[CF-Devel] Future of maps.

[Mark Wedel]

 Regardless of what is need to be done with ISO, the current state of maps needs
to be updated.

 If you have played on a server with a map area larger than 11x11, you will
quickly see what I mean when you traverse the outside world.  As you move north,
a black band appears at the top, and as you keep moving, it disappears and
appears at the bottom.

 This is because the world maps have an extra 5 spaces along the edges that it
draws, and then when you change maps, that goes to the other side.

 The solution for this, which I plan to work on soon, is to implement automatic
map tiling.  Thus, when you approach the edge of one of hte maps, it
automatically loads the map that should come into view.  This would be done by
extending the map header to say what maps should be loaded in the different
directions.

 With that, it should be easier to make very large autojoin continents.  There
are really 3 possible future directions:

1) Keep outdoor continent basically the way it is, just use autojoining.
2) Go to an indoor/outdoor scale.  The continent would be increased 20-30 times
in size (in each direction, meaning 400-900 overall scale).  Cities would not
appear as the little images you enter, but instead by placed on the world maps. 
Thus, alternative ways of entering cities, like flying over the walls, would
work.  But the shops, caves, towers, etc, would still be buildings you enter
from this.
3) Go to unified scale.  Take #2 above, and increase the scale another order of
magnitude or two.  In this mode, everything is the same scale - the shops don't
have buildings, but rather just appear as spaces on the map (walls, floors,
etc).  In this way, to go accross a city would probably be several hundred
spaces, and the continent would be thousands to tens of thousands.

 #3 creates the humungous world some people want, but is also a lot of work.  It
also means that travelling from say navar city to scorn overland would be a
tremendous journey,  probably taking an hour or more of real time.  It would be
very difficult for anyone to explore the entire world.

 #2 is a bit more modest.  The world becomes a bit larger, but instead of taking
20 seconds for that navar to scorn journey, may now take a few minutes. 
Dungeons would not be piled so much on top of each other.  The split between
indoor/outdoor would be very clear, and if/when things like day/night and
weather are added, not a lot of maps would need to be modified (compared to #3,
where you would probalby need to note which spaces are indoor and which are
out).

 Presumably with either #2 or #3, the actual expansion could be done pretty
automatically, with hand clean up (eliminating some of the blockiness and adding
some more variety).  In cases of both #2 and #3, all exits leading too/from the
world maps would need to be redone due to the new coordinates.

 As a note, if the continents get expanded, some rething may also be in order. 
If things like player controlled boats are added, we would really need to think
about such things like 'just where is pupland/port joseph/lake county?'.  Is
dtabb really needed as a seperate continent if the first is greatly expanded?   
Some of these could very well get merged into the main continent.

 Anyways, food for thought/discussion.