Zugg Software :: View topic - 6.62 Auto-mapper with Achaea

Novice Joined: 10 Apr 2003 Posts: 45 Location: USA

I'm getting rather tired of following the directions on the help files for ZMud's auto-mapper, and then, every time I try to view the map I thought I was starting to make with the tool, it's just a completely blank window with nothing in it at all. I followed the directions for auto-configuration, started a new map file, then walk around a certain area to create the test-map, and when I'm finished and try to look at it-- it has nothing at all.

I only hope that asking the forum community for some basic information on using the auto-mapper, and getting it to WORK next time, is not a violation of Zuggsoft policy (don't laugh, I've seen stranger things for other shareware products). I have ZMud 6.62 for Windows and the game in question is Achaea.

Holly

SubAdmin Joined: 18 Nov 2001 Posts: 5182

Asking for help with everything zMud is what this forum is for. You best bet is to use the Search feature of these forums. Achaea is a particularly difficult mud to map, and it has been discussed many times. Numerous solutions have been posted, some worked for one person but not another. It is just a matter of finding one that fits your preferences within Achaea.

Search can be found at the top of the page and in my signature.

Novice Joined: 10 Apr 2003 Posts: 45 Location: USA

Thanks for the tip Vijilante. I think the problem now is not that I can't get it to work, but that maybe the auto-mapper just isn't designed to do what I want it to do.

I have been trying to use the auto-mapper to produce the kind of maps that are shown on the following website: http://www.rangerrawb.com/ranik (Yes, these are Dragonrealms maps, but you get the idea ;) Without the small graphical pictures, just the squares, lines, and some text footnotes. Unfortunately, even when the mapper APPEARS to be working, trying to get it to SHOW what it's been capturing in that format is unsuccessful. Trying to get it to show what its captured produces only blank windows. Trying to create a zone keeps giving me a parse error: Action not permissible with a closed dataset. But it doesn't tell me how to OPEN it!

If I have been mapping correctly, what should I see when I click the Edit map icon or when I try something to get the mapper to SHOW me what it's been doing? Maybe I have been going about the process completely wrong, and the mapper isn't designed to do what I want it to do. Maybe I need the ZMapper plug-in?

Holly

GURU Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 4379 Location: USA

Ok, let's start at the beginning. First, you configure the mapper. A wizard will pop up and ask you to go to someplace quite in the MUD. After doing this, it will send a direction command to the MUD so that a new room will be displayed. Now, the mapper attempts to look at the room output that was displayed and make sense of it. It will show you what it thinks is the room name, description and exits. After that, it should be configured (however, as Vijilante mentioned, getting the mapper to crrectly recognize everything in Achaea is a pain) and there should be one room in the map with a blue dot in it.

Next, you should be ready to start mapping. With the mapper in Map mode (the button with the pencil is selected), you start walking around in your MUD. Ideally, this will capture the room information sent by the MUD and create new rooms in the correct position in the map.

Finally, when you are done creating new rooms, you put the mapper in Follow mode (the button with the footsteps is selected). Ideally, it should follow you around (by moving the blue dot) as you walk around in your MUD.

Things to check:
1. Exits from the room are automatically displayed when you enter a new room.
2. You have a prompt being displayed.
3. You are not in brief mode (you can use brief mode, but this just makes it harder for the mapper in most cases)
4. When auto-configuring, whatever the wizard highlighted as room name, description and exits is correct.

Note: When you create a new map, there is already one zone called Untitled. You can rename this zone to whatever you want, but there is not need to create a new zone right at the moment. When you do want to create a new zone, you can do it by the Zone menu as you probably already know. The best way to do this is to first map the room that belongs to the new zone, then create the new zone, select the room jsut created and click on Edit|Move rooms to zone to move it to the newly created zone.

Now, after that overview of how the mapper should work, in what part is that you are having problems? What is it doing that it shouldn't? Or what is it not doing that it should?

Newbie Joined: 28 Dec 2003 Posts: 3 Location: USA

Okay, I am also trying to auto-map in Achaea...and have been somewhat successful in making a standard grid. What is happening however is that Achaea has a line that shows the room name, then a newline char. Then is has a random sentence describing the weather, and then continues onto the room description with no new line character. So the description is never the same, and as you walk, the automapper cannot make rooms equivalent because the descriptions are changing. The descriptions are also changing because the paragraph beyond the description has sentences stating what items are in the room and which people are in the room. Then it gives the exits shown, usually be a sentence starting with "You see..".

Example:
Anza Street near the warehouses.
Occasional drops of rain fall to the ground from a sky grey with pregnant
clouds. There are grimy large warehouses on either side of the street. One to the west Some of the signs are intricate and detailed while others simply have a single name in black on a plain white board. A runic totem is planted solidly in the ground. Bertha is here. You see exits leading north and south.

The Achaea system lets you colour config these following things:

Room name.
Weather.
Description.
Things.
People.
Exits.

So what trigger can I use to have the automapper ignore everything but the ansi colored texts for everything but Room Name, Description, and Exits?

Thanks...

SubAdmin Joined: 18 Nov 2001 Posts: 5182

Best suggestion: Turn off weather messages. If it doesn't actually affect your characters abilities then it is a waste of bandwidth.

Next best suggestion use a trigger setup to either #SUB the lines into a better format or #TAG the information for the mapper. I posted a #SUB setup in response to babyl a while back so searching for all posts with him/her as the author should yeild good results. Note that it is ansi driven and hence designed around his/her color setup.

