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Beginner Joined: 27 Sep 2003 Posts: 10 Location: USA

Although I really like the new Storm Front front end by Simutronics, I'd really like to have a map as part of the front end, in order to visualize the game better, and find my way around, etc.

I thought that this would be easy to do with Zmud since Gemstone is officially supported, but it's not easy.

I turned on the automaping, a little disappointed that I couldn't just download a premade map from a website or whatever, and proceeded to attempt to map the Town Square of Wehnimers Landing. I started in town square south west, went north to town square west, then to Town square central, and finally to town square south east. Everything was looking awfully spiffy, and I thought that perhaps making my own map wasn't going to be so bad afterall. Then I went west, which brought me back to town square SW again, where I started initially. One problem: the automapper was unable to figure this out, perhaps because Gemstone's city layout fails to correspond to a perfect grid layout. Going from town square south east to town square south west could be construed as leap frogging over a square space (moving over two grid spots for one keystroke intead of two), something which the automapper does not seem to readily apprehend. I decided that perhaps if I went to town square central, the mapper might catch on to what was happening, and fix itself. Alas, this did not help in the least, and it wasn't long before my little town square map of five rooms had grown into a complex pile of lines and rectanges that seemed perhaps to go on ad infititum.

I deleted everything and started over. Reading the help file, I figured out that I could drag the duplicate room over the original, and this seemed to fix my dilemma, allowing me to map the town square. But, interestingly enough, the two rooms still seemed to exist seperately according to zmud, they just happened to be located in the same location, and to have the same name and number of exits. If I deleted one of the rooms, this caused problems, so I had to delete everything and start over yet again. It kinda bothers me having these duplicate rooms, but I'm hoping that it will be transparent when I'm done mapping.

I continued doing a combination of auto-mapping and manual editing and got through a portion of the western section of the town without entering any buildings. I having had problems merely moving around the town square, I was expecting bigger headaches when I raised the ante and tried to move in a direction that wasn't n e s w. But eventually I decided that this couldn't be put off any longer, so when I came to the north gate, I took a deep breath and type 'go east tower'. This is where the town thieves, or lock pickers help players open their chests. They a couple of thieves were quite happy to see me come in, but it took me a while to inform them that I was merely making a tour of the city and didn't have any boxes for them to look at. I was dismayed to see that according to my map, the box that I succesfully and correctly labeled "Wehnimer's, Land's End Rd." had mysteriously been replaced by "Land Tower East, Office."

Now I'm attemping to figure out how to convince the mapper that I have in fact gone into another room and that the this is done via a different command than the standard n e s w. It's not exactly intuitive.

I've spent about an hour thus far mapping Gemstone with very little to show for it. I'd be curious to hear from other people who have attempted to map the game, whether they've done it succesfully or not. How long it took, whether it's worth it in the end, etc.

If done successfully, would it be possible for you to email me a copy of your map? :)

Beginner Joined: 27 Sep 2003 Posts: 10 Location: USA

Ok. I've discovered the ">" symbol for non standard exits. This is quite useful. It's a lifesaver. However, I've also discovered that as I run around the little bit of town that I've successfully mapped out the auto-mapper loses track of where I am, whether it's in follow mode, or in auto-map mode. It keeps up for a few rooms and then it loses me, and I have to remind it where where the current room on its map is. Is this a known bug or did I do something wrong when I made my map that is confusing the mapper? As I mentioned in my previous post, when I go in a direction and the mapper mistakenly creates a new room instead of linking to one that's already there as it should, I simply drag the new one onto the old one. Everything looks nice again, but is it really?

Any advice would be appreciated. Good maps would add so much to the game.

Beginner Joined: 27 Sep 2003 Posts: 10 Location: USA

Ok. I figured out what was causing the mapper to lose track of where I was on the map: some of the rooms, despite what appeared to be a good accurate map and would be if printed out, had exits that led to entirely false room numbers, and did not correspond to their adjacent rooms. I'm not sure what caused this. It may have been the dragging of duplicate rooms onto their originals when I should have simply deleted them instead.

At least I've figured out what was wrong. This is quite a time consuming endeavor, but it'll be worth it if everything works out in the end.

Do people put their maps on the web for download for certain muds in order to save people the trouble of re-inventing the wheel so to speak?

How many rooms can I use per zone? I'd like to have my zones correspond with Tsoran's maps if that's possible (for people who don't play Gemstone, he makes the maps that everyone prints out and uses.)

Wanderer Joined: 26 Jan 2001 Posts: 74

A couple tips for you...

