Mudlet - Forum

I don't see the need to right-click for options when other UI interfaces should provide it all and right-click could be used for easy navigation. I'll think on F11 though.

Right-click menu will be available in the mapping mode, but otherwise right-click will move the map in the normal mode.

Some screenshots for discussion: Feel free to post all and every ideas about the mapper here while at it.

Idea on how to represent paths in the main window - should exits between rooms be connecting lines, a path should make the exit lines glow blue and make them bigger in diameter.

@Jeremy
Perhaps now is a good time to bring up 'space' from the upcoming Tears of Polaris game. That is an instance of a three dimensional mud (or area of the mud) which is limitless, and based around x, y and z coordinates. Movement will be a direction + speed, rather than a room by room thing.

There are other muds like this, but you are here/now in this thread, and it is one of your games.


@Vadi/Heiko
There needs to be a limitless number of user-definable fields for room information. I want to be able to capture information from 'survey' (which is a command that provides detailed information about the current room, in IRE muds. I'm sure most muds have a similar command, not to mention just capturing information from the room descriptions).

If a room is territory controlled by a city, I want that detail stored somewhere. If it has a shrine to a god, I want that detail stored. If it has an aggressive npc or rare quest item in it, I want to be able to store that detail there. I want to be able to easily display a map of an area, with colours that are meaningful to me right now. One week I may be involved in a city vs city war, so I want a map where all of my city's territory is coloured green, and all of the enemy's territory is shaded red. Two weeks later, the war will be over and I will want my maps to show shrine locations in similar colours. Or I may want to go back to displaying room types (forest, water, desert etc) in their colours.

I also want to be able to script this somewhat. Shrines, for example, affect the rooms adjacent to the room with the actual shrine in it (we call it 'shrine influence area'). Therefore, I want the freedom to add code that will colour that area of influence as well.

I imagine that this will all be possible, with the room information being stored in table(s). Lua is kind of perfect for the sorts of things I just mentioned.


@Heiko/Vadi - wild idea?
You're already displaying 3D cubes for each room, how about an 'inside the cube view?' It would look boring/basic with the default cubes/exits, but with the option of adding your own skins to each cube, muds could have the option of designing artistic 3D representations of specific areas, if not their entire mud (which would be ridiculously time consuming, of course).

A lot of players seem to be pretty artistic people, and I could see them doing designs for their own player-built houses, or even just some of their favourite places in the mud. Guilds would, over time and with group efforts, illustrate their guildhalls in this way.

Yes, customizable room data is definitely something that was in my mind too.

Along with the customizable cubes - someone talented could put a 3D house in there or etc.

Here's a mockup I did purely for fun. Probably wildly impractical.

(Clicky for full-size version)

You actually have some very nice ideas there for the mini view.

I'm missing exits (up/down/in/out?) and also it might be a bit difficult on the eyes if you have several levels of elevation, but I thought it came out nice. My inspiration was Stonesense, a program that hooks into a known game called Dwarf Fortress and gives it some nice graphics.




Say, I don't know a whole lot about how your mapper's workin' out there, but with all of the functionality you're building into it, do you think I actually get my map to look like my mockup? Because I absolutely love the old retro SNES look.

Would be a bit hard, because we're actually using 3D openGL, not sprites and images

But I like the tooltip/description thing you have showing.

Alexander Divine wrote:Here's a mockup I did purely for fun. Probably wildly impractical.

I actually rather like this idea of rooms not being a box but a floor, but the trees and such are overkill.