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Gruppe Adler Map Tile Generator

Gruppe Adler Map Tile Generator (grad_mtg) is an Arma 3 Modification built on intercept, which allows the generation of so called map tiles.

Check out our FAQ at the bottom of this README for more info.

Installation

Download the latest version of the mod from our releases page. The only dependency, which has to be loaded as well is intercept.

How to use?

0. MAKE SURE YOUR GRAPHICS SETTING "DISPLAY" IS ON "FULLSCREEN WINDOW"
1. Start arma with grad_mtg and intercept.
2. Go into the editor and open the map you want to generate tiles of.
3. Place a player-unit and start the scenario in singleplayer.
4. Once the mission has loaded press ESC and take a look at the debug console.
5. Type the command you wish (see below) into the Execute field and press LOCAL EXEC.
6. The statement should return true (check the black line directly below the text field) and there mustn't be any script errors.
7. Close the ESC Menu, or the debug console will be visible on the tiles, and wait five seconds to let grad_mtg do its thing.

Commands

gradMtgStart

gradMtgStop

gradMtgCompleteStart

gradMtgMeta

Exported Files

All exported files can be found in the grad_mtg subdirectory of your Arma 3 installation directory.

FAQ

What is a map tile?

According to Open Street Map Wiki: Tiles:

Tiles are rectangular slabs of ceramic affixed in a grid arrangement to your bathroom wall. [...]
Here we are much more likely to be talking about map tiles:

• square bitmap graphics displayed in a grid arrangement to show a map
• We may also be talking about tiled map data.

How does grad_mtg work?

In short the map tile generator works like this:

1. The ingame map is opened automatically
2. MTG zooms to the correct part of the map
3. A screenshot of the current extent is taken
4. The screenshot is cropped to only include the correct tile
5. Repeat the process from step 2 until all tiles are exported

What is a Level of Detail (LOD)?

The LOD specifies how much of the map one tile covers, but why do I need tiles of multiple LODs? Can't I just make 100m x 100m tiles of the map and thats it?
No, because if you then want to show the whole map (all the way zoomed out) the browser would have to display a lot of tiles. For Stratis (which comparatively is small) that would be 6724 tiles (82x82) and I think we can agree, that that is too much.
The solution is to show less tiles, which each cover more of the map. For example showing 1000m tiles would mean the browser has to display 81 tiles (instead of the 6724) for the whole of Stratis.

The LODs this generator exports look like this:

What is a map type? / What is the difference between topographic and satellite?

The best way to explain is probably to just show you:

Satellite	Topographic

Whats the nomenclature of the exported tiles?

Our nomenclature of the tiles matches the one of the OpenGIS® Web Map Tile Service Implementation Standard.

The tile in the top left corner is 0,0 with the first number specifying the column and the second the row.

In your Arma installation directory you can find a grad_mtg directory, which holds all files exported by grad_mtg. In this directory there is a subdirectory for each map, which holds next to a meta.json a topo and a sat folder.
From there on the relative path of a tile is {LOD}/{COL}/{ROW}.png.
So for example the topographic tile 0,0 for LOD 8 is topo/8/0/0.png and tile 10,0 (tenth tile in first row) would be topo/8/10/0.png.

What's the content of the meta.json?

The meta.json looks like this:

{
    "displayName": "Stratis",    // Map display name
    "grid": {
        "offsetX": 0,    // Grid origin offset from the left
        "offsetY": 8192  // Grid origin offset from the top
    },
    "layers": [    // Available "Layers" with path and display name
        {
            "name": "Topographic",
            "path": "topo/"
        },
        {
            "name": "Satellite",
            "path": "sat/"
        }
    ],
    "locations": [   // Locations of type nameVillage, nameCity or nameCityCapital
        {
            "name": "Air Station Mike-26",
            "pos": [
                4278.85009765625,
                3855.60009765625,
                -217.83058166503906
            ]
        },
        // [...]
    ],
    "maxLod": 8,                // Maximal available LOD
    "minLod": 2,                // Minimal available LOD
    "worldName": "Stratis",     // Return of worldName script command
    "worldSize": 8192           // Return of worldSize script command
}

How long will an export take?

How long an export takes will vary a lot depending on what exactly you want to do, with the biggest influencing factors being map size and export level of detail.
But for reference: It took us about 25minutes to export everything for Stratis (topographic + satellite & LODs 2-8)

But why aren't you just using the EMF export of Arma?

Yes in theory using EMF files would be a lot faster and easier, because you wouldn't have to let Arma run for an hour or so to export a big map. So why not use that?
We made lots of tests with the EMF export of arma, but came to the conclusion that the exported EMF is not of very good quality. Shapes which should be rectangular aren't. Some shapes don't have the correct proportions. Some shapes are completely missing.
And although you can fix some of those issues after the fact, you can't fix all. Here is an comparison screenshot which shows the map next to an an already corrected EMF. (The EMF coming directly from Arma is a lot worse.)
This means we have faulty vector data, which obviously cannot be used to generate correct map tiles.