Landscape Textures

The colours on each of the Darwinia levels are read from a single 64x64 pixel bitmap, specified by the level file. The colours are arranged in the file so that they can be applied to the level depending on the steepness and height of the land.
These files are located in the terrain folder, so creating modname/terrain/ will allow you to place custom terrain textures in your mod.
Heres a high quality image to demonstate how the file is layed out:




How this texture is applied to the level:



Ive used these horrid colours so that its easy to see where they are applied to the level.
As you can see, the red is taken from the top left corner of the file and applied to the low, flat areas at the bottom of the level. The Blue in the bottom left is applied to the flat areas in the high areas of the level (on top of the mountain), and the yellow and green are applied to the low and high steep mountain sides respecitively.
Obviously, if you don't want your level to look as crap as this example, you're going to want to make the colours in your file blend together nicely.
Save your file as a 24bit bmp, and put it in the terrain directory for your mod. Then alter the following line in your level file, in the Landscape_Startdefinition section (should be at the very top), to match the name of your new texture file:
landColourFile landscape_earth.bmp
Your level should now have the new texture file on it.

As a further note, height of any particular piece of land is relative to the rest of the level. Ie, if your whole level is flat, any small bumps on it will count as high ground, and will be shaded as a high area. However if your level has high mountains in it, those same bumps are still going to be low relative to the height of the mountain, and will be shaded accordingly.

Finally, heres a list of textures that are already there which you can use, to stop you from using extreme coloured lights to colour your level.

landscape_containment.bmp
landscape_default.bmp
landscape_desert.bmp
landscape_earth.bmp
landscape_icecaps.bmp
landscape_mine2.bmp
landscape_mine.bmp

So, there you go. Now you can make your levels more unique with crazy coloured landscapes!