Mudlet mapper issues (Achaea)

[dlz]

hi everyone,

I have been using the mapper for a few weeks now and have mapped a few thousand rooms beyond the stock areas acquired from IRE's png files. I have come across the following bugs/issues/suggestions, and stuff...

When mapping is on, the mapper displays the message that it's adding a missing exit to the in, whenever you walk past an in exit, even if the the exit (and the room its connecting to) already exist. It doesn't actually seem to be doing anything other than displaying the message.

There is no link bending function. That is to say, every room has to be connected to every other room via a straight line. You either end up with a really cluttered-looking map, or a really spread-out, difficult to read map. The addition of something like "exit stop" in the vadi map, or the ability to bend links like in the zMapper would be HUGE. See the attached screen shot montage for an example of what I mean.

A lot (and I mean A LOT) of inter-zone links are so dark. Perhaps having one set color for these zone-to-zone links would be easier? Maybe bright yellow or bright white?

It seems that when you load the map, the visual components are somehow "redrawn". This causes some rooms to be moved (I like the word scrambled) because they are orienting themselves to a room "below" instead of "next" to. The issue here is that the map I saved is not drawn the same as the map that opens.

Rooms without persistent vnums cannot be mapped with any sort of meaningfulness... I am addressing the issue of deep sea diving areas mostly. The same few vnums keep showing up, but not necessarily in the same "position" or with the same exits.

This last issue is, in my opinion, the biggest issue presently. When exits are drawn, they are not oriented to anything in particular. A link that represents a NE exit is not necessarily attached to the upper-right corner of one room and the lower-left corner of another room. This makes areas like Lorielan's maze and the Bog of Ashtan nearly impossible to map or navigate. Most of the links in the Bog of Ashtan map are unidentifiable. You can't look at the map and know which exits a room has. Without the exits being anchored to the compass points of a room, I feel like the map loses an enormous amount of usefulness as a visual guide. There are some who disagree, so perhaps a "snap to compass points" addition?

[Vadi]

You need to update your mapping script for 'in' exits to stop being mapped.

[Heiko]

Added new functions to define arbitrary exit lines with different colors, different line styles and with or without an arrow symbol. These can be used to visualize map errors or special exits. I've tried to map your example bog above with the new features and got this (prolly not complete):

[Heiko]

About the rest of your ideas: You can customize the 16 ANSI colors that are used by the MUD in the mapper indiviually from the normal text console colors -> preferences -> mapper colors. This will do away with your dark area exit problem. I've added little arrows to area exits to make it more obvious, but the best solution imho is to merge all areas into a single map -> see my Midkemia single map demo howto.

Your other issues were Achaea mapper script related. I'd change that script to a single room mapping mode instead of the current add-as-many-rooms-per-move-as-possible policy.