Best way to map a MUD?

[Wish]

Greetings all.

I am interested in creating a fantasy map of a text MUD that I am staff on. While there are many mud-mapper programs, I am looking for two things:

#1 I am looking for a collaborative online program that can be worked on by many people across the country. Ideally a gigantic grid with the ability to change the color of square and label them.

That's so I know what all is there in relationship to everything else. Since the MUD is gigantic, the more staff to work on the map the better.

#2 I am looking for a good software program to create the fantasy map on afterwards. Checking the forums here will be one of my first steps at that stage.

Any ideas?

Thank you so much.

*Wish*

[Ascension]

The way that I have always mapped muds is the old box and line method. A square/rectangle/triangle/circle represents the room and the line represents the exit to the next room. While I don't know of any program that does that specifically any raster or vector program can draw boxes and lines over a grid. Myself, I always used graph paper and pencil, scanned it in, then went over it in Paint Shop Pro, and uploaded it. Fancier maps forced me into Photoshop but that would be overkill for box and line. If you haven't ever looked at the DragonRealms maps then I would suggest looking at those...Sallion and myself did the early mapping for that game but that world has changed a lot in the past 15 years and others have taken over since we retired in 1998. But I digress. Different people can upload their map and then all you need to do is create a table and put each map into that table and then they will all align properly. I'm sure that there are far fancier tools nowadays than tables so those familiar with web stuff can handle putting it all together.

[meleeguy]

I find this discussion interesting. What platforms are desired? Can you provide more details about your proposed workflow and perhaps a simple but non-trial example graph? I am familiar with text adventures but not muds.

The simplest model I can think of is;

get (partial map) copy
edit copy
submit edited copy
a - conflicts detected, merge fails
b - no conflicts, edits are merged

otherwise you have to have a locking model;

browse map and select nodes to edit
lock nodes
edit nodes
unlock nodes

if you allow a person to lock a node and then lock another deadlocks are possible.

[Redrobes]

Firstly, does your MUD exist in text for at mo cos we have had people on here who have been converting the text representation into graphics by script.

If not then I would suggest looking at a VTT but then I would cos I write one. The point is that a VTT is a shared online collaborative mapping exercise. Ok so normally its the DM thats doing the map bits adjustment and players change their character tokens but it does not have to be that way. You can collaboratively edit a map online. A VTT has a grid and some tokens and you can import tokens in to use.

I would start at looking at what you already have to use first tho.