You can merge those stacked identical rooms into just one. That may help some.

From my own experience trying to map DR, you may want to look into modifying how you capture the rooms into the map. It defaults to capturing the room description, but since those can change between day and night descriptions (at least in DR, I assume the rest of the Simu games have the same capability) it would be wise to switch to using the room name.

Ana

Beginner Joined: 27 Sep 2003 Posts: 10 Location: USA

Thanks for the tip. I've never noticed Gemstone's room descriptions to change due to the time of day, but sometimes I switch between simple and detailed descriptions and those are certainly different.

However, as I'm making this map, I'm at a loss to figure out why the mapper can follow me from some rooms to their neighbors, while certain other rooms it gets stuck. And I've proofed the exits under properties, and the directions and correspond with the appropiate room numbers for each exit. I'm completely stumped.

Does the mapper follow your movements around as it should or is this a pipedream, too good to be true? The map itself -is- a bit useful I suppose even if I can't have it follow me around, but I was expecting it to do that.

SubAdmin Joined: 18 Nov 2001 Posts: 5182

It should be able to follow you wherever you go. First thing you have already done, make sure the existing exit points to the destination room. Next thing is to understand what the mapper is looking for to determine if you have moved into that room. Depending on your configuration that would either be the first line of the description or the roomname. These are obviously being detected correctly for you to create the map in the first place, and if the exits for the last room are correct then you have to look closely for what has changed in the destination room.

Beginner Joined: 27 Sep 2003 Posts: 10 Location: USA

Ok, I was wrong, you were right. The descriptions, or some of them anyway, do change according to day and night. This might be why it's not working. I tried to fix this unsuccessfully by going up to room description configuration under config and unchecking the option for room descriptions. I then moved around on the map, and it followed me for one movement, then it got confused again, and left me high and dry.

I then decided that perhaps it wasn't enough simply to uncheck the room description option in config, because all the room descriptions that I had already collected were confusing it. So I deleted every single room description that zmud had captured and stored on my map. But this didn't help either.

What am I doing wrong? I asked for help on the Gemstone message boards, but what I got was sympathy from other players who had also tried unsuccessfully to get the mapper to work. Your post is my best lead so far to a proper, working map.

quote:
Originally posted by Anabasis

A couple tips for you...

You can merge those stacked identical rooms into just one. That may help some.

From my own experience trying to map DR, you may want to look into modifying how you capture the rooms into the map. It defaults to capturing the room description, but since those can change between day and night descriptions (at least in DR, I assume the rest of the Simu games have the same capability) it would be wise to switch to using the room name.

Ana

Wanderer Joined: 26 Jan 2001 Posts: 74

Not sure I can give you much more help. I actually haven't been using zMud much lately. I know they've changed things for GS4 and that may be part of the issue.

My best advice is to not try to do things too fast. Make a few rooms, then see what works and what doesn't. Try to track down the problem and find a solution for it, or a way around it. You'll get plenty of good advice here.

The only other thing you may want to do is to look over on Yahoo. There is a mailing list for DR (DRzMUD@yahoogroups.com) that has been discussing mapping a lot lately. You might be able to find a similar group for GS, or get your answers from the DR group.

Ana

Posted: Thu Dec 04, 2003 8:32 pm

I think its that the automatic configure doesnt work so well in this case, but i think with the right commands you can tell the mapper what to do. I know that the various parts of the room come in differiant %gsl() variables, for example:

%gsl(p) contains the room name
%gsl(j) contains the standard exits in this format: ne|se|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?
%gsl(I) contains the room description
%gsl(M) holds the last thing to be monsterbold

the basic trigger to capture the various %gsl()'s is:

#TRIGGER {M} {
target = %gsl( M)
#VARIABLE target {%replace( @target, " ", "|")}
#VARIABLE target {%item( @target, %numitems( @target))}
} "" {gsl}

I use this to make @target always be equal to the critter name of what in the room, you will need to look again to refresh it if you plan on using it yourself.

there are other gsl's as well, i use the following to view them for when/if i ever need to make more triggers on them.

#ALIAS lsg {#FORALL @lsg {#EC {%i %gsl( %i)}}}
#VAR lsg {a|b|c|d|e|f|g|h|i|j|k|l|m|n|o|p|q|r|s|t|u|v|w|x|y|z|A|B|C|D|E|F|G|H|I|J|K|L|M|N|O|P|Q|R|S|T|U|V|W|X|Y|Z}

PS Remember that gsl variables are case sensative