Hi @ all

It's me, Sammy, the nearly forgotten mapmaker.  :wink:
I've been absent for nearly ... hmmm ... (ok) ... for a realy long time.  
I had some RL-problems (as usual) so I wasn't very productive in the past.
BUT ... I didn't stop thinking about Daimonin and especially about mapmaking for this game. So I spent some time with my PC and tried to figure something out.
Now it's time to present these ideas and some of the programming / mapmaking i did.

The Mahewa Project

As I mentioned in my Loneworld-topic there is a city (not a town or a village) located in the south of the dark forrest called MAHEWA.
It is a harbour-city and should be a starting point for many Loneworld quests.
After a short while I encountered a small (big) problem: The size of this location.
My first pencil drawings showed me that I would need an area of minimum 10x10 (24x24 tiles) maps.
When I started making map by map I thought : ok ... it would be nice if I could draw the rough landscape-design with a drawing-program and then transfer this to a mapset.

So the idea for the Mahewa-World-Creator (MWC) was born. A small C++ program that makes it a bit more easier to connect all the maps.

The designing process would be like this :
- drawing a picture of the Mahewa city-limits
- creating the mapset of the connected maps with the MWC
- finish the landscape-design (beautify the maps) with the Daimonin-Editor
- integrate NPC'S
- integrate Scripts for communication / quests / aso.

The first step was very easy for me : drawing the City of Mahewa with the GIMP.



The second step wasn't so easy : programming the MWC. (But I did it  :lol: )

Using this program I was able to enter some data for the maps like :

- author-name
- indoor/outdoor flag
- Name of the mapset (shown in the client)
- specification about the level of the maps (sub-level or overground-level)
- filenames of the maps in the mapset
- name of the picture from which the mwc should get the data for the arches used in the maps

... and some more.

I had to define a palette for the mwc as well to tell the program which colour stands for which arch.
So here it comes :



So after some bughunting in the c++-code I managed it to get the maps out of the picture  

I used the tile stitcher perl program to get an overview so you can see the whole mapset at once :


(small version)

http://home.tiscali.de/sammydesign/mahewa_iso_big.jpg
(big version (as a link   ))

At this moment the whole mapset has a total amount of 225 (already connected) maps.

The next thing will be the beautifying of this mapset.

In this forum-topic I will report about the ongoing process of building this city.

Ideas / comments / critics are welcome !  

Cya all
Sammy (aka Tammy)

Btw : It's good to be back  

Very very nice.

Looks great.
How long has it taken so far?

Nice to see you back

A really nice design!

Hi @ all

@theoris


hmmm ...
- coding the MWC : 1 1/2 weeks
- bugfixing the code : 1 week
- painting the reference-bitmap of Mahewa : 1 hour
- let MWC create the mapset : 1/2 minute
- let tiles_stitcher.pl create the overview : 1/2 minute

 :wink:

- beautifying the mapset will last ... 3-4 weeks ... probably

Cya all

Sammy (aka Tammy)

And also remember your ready to upload gallery is here:
http://www.daimonin.net/modules.php?set_albumName=album29&op=modload&name=gallery&file=index&include=view_album.php

;-)

Hey Sammy. Thats a very useful method to quickly flesh out the basis of a larger mapset.

Very nice work sammy! ConGratulations!!! I will really like to play on those maps

Very nice, as always. Can't wait to try it out when it's done.

Awesome job Sammy. Gosh, i could have used that in many situations . Great!

Cheers,
Unislash

Thats really cool.

Ahem

"I used the tile stitcher perl program to get an overview so you can see the whole mapset at once : "

you guys have a program to do that now..? Where can i get it....?

I would like both programs, one to dummy up the maps like that and the second to tile stich them, that would be quite useful...

