Introducing a new kind of map (looking for feedback)

[Muggens]

Originally Posted by skjoldinbrothr [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I will keep that in mind moving forward. Of the other two, which do you prefer and why?

The mtg card is alot more tidy and cleaner looking, visually and how the info is placed than the other two. It also looks as it has more stats and info. Not digging the other two as much, could be the resolution...
Maybe make a copycat style card of mtg instead of a pure copy? WotC are greedy bastages but im sure u can use a mtg template without getting sued [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]
My 2 cents

Good luck!

[Izmael]

Can't wait for Highpass. Maybe with this tool I'll be finally able to learn my way around this zone, after 20 years of being lost.

[Wolfshead Sky]

Someone ask for Highpass? [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Bardp1999]

I wanted to hate this before I clicked because who needs more maps? But I will admit its pretty awesome. Good work friend.

Making the controls a little less clunky would be a good start, and definitely adding in more "points of interest". One of these for SolB and Sirens Groto would be the coolest...Chardok also!

I hope the community ends up fleshing this out competently and we can add it to the Wiki

[Wolfshead Sky]

Glad you guys are liking it. And what better praise than to get a thumbs up from someone who wanted to hate it LOL [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.].

I've added more zones. Again, for now, these are only the zones. No bells and whistles, yet. But while working on Erudin Palace, I noticed an area that doesn't appear to be accessible in the game. At least I couldn't figure out how to get to it when I made a character to double-check. It is a small area off in the distance with only a building and what looks like 3 teleporter pads. But that isn't what makes it interesting. What makes it interesting is one of the textures on the building [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]. I left it in the map so users can see it for themselves, but check out the image below.

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[Wolfshead Sky]

All world zones have been added. Almost all of these are "zone only" and have nothing beyond the actual zone file itself. This means some buildings, structures (such as druid rings), and even trees are usually missing. Time permitting, they will be added later, but it will be a slow process. This also means that the "fly to" functionality by clicking on a point of interest is also not available yet. Again, this adding this content will be a slow process. Despite these shortcomings, the zones are still available to fly around in!

You can think of this project as being very much in beta, and things will be goofy, perhaps the odd broken link, loading the wrong zone, mispelled word, etc. Also remember that the complexity of the zone will determine how choppy the program can be. It is in a browser, after all. This can affect the smoothness of the flying controls. Please report any problems you run into here.

Some zones have collision polygons mixed in with the terrain polygons. I've managed to clear some of the zones, but some zones have these collision polygons (to keep players from going where they aren't supposed to) linked to actual, necessary terrain polygons and deleting the former will also remove the latter. These zones will be flagged as needing to be "cleaned up" and will require some love in a 3D modeling program and re-imported back into Unity. These zones will be cleaned up as time permits.

For now the main EQ Explorer page is simply a web page. It will be upgraded soon to an actual Unity program. But for now, it'll get you to the zone you want to explore.

BONUS! I found the zones for the original character select screen and tutorial. These will be at the bottom of the page, and are pretty neat to explore [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.].

Some of you have expressed a desire to help out with this project. If you would like to help, I have lots that needs doing, so please PM me [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.].

Enjoy!

[Wolfshead Sky]

We've been working hard on the project. Almost every zone has been cleaned up. The Hole, The Warrens, Paineel, and Plane of Mischief, while still available to explore, still need to be cleaned up.

Note! We've run into a few technical glitches here and there with Unity. Seems like Unity has been acting persnickety at times and dropping textures and/or making the colors appear a little off. There was even an extreme case where Unity removed all textures from a zone map for some reason. If you notice anything goofy like this, please report it here.

Even though this is just a map project, we've been toying with the idea of being able to toggle atmospheric effects just for fun. Zones like Kithicor Forest and Misty Thicket look odd without the fog and green tone. It might be neat to be able to toggle these effects. Again, just for fun [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.].

Right now, we are at the point where we are trying to determine what we should add to the project. We've toyed with ideas of floating information cards at notable locations, zone music, etc., but all of these things drastically increase the size of each zone. Even though each zone is its own application, they are web applications and making the download/load time too long for each one can be cumbersome. In one respect, we are incredibly satisfied with being able to simply fly around an empty zone to explore. If the project must remain that simple due to size constraints, so be it. However, if we can, we'd love to add bells and whistles here and there to make flying around the zones a bit more fun and informative.

Objects! Adding objects to the zones is still on our to-do list. As I've mentioned before, many of the zones are pretty bare. Indeed, flying around East Commonlands without any trees in it is rather odd. Due to the amount of time it takes to add items, for now we are only going to give priority to certain objects. For example, adding the druid rings to West Commonlands is more important than adding a bookcase to an out of the way room in some building in Freeport.

Have any suggestions? We'd love to hear them! We've been having a blast with this project and it is pretty neat to see how these zones are put together.

[Terrel]

Thanks for all of the work on this!

Would it be feasible to set up an option so that you can't walk through walls/floors? That'd be awesome!

[Wolfshead Sky]

We've been wanting to implement something like this for a while, but have run into a number of issues. Getting the collisions to behave has been a pain in the butt. We THINK we've found a workable implementation, but it comes at a cost which is movement speed. Our biggest issue is the speed that we can zoom across the map, which is great for being able to navigate quickly, means that we fly right through the mesh collider of the map. You can fix this in a couple ways. One, you can make the user/player collider bigger. That isn't feasible since there are so many tight tunnels. The only other option we can come up with is slowing the camera down so we don't shoot past the collisions between frames. We are working on it, and like I said, we THINK we've found a workable solution. Doing some testing now [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.].

[Wolfshead Sky]

Made a few changes.

First, we changed the name to EQ Scout. Turns out that there is an EQ Explorer website already out there and we don't want any confusion [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]. This means there is a new URL to the project: http://www.legendreaders.com/eqscout/

Radically changed the interface. It is now very minimal and is inspired by old and new EQ interfaces. You'll also see grayed out options for features to be implemented in the future.

It also turns out that the ability to change movement and mouse speeds wasn't available in every zone. This has been fixed.

Still working on a way to allow for collisions so the user has the option to not simply fly through everything. Unfortunately every solution we've come up with causes problems in other areas.

Enjoy!