Contents
- What is this map tool?
- What can I use the map tool for?
- What else can it do?
- How do I create my own map?
- What features are available when viewing a map?
- Known bugs and missing features
What is this map tool?
The map tool allows you to create custom World Of Warcraft maps that you can share with your friends or other players. It uses the co-ordinate system found in most of the map addons you can download and install, such as Map Notes.
The main advantage of using this tool is that you can show a location on a map that users without any map addon can see. They can look at your map and compare it to their ingame map to find out where to go.
Once you save your map you will be given a link that you can use to edit the map later, allowing you to put together more complex maps in stages.
The map tool also allows you to create private maps that are protected with a password in the link, which you can share among your guild mates. One example might be a map used to co-ordinate tactics in one of the battlegrounds.
Please remember that this tool is currently in beta and may contain bugs. I have listed bugs that I know about below. If you spot any others then
To use this map tool you need Internet Explorer 6+ or Firefox 1+ and you must have javascript enabled.
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What can I use the map tool for?
You could use it for any of the following:
- Create maps to show locations of quest objectives, such as NPCs or objects.
- Make maps of the main cities to show NPC or building locations.
- Map out areas where you have spotted locations of herbs and deposits.
- Show a path to take in a certain zone, labelling the map points #1, #2 etc.
- Create private maps to share with your guild to form tactics for PvP or battlegrounds.
- Share a meeting point with your friends or guild for an in-game event.
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What else can it do?
I've also designed it to allow you to create quick maps with only one point, using only a specially formatted link to the site. This means that you can quickly show other players one point in a zone without having to go and create and save a map with the map tool.
The link takes the following format:
http://www.worldofwarcraftstuff.com/map/zone/x/y/
Valid values for X and Y are between 0 and 100. Valid values for the zone are shown in the list below:
alterac-mountains, alterac-valley, arathi-basin, arathi-highlands, ashenvale, azeroth, azshara, badlands, blackrock-mountain, blasted-lands, burning-steppes, darkshore, darnassus, darrowmere-lake, deadwind-pass, desolace, dun-morogh, durotar, duskwood, dustwallow-marsh, eastern-plaguelands, elwynn-forest, felwood, feralas, hillsbrad-foothills, ironforge, kalimdor, loch-modan, moonglade, mulgore, orgrimmar, redridge-mountains, searing-gorge, silithus, silverpine-forest, stonetalon-mountains, stormwind-city, stranglethorn-vale, swamp-of-sorrows, tanaris, teldrassil, the-barrens, the-hinterlands, thousand-needles, thunder-bluff, tirisfal-glades, undercity, ungoro-crater, warsong-gulch, western-plaguelands, westfall, wetlands, winterspring, world,
Some examples would be:
http://www.worldofwarcraftstuff.com/map/the-barrens/50/50/
http://www.worldofwarcraftstuff.com/map/orgrimmar/49/69/
http://www.worldofwarcraftstuff.com/map/elwynn-forest/42/67/
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How do I create my own map?
To create your own custom map please follow these steps:
- Load up the map tool page.
- Select the zone you want to map from the lookup and hit the Change Zone button.
- Enter an optional title for the map you are about to create.
- If you want to stop everyone viewing the map then tick the Private Map option.
- If you want to have your name appear beside the map then fill in the Name field.
- If you want to have the show and edit links emailed to you then fill in the Email field. Email addresses are never displayed on the site and are only used to send out the map show and edit links to you.
- Gather together the information you need for your map.
- Either click somewhere on the map to insert the co-ordinates in to the X and Y boxes or just enter them manually.
- Enter an optional description for this map point, choose a color for it and pick how you want the description aligned to the point.
- If you group your map points by color then users who are viewing your map can turn groups of map points on and off. For an example check out the Orgrimmar map I put together.
- Click the Add button to add the point to the map.
- If you make a mistake click the Undo button to delete the last point.
- If you want to delete a specific point on the map then click the small white X beside the point. These Xs will not appear on the saved map. When you delete a point in this way the X co-ordinate, Y co-ordinate and the description will be filled in to the fields above, allowing you to realign or recolor a map point easily.
- If you want to start again click the Clear button to delete all the points.
- Once you are finished click the Save button to save your map. You will be given two links.
- The first link is the link you share with friends or other players to let them see your map. If you ticked the Private Map option then the link will contain a password, meaning that only the people with the full link can view your map.
- The second link is the link that you can use to edit your map at a later time. It contains a password to stop other people changing your map. Again, you can share this link if you want to allow others to edit it as well.
- Please keep both links safe as there is no way to get them back once you have browsed away from the map tool. You can have them emailed to you by filling in your email address and checking the Send option.
- Once you have saved your map you can continue editing and saving until you are happy with it. If you want to reset the map back to the last time you saved it then just click the edit link you were given or refresh the page if you have already.
- All non-private maps are saved on the Saved Maps page and do not contain either the private or edit password in the links.
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What features are available when viewing a map?
There are a number of features available when viewing a map:
- You can choose to hide or show all the map points using the tickbox at the bottom of the map.
- You can then turn on individual map points using the tickboxes beside each of the points in the list at the bottom of the map.
- If the person who created the map has grouped the points by color then you can turn groups of map points on and off using the tickbox in the header sections of each of the tables. For an example check out the Orgrimmar map I put together.
- If you find that the colors chosen by the person who created the map are hard to read or don't print out well on your printer then you can use the option at the bottom of the map to set all points to a specific color. If you want to go back to the original colors then select No Color from the color selector.
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Known bugs and missing features
I know of the following bugs so far:
- Bug: When adding map points using Internet Explorer the map will flicker. In Firefox it's fine.
- Bug: The co-ordinate tooltip won't work properly when hovering over an existing map point and it's description e.g. it will read 0,0.
- Bug: If you drag your mouse rapidly over the map while editing then your CPU usage will get quite high. Smooth mouse movements do not have such an effect. I'm looking in to this one as a priority and I think it's something to do with the tooltip library I'm using.
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