Automatically Generate a SnowRunner Map From the Real World

Hey guys, I have great news: the SnowRunner integration is fully complete.

And for the FS25 guys, I have a lot of updates too—but first things first.

SnowRunner Is Ready

The SnowRunner export now has everything you need: terrain, forests, water, buildings, plants, distribution rasters, mud rasters, wetness rasters, and powerful modifiers for procedural generation.

Feature-based fill, for example, is smart enough to understand where water should be based on the terrain and the water features. You don’t need to paint everything by hand or already know exactly how every SnowRunner raster should look.

I also added gameplay zones, so you can place them in the game quickly. And there are even simple contracts that can be generated automatically from those zones. They are for casual players who don’t want to make contracts manually right now and are perfectly happy with something simple: pack and play.

And of course, the integration comes with complete documentation and a useful Checklist in the Editor.

I Was Sure I Would Drown Here

In less than ten days, I added the SnowRunner integration end to end.

I had been thinking about SnowRunner for a long time, but every time I looked at it I was like: OMG, I’ll drown here. I still remembered how painful the FS25 research was, and I wasn’t exactly excited to repeat that adventure from zero.

But I think that experience made my brain work completely differently. I know all the little tricks for reading and comparing things effectively now. I understand much better how games work, what usually matters, and where to look when something is hiding from me.

But Most Importantly: MapToPlay Rails

I don’t need to care about building terrain, vectors, alignment, exports, collections, or editing again. Everything is already there. Everything is unified and standardized. The platform gives me the complete foundation, and I only need to check how the game works and how to pack its stuff.

So that whole idea—build the platform once, then add only the specific parts for each game—is now fully proven. Yes, SnowRunner is the fourth game in MapToPlay, not the second. But it is the second game with such a detailed, powerful, feature-rich export.

Where the Idea Came From

You know what? I announced MapToPlay in April, even before it had a name, but to be honest I had already been thinking about it for about a year.

From the very beginning, when DTM data appeared in Maps4FS, I started thinking: hey, it’s the same. It can be reused. So first I isolated DTM into a separate library and standardized it. Then I did the same for vectors. They never became a separate library because there was no need, but that was when I realized the whole thing could be universal.

Any game, the same rails. I just needed something between input and output—something convenient and interactive. That is how the idea of MapToPlay was born.

Thank You, Saber

And of course, I want to thank Saber. Their editor is so good and user-friendly, and the data structures are awesome. Seriously, it was a pleasure to dive into it and automate it.

I wish every game had tools this friendly for developers like me. That is a huge reason I was able to do this so fast instead of drowning there for weeks, as originally planned.

And Now, the FS25 Guys

As promised: a bunch of quality-of-life updates. Really, a lot of them. I have already forgotten most of the smaller ones, but you will definitely find these:

• Rename features
• Move features to a different layer and category
• Rotate, scale, and move features in the viewport
• Copy and paste features either with all modifiers and attributes or in geometry-only mode
• Pan the terrain with the left mouse button and use the mouse wheel to zoom in the Navigate tool

Thanks for your attention.

And as usual, feature requests are always welcome.

SnowRunner has just become part of the MapToPlay ecosystem, and it will definitely need real user feedback to add features, polish things, and find everything I couldn’t find alone.

Stan, Developer of MapToPlay