Garan

With the release of RoI, Turbine introduced a new BackPack bug which can cause any plugin that accesses the Backpack to eventually crash the client. MoorMap version 1.10 is potentially susceptible to this bug when displaying the Ettenmoors map (it checks your inventory for the Ettenmoors' map items to determine whether to create the quickslots that allow activating the items by clicking on the map-in location). All other maps should be safe.

Because of the severity of the bug (it crashes the game client), version 1.11 will have the map-in functionality of the Ettenmoors' map disabled and this functionality will remain disabled until Turbine is able to fix the bug. Version 1.11 should be available later this week.
EDIT: After checking further into the inventory bug, versoin 1.10 was not affected so version 1.11 will be delayed until more of the new content can be included.

Vandalyzed

Thank you for the info, I will take a look.

As far as the Quick Annotation Marker. I got that moved, so good deal. I was trying to drag the whole thing, but using just the edge worked.

As for my monitor oddness, I'm quite positive it has nothing to do with your plugin. I'm not sure why, but the game does not recognize the higher resolution of the monitor. But, that's a problem I'll have to look into. I will see if your suggested edits to the file will straighten moormap's size, but unless the game recognizes the higher resolution, I don't think moormap will change at all.

As for my suggestion/question of an export to excel feature, I happened on another post where someone had mentioned the chat logging and use of a location shortcut and then he copied these into an excel file. I can probably do something like that.

I think you've done a great job with this plugin and thank you for the quick response.

Garan

Thanks for your feedback.

Unfortunately, we only have access to writing to .plugindata files which are a relatively ugly format. If you are interested in looking at them, the MoorMap data files are stored in the "My Documents\The Lord of the Rings Online\PluginData\username\AllServers" folder. Each map has a separate file for custom annotations named "MM_CustomAnnotations_xx.plugindata" where xx is the map number from the readme.txt file (in the Moormap plugin folder). The separate files were necessary to prevent excessive lag when loading thousands of custom annotations (one user had a couple of thousand crafting nodes just in the starter areas).

The built in Quick Annotation control is repositionable - you just have to use your left mouse button to drag the very top edge of the control. As to the shortcut not working, I'm not really sure why it would seem to be intermittent, it should either work perfectly or not at all - the only time I've had a user report intermittent functionality was when he accidentally added the shortcut with static values. See my post in this thread on 04-13-2011, 12:32 PM if you need detailed instructions for creating the shortcut.

As to your monitor oddness, I'm a little confused. You said your game is set to 1024x768 but the monitor is 1280xsomething (probably 1024) but that the game doesn't go higher. The game should be able to go to resolutions far higher than 1024 - when you changed your monitor, did you go into the windows Display Properties and tell windows that you have a different monitor? If not and the monitor is old enough that it doesn't support plug&play then that may account for some of the oddness and the unrecognized resolutions. However, the confusing thing is that the plugin should use whatever resolution the game is running at and the map is resizable by dragging the lower right corner to whatever size you need. The icons are positioned and sized with the map, so when it is resized they should position properly, regardless of whether the map occupies the whole screen. If it is not behaving this way then I suspect the same problem that is causing the game not to recognize all of the monitor's resolutions is causing the display discrepancies.

You can try to get around the resolution issue by letting moormap automatically detect the game settings and resize itself - to do this, edit the file: "My Documents\The Lord of the Rings Online\PluginData\username\AllServers\MoorMapSettings.plugindata" (where username is your account name) and find the lines MapTop, MapLeft and set their values to 0 (if they aren't already 0), then find MapWidth and MapHeight and delete the entries completely - both the lines with the setting names and the lines with the values. If you aren't comfortable editing the file, you can also simply rename it to test whether the settings will work (a new file will be created with default settings). It is important that the plugin is NOT loaded when you edit the file, otherwise the changes you make will be ignored and overwritten by the running plugin.

Vandalyzed

Just a couple thoughts/suggestions. Since, at this time, there's no way to integrate moormap annotations to the game map, I was wondering if it would be possible to have a print option, or even an export to excel file option. This way I could manually organize my annotations, separate and print them so that the coordinates are in front of me without having to switch back and forth between the map.

