Graveyard fixed and FG added
 

Tony, I noticed you did not update your mainhud_map file with a mistake I had found in The Graveyard exit to Stonestair Byway being mislabeled. I fixed that and here it is for you, and anyone else who had updated their files with Tony's.

Quib, I am away from home at the moment but it was 2 of the crafting guild icons and waypoints.

Tony or quib, one of you guys may want to head over to oakmyst and follow the path down to the mariners bell, on the map that we have, its a slightly curving, almost straight path to the bell. In reality it is a curving ramp leading down to it and on the map you spiral off of the path a ways on your way down to it, but the bell icon itself is in the right location as well as all the other stuff about the map, the map's just drawn wrong in that area.

I cant find my vb6 cd anywhere and all my downloads aren't burning for me, but I finally found my vb5 disc in the garage so .net will have to wait until next time I want to use it and cant find the vb5 cd. The stupidest thing with the VBAccess is that in order to read or right a .text property you have to control.SetFocus first, it really irritates me.

Don't worry too much about Tony or Eloa getting bug fixes into the map xml when they post; I round up people's map xmls and get all the stuff organized and consolidated. This way, we don't need to worry about everyone modding from the newest version; I simply make sure everything xml side is taken care of in the end.

Eloa, it sounds like you might have an old version of the Oakmyst Forest map.

Quib

Highly possible

heres a better version of Fallen Gate. Lemme know if its up to par:)

Could you take the gray fill, and run the texturizer filter over it with the following setting (assuming you have photoshop):
Texture: Sandstone
Scaling: 100%
Relief: 1
Light Direction: Bottom
Invert: No

I really like the thick black borders and clarity.

Personally I find a drop shadow with the following settings looks a little less like a shadow, and more like smudging:
Blend Mode: Multiply
Opacity: 100%
Angle: doesn't matter
Distance: 0
Spread: 5
Size: 10
Quality -
Contour: x=y (line at a 45 degree andgle up and right, the first choice)
Anti-aliased: No
Noise: 0%
Layer Knocks Out Drop Shadow: Yes

However, the shadow is personal preference, and as you have it now does look fine.

I really dislike flat fill colors; the texture helps add to the illusion that it's a handdrawn map on parchment.

I'm in FG testing the zonerect, it's off a little, but I'll have it perfected by the next official release.

Quib

I'm working on a database program that I will put on my website when I'm finished.

It will have the following funcionality for users:

• add entries to tell us which maps we have not yet done
• add entries for each map of new locations that should be made as POI's
• add comments for the authors
• add quests and automatically generate the xml needed for them.
• and whatever else I think of that could be relevant for us.

For us developers:

• read the users entries in a structured format
• check off entries as they are completed and post the code for that entry with it
• respond with users
• and whatever else I think of that could be relevant for us to do.

Mainly this is just an exercise for me to get used to web programming as I just got my own site, but it will also be useful for us to keep track of all this information that we're trying to wrestle with. Any additional things you guys (devs) can think of that would be useful to implement, send me a PM and ill add it to my checklist

here ye are quib

/slap me if I'm being too demanding about dumb little specifics, but dang I believe that map is perfect. Here's my xml, I adjusted the fallen gate zonerect a little.

Diztorded, I haven't fixed the Stonestair Byway icons yet, or corrected them rather, but it's next on my to-do list.

Quib

The down below entrance in Elddar Grove is pointing to something off the map as well. It should be pointing to 518.58, -17,13, -397.15. I had assumed that this was an SOE bug, but perhaps not? There are many problems with paths in North and South Qeynos as well.

Any errors with pathfindlocations or icon placements in the maps that are default and provided by SOE are 99% likely bugs from SOE. We haven't messed with them much besides correcting SOE's errors.

Oh, and your corrected pathfindlocation has been commited to the xml. ^_~

Quib

3d maps
 

stormhold level 2 in 3d.

That Looks Great Sunthas :nana:

Someone REALLY needs to come up with a guide on "How to Map" a zone. With links to all the software needed. I can think of a bunch of zones that really need mapping, Like Nektropos Castle for one. I'd love to map it but all I know how to do is make a /loc button and run around clicking it.

here ya go. I have uploaded this before, but im sure other people havent searched this thread just like you:)

Update 1st Post
 

Perhaps you should update the 1st post of this thread with this type of information. :)

You know what would be really cool (although I'm unsure if it's possible) would be if the maps were Vertex based like Clipart is. They'd be scaleble to any size and be really small. They'd also be VERY easy to create from /loc points. But since I know nothing about XML my idea is prolly just noob foolishness.

Unfortunately, EQ2 doesn't support point based maps (like EQ1 used). You didn't really ask for something noobish (EQ1 uses an XML UI and it has point based maps), it's just a matter of not understanding what XML is. It isn't programming; it's a textual representation of graphics. Although we have some flexibility with OnEvent properties to pseudo-program, XML is really just another form of graphics file.

Nearly everything you see that changes dynamically on the UI (number values, gauges, the arrow on the map, etc.) is a hardcoded function of EQ2; XML is just telling EQ2 where that change happens.

I have mixed feelings about point based maps. They'd be much uglier than what "can" be done with EQ2's mapping system; they'd also be much easier to make and more accurate.

Quib

I downloaded the most recent zip file of this mod but it doesn't have all the maps that are listed... is that on purpose or a bug?

