods
A second thing is the use of mods. The base game has a fair number of vehicles, divided into European, US and Asian (Russia & later China) models. What I’ll do in any case is place vehicles that fit to each region (West Gasmea - US; Hetvesia, Fruinia, East Gasmea - EU; Archana, Dalluha - Asia).
Of course, there is also a large steam workshop with all sorts of other vehicles… but you have to manually subscribe to all mods that a map uses in order to be able to load the map without crashing.
As I understand it, the map is divided into several regions and has a unique transport. Without this transport, the map will not look more complete. As for me, I wouldn’t want to download more than 14 mods separately, from everywhere. The development course is interesting to me.
Are you doing borders/political lines or just geographu? I doubt that the birders would stay so much the same, probable each modern country would be multiple in the past.
There is no ‘border’ or ‘region’ concept in the game, so it’ll be all in your head.
For simplicity’s sake, cities and roads are based on the modern day map and will be static over the decades. Cities grow automatically based on connections, and modern-style buildings will automatically replace 19th century style buildings over time. Ofc I’ll upgrade the dirt roads to paved ones, highways etc. as new infrastructure elements become available in the game and as appropriate for the time.
The only region-specific thing I’ll do is place vehicles appropriate for the general region of the map (US, EU, Asia), and I think that level of fuzzyness (EU comprises German, Swiss, British etc. vehicles) fits the fuzzyness of the countries’ Earth equivalents well. (The vanilla EU set for locomotives has a slant towards electric from 1930s onwards - as befitting a Swiss-made game - but if there is no opposition to a few mods I’ll keep steam alive a bit longer in East Gasmea with some DR/DB steam engines…)
The game also automatically generates cars for the sims (once cars become available in the 1910s or so). Here, we’ll have all sorts of cars driving around in all areas of the map since, again, the game has no concept of regions or borders. So expect to see Trabbis in Gasmea and pink Caddys in Archana past 1950, and both will drive around without restrictions.
Otherwise, based on the poll results I might indeed make more detailed videos on the progress once I start building (probably no live building, but rather in-depth commentaries on all corners on the world).
And since the mods poll is inconclusive, I’ll probably only handpick a few iconic engines for some of the Not-EU regions (Italy/France/Germany) as Steam (ha!) mods and maybe the odd ship since maritime coastal traffic will be quite heavy.
You can still vote on the mods poll, by the way - I won’t need mods until a fair while into building stuff. (Filling the map with the initial horse carriage stuff for and between cities and getting the basic ship traffic going will take plenty of time…)
So, here is the first update video about developing an actual living gameworld, and not just the map. It’s five years in (playing on 1/4x speed), so 1855. Download links to the map (with a few fixes) and the savegame are in the OP.
