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| world_maps [2023/10/01 17:37] – clarify tracking ch1b1 | world_maps [2023/10/01 22:09] (current) – not future ch1b1 |
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| ====== World Maps ====== | ====== World Maps ====== |
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| <WRAP center round important 75%> | |
| This page is **from the future**! It represents behavior that will be adopted when the server transitions to Minecraft 1.20 on or about 1 August 2023. | |
| </WRAP> | |
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| <WRAP center round box 75%> | <WRAP center round box 75%> |
| You can spruce up that old oaken icon by using one of the following **magic prefixes**. Enter them exactly as you see them here: | You can spruce up that old oaken icon by using one of the following **magic prefixes**. Enter them exactly as you see them here: |
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| * ''![home]'': This is where you live. You probably only have one of these, but maybe you have two or three. Home markers tend to look best when you put them in a high, central place, such as a tower. | * ''![home]'': This is where you live. You probably only have one of these, but maybe you have two or three. Home markers tend to look best when you put them in a central place. |
| * ''![activity]'': Something to do; open to the public. | * ''![activity]'': Something to do; open to the public. |
| * ''![base]'': A location with shelter, food, beds, and maybe other amenities. We tend to leave these things wherever we go. If you have a grand palace, perhaps you should use a different marker style. But this marker is just the right size for a bolthole or a FARP. | * ''![base]'': A location with shelter, food, beds, and maybe other amenities. We tend to leave these things wherever we go. If you have a grand palace, perhaps you should use a different marker style. But this marker is just the right size for a bolthole or a FARP. |
| ===== Tips and Tricks ===== | ===== Tips and Tricks ===== |
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| Before placing a marker, be sure to view your location on the map and pick out a good spot. You might want to offset your markers slightly so that they do not obstruct important map features. Remember that these are //overworld// maps. If you have a giant, industrial-scale sorting depot deep underground, mark the surface entrance. Otherwise, visitors will have a tough time trying to figure out how to get in. | Before placing a marker, be sure to view your location on the map and pick out a good spot. You might want to offset your markers slightly so they do not obstruct important map features. Marker icons will render in the Z+ direction away from their coordinates. |
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| | Remember that these are //overworld// maps. If you have a giant, industrial-scale sorting depot deep underground, mark the surface entrance. Otherwise, visitors will have a tough time trying to figure out how to get in. |
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| Marker signs do not have to be visible to other players. Our satellites use a super-sensitive neutrino detector that can find them wherever they're hiding. | Marker signs do not have to be visible to other players. Our satellites use a super-sensitive neutrino detector that can find them wherever they're hiding. |
| In the beginning, there were no maps. There was only {{:map:netherway_map.png?linkonly|grid paper}} and fires that burned eternally for no discernible reason. Maps had to be kept well away from open flame. | In the beginning, there were no maps. There was only {{:map:netherway_map.png?linkonly|grid paper}} and fires that burned eternally for no discernible reason. Maps had to be kept well away from open flame. |
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| One of the first experiments in digital mapping involved leaping from a tall tower while holding down the ''[screenshot]'' button. After the dwarf in question was stitched up, the images could be stitched together <sup>//[citation needed]//</sup>. | One of the first experiments in digital mapping involved leaping from a tall tower while holding down the ''[screenshot]'' button. After the dwarf in question was stitched up, the images could be stitched together <sup>//[dubious—discuss?]//</sup>. |
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| The first map rendering software was ''c10t'', which produced un-tiled, single-image overhead views. The entire map was rendered at once, without caching. This was perfectly adequate for the Old World. Prior to the domestication of the horse, the development of the wood-composite durable boat, and the invention of Nether Travel, the size of the world was generally limited to about two or three Daywalks in any given direction. | The first map rendering software was ''c10t'', which produced un-tiled, single-image views. The entire map was rendered at once, without caching. This was perfectly adequate for the Old World. Prior to the domestication of the horse, the development of the wood-composite durable boat, and the invention of Nether Travel, the size of the world was generally limited to about two or three Daywalks in any given direction. |
