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Winds of Almerra

An open-world, melee RPG full of life built in UE4

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Image Data Layering

Creating gameplay and other iterable data from specialized images

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For mapping data elements, nothing beats spreadsheets.  When planning out massive game worlds, there is sometimes a need to align foliage, fauna or other data elements to world space to procedurally add various mechanics.  This is where a simple conversion script can come in handy to directly convert images to csv's.

Data Layering with Image to CSV Conversion

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(Happy data generated using 'B' color values, slightly warped just due to my column sizing in excel :) )

Easy peasy in C#!  The struct for the Y alignment columns needs be to setup in Unreal according to the image's resolution.  The above is using a 64 x 64 image, and is read/wrote using System.Data; and System.Drawing;

The method involves taking a specific pixel via:
System.Drawing.Color pixelColor = testimage.GetPixel(x, y);

and breaking it into its R,G,B component via:
string pixelColorStringValue = pixelColor.B.ToString("D3");

From there its as simple as adding the image.Width and .Height into loops based on a set image size to bookend the comma deliminator.  Now you can draw any kind of data within Photoshop!

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