Hi @ all

Some infos about the used programs    
(btw : I develop under linux therefore I don't know if these infos are the same under wind***   )

@ratix


The tileset_sticher.pl comes along with the mapmaker-package.
You can find it under   <folder_where_you_installed_mapmaker_package>/maps/utils
To use it you need

- perl (

http://www.perl.org )
- the GD-Library ( http://www.libgd.org )
- the GD.pm (perl-module) ( http://search.cpan.org/dist/GD )[/list]

Some infos about the MWC

You can download it from http://home.tiscali.de/sammydesign/mwc.tar

The tar file holds the following files :

- mwc.cpp (the main program)
- Bitmap.h (the bitmap header file)
- License (the GNU public License)
- mwc_palette.bmp (the fixed colour palette for creating a mapset by bitmap)

How to use the MWC

Installation
1. Unpack this in a folder where you want to create your mapset.

tar xvf mwc.tar

2. compile the mwc

g++ mwc.cpp -o mwc

3. start the mwc in a terminal

./mwc

creating maps
Answer the following questions

- Please enter the author of the mapset : (No spaces allowed !)
- Please enter the name of the mapset : (No spaces allowed !)
- Please enter the areasize (max 15) (x * maps) :
- Please enter the areasize (max 15) (y * maps) :
- Is this an outdoor mapset ? (1-yes / 2-no) :
- Please enter the heightlevel : (0 for groundlevel / 1-5 for sublevel / 11-15 for upper level) :

After answering the questions the mwc creates the filenames for the maps as follows

lowercase(Name) + "_" + "heightlevel_" + "number"

The heightlevel is replaced by "f_" | "e_" | ... | "" | ... "1_" | "2_" | ... | "5_"
The number is replaced by "0101" | "0201" | ... | "areasize_x01" | "0201" | "0202" | ... | "areasize_xareasize_y"

After this the mwc asks if you want to create the maps with or without a bitmap.

create maps with a bitmap
If yes you have to give the filename of the bitmap.
The bitmap has to be a 24bit BMP - file and its height and width has to be dividable by 24.
For example if you entered an areasize_x of 5 and an areasize_y of 3 the bitmap has to be a  120 x 45 pixel wide bitmap.

Normally I use the GIMP for this task (you can find the GIMP here http://www.gimp.org)

To make the mwc understand the data from this bitmap you have to use the colours shown in the mwc_palette.bmp file that comes along with the mwc.tar package.

[/list]

If you've done everything right the maps are created automatically.

create maps with a given terrain or a textfile
If you don't use a bitmap for mapcreating
you are asked by the mwc for each map what you want to do :

test_0101 : (1-gras / 2-stone / 3-water / 4-earth / 5-forrest / 6-from file) :

Here you can choose from several terrains or you can choose a textfile to create the mapcontent.

If you choose 6-from file then you have to create a textfile before using the mwc.
The filename of this textfile must be the same like the mapfilename plus the .txt extension (test_0101.txt for the map test_0101)
An examplefile could be something like that :



Each letter stands for a special floortile. Here are the letters for the floortiles

g -- normal gras
G -- thick gras
e -- earth
E -- earth dark
w -- water
W -- water deep
0 -- water deepest (a zero !!!)
s -- stone
S -- floor_nstone
f -- flagstone
F -- floor_flagm
r -- road
R -- road (dark)
b -- bricks (grey)
B -- bricks (dark)

If you've done everything right the maps are created automatically.

Each map created with the mwc is automatically connected to their neighbour-maps. Only the outer limits of your maparea have to be connected by hand to other mapsets using the daimonin editor.

If you used the mwc and want to make an overview with the tileset_stitcher remeber to create previews of your maps (again using the daimonin editor)

I hope thats all for the moment  :roll:

Have fun ... (if you have comments about the mwc contact me here in the forum or pm me)  

Cya all
Sammy (aka Tammy)

btw : I know that my coding style isn't the best  :wink:

(edited 1 time)

You could put a boat in the harbour with a teleport that leads to a similar (tho unbuilt as yet) port elsewhere in the daimonin world. This would symbolise travel by boat, or ferry.

Well done Sammy, nice work

Feel free to shoot me down all you like, and this is a bit off topic, but couldn't you just run this process backwards (ie map -> GIMP) and end up with a downloadable world map?