Improving Achaea's in-game maps

Tecton

The team has spent a good amount of time today working on updating and improving the in-game maps! While we're undertaking this endeavour, we'd love to hear feedback on areas where you feel map's might need improving (or areas that don't seem to have maps but should). Keep in mind, some areas like Divine temples and a couple of the "maze-like" areas are not mapped by design, but other than that, we want to make sure that every area has a nice, easy to follow map!

Kayeil

Sea floor maps please.  I mean there's printable ones that are useable, so it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to make them visible. You can still keep the hidden rooms hidden.

Ship rooms.

Any way to make player owned houses mapped? I don't get how to do it on mudlet mapper, and once a house gets really big it could be hard to keep track of or teach to someone you're allowing to use it with perms.

Able to make digsites visible? Doesn't make them easier to find but due to their ability to change, it is not easy to keep mapped, and is easy to get lost.

Last I remember, part of Kasmarkin isn't mapped, where the ooze things are.

I think there are some islands with unmapped rooms? Lothos comes to mind, the beach area around the harbour.

I can't think of anything else right now, other than a sort of off topic question... why do the Pirates of Meropis get a little island area and the Mariners Guild have nothing to use as a headquarters or something like that? Did they buy it?

Ismay

I don't suppose you could add a 'walk to room#' function like someone mentioned in another thread, or would that not be considered part of the mapping?

Kayeil

Ismay said:

I don't suppose you could add a 'walk to room#' function like someone mentioned in another thread, or would that not be considered part of the mapping?

Would kind of make the traits and landmarks system fairly pointless. Also, that would probably be a big project. The reason that works for mudlet mapper is that you can goto <area>, goto <room #>, or do rf <room name or keyword> to get an area and room number. Or you can stand in a room and do rl to get information on a room you're standing in.

Tecton

Kayeil said:

Sea floor maps please.  I mean there's printable ones that are useable, so it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to make them visible. You can still keep the hidden rooms hidden.

Ship rooms.

Any way to make player owned houses mapped? I don't get how to do it on mudlet mapper, and once a house gets really big it could be hard to keep track of or teach to someone you're allowing to use it with perms.

Able to make digsites visible? Doesn't make them easier to find but due to their ability to change, it is not easy to keep mapped, and is easy to get lost.

Last I remember, part of Kasmarkin isn't mapped, where the ooze things are.

I think there are some islands with unmapped rooms? Lothos comes to mind, the beach area around the harbour.

I can't think of anything else right now, other than a sort of off topic question... why do the Pirates of Meropis get a little island area and the Mariners Guild have nothing to use as a headquarters or something like that? Did they buy it?

Seafloor: Can't do those, they're dynamic rooms (they only exist for the dive)
Ships/Player housing: Not something we can do official maps with, I'm afraid.
Digsites: Nope, sorry, they're not something that a map would work for.
Kasmarkin: We'll take a look.
Lothos: As above

Ahmet

Kayeil said:

Ismay said:

I don't suppose you could add a 'walk to room#' function like someone mentioned in another thread, or would that not be considered part of the mapping?

Would kind of make the traits and landmarks system fairly pointless. Also, that would probably be a big project. The reason that works for mudlet mapper is that you can goto <area>, goto <room #>, or do rf <room name or keyword> to get an area and room number. Or you can stand in a room and do rl to get information on a room you're standing in.

I doubt it would be a large undertaking whatsoever if they implemented it in game, it would likely use the same algorithm as denizen walkto pathfinding. On the other hand, I highly doubt it will happen.

Tecton

Ismay said:

I don't suppose you could add a 'walk to room#' function like someone mentioned in another thread, or would that not be considered part of the mapping?

Not something we're currently planning on offering, but we will be expanding landmarks to add a lot more generic village tags, so you'll be able to WALK TO PETRA or WALK TO AALEN and you'll go to those areas.

Ahmet

Oh yeah @Tecton! Can we get maps for Fuschal, Myrinia, Squall Cleft, Glundis, Valley of Nidh, and Lanai, pretty please?

Aesi

Honestly? Walking to the standardized landmark ID would be helpful.

aka walk to subdivision in targossas when I can't get it through my skull to walk to park

Tecton

Just for reference, this thread pertains to the in-game maps. We're additionally going to improve landmarks as well, but outside the scope of this thread.

Aesi

Oh, one thought they went hand in hand. My bad!

I would honestly say the flag icon. I can see the appeal but Taels edit to make it a highlight box is simply beautiful.

Shirszae

Someone suggested in classleads making people visible in the MAP like they are visible in the wilderness. Would something like this be possible at all, or is still too complex/difficult/not worth it?

Kayeil

Ahmet said:

Oh yeah @Tecton! Can we get maps for Fuschal, Myrinia, Squall Cleft, Glundis, Valley of Nidh, and Lanai, pretty please?

Are those for real?  O.o

Kiet

Shirszae said:

Someone suggested in classleads making people visible in the MAP like they are visible in the wilderness. Would something like this be possible at all, or is still too complex/difficult/not worth it?

That'd lead to way more automated chasers

Qwyn

An AREAS command like in Aetolia would be very useful for newer folks for exploration and a general gauge of where is appropriate for their level. It's a nice easy command that is a great QoL option for new players.

Shirszae

Kiet said:

Shirszae said:

Someone suggested in classleads making people visible in the MAP like they are visible in the wilderness. Would something like this be possible at all, or is still too complex/difficult/not worth it?

That'd lead to way more automated chasers

Right now people can automate chasing perfectly well without it.  I just think it'd be nice touch to see people like that, much like it is a nice touch to see people on the wilderness. 

