Wiki: Maps?!

I've tried this before. It never works: the /loc command is confusing or it takes too much effort for people. But I'm going to try again.

If we can get some significant additions to the wiki in regards to locations (actual /loc not descriptions, though those have their place) for ground spawn items and named NPCs (in any zone including cities), I will try to produce more maps. Athica already has one linked from its zone page (see, under the picture-map?) Until I get myself set back up to upload to my ftp account, here is Keep of Mielech (oh so exciting).

These maps have a LOT of labels. Too many to look at all at once maybe. That is why there are four files - the 'base' and 1) map labels 2) npc names 3) ground spawns. You can turn each layer on or off in your map view in game. Also, I'm trying some different colors in Keep of Mielech, so I hope that makes it a little easier to view. Suggestions are welcome.

tl;dr
Find nameds, stand on their spawn point. Type /loc. Add those numbers to the wiki. Do it for ground spawns too.

Download this and put it in your maps folder.

If locations are added to the wiki, I can parse them into 'map code' - we can have our OWN maps. Not blank things. Anyway, its a great excuse to replace the "X spawns where Y did in Live" locations on the wiki (mielb was realllly bad about that.)

Like, mapfiend offers maps that have a very similar layout to what I'm proposing here. We only use ONE of four possible layers for our maps. Seems a little silly. But this would be a community project... I'm not doing all of the locations on my own, I literally don't have time, and since I play only slightly more than, oh, you do Cinn, it'd be a bit much to ask.

But as for 'changing maps' - this is just an optional thing atm. A wiki project >_>

edit ... damn you, you know i can't watch youtube at home.

... and they call me... the jackal.

'cause you're freakin' me out.

Nothing's where you think it is.

Chaotic Winds hosted a map pack that had many named locations already mapped. Perhaps do a dif on those to pre-populate your loc database?

I don't think CW's map pack is available to the public anymore. Even though it has a link to it on their page, that map pack is the same as the other one and is completely blank for every zone after installing it

nikosk said:

I don't think CW's map pack is available to the public anymore. Even though it has a link to it on their page, that map pack is the same as the other one and is completely blank for every zone after installing it

Click to expand...

my favorite part of the Chaotic Wind's map pack was the day emberflow was released their map pack was mysteriously updated with a map for it that had tags for the spawn point of every single named mob in the entire zone and some that didn't even exist and were probably cut in development.

that was a good map thanks chaotic winds

Nice idea

I like this idea. I have been working on some maps myself and I'd be willing to share them.

adding locations of NPCs on the wiki is how to help with this.

Cinn said:

why are we changing maps?

Click to expand...

OMG it's Dr. Phlox!

Wait, why is he changing maps?

Download
First of all, the downloadable archive of the first complete "run" of wiki maps. Choose the mirror of your choice.

Mirror 1: ZIP file on Google Docs Click File > Download original to download the file.

Mirror 2: ZIP file on Mediafire

This file can be extracted directly into the Maps folder in your game folder. Original map files will not be altered. In most cases, player-altered files will also remain unchanged (see below for more details on this matter.)

How Maps Work
I have come to the realization that many players do not understand how map labels work, and it is such a shame. There are three "areas" in the map UI that control labels (not including the Map Edit panel.)

Before you can understand the UI, it helps to understand the file structure. Within the Maps folder, four files are kept for each (visited) map. The base file is the file named with the mapname with no suffix. This file will have the basic drawing of the zone, and may also include some basic labels. mapname_1 _2 _3 are kept for player-labels and lines. These correspond with the 1 2 3 buttons in the UI.

The mapnames for many zones are easily sussed out with knowledge of the old zone name or shortname, but others are a bit more difficult to match. This information for all zones is available on the wiki (I added it myself last night), though not currently displayed at the time of this writing.

With the wiki maps, layer 2 is used for NPCs and layer 3 is used for ground spawn items. Layer 1 and base files are preserved.



Layers Visible control files of the map files are displayed. A yellow tint indicates a layer is active, white that it is deactivated. This can be especially beneficial when there are a great many labels in one file, and you need to hide only those. Layers hidden in this way are hidden completely, with no anchors shown for labels.

The Labels button found below the Active controls can hide labels on all layers while preserving all drawn lines. Labels hidden with this method are shown instead with + anchor marks on the map. Labels can still be viewed by mousing over them.

The Active layer indicates which layer any player edits (made in the edit panel) should be saved to. This is set to 1 by default, and when using wikimaps this is encouraged.

The Wiki Maps
Players insterested in helping the effort to expand these maps may save labels to _1 and submit these files to me via PM. 7z, RAR, or ZIP files are all fine. Locations may also be saved directly to the wiki. However, let me caution all editors in this: map coordinates do NOT match /loc coordinates (which are used on the wiki.) You cannot just open your map file and copy the coordinates you find there. While /loc gives x,y,z the map files use instead -y,-x,z and therefore must be converted. I have a method for converting map coords to loc coords in bulk, and am more than willing to do so (as I have done hundreds of these in the last 48 hours alone.) Any additional details about an NPC's location should be added in the Loc Details portion of the NPC template, and Location should be preserved for x,y,z coordinates only. Edit: Additional information in the case of groundspawns, where there is no Loc Details equivalent, should be added directly after the loc in parenthesis.

Many NPCs, groundspawns and most Adepts are not labeled on the wiki maps for a lack of proper loc data.

Adding Roaming, Patrols, or Wanders to the details (or indeed most deviations) will result in _(Roams) or _(Patrols) being added after an NPC's name.

If an NPC/Event is an Adept or Raid Tiered, their name will appear larger on the map. Adepts will also be a different color.

There is no current indicator for day / night only NPCs. I will seek to arrange this later, but it will be a rather large undertaking.

Optimally I would like to see NPCs colored based on average con color to 65, however the data given in the level field varies too much to make this possible atm.

I'm open to any additional suggestions. I hope people find these maps useful.

This is really cool and I support this. Awesome job, Rari!

This is an awesome idea and so far the pack is great! I did have one problem though with the file thurgadina_2 causing me to crash if I was looking at the map in thurg. The file looks fine, no obvious strange characters or anything so I'm not sure why it made me crash, but I couldn't load my character back up until i deleted the content from the file.
Wish I could be more help and have an actual fix for the map file.

I had someone else have a similar issues, Malloxx - I'm wondering if there is some sort of limit to how many labels can be displayed reliably. The person (norame4, who commented above you actually) said one of the z values got super-big in the file. I haven't had this issue when testing them though and I'm not sure what caused it.

We've had a lot of people adding new locations on the wiki, which is awesome. I'll try to create a new set for October, so keep adding locs!

I don't know if I have your halls of mielech map or what but when i go in there every npc spawn is marked on my map not just named ones. are you trying to mark every spawn or just named? every spawn would be tough to do because you'd have like 50 different locations for 1 mob and multiple mobs would share some of the same locations.

The focus is on nameds - I don't honestly expect people to add locs for mobs where there are 50 spawns. There is space in the template for 20 locs, though that can always be expanded on if necessary. I've never seen one NPC added with more than ~5 locs given.

That said, you can't accidentally get the wiki maps, you would have had to have downloaded them from here and added them to your maps folder. This is what my Halls of Mielech (guktop) map looks like.