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| The early servers used a wide variety of rendering software. Sometimes the maps rendered sideways. Sometimes the maps rendered {{:news:failfishmural.png?linkonly|nothing at all}}. | The early servers used a wide variety of rendering software. Sometimes the maps rendered sideways. Sometimes the maps rendered {{:news:failfishmural.png?linkonly|nothing at all}}. |
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| After the development of rockets capable of reaching outer space, the Dwarven Space Agency (DSA) rapidly launched a fleet of low-earth orbit satellites to image the world. Equipped with a suite of advanced sensors, they could map the world by day, by night, and from a variety of angles. | The first tiled map viewers required an administrator to manually code up each marker. This process was cumbersome and occasionally resulted in speling mistakes or coordinate inversions. In 2016, the server switched to ''mapcrafter'', which supported automatic marker generation. Using nothing but a sign block, a keyboard, and a can-do attitude, players could add their own markers to the map. The sign prefixes developed for ''mapcrafter'' (see [[#marker_icon|Marker Icon]]) remain in use—largely unchanged—as of 2023. |
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| | In July 2022, ''mapcrafter'' ceased to be maintained and was replaced with ''overviewer''. Overviewer, which was written in Python, was substantially less efficient than mapcrafter. A complete render took many hours, leading one one admin to complain, |
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| In 2016, the satellite constellation gained an advanced neutrino detector. The new sensor could detect signs that were labeled with special, neutrino-emitting words—even when they were underground. The images and text were correlated and tiled together with software called ''mapcrafter''. | >> ''8.09t/s eta 23h 58m 37s'' |
| | > Slow… lazy… snek. |
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| In July 2022, ''mapcrafter'' was replaced with ''overviewer''. The imagery produced by ''overviewer'''s advanced algorithms took many days to stitch and collate. The final product was exceptionally sharp and finely detailed. | But the resulting tiles, which included both day- and night-time lighting maps, were the next best thing to actual gameplay. The maps even provoked a Cease-and-Desist letter from the Dwarven Board of Tourism, which complained that the high-resolution maps had a negative impact on the travel and hospitality sectors <sup>//[citation needed]//</sup>. |
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| But nothing lasts forever. | In October 2023, ''overviewer''—which had been unmaintained since April—was replaced with ''squaremap''. The squaremap tiles marked a return to traditional, top-down, 1:1 scale maps. While less visually impressive, squaremap offered one important design innovation. |
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| Operating a fleet of low-earth orbit satellites, around the clock and around the cube, proved to be an expensive undertaking. Several satellites de-orbited unexpectedly, causing [[:news:mc-142134_issue|blackouts]] in numerous territories. Others gained sentience and went rogue but—as they are unarmed, civilian satellites—should not pose a threat to earth <sup>//[dubious, discuss?]//</sup>. | Up until this point, all mapping software had shared a common design principle: maps were rendered in "batch" mode. Each night—or every 72 nights, by traditional Gregorminian reckoning—a world snapshot was taken. An external process fed the data to a redstone logic core, which produced the maps. This design required the mapping program to read and understand the Minecraft save-file format. Over time, changes in the file format—"anvil," "the flattening," "caves and cliffs," and many other updates which lacked clever names—would cause breakage. |
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| In August 2023, the DSA decided that the low orbits were too unstable—and too populated with space junk from the rogue satellites—to use effectively. Larger launch vehicles were developed. These placed more durable, longer-lived satellites into geosynchronous orbit. These orbits were significantly higher than those of the first-generation satellites. As a result of the increased altitude, fine details could no longer be resolved. | The Minecraft 1.20 update was the last block of hay for the administrators, who decided to switch back to paper: the PaperMC modding framework, that is. In a great ceremony that was attended by no one, the ''squaremap'' plugin was connected directly to the Voxel Engine of the Cosmos. Its comparator-based Difference Engine could then detect each change, as it was made, and account for it in real-time. Impatient cartographers no longer had to wait for the once-daily satellite pass to view the fruits of their labor. Maps, and map markers, were generated //live//. |
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| The new orbits offered one important advantage: with the satellites placed at a "fixed" point in the sky, communication was greatly simplified. The operators no longer needed to wait for a satellite to pass over a ground station in order to receive its data. Instead, satellite data could be fed into a high-performance redstone core in real-time. A new software suite, ''squaremap'', delivered these new maps to dwarves around the cube. | |
