Importing worlds into Topia

OK, I admit it, this post is a little hacked together. There is a message carved into the preset world 'creator's message' that points at this page as being the source of info for importing worlds and I haven't actually managed to write it yet...

I'll edit this with pictures and examples but for now I'm just going to dump the info needed, hope it helps...

A valid import file is a 1024x1024 uncompressed .tga file. 8, 24, and 32 bit variants all work.
The file must be called heightmap.tga.

As of V1.3, you can now drag these files into Topia via iTunes file sharing, just drag the file into Topia. You can still use software like iFunBox or iExplorer to get the file onto your device, simply drag heightmap.tga into Topia's documents folder.

Run the game and now, while editing your world, an 'import' button will appear in the Edit menu.

In 8 bit monochrome mode the colour of the greyscale image corresponds to the height above sea level, in a colour image the red channel is the height above sea level.

The simple 'import' button reads the file in. Everything will be above sea level but can be adjusted to be more interesting in the Scale/Offset/Smooth tools.

The 'Import & Make Seabed' does more and is designed to work with some heightmap files I found while experimenting. In this mode anything with a height of 0 is the sea. Rather than have a world with oceans that are only puddle-deep this mode generates an 'interesting' seabed automatically. 

With colour files the green channel is a 'grassiness' map, the blue is a 'potential grassiness' map, it's easiest to make these the same at the moment.

Sorry about the rushed guide, I will be updating this page with examples as soon as possible.

Topia V1.2 released

Suddenly, after an insanely long delay, V1.2 of Topia is out. This release has taken a while and is mostly focused on the editing tools and being able to finally save the levels in a non-insane way.

New features are:

• Completely rewritten save system, level edits are no longer stored as a weird, confusing timeline, they are now saved completely as they appear. This was the bulk of the update and I spent a lot of time ensuring the save and load were as quick as possible and don't use an insane amount of space. Storage requirements for a level are variable but tend to use somewhere between 1 and 2 megabytes for each slot
• There is now the concept of 'grass' and 'potential grass'. This basically means that you can now paint down paths and patterns in 'dirt' and the grass, as it grows, will not cover them. areas of 'dirt' can be reclaimed as grass with the grass painting tool as long as they aren't too near the sea, too steep and rocky or above the snowline.
• The painting tools have been hugely optimised, this means that people on slow devices (iPhone4 and older + the original iPad) will see much less of a slowdown than before.
• New lighting: Lighting calculations have been optimised for better performance while the resolution of the lightmap has been enhanced.
• Better water animation: The way the water refracts the seabed under it is much more realistic and looks cooler.
• Tree planting. Players can now plant trees anywhere flat enough for trees to grow.
• Importing levels from graphic files: More info on this coming later...
• Preset worlds: Players can start from a selection of preset worlds, 7 in the current version.
• Scale/Offset/Smooth tools, used to make world scale changes to the level.
• Advanced tools: Some silly effects to tweak your world
• Life editing in edit mode: Wipe out all trees and creatures, plant random trees.
• Updated landscape tutorial
• Vine camera loop mode: The camera travels and rotates over the world and is back to where it started exactly six and a half seconds later. Film this from Vine on another device and it's fairly simple to make seamless looping videos.

Now I have to post another blog detailing how the import works in case anyone tries to follow the link painted as a path in the Creator's Message world!