An extremely interesting project...

[Quipster]

Hello there !

I'm no master at this cartography, in fact, I just got into it a few days ago. But, it is very interesting.

Anyway. My reason for posting is that I have a very interesting idea, and I need some help to make it happen. The help I need will come from a very specific person... Let me explain.

I am part of a team working on a MMORPG called Vermund: A Matter of Life and Death. This game is planned to be entirely different from other MMOs, but I wont go into too much detail.

My reason for posting is that we have come to a point in the design where we want to attain some public support. To do this, we have decided to build a public website for the community. Seeing as we plan Vermund to be different from other MMOs in almost every way, naturally we decided we wanted an original website style. That got me to thinking...

I want our website to look like this... http://picasaweb.google.com/butch.cu...68180146816722

General layout items could be made of roads, and links/buttons of houses, or perhaps the names of forest/lakes.

I light of this, the specific kind of person I require, is someone with a knowledge of both web development, and cartography. Alternatively, if someone could make me the elements required for such a website, I'm sure I could find a web developer elsewhere.

If this project interests you, please contact me at toiletpapero_0@hotmail.com

I hope to hear from you soon!

Chris "Quip" Warris
Team Coordinator
Vermund:A Matter of Life and Death

Edit: I can't believe I spelled that title wrong. I even ran it through a spellchecker ! Goodness. I need a coffee.

[Pank.HQ]

In my experience, it seems the type of work you're requesting would function best as a Flash site, and those can be very pricy ($500-1000+ for a Flash developer alone, judging from professional Flash forums). I can't speak for the whole community, as I am a new member like you, but I'm not sure that it's in your best interest to ask for web design here. You're probably better off asking us to produce maps, and searching professional Flash or web developmentforums (like flashkit of designphorum, if those sites are still active). But, yeah - while you might be able to find a good number of useful and helpful fantasy cartographers here, websites are pricy endeavours and something else unto themselves. I'm sure we could help with creating the individual elements, though. If you put up specifics for what you want, I'm sure people would get around to them quickly.

Good luck! (And someone correct me if I've said something wrong.)
=)

[NeonKnight]

Sounds like the general layout (flash or otherwise) maps could be produced here, but then you would likely need someone skilled in web design to combine the bits into something whole.

[xv43]

It might be helpful to have a loose sketch of what you're looking for with notes, the link you gave suggests you just want a map, but gives no concrete direction to move in.

[Quipster]

I did have my doubts in finding someone with both those skill sets who would be willing to work for free...

I'll post some rough sketches in the next couple days. Quite busy right now, but if I get a moment...

[Rovingjack]

I'm only just starting the learning of HTML but it seems to me that there is a way to make clickable sections in a greater image map. But if the idea of the map is like the one you posted with each building cliackable, that is going to be one hugely mosterous jumble of HTML coding.

[Redrobes]

You can make a bit of an image clickable with 'image maps'. They are lists of coords in the image which are hot linked to something like another web page. They are a bit of a pain to set up... that is they would be if you didnt use a little utility to help you out. Fortunately I have one.

A long time ago I tried to use image maps to link lots of maps together in a campaign world so that you could use your browser to navigate around and click through into more maps. This was before I wrote my VTT thing in my sig.

But to help me I have written an app where you graphically draw out the shapes and it generates the html for it. I think flash might be better but I don't do flash - don't particularly like the way its been implemented.

You should check out VTTs like mine and MapTool tho from what little you have said so far it seems very similar. You might find that all the hard work has already been done. Theres a VTT section here on the site with some demos and movies and stuff to trawl through. Also on my sig is an index page link with links to specific VTT pages too.

Anyway, attached is the app in a zip (hopefully). Its copyright but free to use and you may distribute it to your friends and site developers. You have to edit the html and change the links when its made the result to point at your desired web page as by default it just points the links to mine. To install, just unzip it whereever you want to. To use it, load an image, clickety click in the image to draw shape and then press save html. Easy. Double click on resulting html and move cursor over invisible drawn shape to see the cursor change shape to link and pointer shapes etc.

This could be seen as an easy and cheap way to link lots of maps together but I would still maintain that the VTT way is much much better.

[torstan]

Thanks for that RR. I've downloaded it and will check it out. I have some interest in using this for non-VTT html uses. Cheers.