Guild City

[Straf]

We have the N.S.E.W. ground view map with gardens, walls, roads, roofs and what you would basically see from a drone or hot air balloon. The zoom is for in and out or the resolution so you can get more detail right up to practically the pixel resolution that it was mapped out to the whole city - like google maps. Then I can place down hot links. Those can be links to images or a URL. The URL can be another zoom map. So we can put in hot links on the ground level where there are man hole access hatches and link them all to the sewer zoom map. We can put in hot links at the doors to buildings to the attachment for the single map for inside that building. What I cant do is put in hot links on attachments. So all the hot links need to be on the zoomable layers of which there are going to be about 2 or 3 max (Ground, Sewer, something else). I can link the whole city zoomable map onto the Guildworld zoomable map at the point of "The Guild" in Robbies area - see earlier posts in this thread about that.

Here is a map I did of some nature reserves. If you zoom in you should get up close to the point it adds hot links to the photos.
http://www.hawkandowl-shapwick.org/A...hesMap/Map.htm
(If you go to the "wick" part of Shapwick Moor in bottom left Hawk and Owl region, there is a URL link there to their main website. So if that URL was the guilds other zoomable map then you would see the next zoomable layer there)

I think I get it You could, in theory, have an infinite number of zoomable layers by just clicking on a link to open up a district map, with individual properties linking to attachments that show the detailed plan. The composite map is built on-the-fly using the individual district maps whose positions are defined by some gridding system magic. The more zoomable maps there are the more room for errors to creep in, so keeping it simple is crucial, so the number of zoomable layers needs to be limited. Am I understanding this correctly?

If so then a complex underground labyrinth underneath Soap Distant's house (see Brentford Triangle by Robert Rankin for more information) would be well outside the scope of this project.

I am just sitting and imagining how it can all be done, and speculating more than anything, so don't really mind me

[Redrobes]

You could, in theory, have an infinite number of zoomable layers

Yes you could but each one is 16384x16384 pixels which is a lot of bitmap to upload. So its more about the effort of maintenance than anything. My ViewingDale app did it on the fly so you didnt have to do this but were on a forum with HTML and Javascript at our disposal so were limited.

The composite map is built on-the-fly using the individual district maps whose positions are defined by some gridding system magic.

I build the composite map from peoples uploaded thread attachments and put it all into my ViewingDale app which does do it on the fly, then export it as one large bitmap to upload to the guild.

The more zoomable maps there are the more room for errors to creep in, so keeping it simple is crucial, so the number of zoomable layers needs to be limited. Am I understanding this correctly?

Its more about management and effort of the amount of huge files we have to upload on every single update of the map. If someone changes a small item in one of their sectors of the city and creates a new attachment then we have an automatic WIP Scraper here on the guild which I wrote the original of some long time ago and improved by RobA. Thats run every half hour or so and it looks out for new WIP attachments with the ### Latest WIP ### tag and generates a page of the thumbs with links to the latest thread post. Its normally used for the monthly challenges but its also used for the community threads too. I download a copy all the new latest images that I dont have and update my local set. I put them into my ViewingDale app which aligns them and composes all the parts together and I export one large 16Kx16K bitmap of the whole city. I have another app I wrote to break up these large 16K bitmaps to LeafletJS compatible tiles (256x256) for the zoomy javascript engine called Leaflet. Once you upload 5000 or so of these tiles then in a browser you get to zoom in and out of everyones sectors like google maps up to a resolution of 16K in a browser window of say 1280.

So thats how its all done

[Straf]

Yes you could but each one is 16384x16384 pixels which is a lot of bitmap to upload.

Oh, I don't know. In 24 bit depth I make that only 4.5 x 10^15 bits, I mean that's only somewhere in the region of 500 ish terabytes uncompressed. Imagine how long it would take to back that up onto 3.5" floppies!

So its more about the effort of maintenance than anything. My ViewingDale app did it on the fly so you didnt have to do this but were on a forum with HTML and Javascript at our disposal so were limited.


I build the composite map from peoples uploaded thread attachments and put it all into my ViewingDale app which does do it on the fly, then export it as one large bitmap to upload to the guild.


Its more about management and effort of the amount of huge files we have to upload on every single update of the map. If someone changes a small item in one of their sectors of the city and creates a new attachment then we have an automatic WIP Scraper here on the guild which I wrote the original of some long time ago and improved by RobA. Thats run every half hour or so and it looks out for new WIP attachments with the ### Latest WIP ### tag and generates a page of the thumbs with links to the latest thread post. Its normally used for the monthly challenges but its also used for the community threads too. I download a copy all the new latest images that I dont have and update my local set. I put them into my ViewingDale app which aligns them and composes all the parts together and I export one large 16Kx16K bitmap of the whole city. I have another app I wrote to break up these large 16K bitmaps to LeafletJS compatible tiles (256x256) for the zoomy javascript engine called Leaflet. Once you upload 5000 or so of these tiles then in a browser you get to zoom in and out of everyones sectors like google maps up to a resolution of 16K in a browser window of say 1280.

