Heightmaps
A heightmap is an image that defines the landscape of your game. Keep in mind that your game doesn’t necessarily need a heightmap, but they are perfect for driving, racing, and role-playing games.
Heightmap images are made in Grayscale mode, which means that there is no color in them, but just 256 shades of gray. You can create mountains and valleys and plains in a heightmap through the use of different shades. Anything that is fully white represents the highest peak, whereas anything that is completely black represents the lowest point (see Figure 8.1).
Figure 8.1. The image on the left is the heightmap that was used to create the image on the right. As you can see, the areas that were white represent the high points and the areas that were black represent the low areas.
Now on to the fun part. We are going to create some heightmaps in PHOTO-PAINT. There are hundreds of thousands of possible combinations we can use to create a heightmap, but here I will discuss three different methods. Once you have reviewed these methods, try creating some heightmaps on your own.