User talk:WinterRose/Maplist

WinterRose, thank you for creating so many of these maps. What software do you use to create your maps? Any special techniques if one of us wants to get into mapping? The last time I did any serious mapping on AVATAR, it was good ol' pen and graph paper. Thanks for any pointers you can provide. --Shalineth 22:17, 18 March 2012 (CDT)

Hello Shalineth, I'm glad you're interested in mapping. Although all the lowmort and hero areas, save few noticable exceptions like Hero Quest have been mapped, no lord areas have a single map to them. As for the lowmort maps - Dave Garber was incredibly precise and pedantic when making them, however hero ones (many of my maps as well), could use improvement. I'll try to list below how I make maps, perhaps it's useful to you or others. -- WinterRose 05:59, 19 March 2012 (CDT)

Alt Tips and Tricks

Every area can have a series of tricks to it that cannot be seen or performed by a single alt. While this is rare, one should, if possible, run an area with multiple alts. Since mapping is a slow process, speed in defeating multiple rooms isn't as important - versatility is.

Class and race specifics:

• Mage is the most versatile class for exploring (IMHO) since it has access to Keyfinder and Bashdoor, and is easily capable of defeating any single room at a time, as well as immediate access to information about anti-magic nature of rooms.
• When dealing with anti-magic rooms, especially complicated ones, fusiliers are a good choice.
• Certain doors have levers invisible to anyone without psionic and/or rogue-lore expertise. BCI excel here as they can see both types of these levers (for a notable example see Tssasskkas's Lair).
• While speaking of psionicists, Insight is a wonderful tool.
• Some areas have Woodcraft-ed markers visible only to archertypes/druids. Druids are a good choice since they can ascertain if a room is an Infirmary, something that only healer-classes can do.
• Tuataurs are lovely for their constant Bioscan-like racial. Otherwise, just remember to cast it if possible.

Mapping an Area

Pencil and graph paper! It takes forever, of course, but usually software can't deal with complicated layouts. Simple meshes like Battleground are mappable with programs, but once you visit Neraka or some of the areas with random-exit mazes, it breaks down quickly.

• Try to avoid getting Foci, specifically Fly, when spelling up and use substitute gear to fly. It's hard to detect Air rooms otherwise.
• Always try going into each of the 6 cardinal directions, to detect hidden doors.
• "Get all" in every room. Secret items on floor can be revealed in this manner - containers, levers, portals, etc. Number of "You can't take that." messages indicates how many hidden objects exist.
• Recall set to determine if a room is cursed.
• "say hello" to determine if room is silenced (very rate, though it does happen).
• Alias the get all, say hello, and recall set since you'll be doing this a lot.
• Type list to see if any of the mobs is an unexpected shoppie.
• When encountering random-exit mazes, these reset every repop. Seek sense in the layout - although the exits change completely (for example a 2-exit room goes from north+east to south+west), that same room will always connect only 2, and always the same 2 other rooms. For an example see the Fungal Forest or Silmavar Labyrinth.
• It hardly needs to be said, but do read descriptions on everything. You will encounter many reportable bugs this way - items incorrectly placed, mislabeled, broken portals, movable furniture, etc.

Once you have scoured the area room by room and wrote everything down on paper - locations of sentinel mobs, room names, doors, anything else relevant to adventuring - you can start drawing up a proper.

Drawing a Map

In my experience I've always found Photoshop easy to use. After loading an appropriate background, I scale it to anywhere from 1200 to 1900 pixels of width. Why maps this big? The only issue I had with Garber's maps is that, although incredibly detailed, they are simply too small. Places like Igecsoz or Midgaard are difficult to read. When the map is reduced to 650px on the Map page of an area, it's nor really important to read every letter, but if one needs to - just load it full size and zoom in.

It's important to turn on the grid, and the "Snap to grid" options. Grids are a natural mesh onto which to draw the rectangles. Snapping to grid makes them automatically aligned and properly set. When a rectangle is drawn, giving it a 3-pixel black or red stroke easily indicates if the room is cursed or not.

Some of the specifics I tend to use:

• Land: 50/200/0
• Water: 0/200/200
• Air: 255/255/255
• regular connections and doors: 5px
• Locked pass-proof doors: 255/0/255
• Inter-Area connections: 170/170/255 for the bright part, 0/0/255 for the thick blue part, lines are 10px thick
• Cursed rooms: 255/0/0 stroke
• Uncursed rooms: 0/0/0 stroke
• Font sizes: as appropriate. I try to make it half-readable even when reduced to 650px of width, as I usually do. on the Map ot XXX pages.

That's all for now I think, if you have any other questions, please go ahead and ask. -- WinterRose 05:59, 19 March 2012 (CDT)