Seamless Maps

[dorion]

So a friend and I were talking about a month ago. We get on the subject of Wyvern Map Making and how to make yourself different. Everyone has their own styles for maps, Zypher when he was still a wizard had the annoying habit of making it impossible to fly over water in his maps. Janica has her distinctive art style. Teshuvah has "Tree Walls." And we got on the idea of immersion and making Wyvern feel smoother. One of the things about Wyvern maps is most come to a jarring halt with darkness or whatever the out-of-bounds terrain is. We came up with two ideas. A teleporter tile that will automatically map you to the correct neighboring map when ever you hit the border of a map, but thats not possible for us with no Wizardly Powers. The other was to add a buffer on the edge of the map. The problem with that is you need a buffer of 6 squares on every side, thats alot of space to fill in. So I made a tool to automate it. It is a small python script I call the Expander. It goes through your map and moves all object 6 spaces down and to the left, and then extends walls, terrain, and soon Mountains and certain special tiles to the new edges of a map.

For example we have this map:
[url=http://img257.imageshack.us/my.php?image=originaled8.png:eaf59][img:eaf59]http://img257.imageshack.us/img257/5634/originaled8.th.png[/img:eaf59][/url:eaf59]

This map is only meant to be entered and exited along the roads, a perfect choice for the Expander. When run through the Expander the script should make the map should have its borders expanded by 6 on all sides and if you keep the orginal teleport locations(invisible in this picture use your imagination) and connect to maps with with similar borders you have a nice smooth ride through the country side.
Like this:
[url=http://img257.imageshack.us/my.php?image=messup1mm3.png:eaf59][img:eaf59]http://img257.imageshack.us/img257/830/messup1mm3.th.png[/img:eaf59][/url:eaf59]

Hmm so I had trouble understanding how the Mapeditor saves the map, here:
[url=http://img150.imageshack.us/my.php?image=messup2xs5.png:eaf59][img:eaf59]http://img150.imageshack.us/img150/6339/messup2xs5.th.png[/img:eaf59][/url:eaf59]
Ummm....
[url=http://img337.imageshack.us/my.php?image=progressel8.png:eaf59][img:eaf59]http://img337.imageshack.us/img337/2333/progressel8.th.png[/img:eaf59][/url:eaf59]
Well that is somewhat better.
[url=http://img337.imageshack.us/my.php?image=progress2rn3.png:eaf59][img:eaf59]http://img337.imageshack.us/img337/2946/progress2rn3.th.png[/img:eaf59][/url:eaf59]
Well it is halfright.
[url=http://img150.imageshack.us/my.php?image=version1xg3.png:eaf59][img:eaf59]http://img150.imageshack.us/img150/3327/version1xg3.th.png[/img:eaf59][/url:eaf59]
Now we are getting somewhere!
[url=http://img257.imageshack.us/my.php?image=progress3rs1.png:eaf59][img:eaf59]http://img257.imageshack.us/img257/3336/progress3rs1.th.png[/img:eaf59][/url:eaf59]
Taking Shape.
[url=http://img337.imageshack.us/my.php?image=progress4xk6.png:eaf59][img:eaf59]http://img337.imageshack.us/img337/6734/progress4xk6.th.png[/img:eaf59][/url:eaf59]
One Step Backwards.
[url=http://img337.imageshack.us/my.php?image=progress5um1.png:eaf59][img:eaf59]http://img337.imageshack.us/img337/8206/progress5um1.th.png[/img:eaf59][/url:eaf59]
Almost there!
[url=http://img337.imageshack.us/my.php?image=sucesshc5.png:eaf59][img:eaf59]http://img337.imageshack.us/img337/7977/sucesshc5.th.png[/img:eaf59][/url:eaf59]
Ahh Perfect!

Now the script still isn't perfect, it only extends walls, terrain, and random terrains from the original archs. I'm working on a way to get Mountains, wiz archs, fog, and certain special tiles like No Monster and No Spells working easily without the hard coded paths I have now. When I do I'll package it in a small GUI and anyone that wants it can have it. Until then bask in my GLORY!

[dorion]

4 hours. Longer than I expected but the script is a lot cleaner than I expected. But now I can just throw maps into it and it spits out new version in less than a second.