Newbie Joined: 28 Dec 2003 Posts: 3 Location: USA

Vijilante,

Thanks for the reply. Here's my indepth, though....

Your best suggestion doesn't account how the description also contains sentences that follow immediately after it in Achaea if there are Things present. Then sentences after that if there are People present. Then the exits are stated. All without line feeds, only carriage returns, I guess when it hits 80 characters (but that's just a guess).

So the description does change if Things or People are removed or added to the room.

I don't just want a simple mapper, I want to be able to separate the description, the room name, and the exits mentioned from the VERBOSE room description returned as I move from room to room. Eventually, I want to even be able to separate items, and people. But for now the description, name, and exits will be sufficient.

I attempted your suggestion to babyl but it just didn't suit my needs for what I want to be able to do. I have read through the forums for around 15 hours now and am still having problems.

Basically, I attempted to set up through Achaea descripition color configuration unique colors that would be different from the rest of the games colors for Room_Title, Room_Desc, Things, Players, and Exits.

I set these to:
Room Descriptions:
Room_Title 13 0 Outside the Cave.
Room_Desc 15 0 The trees loom above you...
Things 14 0 A squirrel scampers about here.
Players 11 0 Sarapis, the Logos, is here.
Exits 8 0 You see exits to the north and east.

Where 13 is a bright pinkish/purple, 15 is bright white, 14 is bright light blue, 11 is bright yellow, and 8 is a dark grey.

My ansi log of a good screen that has most of the above information is like this:

594h, 440m, 1870e, 1240w [37mex-[33msouth[0m
[1;35mNorth of Central Market. [0m
[36mA smattering of clouds fills the sky, lacing it with spiderwebs of grey. [1;37mThe [0m
[1;37msmells of a baked goods reach your nose. Around you the stalls hold a wide [0m
[1;37mselection of pies and cakes, some still steaming as if just out of the oven. [0m
[1;37mSmall street urchins lurk about these stalls hoping to catch a vendor unawares [0m
[1;37mto grab a cake before scooting back into the milling crowd. A long butchers [0m
[1;37mtable dominates this part of the market. A river of blood drips from the table [0m
[1;37mdown a nearby sewer grate. The gigantic butchers behind the table continually [0m
[1;37mcall out about their wares. All of the butchers have huge muscular arms which [0m
[1;37mchop large slabs of meat and bone in single swipes.[0;37m [1;36mA runic totem is planted [0m
[1;36msolidly in the ground. Casually causing electricity to dance across the iron [0m
[1;36mgauntlet worn on her right hand, a War Witch of Ashtan smirks here haughtily in[0m
[1;36mtight red leather. [1;33mKarmic Scholar Natash is here. She wields an iron-tipped [0m
[1;33mwhip in her right hand. [0;33mYou see a sign here instructing you that WARES is the [0m
[33mcommand to see what is for sale.[0m
[1;30mYou see exits leading north (open door), east, southeast, south, southwest, and[0m
[1;30mwest.[0m
594h, 440m, 1868e, 1240w [37mex-[0m

Now there are a few lines in the Things of the rooms that I guess Achaea specifically sets to the color of my prompt, or red, or sometimes a light bright blue, but these things don't match the colors of my main room descriptions.

So what I attempt to do is set up a class that would, by color, tell the mapper what is what, so that it could only take in the room name, room description, and room exits, based on my custom colors, ignoring other things such as weather.

#CLASS {Mapping}
#TR {%e~[36m(*)%e~[} #nomap //to not take in weather
#TR {%e~[0~;37m(*)%e~[} #nomap //to not take in whatever it tried to change before runic totem
#TR {%e~[1~;36m(*)%e~[} #nomap //to not take in items like runic totem
#TR {%e~[0~;33m(*)%e~[} #nomap //to not take in items of Things color
#TR {%e~[33m(*)%e~[} #nomap //to not take in items of Achaea moddified Things color
#TR {%e~[1~;33m(*)%e~[} #nomap //to not take in items of Players color
#TR {^%e~[1~;35m(*)%e~[} {#VAR RoomName %1;#TAG name %1} //to take in everything from the escape color code
//for the room name color until it reaches the next escape + bracket combination
#TR {%e~[1~;37m(*)%e~[1~;37m$}{#VAR RoomDesc %1; #TAG name %1} //to take in everything from the escape color code
//for the room description until it reaches text that is no longer of that color.
#TR {%e~[1~;30m(*).} {#VAR RoomExits %1; #TAG exit %1} // to take in everything from the escape color code
//for the room exits until it reaches a period.
#class 0

I attempted to use this class and then go into a map, configure the map, and the return responses weren't even what I wanted to have ignored or stored. I really thought this had a chance, but I must be missing something. Can what I do have a possibility... oh yeah.. and if so, how? Thanks!

METASPARKS

Newbie Joined: 28 Dec 2003 Posts: 3 Location: USA

bump!

Wanderer Joined: 28 Dec 2003 Posts: 62 Location: Australia

My god!! you did all that to make the mapper work? or nearly.Well I have mine fully operatonal slow walking,get dumped somewhere,no probs go to favourates pick a room record the path and away she goes. I must admit though it wasnt all cream when I started..but the trick is all in the config setings.If you havnt got that rightly set then forget it.Your wasting time with scripts.the only script I use for the mapper is my slow walking script as the speed walker overides any type of walking you select.I'd be glad to help ya if you can explain exactly what the problem is .I am using the zmud 6.62. Cruising>