Flash Map

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Zephyr
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Flash Map

Post by Zephyr »

I wrote a flash application that replaces the accurate map, hopefully. It still has some bugs in it, but hopefully nothing too serious.

http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/map/index.php?map=1
http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/map/index.php?map=2
http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/map/index.php?map=3
http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/map/index.php?map=4
http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/map/index.php?map=5
http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/map/index.php?map=6

I think it's a bit slow at loading, but the data it has to load doesn't really weigh that much. TR is just not the fastest server there is :p

After loading the map once, it will stay in your browser cache so the next time shouldn't be so slow.

I hope this is useful at replacing the accurate map and exterior maps for both oblivion and morrowind.

[edited on 17.3.07 to change map links]
Last edited by Zephyr on Sat Mar 17, 2007 1:24 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Lud
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Post by Lud »

That's great, Zeph.
Now I just have to figure out how to move the nodes :P
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Vernon
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Post by Vernon »

Fucking shit that is amazing. Will the the maps need to be re-downloaded when the map is changed or will it somehow be possible to append information to the cached flash file?

btw hullo - nice to see you back :)
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ko2fan
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Post by ko2fan »

If the slowness is transferring the data, the slowness is possibly due to the traffic shaping im currently doing. Any file thats over a certain size gets limited to a pretty slow speed, in an attempt to stop certain people trying to use up all the bandwidth.

When the major files are moved to mirror servers, I can remove the traffic shaping and it should load much faster.

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Post by Zephyr »

sup bernon :v

Thanks for the idea about the cache! After reading that post, I figured out a way how to use the cache to keep the files in memory. Flash is able to load from browser cache, but it doesn't seem to save anything there, so I had to find a way to write to the cache instead.

So, now all the images are hidden in the HTML file and at least Firefox and IE7 seem to know how to let Flash use that cache for loading data. Some loading will still occur but it's not nearly as bad as before! :D

To me, it seems that Opera is not able to do this trick. I don't know about IE6 since I can't really test for it as I have IE7 instead. Anyone else?
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Post by angelus6 »

works really nicely Zeph, good job on the xml load time :D maybe as wel as a cache try reducig the image size used so it may cut down load times :\ this would require redoing hte flash file tho and chances are would only shave a few kb off the file size, probly not worth it but just an idea :)
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Lady Nerevar
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Post by Lady Nerevar »

ooh, looks very nice. at first i was about to post saying that i like the map the way it is, but after actualy seeing it is a real improvement.
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Zephyr
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Post by Zephyr »

angelus: Yeah, I can try if I can adjust the jpg quality a bit lower in order to achieve a lower file size. I don't know how low it can be realistically dropped though. Anyway, the way it works is so that it loads files from outside flash itself. The actual flash file is just 23kb or something and even the images don't weigh that much

All of TR that I made createmaps of is currently just 20MB, which is not a lot in my opinionout of this, only about one sixth is loaded at a time.

Anyway, now I added exterior claim coloring to it as well as fixing a couple of bugs that you may not have noticed at all. There's still some annoyances possibly left but I think that most of my work with this is done.

As for making it run faster on any computer, just don't refresh it. When you refresh, it will not use your browser cache for images and everything has to be loaded again. Anyway, it's definitely faster for at least me than the accurate maps (http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/qmap.php?map=2&id=1222&mode=1 this stuff) were, so it's still an improvement, I hope.

The map has utilities for moving and inserting new nodes. It just needs to be integrated with the TR server, which I asked for Amrod to do. I don't think it should take a long time.
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Post by CleverClothe »

That map is a WHOLE lot better! I can actually see more than one node, it has zooming, and it runs faster. This is great.
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Zephyr
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Post by Zephyr »

I have now integrated the map to the website so that the old version of the accurate map is no longer in use on any part of the website.

As moderators, when editing claims, remember that each claim has a node on the map already. Click the Focus button to get there, zoom in if necessary and then change the node's position to your liking.

After the position is good for you, you can check if the coordinates have already changed in the "Edit claim" screen. If they have, you don't need to do anything else; just close the window. However, because of Javascript and/or browser issues, this doesn't always happen. To get the coordinate string in this case, click on the button with an icon like "v" (check) and you can copy/paste the coordinate string from there.

For making new claims, the procedure is exactly the same.
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Post by Noirgrim »

What do I need to give you for this to work with map 7 (Stirk) and map 9 (border crossing)?
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Post by Gez »

I'd say "raw graphic data." Oblivion hasn't kept Morrowind's createmaps function, has it?
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Post by Zephyr »

Apart from giving me an undisclosed sum of US dollars, Gez is correct, that's what's needed. I need to make some slight changes to the map as well before anything would work. I don't know anything about the worldspace issues though, but I guess it would work just like TR does. I'm sure that it is possible, anyway, since there was such an example on UESP wiki already:

http://www.uesp.net/oblivion/map/obmap.shtml

However, I don't have Oblivion on my computer so it is somewhat challenging for me to try creating such maps, even if I knew how.
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Post by Lud »

Quick thought: import the landmass to Morrowind and then use creatmaps there. Tools exist for this, and if they're easily used, then it could be done reasonably quickly.
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Post by kapuhy »

Is there any way I can download the whole application and store it on a computer that doesn't have internet access? Would be very useful for me...
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Post by Zephyr »

I have made the createmaps for the maps 4 and 5 because they hadn't been done before.

If you are a moderator or an admin, please read this guide so that you know how to update the maps. Here's how they are made:

1) Make createmaps for a particular map.

2) Rename all files so that only the coordinates remain in it. This is done with a script, I have attached my implementation of it in this post. You need to know php and how to run it in order to use it, obviously. You need to edit the script for your MW/Maps/ path too.

3) Use a program to batch convert all the map images from bmp to jpeg. I used ACDSee Classic (2.43) with jpeg quality around 60%. For some reason, Photoshop made the jpeg files bigger for me, which is a major concern in this application.

4) Upload the files to TR server to the correct directory.

As for making an offline version, that's a good idea, but I don't probably have the time to do it. I probably don't have the time to do the support for Oblivion either in the coming weeks.

[edit]

Scratch that, I made a standalone version. I think it should work, although I tried to make it as fast as possible. There are 6 different exe files, one for each map, because making a dialogue would've been too much of a bother for me (it was not designed to be standalone). Since there are over 4500 images in the dynmap folder, the zip is heavy at around 35MB. The exes are big only because flash made them big.

Because this is an offline version, you must download the latest files yourself. The latest node data can be obtained from http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/files/nodes.xml and the map images have to be supplied by someone on the server (no package exists for them). In the zip file, only an old version of nodes.xml is supplied!

You can download the offline version here:
http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/files/map.zip
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