Zugg Software :: View topic

Newbie Joined: 27 Jan 2005 Posts: 2

Would it be possible to have different types of exits that you could change the value of with a command?

So say I have someone following me, and I don't want to enter the sewers because that would lose them, I could do #exitvalue sewerentrance 500, and so make the path not enter there?

Posted: Mon May 08, 2006 5:26 pm

You would need the zMapper extension to do that (in either CMUD or zMUD). zMapper allows you to define custom exit types and the COM scripting for zMapper allows you to modify the cost. Now, in zMUD only rooms have a cost. When the mapper is rewritten for CMUD, then links will have a cost, but to create a custom exit type and change it's cost you'll need the zMapper plugin.

Posted: Tue May 09, 2006 2:22 am

I don't think I've seen it anywhere, but what I'd love to see added is Zone Properties. Specifically I'd like to be able set properties like the level for are certain zone 15 - 30.

Magician Joined: 23 Nov 2004 Posts: 364

perhaps a method to have multiple checks to see if you successfully went into the room. just a thought after trying to go zone to zone while in brief mode whereas i have mapped in verbose mode. brief mode shows only the room name/exits, verbose shows no room name just the description which is more valuable in terms of having a search script.

Wizard Joined: 25 Mar 2003 Posts: 1113 Location: USA

While I was mapping out the newest area on Achaea, it occured to me that having hierarchical zones would be extremely useful. I could use this in Lusternia, too. We have different planes and within those planes we have different areas. I'd like to be able to separate the planes and have them be parent zones to the areas within them. It could be as simple as having a sort of tree view on the zones list, or you could go so far as to have the parent zone actually display all the child areas together as one. You could look at each area individually, the way it is now, and you could select a parent to show all child zones connected together as one larger map, perhaps with labels near each child zones. Is that feasible, do you think?

GURU Joined: 23 Dec 2000 Posts: 4834 Location: USA

Almost all of that is already doable in ZMud, Larkin.

1)you can nest zones (the only caveat is that there's really no other support for this beyond drag and drop so there's literally no way to move a zone to the topmost level)

2)#1 is in tree-view mode

3)link labels (which are double-clickable to open up that zone) identify the destination zone

The only thing you asked for that can't currently be done in ZMud is the many-zones-displayed-as-one-zone feature, but even so this one's already about half-done. Rooms are created in relation to the previous, already-mapped room, so if you don't change the x,y coordinates then ZMud could just loop through all the rooms and place them all on the same canvas without any overlap. Z coordinates (levels) will give you a problem on a 2-d map, though, unless you do the sort-of-ugly offset stack that Zugg uses. A 3d renderer that allowed you to roam off the beaten (mapped?) path would be much sweeter, if hugely impractical.

Posted: Fri May 19, 2006 10:10 am

The only thing I particularly wanted for the mapper is to give links costs, which has already been mentioned (and stated as [EDIT: *NOT*] implemented). Other than that it's already a beyond useful tool. I never saw the slower algorithm's Zugg mentions, but I remember being impressed with how fast it calculates routes when I first used it.

One thing I do with the current map, however, is change the entering status of some rooms. Save a list of room numbers that enter zone X (grabbed manually), and if I'm enemied to zone X I set those rooms as unenterable. Also I do this for rivers when not using waterwalk magic. On casting the spell (or checking status), I cycle through the list and prevent myself from entering the rooms. Only problem with this is I have to set the map to edittable first.

I don't know if there's an easier way to do this (coded it a long time ago and haven't really looked at the code since), but perhaps a feature to make a zone itself unenterable would be nice.

Wizard Joined: 25 Mar 2003 Posts: 1113 Location: USA

Thanks for the tip about the drag-and-drop, MattLofton! Learn something new every day.

Posted: Fri May 19, 2006 4:52 pm

Riesz, the link costs have *not* been implemented. No changes are being made to the mapper for the first CMUD release. The mapper will be worked on later when I convert it from using ADO/MDAC to using SQL. I'll be adding features at that time. No ETA yet.

Adding a flag to a zone to make it unenterable is a good idea.

Posted: Tue May 30, 2006 9:27 am

Ah, my bad on that one, must have mis-read something. SQL would be nice for sure... will it be possible to call SQL queries directly against the new databases (including the mapper)? That would definitely help with some of my more complex scripts.

Magician Joined: 17 Apr 2005 Posts: 496

Look at the help file for #mapquery and #query ... that may not be all you need but it's a pretty good start.

Newbie Joined: 20 Apr 2006 Posts: 8

I would love an option to make the room I am currently in centered on my map automatically every time i move.

I would also love transparency stuff for having my map open over the entire window, but i could still see through it for the most part. That would be awesome.

edit: i just thought to make the transperancy stuff work for all windows in cmud.

Wizard Joined: 14 Aug 2004 Posts: 1269

Posted: Wed May 31, 2006 8:48 pm

You won't see transparency stuff for a while...probably not until I get a chance to see what new features are in the Vista version of Windows. I've played with transparency and DirectX on Windows XP and it makes everything *horribly* slow. I'm talking about at least a factor of 10 slower in scrolling text that has a semi-transparent window over it. Not something that most MUD players are going to do. I had high hopes for this and I'll probably take another look at some DirectX stuff in the future, but my initial experiements with transparency were really disappointing.

Wanderer Joined: 06 Jan 2006 Posts: 70

Any chance to get room highlights? Like being able to make individual rooms have a outerglow of red or green? Sort of like a border/edge colour?

Posted: Fri Jun 02, 2006 7:47 pm

Well, you can already do that with zMapper. Just define a custom room shape with a different border color.

Basically, if you are looking for *visual* improvements to the mapper, try zMapper first. It's not perfect, but I'll be updating zMapper for CMUD in the future. You'll never see all of those visual enhancements added to the basic mapper in CMUD...they will always be part of a mapper addon.

Posted: Mon Jun 05, 2006 1:50 pm

Wizard Joined: 14 Aug 2004 Posts: 1269

Riesz, I haven't noticed any of the problems you mention on my PC.

Wanderer Joined: 06 Jan 2006 Posts: 70

Nor have I.

Beginner Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 20 Location: Florida

In some muds where mapping is difficult, but ansi is enabled for room elements (short, long, exits) it would be nice to specify what color each one is for the mapper instead of killing yourself with the config.

Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2007 7:10 pm

You can do this already through the #tag command. The purpose of that command is really to bring all the power of CMUD's scripting and pattern matching to bear on matching your rooms. The relatively simple mapper config doesn't really provide a way to do that.

Newbie Joined: 01 Jun 2008 Posts: 4

My wishlist : Having the room properties window dockable
Makes it so zmud captures everything between two prompts instead of the current pargraph settings that does not work most of the time as soon as there are blank lines in the description.

Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 2:21 pm

Do you really mean zMUD? This is the CMUD forum.

GURU Joined: 23 Dec 2000 Posts: 4834 Location: USA

Not to mention that #TAG already helps you override the paragraph setup (in fact, when using #TAG I'm pretty sure the mapper totally ignores most of the configuration settings anyways).

Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 10:40 pm

Actually it's not true. #TAG *should* cause it to ignore everything, but since you can selectively use tag for just one item (like using #TAG for the room name, but not for the exits), then the mapper still uses other configuration data. Part of the Phase 2 improvement of the mapper will address this particular issue so that you can totally turn off the default configuration.

Although capturing everything between two prompts isn't really a good solution either, since various chat channel text can easily appear in that area too, giving you a room description that doesn't match the next time you enter the room.