Aesi

I just logged in briefly to give a few more points that I thought about:

• better highlighting of shops, I find myself with config mapshow on to use that map instead
• I see you have some sort of a bisect icon showing a door, maybe a red coloration if it's closed? Not really a necessity though.
• better colorization/some sort of legend to what the geographical room colors mean
• aformentioned flag change, but that's just a personal wish
• change the zoom event so it's relative to current position, so the zoom doesn't have to pan back to you
• on the right side (opposite to exits) maybe a text to tell you if you're in a group, with a mouseover telling you the members. So you can visually see if they lost you.

Those are my thoughts.

Eld

Kiet said:

Shirszae said:

Someone suggested in classleads making people visible in the MAP like they are visible in the wilderness. Would something like this be possible at all, or is still too complex/difficult/not worth it?

That'd lead to way more automated chasers

Parsing the in-game map to find a path to another person sounds like a huge pain. Not sure it would realistically make automated chasing much easier than whatever you can do with ndb. I could be overestimating the difficulty, though.

Aesi

Eld said:

Kiet said:

Shirszae said:

Someone suggested in classleads making people visible in the MAP like they are visible in the wilderness. Would something like this be possible at all, or is still too complex/difficult/not worth it?

That'd lead to way more automated chasers

Parsing the in-game map to find a path to another person sounds like a huge pain. Not sure it would realistically make automated chasing much easier than whatever you can do with ndb. I could be overestimating the difficulty, though.

also might just lead to client slowdown. Websockets are a finicky mistress to begin with

Eld

Tecton said:

Kayeil said:

Sea floor maps please.  I mean there's printable ones that are useable, so it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to make them visible. You can still keep the hidden rooms hidden.

Ship rooms.

Any way to make player owned houses mapped? I don't get how to do it on mudlet mapper, and once a house gets really big it could be hard to keep track of or teach to someone you're allowing to use it with perms.

Able to make digsites visible? Doesn't make them easier to find but due to their ability to change, it is not easy to keep mapped, and is easy to get lost.

Last I remember, part of Kasmarkin isn't mapped, where the ooze things are.

I think there are some islands with unmapped rooms? Lothos comes to mind, the beach area around the harbour.

I can't think of anything else right now, other than a sort of off topic question... why do the Pirates of Meropis get a little island area and the Mariners Guild have nothing to use as a headquarters or something like that? Did they buy it?

Seafloor: Can't do those, they're dynamic rooms (they only exist for the dive)

The map for a given area is the same each time, though, right? If the problem is the room ids being assigned on room creation, would it be possible to just assign them fixed ids and have the room creation process grab the appropriate id? Or would it cause problems to have multiple existing rooms with the same id (if multiple people were diving and got the same map)?

It would obviously require extra machinery, in any case, so a separate issue from the general map improvements you're talking about. But it would be nice to have maps available for the diving areas, Tears of Sarapis (those are the same issue, right?), and whatever other similar areas there might be.

Ahmet

Qwyn said:

An AREAS command like in Aetolia would be very useful for newer folks for exploration and a general gauge of where is appropriate for their level. It's a nice easy command that is a great QoL option for new players.

Or something like Imperian's EXPLORED :>

Tael

Aesi said:

Oh, one thought they went hand in hand. My bad!

I would honestly say the flag icon. I can see the appeal but Taels edit to make it a highlight box is simply beautiful.

A toggle would really be ideal, though sort of pointless now since anyone can pretty easily just add a package that changes it themself, and I do see how the flag is more total-newbie-friendly.

In either case though, that's not really something to do with the maps - that's the Nexus client.

Lorielan

We're looking for suggestions regarding unmapped or poorly mapped areas accessed via the MAP command in game.

Kiet

Shirszae said:

Kiet said:

Shirszae said:

Someone suggested in classleads making people visible in the MAP like they are visible in the wilderness. Would something like this be possible at all, or is still too complex/difficult/not worth it?

That'd lead to way more automated chasers

Right now people can automate chasing perfectly well without it.  I just think it'd be nice touch to see people like that, much like it is a nice touch to see people on the wilderness. 

This would make it 50x more effective and easier to, though. People don't generally have free sensing abilities for a reason. Combat balance shouldn't be affected by convenience things like map command

Utianima

Tecton said:

Ismay said:

I don't suppose you could add a 'walk to room#' function like someone mentioned in another thread, or would that not be considered part of the mapping?

Not something we're currently planning on offering, but we will be expanding landmarks to add a lot more generic village tags, so you'll be able to WALK TO PETRA or WALK TO AALEN and you'll go to those areas.

I would love it if we could get WALK TO AZDUN too

Aegoth

If #input = azdun then #destination = zsarachnorr

Tibitha

Ahmet said:

Qwyn said:

An AREAS command like in Aetolia would be very useful for newer folks for exploration and a general gauge of where is appropriate for their level. It's a nice easy command that is a great QoL option for new players.

Or something like Imperian's EXPLORED :>

Explorers tome: 500 credits
   - Invested with incantations tied in to the very earth, this tome will 
     report how much of the current area has been explored.
   - Syntax for use: READ <tome>.

Ahmet

Tibitha said:

Ahmet said:

Qwyn said:

An AREAS command like in Aetolia would be very useful for newer folks for exploration and a general gauge of where is appropriate for their level. It's a nice easy command that is a great QoL option for new players.

Or something like Imperian's EXPLORED :>

Explorers tome: 500 credits
   - Invested with incantations tied in to the very earth, this tome will 
     report how much of the current area has been explored.
   - Syntax for use: READ <tome>.

Not even close, Tibitha. Not. Even. Close.

Achaean tome, 500 credits, current area only.

Imperian explored, free for everyone, lists every area you've ever been to and your explored %.

I'd settle for a 1k version of the tome that does this.