Zugg Software :: View topic

Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2008 5:45 pm

I don't think you're going to get any dissension on the MXP-mapping thing, Rorso. As for where a discussion would take place, I'm sure that teddy bears will be involved. You'd better go incognito. Today's the day, after all.

(I don't know, the rhyme's stuck in my head for some reason. I had to let it out Sad

)

Wizard Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 1551 Location: Australia

Yeah, DirectDraw has pretty much been merged into Direct3D... it's not discontinued per se, you can still use the DirectX 7 interfaces to access it (even in DX9).

When I was playing around with rendering tiles a couple of years ago, I found it simpler to use Direct3D anyway - basically each "tile" is two triangles (4 vertexes) and you render them with no "Z" axis/rotation, so they appear as a 2D object directy in front of the camera. Not sure how that compares speedwise to using 2D drawing, but it allowed for nifty things like real-time lighting/alpha blending/etc.

I guess with the mapper you could in theory build them all as cubes and include the Z-offset, so you can see more than 1 level above/below your current position and be able to rotate the camera to more of an "isometric" view, but that's probably vast overkill ;)

Edit: I was bored... so put together a program to do a 3d view of my MUD's map from the CMUD MDB file Very Happy

I didn't support diagonals (since I don't use 'em) or non-standard exits but yeah... kinda neat.

Beginner Joined: 24 Mar 2007 Posts: 15

Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2008 4:48 pm

I'm not planning on doing any 3D stuff like that, sorry. I'm much more interested in graphical tile-based mapping, and that fits better with what a lot of MUD servers are looking for too. I actually want to get away from the "boxes connected by lines" concept of the current mapper and get into something a bit more flexible.

Wizard Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 1551 Location: Australia

Yeah, I agree that tiles would suit a MUD a lot better, it was more of a "I'm bored, I wonder what it would look like". The above image isn't really practical, to see the rooms clearly in 3D you need a much bigger window than you would in 2D, which takes away real estate from the main MUD window. Incidentally, there are ways to map a 2D surface onto a 3D object (even if it is just a plane), so you could potentially rotate the tile playfield to have it on an angle - like one of those 3D chess boards.

Beginner Joined: 24 Mar 2007 Posts: 15

I used to use MUSHclient before CMUD and nothing except scripting ever changed in that app. I like my software to evolve. Once he effectively said 'screw you' to any Vista users I knew it was time to switch.

So despite some frustrating bits, thank you for making a worthwhile alternative. :)

Let us know what you decide to go with, when you're there. :)

Posted: Mon Jul 07, 2008 8:49 pm

Getting this thread back on track:

I am starting on the Phase 1 of the mapper conversion this week. I hope to have this first phase done by early August, but stay tuned to the Beta Forum for more details. It will also have some other various bug fixes, but the next version due in early August will definitely be a new BETA version because of all of the mapper changes.

This new beta version will be CMUD 3.0, but it won't require any new license key yet.

Wizard Joined: 14 Aug 2004 Posts: 1269

Posted: Fri Jul 18, 2008 2:26 am

Hmm, interesting. I particularly like the comment on their page: "Z-Mud alike map". Heh. Anyway, I think it would personally drive me crazy, but it's kind of cool in a way too.
Using the flat square tiles instead of cubes helps a bit though. It's not as hard to figure out as the one Rainchild posted. But I'd have to play with it live to see how easy to use and responsive it was.

Enchanter Joined: 09 Sep 2007 Posts: 605

Mapper is one of the main z\CMUD features, visual enhancements for it should have a great effect (i.e. they are user attractive). After all, not everybody dreams of stuff like a new API for cMapper. Wink

Wizard Joined: 14 Aug 2004 Posts: 1269

Wizard Joined: 14 Aug 2004 Posts: 1269

Posted: Mon Jul 21, 2008 5:08 pm

The new mapper will use SQLite. The Database components that I will be using for this are called ZeosLib and it has drivers for many different databases. So in theory you'll be able to use other database engines. But what I found when doing the MDAC/ADO mapper in the past is that the mapper always needs optimization for speed that usually prevents *any* database from working with it. For example, the mapper depends upon the database being in memory for speed. This is true for "local" databases (like SQLite or even MDAC/ADO), but is not true for server-based databases. My guess is that a server-based map database would be so slow that it wouldn't actually be useable. So doing a shared map database requires a lot more than just using a server-based database engine, and that is currently beyond the scope of what I am doing.

