you can use different formats for dds, if you could post one of the images here i bet i could make it a dds that is under 1MB, and closer to 500kb

EDIT: and the DDS files i was using(1024x1024) compress(in zip file) to practicly nothing.

Should be able to get it even smaller than that. I'll have to wait to get my hands on one those map images ;)

Yeah, zip compresses the dds image file size a great deal.

Eola if you post that mod with the map design you have it will become one of the most heavily downloaded UI mods on this site.

OMG I want that mod :nana: :nana:

Maybe I should just hold out on this one a while....

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:nana: :nana: :nana: :nana: :nana: :nana: :nana:

Adding maps to the map window
 

This might be a good time to suggest that perhaps the existing map window should be examined a little more closely... I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader.

The necessary zone names are available someplace if you look in the game directories closely (at least after zoning there.)

Happy New Year.
MrBobble

hmmm...looking everywhere for everything...
examined for what.....
no clue, the only thing that looks odd is P1, P2, P3...but no idea, you guys say if you find something.

Got the dds files to 512k, no alpha, no mip maps, nothin
And what you've been waiting for.... just read the readme if ya need help

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How do I get the map window to show up? I'm using your files but what command will bring up your map window?

Thanks!

He speaks!


But we don't need any more exercise, we've been chasing our tails for two months! :p

oh ingame easiest way is to make a macro that goes /Show_window mainhud.maps

I dropped the map window in your Jornal. Why? Because. Heheh. Well mostly cuz its the biggest window as it is, so you wont have too much window size-changes from the larger maps.

Not to mention being able to have a noted map open at the same time as your real map in zones in Antonica.

EDIT: looks like Eloa's version was done as its own window. Just checked it out in the builder. Ill have to go in game real quick. Will obviously not be J for that one:)

look here guys

C:\Program Files\Sony\EverQuest II\cache\ioplans

I glanced inside the io files and of course it looks all crazy, there are lots of directories of vpk's listed in them tho...

not sure how this can help us with any of these things, though!

The work you guys are doing on this mod is absolutelyawesome !!!

& the fact that SOE Bobble posted & threw out a clue has left me very impressed indeed. :)

I am following the progress of this mod daily.

May the Gurus prevail & bring ingame maps to the masses !




:)

I believe I've figured out what he's referring to. I'll see if the "You are here" dot/arrow moves when you place custom maps here. If not, we might as well just keep it going in the journal window.

MainHUD.Map.MapStyles: Lists a bunch of image frames with the internal zone names, referencing the game maps we know about.

MainHUD.Map.MapPage.Icons: Lists of all the waypoints in a given zone. Names match up with MapStyles images and the zone names in cache\ioplans (although that appears to list zone lines?)

If this works, the biggest problem will be scaling it correctly so the You Are Here dot is placed at the correct point.

to show Eloa's version this should work

/show_window MainHUD.Maps

and to hide
/hide_window MainHUD.Maps

Okay gang, it works. I've got it so the map folder will show the Peat Bog, including mostly-accurate "You Are Here" arrow.

1- Get a map and convert it to DDS format. ***The actual map area needs to start at 0,0 and end at 436,506 or it will get cut off!*** The image itself should be 512x512.
2- Find the "internal name" of the zone. You'll need to find it under the "paks" folder. Example: The Peat Bog's internal name is qey_adv04_bog
3- Duplicate one of the Image Styles under MapStyles and rename it to the internal name of the zone.
4- Set the ImageStyle's zonerect to reflect the loc of the upper left and lower right corners of the map. Switch the negative/positive values for the X axis.

Example: Map of the Peat Bog here: http://www.***************/eq2/maps.asp?ID=7
You can see that the NW corner's loc is labelled 850,345, and the SE corner is 545,670. Therefore, the zonerect for qey_adv04_bog is "-850,345,-545,670"

5- Go to MapPage and it's subpage Icons. You'll see here that there's a Page with each internal zone name just like there was an ImageStyle in MapStyles. Duplicate one and rename it to the zone's internal zone name. Now you can create/move/rename the "points of interest" icons for that zone.