So thats how its all done

Thanks for the explanation. I just went off to see what ViewingDale is and I watched a video on YouTube. When the view zoomed in on a character's bald head I thought there was going to be a zoomable map tattooed on his head!

I thought there was a server side app stitching everything together from individual sections on-the-fly. Thinking about it, processing that much data for potentially multiple clients may cause a bit of a CPU load problem.

I'm thinking that Google Maps draw theirs from GIS data at the relevant zoom level?

[djan]

Nice idea ... and a very long thread ... but I would like to participate.

Some random remarks:

• A possible solution for the problem of having to get all of the parts aligned properly, is to have the city consist of a large number of 'islands'. For example, a city in a river delta like Venice. Or an elven city in gigantic trees; or a floating city. You will have to have the bridges connect properly.
  
• Many big cities I know, haven't grown out of one core but often out of multiple cities/large villages that grew together into one big city.
  
• Perhaps not every participant will want to map at the same level. Some would prefer to map the entire city of big chunks of it, while other are more comfortable mapping a few streets of even individual buildings. Perhaps this can be used to divide up the work: have some people create a general map of the city, then map the general outline of some big chunks (putting some important landmarks on the map such as cathedrals) creating neighbourhoods etc.
  
• Even when everybody is mapping at the same level, the (minimum) amount of detail needs to be determined, I think. This also depends on the size of the neighbourhoods. With a neigbourhood of approc 200 by 200 metres you can have a lot of detail (specifying individual buildings). With 20 mappers this will result in approx a 1 square kilometre city, which is a quite big medieval city. With neighbourhoods of 500 by 500 metres, you are almost mapping complete cities and the amount of detail can be much less.

[Mouse]

Nice idea ... and a very long thread ... but I would like to participate.

Some random remarks:

• A possible solution for the problem of having to get all of the parts aligned properly, is to have the city consist of a large number of 'islands'. For example, a city in a river delta like Venice. Or an elven city in gigantic trees; or a floating city. You will have to have the bridges connect properly.
  
• Many big cities I know, haven't grown out of one core but often out of multiple cities/large villages that grew together into one big city.
  
• Perhaps not every participant will want to map at the same level. Some would prefer to map the entire city of big chunks of it, while other are more comfortable mapping a few streets of even individual buildings. Perhaps this can be used to divide up the work: have some people create a general map of the city, then map the general outline of some big chunks (putting some important landmarks on the map such as cathedrals) creating neighbourhoods etc.
  
• Even when everybody is mapping at the same level, the (minimum) amount of detail needs to be determined, I think. This also depends on the size of the neighbourhoods. With a neigbourhood of approc 200 by 200 metres you can have a lot of detail (specifying individual buildings). With 20 mappers this will result in approx a 1 square kilometre city, which is a quite big medieval city. With neighbourhoods of 500 by 500 metres, you are almost mapping complete cities and the amount of detail can be much less.

Thank you very much for your suggestions djan. We are hoping to be treated to a rough sketch of the layout that J.Edward would envisage when he has time. It was he who designed and portioned the Guildworld map last year for the 10th anniversary celebrations. However, he is one of the Community Leaders closely involved in running out the Annual Awards, so we may have to be just a bit patient. I am sure that he will see and consider your comments, and that the wait will not be a disappointment

On the third point you make in particular, there has already been talk of a 5' grid to cover the entire city, which would give all mappers the same reference to scale.

I will add your name to the list at the head of this thread. Welcome to the Guild City building team

[DanielHasenbos]

Alright, I'm not going to read through the 14 pages of comments, but I'd love to be part of this project! Count me in!

-Dan

[Jalerym]

I would love to be added to the list

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G920A using Tapatalk

[Mouse]

Alright, I'm not going to read through the 14 pages of comments, but I'd love to be part of this project! Count me in!

-Dan

14 pages? Really? Its only 3 days old! LOL!

Welcome to the team Dan - good to have you along

I would love to be added to the list

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G920A using Tapatalk

Thanks for confirming Jalerym. Welcome to the team

...

If either of you (or anyone else already on the list for that matter) wishes to withdraw at a later date just let me know and l can take you off again - no problems

[Voolf]

If either of you (or anyone else already on the list for that matter) wishes to withdraw at a later date just let me know and l can take you off

Mouse The Almighty

[Mouse]

LOL! Off the list, not carry off!

Don't have either the wings or the halo to do the other thing

EDIT: its only because the list has been drawn up in the first comment - which is mine This thread has taken on a life of its own. I'm just doing the caretaker bit - updating things.