Or are the only selectable maps the ones whre there are multiple maps to a zone?

go and download the mod if you want everything. This is a development thread, not meant for everyone to download and use as a mod :)

Quoted from http://www.eq2interface.com/download...php?s=&id=3391:
"Maps automatically load when you enter a zone! The select map tab is to choose icon overlays for Antonica, The Commonlands or Thundering Steppes and to showcase the multi-floor maps."

I'll bold and underline that paragraph when we get to the next official release. Also gonna redo the acknowledgements section of the readme to more clearly show the amazing effort put in by people who've helped directly with this project (diztorded and taco-man to name a few) as opposed to website links that should get a seperate listing.

Quib

Fallen Gate
 

The FG map looks AMAZING! One point though is that the circle room in the NE area is below the passages. The map has the circle area above. Also, the walls do not match up in the center with where you actually are. On the edges,NESW corners, it matches up perfectly. I rechecked the /loc numbers and they match. Is there something that I can do to maybe correct this? I personally do not see it as a BIG deal because it is heads over heals better then what we had before, nothing.

I will start getting important places tonight and will start work on Clearwater which is the zone below Serpent Sewers.

As a note to all of us who have had a hand in this project, I assisted a person outside this community with the installation of this mod and her reaction was, well, extatic. She could not stop thanking me and thought that this was just an amazing piece of work. (This is where you pat yourself on the back for a job well done!) :nana:

It would be great if the icons would automatically load, so you could get rid of the select map tab entirely. For the purpose of viewing other zones than the one you are in - I think the select map tab is too buggy and incomplete to be used for that.

Edit: I didn't mean that to sound demanding at all, I'm just making a suggestion :)

Everyone I've talked to loved the mod!

Ok this database is coming along exceptionally fast, php was easy to learn once you get a couple weird things outta the way. I've got the submission system up, now all I have to do is set up how to read the information and make a small little interface and get it up and running and information exchange between us and the users will be easy as hell.

eloa, awesome:) will be more popular than allakhazam with that one :nana:

Is that DB/site ready :nana: ?

Question about the overlay icons: it looks to me like each color represents a specific type of location (i.e. creature spawn, discovery location, quest location, et cetera) Is this the case? If so, what are the color equivalences?

I started playing around with the icon file to change the "you are here" indicator and started thinking "wouldn't it be cool if the other icons looked like what they represent?" So, just wanted to make sure I was changing them to the right things before I mess up y'all's wonderful mod. :D

Yes the color of the icons mean something, I don't recall exactly which color goes with what type of point of interest.

Quib

here is my PHP database website: http://eq2.evilvsgood.com Need to update it more oftne, its more fun to play though than update the site. :)

blue=loc (just the place itself)
orange=mob
red=named mob
green=NPC
light blue=quest

"i think white was meant to be quest"
A really light blue dot is a quest spot. There's a few of these on various maps but not many.

Also, before you consider redoing the icons, ger, we're sticking with the dots as they are easy to place and aren't huge and cumbersome like the default icons.

Quib

Well, before seeing this I found the last bit in your XML that marks everything, so that made life easier. As for size, I'm not doing anything nearly as large as the default icons. I'll attach a screenshot to show you what I mean…

As you can see in the screenshot, I'm still tweaking the icon sizes—they seem to be clipping at the bottom/right, despite matching the dot size and the XML bounds correctly. *shrug* I'll figure it out eventually. I'm also still working on what icons to use for some of them, since they don't show up as recognizably as I'd like.

Right now I have it set to:

Location: blue campfire
NPC: green walking man
MOB: orange dog paw
Named MOB: red crown
Quest location: light blue checked box

The campfire, crown, and checked box aren't showing up quite right, so those will likely be changed…I'm open to suggestions. (And feel free to suggest again that I abandon the changes, just trying to make myself useful while I figure all this stuff out :D )

it actually seems harder to see to me...like a chopped up circle they are so small...

maybe because im tired, but a lot of people play with droopy eyes :) I like circles better ;)

I get what you're doing! Since this is simply a graphics file swap, I don't see why this is a bad thing, it's simply an optional version of the icon_map3.dds file.

Personally, I find it clever; the more of the 20x20 segment of the dds file per icon you use, the more visible they'll be.

Quib

What I initially tried was a direct 20x20 swap. As I mentioned, that seemed to crop at the right/bottom for some unknown reason. That screenshot was taken with the icons at 17x17 (my screen/game resolution is 1280x800, just FYI) but they're still cropping. I'll keep playing with it tonight in between mucking with my XP bar and target/implied target windows. ;)

And yes, the whole idea was just a graphics swap—I don't want to muck with the incredible work you folks did on the XML for fear of totally messing it up. :D

You're right, some of them (particularly the location, named, and quest icons) do look…well, like crap. I'm working on finding better icons for them so that they are actually visible instead of weird circlish blobs.

I think the icon replacement idea is great.. I really like the little green man icon, and the dog paw is neat too

I think they all look cool

Thanks for the support. Think I finally got them to not crop, and found icons that are relatively recognizeable…which is kind of hard when they display at 8x8, yeesh. ;)

Anyway, here's a screenshot of it in action, a legend of what's what (the colors should remain virtually unchanged from the official versions), and the DDS file. The DDS goes in images/icons, but make sure you save a copy of the original in case you decide you liked the dots better.