Zugg Software :: View topic - Multi-Layers (big picture warning)

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

I'd like to see the ability to view more than the standard 'above', 'current' and 'below' ... like have a threshold or something where you can see X rooms above and below (I did 3 above/below manually).

The colours are a bit whack, but you get the general idea... I'm still not sure if the bottom layer should be darkest, or lightest... ie make them fade into the background colour, or make them stand out the most in a 3d-style stack.

Also, I didn't get the links to draw on those above the map, but I think that maybe they should... though I guess you probably don't want links to block out the current layers.

I guess you'd draw the stack bottom to top, skipping the current layer, then draw the current layer so that it covers anything that potentially would have blocked it?

Anyways... :)
-- Rainchild

GURU Joined: 27 Sep 2000 Posts: 90 Location: USA

Damn!

SubAdmin Joined: 18 Nov 2001 Posts: 5182

I second Leto, on that. Lot of work to get your point acrossed, and I think it is a great idea. Probably be hell for Zugg to implement though.

Posted: Thu Oct 09, 2003 6:20 pm

I'll give it some thought when working on future versions of zMapper. It's actually pretty easy to implement. The hardest part is probably the user interface for letting you decide how to color each layer. But the drawing loop in zMapper is already a loop like this:

For iZ := Z-1 to Z+1 do...

so that it loops through the current 3 levels. Changing this loop is the easy part.

Also keep in mind that drawing the map on the screen is one of the most time-intensive jobs. The more levels you draw, the slower it will be to do simple stuff like scroll the map. But there are plenty of people with faster of computers these days, so it might be useful.

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

Aye, throw a geforce 4 at it, and maybe we could even alphablend the rooms instead of colour them, hehehe... but colours is fine enough for me :)

Enchanter Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 656 Location: USA

This does sound like a great idea, but for those of us with slower pc's could we keep this optional. Perahaps have a option to choose the number of levels to display.

Posted: Fri Oct 10, 2003 8:16 pm

That's exactly what I'll do. I'll allow you to select the number of levels above and below that you want displayed. And I'll probably have separate settings for printing.

SubAdmin Joined: 18 Nov 2001 Posts: 5182

Sweet!