There are lots of issues behind shared map databases. Not all of them are technical. There are ethical/legal issues involved in publishing a shared map of a particular MUD, unless the MUD itself wants to host it. The areas and zones of a MUD are owned by the MUD itself, or the builder of the area. Right now this data is just stored on your local hard disk, similar to just a "cache" of the MUD that you are playing. Making this database "shared" and available across the Internet is essentially publishing this data to everyone, and I can see many MUDs who would have a big problem with that.

I don't want to get into that in this thread, so if you want to talk more about issues involved with shared map databases, create a new topic for that. It's also something that has been talked about in the past for zMUD so you might be able to search and find some older threads that talk about it.

Wizard Joined: 14 Aug 2004 Posts: 1269

The only other thread on this suject (from 2002) appears to be in the zMUD Beta Forum, to which I cannot access.

Zugg, or another forum moderator, can you move this post, and the previous two (perhaps editing out the last paragraph of Zugg's post), to another thread in this forum called "Shared Map Database" or whatever you feel it should be called?

Newbie Joined: 02 May 2009 Posts: 9

in last beta u changed mapper interface a little. u dock "editmap toolbar" at left side in MapMode mapper and u cant replace it or remove. its disadvantage cause when u change FollowMode to MapMode(edit) this toolbar appers and map area redrawing so it becomes lesser a bit.
i ussualy use alias for change mapper mode. and have a lot of triggers which uses this macros (fe doorcreator script or recoloringrooms) and it change mapper mode 2 times in 0.1-0.2 seconds(cause impossible to edit rooms color, doors, links and other in followmode, so script enable mapmode , create door and enable followmode). if i editing zone with a lot of rooms(50+) then redrawing map take a little time and "shake" of cmud interface. so very uncomfortably to edit maps (.. (my map count about 30-40k rooms and i dont have doors in it ( so need to do great job)

ps i have good pc and itsnt a reason of this

Posted: Mon May 04, 2009 6:53 pm

You can rearrange the toolbars however you want. Just make sure you have the Lock Layout option turned off.

Posted: Fri May 22, 2009 9:20 pm

Just to update this post. The v3.0x BETA versions contain the "Phase 1" of the new mapper described at the beginning of this thread. I plan to release a PUBLIC version of 3.x as soon as I feel it is stable enough and has enough bug fixes.

The Phase 2 and Phase 3 of the new mapper will come *AFTER* the first 3.x Public version in later beta rounds. But all of the mapper improvements will still be added as part of the 3.x major version series.

Apprentice Joined: 14 Apr 2008 Posts: 105

On the subject of mapper ideas, it would be really cool if there was a way for triggers to add dots or icons to rooms dynamically, like if you get a message saying when you do a "scan" that there are enemies 2 rooms away south, 3 rooms away east etc that it could place a dot or icon in that many rooms in that direction for each -- let us use the map like a "radar" :) of course and a way to when we move out of the room to change icons created from being in that room to a different colour to indicate that they are the "last known position" rather than being up to date.. hell could even make it so additonal floating text could get added dynamically to rooms with the icons so you can hover over one if you want and see what it was you saw before was in that room :) I think the problem at the moment is you can only the entire room colour or icon for the whole room, not add "extras", and even with the room colour you have to specify the room exactly with a number rather than being able to say x in direction

edit: hmm this is interesting via google, http://mudstandards.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=87&start=50

oh and that picture Rainchild posted above is wowawesome :) but needs to be edited to be a thumbnail to click for larger pic or changed to a link really, it's making the text on the thread hard to read it's messing up the scrolling horizontally so you have to scroll text doesn't fit to the page anymor

Posted: Thu May 06, 2010 5:31 pm

Removing this post from sticky status because the information is old.

Apprentice Joined: 14 Apr 2008 Posts: 105

okies cool hope you look at that idea I posted though, I wanted something like that a while ago but it seemed just not possible to do cos of the limitations of how colours of rooms can be changed (only exactly rather than directional), tho of course the ideas about going further and better to let people show what's in different rooms would be even better :)

GURU Joined: 23 Dec 2000 Posts: 4834 Location: USA

Essentially, that can already be done, DK. It's just not simple and easy, might not even be reliable, and it definitely requires the use of ZMapper (or later Cmapper when that comes out).