Zugg Software :: View topic

Enchanter Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 698

I've purchased several licenses for both zmud and zmapper, and given them to friends. Some friends are only known through mudding, others have never connected to a mud.

I thought I'd make some really kicking maps for a mud or two, using a geographic background bitmap overlayed by my zmud maps. I'd pass these maps along with the next public versions of both programs and reg codes.

My Grand Idea to Promote Zmapper Sales:

I figured if the maps were good enough, they might get passed around and maybe even spark interest if they were posted on the web.

Playing with MSPaint and captured pics created an acceptable background but it wasn't great. After taking a break from mudding for awhile, and getting frustrated with trying to be an artist —I'm not— I started playing WarCraft III again.

“Whoa!” said I, “These world editors and tile sets are really sweet. I bet I could almost recreate the terrain of the mud with these.”

Well, It almost works okay except for the not-quite-overhead camera angle. I just capture sufficiently small squares from the editor and paste them together in a graphics program to reduce the distance distortion.

The problem occurs with the scale. I'd like to use the largest versions of the graphics tiles, units and doodads so that zooming in on the map will show great detail, but trying to make everything fit is an immense job.

The Request:

The WCIII world editor has coords displayed for three dimensions with the center point being 0,0,0. The zone map I'm using has a center co-ordinate of roughly X=27,408 Y=32,200.

It would be MUCH easier if I could export the particular zone to it's own .mdb and then modify the coords of all the objects by using an offset.

Then all I'd have to do is place objects in the world editor based on the coords from the zmapper window and create the evironment around those structures and objects.

Then it's just a matter of creating a GIF of the current zmud map and copying and pasting the ‘picture’ over the map, aligning accordingly.

It is possible to do now by adding/subtracting from the map coords by hand and calculator, but if zmapper would help me do this, that would be so much better.

Posted: Sat Feb 07, 2004 9:41 am

You can already do this. This is actually almost exactly the kind of thing I currently do with zMapper when I'm making a new game map for zExplorer for something like Star Wars Galaxies.

The first step is to just create the background GIF like you said (using WC III is a great idea btw).

Next, run zMapper and create a new map database. Use the Zone/Background to load your background image. Then, use the Zone/Offset to set the first point. You'll enter the coordinates of the pixel on the background image and the coordinates in "game units" for a single point, like the origin. Once the origin is set, then use the Zone/Scale to do the same thing for another point on the map, like one of the corners.

This will set up the scale to convert from the pixels of the background image into your actual game coordinate system. Once this is set, you then can add rooms based upon their game coordinate values, much like we add dungeons, cites, etc to the zExplorer maps.