BMPtoDAT is a small application written in VB.NET in mid 2007 which reads bitmap images and converts them to Populous map files (.dat) The program works as a console application which reads in the bitmap path as a command line argument and then outputs a dat file with the same filename which is the converted map.

BMPtoDAT takes the colour blue to be water. Any other colour is taken as land, the height is based on the green component of the RGB pixel colour. This is then multiplied by 4 giving you a range from 0 to 1024 which is the height range that is valid in Populous.