Terrain Development Guide


Chapter 1: Targetware Terrain Basics


Requirements - What's Needed?

Actually, very little is needed in order to create your own terrain. Just a few readily available tools, this guide, some patience, some effort, and a touch of creativity and elbow grease.

Necessary Tools

Text Editor: Any text editor that can read and save in standard text or ASCII format. For Mac users, it should be able to open and save text files with DOS (PC) line endings (which is why Apple's TextEdit is not a great choice). A huge number of these programs are available on the Net and at least one is probably on your computer right now.

Some common text editing programs include:


Graphics Editor: Any drawing program that (1) can create graphic files in Targa (.tga) format, and (2) allows you to determine the pallette number of any colour within an image and allows the User to edit that pallette. In addition, to make use of all the features of the terrain system, an editor that allows you to work with alpha/transparency will be needed.

Some common graphics edition programs include:


Note: The products mentioned above are merely suggestions and not necessarily endorsements by Targetware.


Optional Tool: Targetware MapMaker

Although not strictly required, because you can make an entire terrain with just a graphics program and a text editor, the Targetware MapMaker program is a powerful tool to help you generate real world terrains from satellite data. The MapMaker is free to download and use with Targetware mods, and full documention is available online. See Chapter 4 for more information.


Microsoft Word, Notepad, and WordPad are registered trademarks of the Microsoft Corporation. PhotoShop is a registered product of Adobe. Paint Shop Pro is a registered product of Jasc Software.