(When placing markers, go to the image "ZoneMap" and change it's style from "MapStyles.fprt_hood01" to "MapStyles.(currentzonetoedit)" to display the map in the editor window.)


The hardest part is going to be getting the ZoneRect 100% accurate. :D

Unfortunately there doesn't appear to be a way to do anything with the height axis, so Eloa's method will probably still work better for multi-level but single-zone dungeons like Blackburrow.

Edit: Ooh! He could use the method he's doing to show/hide images underneath the regular map area, then use blank maps. That way you can sort through multi-level dungeons AND have an accurate loc arrow!

Note: I'm saying "arrow" instead of "dot" because that's what's currently on test and it should be live within a week.

wooohoo!

good job Deathbane27!

Let get on this...we need to get together and figure out which maps each of us will do...i'd be MORE than happy to see this go to what i originally planned!

Unfortunately my participation in this endeavor has pretty much reached its limits. I'm horrible at making maps, figuring out where I am and where to place landmarks, etc. And to top it off, my highest level character is 20 and I don't even know where to GET all these access quests. :p I'll see what help I can contribute, though.

ok myself and hopefully Eloa will get on it then:)

going to suck for Eloa tho, now we have to port all her waypoints into the map window ;)

Hmm... i dont like the current map window. Especially the size limitations of it. I'll mess with some stuff later and see if I can figure out another way to mess with the loc. I myself can do without the Loc, but what do you guys thing, would it be better to port everything over to it? I think for one its gonna look pretty ugly, squished, etc. Like the antonica map being split in two, I hate it, but its gonna have to be done with a lot of them.

Here's a blank map and the 4 freeport newbie zone maps modeled after the default in-game map styles for use by someone who can get them in the map window.

This zip has the 4 FP newbie zones, the .dds is a blank map template.

Quib

Thanks :nana:
From what I know hardly anyone makes freeport information and I only play qeynos so this is great, will get them in as soon as we find out where we are going with this.



--------------------------------------------

We need to chat together and find out what we'll be doing about this whole project. I just downloaded mirc to join the chat, ill be there all night tonight, but will be ingame trying to go from 1-20 tonight, heh. send me a yahoo IM to get my attention, Fisher2w2

Eloa, i have a strong feeling that we are going to end up doing a little of each.

For the original map i suspect only a few maps will be able to be implemented because:

commonlands and atonica are too big unless you halve it (might be worth it for these two tho)

a map has to be made that has exact or very close sizes/distances so that it matches up perfectly with the required map dimensions. This is the one that is going to hold us up the most with the zones that have no map whatsoever.

Until someone makes a perfect sized map, we will most likely have all teh maps in the window Eloa created. Once a good map is made, we insert it and test it out.

I was thinking about resizing the map window for bigger maps and trying to get the loc marker to scale with it. but here is my chat ramble about why I dont think we'll ever be able to get that to work:

The weird thing is that there is an ingame map for antonica but its not listed as a style in the uibuilder, therefore we have nothing to go off of as a base for cutting maps up like antonica does now. We can plead with bobble to help us out here...

lets say antonica is 1000x500. could you not start the dot at 500x0?

theres nothing to change the dot with, it has to be hardcoded....

so that all arent left out:

Ok so on another note, in my maps, i managed to resize the maps to 512x512 and just stretch it to the same size as the 1024x1024 and after sharpening them you can hardly tell a difference, which also cuts the size from 512k to 129kb so that will save alot of ram from being eaten up.
New file is attached.

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Brainstorm!

MrBobble
You know if we have this correct, you can just have the great guys over there take my map mod and implement it ingame and let us change the locdot.
If we have it wrong though, and we can resize the map and still get the loc to work can we get some further info please? :confused:
Or even some more information on how maps like antonica work with the split...
Thanks :D

Added steppes map so my coworkers can add to it.

