Given the how busy the few remaining plugin developers are these days. It is long haul from - would like to do it - when I get a round tuit. To actually releasing it to the community.


Sadly there are a lot of useful functions that died almost two years ago. The mapper is one that is still waiting in the queue for someone to start work on it.

I'd be willing to donate via Paypal to a finished product that was really JUST the old style Magellen plugin. Nothing else, nothing fancier, just that.

Does this move it up the list?

lol apparently not.....


puleeeeeeeeze?!?!

I'd do it, but I've no idea about the cell.dat format for figuring out where dungeon walls are. I tried having a look, but it would be a pita to figure it out from scratch. If anyone knows anything about the format, I'd be willing to take a crack at it.

Well, I'm making progress, thanks to a HUGE amount of help from Akilla.

Here's a screenie for the work in progress. It's standing at the top of the subway, facing the exit portal. You can just make out the shape of the entrance room, and the two paths leading down.

http://www.flynn1179.me.uk/ac/images/radartest.PNG

Right now, it just plots a point at the corner of each image that's used for the walls and floor, but it means I've successfully figured out how to read where the walls are. I just need to use this data to draw something more sensible, but that's going to take a fair bit of complicated maths. I'm getting there though.

Yesterday this was posted on the originating site:

http://www.archgrove.co.uk/#oldcontent


"It’s been a long time since I posted anything here, but as I only write when I have both time and something to say, it’s not that surprising. I’m moved to put fingers to keyboard today to discuss something I still get regular e-mails about - an old Decal plug-in, Magellan 2, for Asheron’s Call (for those who don’t recognise these terms, an older article series might be interesting).


The main function of Magellan 2 was as a dungeon mapping system - it would automatically generate real-time wireframe overviews of any dungeon as you walked around it. There’s nothing particularly amazing about it; indeed, retrospectively, a lot of how it worked was naive at best and bad at worst. However, a lot of people seemed to like it, and I still get about an email a fortnight asking for source code & technical information. So far, I’ve been sending out the code about once every 3 months, to give each person a chance to repair the code and publish something, alas to no avail. Hence, I figure it’s time to publish something more general and see what people can create.


[there's an awesome pic of the plugin here but I don't have insider here to post it]


Now, Magellan 2 did more than just map dungeons but the additional functionality (place search etc) is pretty trivial data management and nothing we’re interested in. We’ll be focusing on the map generation, but I’m not going to write this as a detailed set of technical specifications - more as a journey of creation suitable for all who are interested. Hopefully the information contained within, plus additional downloadable material will give people everything they need to recreate the work, if they want to.


Phase One : The problem

What we want: To create a client integrated real time usable map display of any dungeon a player wanders into, something that will help them both find their way around and allow them to explore the full depth of the dungeon (no more missed turns!).


What we we know: We have two data files, “cell.dat” and “portal.dat”, which form an archive of many thousands of smaller files. We also have some vague idea of how the AC client software deals with the problem - we know that when we enter a new dungeon, some data is downloaded and the “cell.dat” file gets larger. We also know, from our many years of dungeon crawling, that dungeons are very “modular” in design - they seem to be built out of standard components, reused many times within the dungeons.


What we can do: We can read the files contained in the cell.dat and portal.dat archive files. We can also, via Decal, draw onto the players screen, and find out their location and orientation in the world.


The challenge is set! Over the next few articles, we’ll see what we can create. "


YAY looks like it may be making a comeback via the original owner, this makes me SO happy!

Cant wait I really liked Magellan

Well, my version's almost ready. It's still a lot less efficient than I'd like though, so I'm going to try and streamline it a bit, and there's some landblocks it still doesn't cope with very well, I'm having a look at those to try and figure out what's going on.


Here's a couple of screenies so far. The second one is the top of the subway.


http://www.flynn1179.me.uk/ac/images/radartest3.PNG

http://www.flynn1179.me.uk/ac/images/radartest4.PNG


Time permitting, I'm hoping to have something released within a week, although it's likely that initially it'll just plot the dungeon walls on the radar for now. I'll add in more functionality once I know it's stable enough.


Flynn