Zugg Software :: View topic

Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2003 7:30 pm

Good news: the other (non Zuggsoft) projects that have been taking up much of my time over the summer are now over. So, I should be able to go back to devoting more time to programming. I didn't expect these projects to take so much time away from programming and next time, I'll say "No" when asked to help with other projects Wink

Anyway, after being gone most of last week, I am now back and getting caught up with email and forum posts. I plan to add the improved user interface for dealing with Doors to zMapper tomorrow and hope to have the new version released early next week (before the end of the month).

Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2003 11:02 pm

OOhhh, this is getting fun! Cool

I've got the Door tool working now. You can now just click the Door tool and click on the edge of a room to add a door. If two rooms are touching, a 2-way door link is created. The position of the door on the edge of the room is determined by where you click. So, if you have a huge "cooridor", for example, with several smaller rooms along one wall, you can use the Door tool to just click on the edge of the cooridor where you want the doors.

The new Move Door tool also lets you drag doors to new positions.

I've still got a few more bug fixes and tweaks (when you resize the room after adding doors, the door locations get messed up). But it's coming along very nicely. I've already fixed lots of bugs and done lots of tweaks to the display output that will help both in zMapper and zMUD. Stuff like exit lines not always being perfectly horizontal or vertical, and door sizes not being correct. I've also fixed a bunch of bugs with this stuff in Hex maps so that doors on the hex boundrys display correctly, and using the door properties to "overwrite" the border of the room works correctly. Custom door shapes are also now rotated properly when used on non-horizontal or non-vertical exits (like diagonals).

Looks like I'll still need Monday to fix the last few annoying bugs with the door locations, and then I'll add a method to select multiple exits to apply a exit type to more than one exit at a time, and then add the code from zMUD to allow you to change the background colors and stuff. If all goes well with that on Monday, look for a release Tuesday.

Once zMapper is released, it will take another week or two to fix some bugs in zMUD and release a new version that is compatible with zMapper. Until the new zMUD is released, some changes made to your map in zMapper won't display in zMUD yet.

I'll also try to release a new tutorial next week showing how some of the new features in zMapper can be used.

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

*grin* so looking ahead what's the plan after zmud/zmapper are synchronized... will you continue improving zmapper, or moving back to zexplorer for a bit?

one thing that I would really *LOVE* to see is teaching the import command how to load (multiple) area files from a MUD... so you give it the file(s), and tell it what fields of the file are interesting (eg name, description, and how the exits are encoded), and which ones to discard (like room programs, etc)

I'd love to not have to manually map my entire MUD with zmud *grin* it takes so long and its forever changing, if there's some way I could load all the data from the area files and get a complete view of my mud that would be extremely useful and cool

Hehe, its probably not what most people would use zmapper for though, I guess.

Posted: Sat Sep 27, 2003 6:25 pm

After zMUD/zMapper are synchronized, I'll be back to zExplorer. I need to finish adding the features of AC Explorer to zExplorer so that I only have one version to support. After that I'll be mostly working on zMapper with updates to zExplorer and zMUD as needed to keep them in synch.

Better importing/exporting is planned down the line. Remember that I want to be able to use zMapper myself to design/import/export actual MUD area files. But you probably won't see that until next year.

Posted: Sat Sep 27, 2003 8:55 pm

quote:
Originally posted by Zugg

After zMUD/zMapper are synchronized, I'll be back to zExplorer. I need to finish adding the features of AC Explorer to zExplorer so that I only have one version to support. After that I'll be mostly working on zMapper with updates to zExplorer and zMUD as needed to keep them in synch.

Better importing/exporting is planned down the line. Remember that I want to be able to use zMapper myself to design/import/export actual MUD area files. But you probably won't see that until next year.

Using zMapper to design MUD areas would be a truely great thing. I've been seeing this as a great possibility since I downloaded the first release of zmapper. Looking forward to that addon myself, and now that I know it's on your list of things to do, I can start getting the information together to let our builders know how to do it.

Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2003 12:24 am

Sigh...ok, fine. Seems that whenever I try to push a release, it just gets me in trouble. Got stuck on some bugs today and made little progress on my to-do list for this release. Some days I guess I'm just cursed.

So, I'm back to saying that "It will be released when it's ready". Should be this week if I can get these gremlins out of my system.

Thanks for your patience. I hope that when its released that you'll agree it was worth the wait.

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

Hehe Zugg you should know by now that we're happy to wait (even if we do have to wait like children the night before christmas) :)

The main thing is that things get released when they're ready, not rushed and then 3 critical updates released each week for the next 2 years ;)

Magician Joined: 09 Oct 2003 Posts: 459 Location: USA

For those of you that remember the old ASCII Mapper application for laying out areas: The same guy is working on implementing the same idea via zmud:

http://www.dlogs.net/download/mapper_v1_1_zmud6_57.zip

It's still in early alpha stages, but looks pretty decent. One of my mud's coders got it redesigned to work with our mud. But, check it out.

Apprentice Joined: 28 Oct 2003 Posts: 164

For those that don't, could you refresh us? :)

Magician Joined: 09 Oct 2003 Posts: 459 Location: USA

ASCII Mapper allowed you to layout an area using the keypad and then tell it to generate the rooms. It would generate a series of .c files all coded and connected just like they were on your map and all you needed to add was descriptions and mobs.

This zmud script does basically the same thing, except using zmapper.

Apprentice Joined: 28 Oct 2003 Posts: 164

Ah, very cool!