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Eloa,
Instead of putting everything inside the eq2ui_mainhud.xml, i recommend you put in

<include>eq2ui_mainhud_custommap.xml</include>

and put all your stuff in eq2ui_mainhud_custommap.xml, obviously :)

just makes more sense that way. Plus if people have certain windows listed above others it would change their layer order all to what your eq2ui_mainhud's order is.

good call, working on it

Just submitted to downloads section as well.
Update
Put everything into a new .xml file

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Another update. I just can't stay away.
This release intented for devs only, not game use. Download .05
Implemented the skeleton for the quests window.

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Keep it up all :D

Split maps and a bit more magic
 

Congrats everyone. If I was a quest NPC, I would give you a reward. Alas, I am not. So how about some more details:


For most of Beta, people may remember, EQ2 only had maps for the cities. The additional maps for Antonica/Commonlands/etc are encrypted and map icons are sent down from the server (along with the fog settings.) We wanted characters to have to explore to discover these regions. Nothing however should prevent you from adding your own versions of the images/locations -- you'll just need to find the name and zonerect. I suspect the fog will reset itself if you change the ZoneRect though.

Sidebar: Calculating the zonerect if fairly simple if you know the /loc and map pixel location for two places on the map (as far apart as possible in x & y). I'll leave that up to the reader. "Ratios are your friends."


Added at the same time was the ability to split maps. It's actually much more complex than that -- and I don't think I left any examples in the XML -- so here are the two additional map properties:

AvailableRect (x1,y1,x2,y2) -- similar to ZoneRect except it specifies the zone area (current location) when this map should be displayed. This defaults to ZoneRect. Overlapping split maps (Antonica/Commonlands) set the shared edge to the point you want to switch to the second map. This allows the maps to switch without moving all the way to the edge.

AvailablePriority (n) -- sets a priority for a map if more than one map has an AvailableRect that contains the current position. This defaults to 0. Lower numbers get preference. The current map is used if there is a tie. This allows detailed maps to be displayed for subsections.

For example: You could break Antonica up into 6 individual maps. Or one overall map with details maps if you travel within an area. Or...

For instance (with fake numbers):
MapStyles
qey_south_0
zonerect -200,-200,200,200
AvailableRect -200,-200,150,200
AvilablePriority 2
qey_south_1
zonerect 100,-200,500,200
AvailableRect 150,-200,500,200
AvailablePriority 2
qey_south_2
zoneRect -50,-50,50,50
AvailablePriority 1

If you are within the zoneRect of qey_south_2 that map will be drawn
based on priority. Otherwise it will pick from south_0 and south_1 appropriately. Note the _N attached to the zone names forn multiple maps.

And as correctly pointed out, the maps currently do not support changing on the Z axis.


I hope that helps.
MrBobble

First off: Thank you very much!
Second: /ponders how many more hidden properties and such there are...
Third: Wow, this looks like it could be very fun, very useful, and a big PITA...
If someone would like to go on and switch mine over to this window, go for it, use my code or whatever. I personally am going to finish up my project as I think I like it alot better than the original map window. Though just some things off the top of my head on what he was saying is You could have a map of the area (antonica) and when you walk into the forest, one could draw up a detailed map of it and have it swap over to that. But again, I like big maps, and lots of information, hopefully they will implement the dynamic data where we can get a constant /loc update and then I will find SOME way to put in a position marker on all my maps. Guarunteed. Thanks to everyone for their hard work and trying all these useless things while figuring out the keys of how to get the UIBuilder to work for us instead of just moving around information. I know that everybody who uses our interfaces is very grateful.

Thanks again MrBobble.

It helps indeed. :)

And thanks for the "currently". ;)

Holy jeez, that was a lot to soak in Mr. Bobble. I've managed to make Oakmyst Forest into a proper map, and I couldn't find the internal name for Stormhold, so there's a selection menu and no-loc dot version of the first floor of that zone. I only marked the zone lines in Oakmyst Forest. Now that I know about the AvailableRects I can do more interesting stuff in some places eventually.

Anyway, check this out everybody.

Quib