Mudlet Mapper

Jeremy
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Re: Mudlet Mapper

Post by Jeremy »

For anyone else testing, Imperian is now sending out room numbers via ATCP. Unfortunately there are some problems with sending out Room Numbers with MXP. I have touched base with Zugg to see if there is something that can be done.

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Vadi
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Re: Mudlet Mapper

Post by Vadi »

Great, thanks!

With the pathing algorithms more or less decided (going to use one of the standard ones or modified, just doing testing atm on the data we got) and the model to come after that, what needs to be done meanwhile is an understanding of the geography different MUDs use so we can be flexible enough in the storage/pathing, along with room detection for the mapping process. I started a thread here: http://forums.mudlet.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1194 if you know of a MUD that isn't listed, do add it in!

chosig
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Re: Mudlet Mapper

Post by chosig »

Features that I would like:
  • Non-standard exits
  • Portals, ie. as in carried eq. not by exits from a room.
  • Portals, as in Aardwolf Hotel, one uses an amulet to get there, and it's just one room with exits to all the continents on Aard.
  • Re-binding of room exits from scripts.
  • Room script (that fires just in that room)
  • Area scripts (that fires just in that area)
  • Option to add flags to exits, so speedwalking will stop if a door is let's say "nopassdoor" and key is not in inventory.
  • Roomflags, option to mark a room norecall/noportal/pk/cmaze. If norecall use a portal, if noportal use recall if both do nothing, pk/cmaze to try and avoid those rooms in speedwalks if in a pk clan.
Aardwolf is a breeze to configure a mapper for, have "tags" made especially for scripting. Sample room (with all bells and whistles enabled)

Code: Select all

{rname}Whitewind Avenue (G)
{rdesc}
  You stand on Whitewind Avenue before a large intersection with a massive
statue and numerous people.  The city around you is incredible, with amazing
architecture, breathtaking horizons, and finely crafted roadwork.  Beneath
your feet, the road is made of a white translucent stone, likely quartz,
that sparkles in the sunlight.  To the north, the grand Aylorian Temple
stands high above the city.  
{/rdesc}

<MAPSTART>
Whitewind Avenue
 
 
     -------     ---        
    +{+} {+} {!} {+>|     
     -------     ---         
         [?] <*} [?]      
                 ---         
         [?] <*> < . [?]  
                 ---         
         [?] <#> [?]      
     -------     -------     
     -!- - - <!> -!- - -  
     -------     -------     
            |.*.|         
                |            
         [?] .!.|         
                             
 
[ Exits: N E S W U D ]
<MAPEND>
{exits}[Exits: north east south west up down]
{roomobjs}
{/roomobjs}
{roomchars}
A small green imp randomly runs about collecting garbage.
(C)(A) A sense of impending doom is sleeping here.
{/roomchars}

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Vadi
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Re: Mudlet Mapper

Post by Vadi »

@jeremys post: sorry, deleted by accident trying to delete mine. But yeah, it's ok, I misread what vars do if you read that.

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Heiko
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Re: Mudlet Mapper

Post by Heiko »

Re: Mudlet Mapper

Postby Jeremy » Fri Jan 08, 2010 7:16 pm
Okay, so for the RoomNum MXP tags Zugg has proposed a solution. You can read about it here:

http://forums.zuggsoft.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=34471

Basically looks like this:

<!ELEMENT RNum ATT="id" FLAG="RoomNum" EMPTY>
<RNum 1234>

Will this be an acceptable way to do it for Mudlet as well?
deleted by accident

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Heiko
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Re: Mudlet Mapper

Post by Heiko »

It's OK.

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Heiko
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Re: Mudlet Mapper

Post by Heiko »

These are 2 screenies to discuss map viewer properties - specifically, how to make it that it's easy to use, in particular, should be use different colors or color hues for height levels e.g. ground floor = green, the lower you go the darker, the higher you go the lighter?
The screenies only show the area of the home city of my Imperian test char - unsure about the city name, but i believe it's Ruins of Caanae or similar. The real map will contain the rest of the areas also in the picture which amounts to 190+ areas and about 20.000 rooms in this case. How do we make it that it's useful.
Attachments
Bildschirmfoto.png
Bildschirmfoto-1.png

Jeremy
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Re: Mudlet Mapper

Post by Jeremy »

That is wicked cool.

I think a green color for the ground floor good. Levels can become progressively lighter reds as you go up and blues as you go down, as in your example image. Character locations could be signified a yellow room.

Not sure if you can do it, but higher/lower levels would need to be semi transparent so you can see through them. Users will probably want the option to only their current level, and hide or turn off all other levels.

The room name and description could be shown in the side bar. Of course, we would have to export that as well. Perhaps players could 'click' on a room in the map window to see the name and description of that room as well.

I have a dozen more ideas, but I will hold off on them for now.

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demonnic
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Re: Mudlet Mapper

Post by demonnic »

We were actually discussing this in the irc channel today, which prompted the post with the screen shots.


I think most of us are in fact onboard with the transparency idea, though we don't want the colors to be hardcoded (so you can color code based on environment, for those muds which have such a thing) and instead do varying levels of transparency. Fogging, as 'twere, based on the current room you're in, though, and not on the camera location per se. so current level is completely opaque, the level above and below are each 50% transparent (this number made up, and obviously subject to change), the ones above/below those 30%, 15%, hidden... or something like that.

An option to toggle current area only was also put forth as a decent idea, current level could also be good. I think there was some talk of having multiple display interfaces available, 3d, ascii, 2d nonascii, etc...


share your ideas though =) The more ideas we have, the better we can make it. Which is to say, the better Heiko can make it, cuz he's the coding guru amongst us.

Jeremy
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Re: Mudlet Mapper

Post by Jeremy »

Ah yeah, I was thinking environments as well, and that would be easy to pass along.

Here is a list of ideas.
  • We can add a room type or size that would allow us to assign the room to look larger or smaller. We could assign a special color to it. Perhaps we could assign a graphic to the room like a tree, building, or other icon. This could be used to display shop rooms, special rooms, etc.
  • A way to display a door on the map.
  • User can set the background color or image.
  • I did not mention in that file I sent to Heiko to test, is that we have hidden room in areas that should not be visible until a player enters the hidden area. When they enter the hidden area, all the hidden rooms are visible. In order to do this we have assigned a 'subid' to groups of hidden rooms. The main rooms (not hidden) in an area have a subid set to 0 and are always visible. When a user enters a room with the subid set to 1, they can see all the rooms with a subid of 0 and 1. If they enter another hidden area with the rooms set to a subid of 2, they can only see the rooms with a subid of 0 and 2. I would love the ability to do something like that with this as well.
  • In addition to the crazy subid thing, we have areas that are built by players. For example, player houses. Of course, these houses are in existing areas. For example, I may have a player house in the city of Anitoch. I may build rooms in my house as I like. Some of those rooms may share the same coordinates as a city room. In order to deal with this we only show house rooms when a player enters a house. In these cases we just watch for when a player enters a house room, and then only display the rooms on the in game mapper that are part of that house, and we do not show any of the other rooms in the area.
  • Hidden rooms are pretty common in MUDs, but our 'house' rooms are not, so if this is undoable then we will probably not pass hidden rooms to the user when they download the maps.
  • Display the Area Name on the side as well. We would have to have that info passed along somehow.
  • A way to indicate the room is indoors or outdoors.
  • An indicator when a user enters a room that is not mapped.
  • More stuff that I can not think of right now.

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