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Adept Joined: 30 Dec 2001 Posts: 220 Location: Canada

Is there a way to convert my map into HTML format?

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

quote:

Is there a way to convert my map into HTML format?

Nope, not really. It probably CAN be done as a derivation of the map database, since you'd already have the coordinates for each room, but ZMud/ZMapper doesn't have the capability to do this.

li'l shmoe of Dragon's Gate MUD

GURU Joined: 15 Jun 2001 Posts: 654 Location: USA

I don't even think that the map coordinates would be necessary. I think PHLN wants a clickable version of the MUD map. Something like VRoma.

This is quite possible, but as MattLofton said, isn't a built-in function of zMUD. I would recommend that you go about this in a different way, however. If you are going to view the map as HTML, converting each room to a separate file would become unwieldy for MUDs with around 20,000 rooms (like WoTMUD). It's better to use the database to dynamically generate the content. If your web server runs ASP, you could use that to manipulate the Access database and generate room content on the fly... otherwise, you could create a MySQL database and export all the data to it (easiest way I've found is to open up the database in Access and use the ODBC driver for MySQL to export the data; note that at least with the stable public version you must rename a few field names temporarily so that they don't conflict with internal SQL keywords... this is only an issue with the driver, once they are in MySQL, you can change the names back). Then you could use PHP to generate room content and links automagically.

Anyway, those are some options.

- Charbal

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

quote:

I don't even think that the map coordinates would be necessary. I think PHLN wants a clickable version of the MUD map. Something like VRoma.

This is quite possible, but as MattLofton said, isn't a built-in function of zMUD. I would recommend that you go about this in a different way, however. If you are going to view the map as HTML, converting each room to a separate file would become unwieldy for MUDs with around 20,000 rooms (like WoTMUD). It's better to use the database to dynamically generate the content. If your web server runs ASP, you could use that to manipulate the Access database and generate room content on the fly... otherwise, you could create a MySQL database and export all the data to it (easiest way I've found is to open up the database in Access and use the ODBC driver for MySQL to export the data; note that at least with the stable public version you must rename a few field names temporarily so that they don't conflict with internal SQL keywords... this is only an issue with the driver, once they are in MySQL, you can change the names back). Then you could use PHP to generate room content and links automagically.

Anyway, those are some options.

- Charbal

I figured he'd want something graphical instead of a long list of textual links. For that, you'd have to know where to position the hotspots or images, right?

li'l shmoe of Dragon's Gate MUD

GURU Joined: 26 Jul 2001 Posts: 1958 Location: Canada

You could also post screen captures of the mapper then hotspot certain
areas to go to other zone screen captures etc.

Ton Diening

Adept Joined: 30 Dec 2001 Posts: 220 Location: Canada

errr, *look confuse*, wow, so many options (I think those are options), just none that I think I could figure out how to do =p.

I was hoping to have my maps in this type... so I can post it on sites.. check it out here, someone did it, but err, I thought it would be easier like coverting logs into HTML...

Anyway, if anyone figure out how to do this in easy steps, I would to learn

http://www.angelfire.com/grrl/yellow_ajah/Maps.html

above is a example of what I found, just don't know how to duplicate it

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

hmm, seems I might stand corrected. ZMud itself doesn't at all support this feature, but ZMapper seems to have an option of exporting to GIF image or XML (I assume this would be very much like HTML?). I think this is a working feature, but a quick look-through of the version notes (or a timely response by someone else to this thread!) should verify.

li'l shmoe of Dragon's Gate MUD

GURU Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 4379 Location: USA

Yeah, what you want is to export the map to a .gif image file using zMapper. The map isn't actually converted to an HTML page, it is converted into one big image which that person decided to link to in some page.

Exporting the map to XML is just like exporting it all into one big text file, but each part of a room is enclosed in tags that describe what that piece of text is. However, this would only be useful to applications that recognize these tags and know what to do with them.

Kjata

Adept Joined: 30 Dec 2001 Posts: 220 Location: Canada

If anyone interest on making the map into HTML format. then read the link here...

http://www.wotmud.org/forums/viewtopic.php?type=0&topic=29067&forum=55&0

GURU Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 4379 Location: USA

Yes, the screen capture method is what was done in the past. It is a painful process if your zones are big. Exporting using zMapper is much easier.

However, like it is mentioned in the link you posted, it doesn't allow for scaling. Of course, this doesn't prevent anyone from sugegsting it to Zugg. This should not be very hard to implement considering that the Printing routines already have scaling options.

Also, be sure to mention to the other people that were complaining about the map size and slowness in 6.40 that this is most likely due to incorrect versions of the MDAC and/or Jet drivers and that if a problem is never reported, then they can't expect to just sit there and hope that someday it might be solved.

Kjata