Would it be ok to make some new city overlays?

[Othesus]

It's been bothering me for a while that the city overlays have been missing connections so I was wondering if it would be possible to put together some new ones.

Here's the current Freeport map:


and here's what I came up with:


It's not drastically different but I think it's a little cleaner looking. Anyway, let me know what you think.

[Dolby]

Your updates look nice. What code changes, file changes and new files are required for this?

[Othesus]

Oh, so far, for Freeport it's just two files-- map_freeport_all_overlay.dds and zones_freeport.xml (to move the icons and text around)

[Othesus]

Here's the current Qeynos map:


and a revised one:


The changed files are just map_qey_all_overlay.dds and zones_qeynos.xml.

Any suggestions?

[sstair]

Can you attach the two updated DDS files, and the two modified XML files to this thread?

[Othesus]

Just a couple tweaks-- I worked on the icons and added a thin drop shadow to the overlay.





So, no suggestions?

[gm9]

No suggestions, unless you want to add a legend to explain the colors and icons.

Otherwise just let the EQ2Map team have the files already, looks good enough to go live.

[Othesus]

Ok, this should be the last update unless anyone has any suggestions. The zip file has the two DDS files and two xml files.

[sstair]

They work fine, and have been pushed live.

[Othesus]

Here are the PSD files with all the layers saved from the GIMP if someone needs to make changes in the future.

I think the auto-updater doesn't check those files normally so to get them you would need to delete:
zones_freeport.xml
zones_qeynos.xml
map_freeport_all_overlay.dds
map_qey_all_overlay.dds

[sstair]

Originally Posted by Othesus

I think the auto-updater doesn't check those files normally so to get them you would need to delete:

The updater downloaded them to me after I uploaded them and recalculated the file stats, so you should not need to do anything different to get the changes.

[gm9]

Yes, they get automatically updated. Of the graphics I think it is only the icon_map3.dds which does not get updated if it exists.

Thanks Othesus for the update, looking good!

[Othesus]

I know almost nothing about VB and .NET but I was just wondering, does the updater use compression? Those files I changed compressed by about 90% and Dolby mentioned that eq2map causes them to go over their bandwidth all the time.

[sstair]

It is possible whoever saved the previous version of the DDS file didn't save it with the right settings. There are a few DDS files that are like that on the server. You can pick them out pretty easily by the file size being different. Usually, the problem is that people didn't turn MIP Maps off when they save them.

I've thought about fixing them, to save on download size, but as it is, everyone already has the files downloaded, and if they get modified, everyone would have to re-download them, which would defeat the purpose.

[Othesus]

Yes, I've noticed that some of the map files are bigger than they need to be because they include mip maps. What I was asking about was whether the eq2map server and client programs use any kind of data compression like zlib to reduce the bandwidth load.

[sstair]

No, it doesn't. We had discussed it at one point, but nothing ever came of the discussion.