Secondly, I tried using the shortcut option for the quick annotation and many times it just didn't seem to work. So, I got rid of the shortcut and just used the built in annotation icon. The problem I have with this is I can't move that icon anywhere other than where it is, currently. (which is the lower left of the screen).

The monitor I was using had to be replaced and the only thing I had available immediately was one of the boat anchor style heavy monitors. This monitor uses a different screen resolution, higher than 1024x768. So, now when I open moormap, it does not cover the screen like the game map does, or as it did before. It is not a non-resizable map that only covers about 60% of the screen and the icons are now all off track, some icons even being off the map completely. Is there anything I can do to fix that?

The game resolution is 1024x768 while my monitor resolution is 1280xwhatever-it-is. Game resolution doesn't go any higher.

Just some thoughts on the things I've encountered, but my main priority question is the ability to export the information to file or print. It would come in very handy with creating a prospecting ritual. If not an export option, if you could point me to the file where the annotations/coordinates are stored, maybe I can at least extract the information rather than having to build an excel file by hand.

Garan

The layering order of plugin windows is controlled by ZOrder, in the case of Lua, the method :SetZOrder() assigns a value to a window with higher values being in front of lower values. In the case of MoorMap's icon, the line in MinimizedWindow.lua:
self:SetZOrder(self:GetZOrder()+1);
sets the icon to one layer above it's default which is sufficient to keep it in front any default UI elements. I've heard reports of skins causing issues with ZOrder, but have not looked into this yet. Unfortunately, Turbine does not provide the ZOrder values of UI elements and setting fixed values just causes problems between multiple plugins. It would have been nice if Turbine had allowed a "topmost" value for ZOrder to insure that controls could stay on top, but they don't. I'll take a look into what, if any, effect skins have on the icon when I get a chance.

EDIT: In case you were questioning the ZOrder of the Quick Annotation control icon, I found that it's ZOrder was not being explicitly set, so it was not in front of the in-game UI elements. This will be fixed in the next release.

jeredwolffe

Good Morning Garan,

If you've wandered the forums lately you'll have seen how I'm trying to make UI elements that work with my plugin icons. Other than the various UI issues I'm encountering in this quest for integration is, several of the plugin Icons fall 'Behind' the UI elements. Where would I find the line in your plugin to bring your icon to the front so after I drag it onto the edge of my minimap, it'll still be usable?

Thanks for MoorMap and your assistance is apreciated,
Jered Wolffe

Garan

Thanks for your comments.

Alanis commented below that MoorMap works well for him (or her) with Eyefinity so it should work for you. As to using MoorMap as a full replacement map, no, it is not possible with the current state of the Lua interface. The biggest reason is the lack of access to character and party location and heading data (well, we have no party data of any type). Some of the quest tracking stuff can eventually be done with Overlays, but that is a verrrrrrrrry long way away (specifically, the Overlay mechanism will not see the light of day until after all of the parchment maps have default data, and as many instanced area map image resource IDs are identified as possible).

What you can do in the way of tracking quest mobs is use MoorMap in conjunction with Compendium by Lunarwtr. Mobs with known coordinates in Compendium act as links to MoorMap. You can click the coordinates in Compendium and that will automatically open MoorMap and add a custom annotation to MoorMap at the location of the desired Mob AND activate a 'ping' at that location so you can easily find it.

grezgorz

I'm going to give this a try tonight. I didn't realize how far this plugin had come

I'm specifically interested in using this as a work-around for the triple-monitor (eyefinity) scaling bug that stretches the in game map (and character select menu) to span all 3 monitors as it is pretty obvious that Turbine will likely never do anything to address it.

I haven't had a chance to try it yet, but this plugin has piqued my curiosity. Would it be possible to use this as a full replacement for the in-game map? i.e. allow display of quest tracking without the scaling issues? If not, how difficult would it be to implement this?

Thanks for all your work Garen!

Garan

Thanks for your comments.

You can turn off any or all types of standard (and custom) Annotations by deselecting them in the Filters just like on the in-game map. To open the Filter List, click the third button from the left in the top left corner - the one that looks like a bunch of little green and red dots with a divider going diagonally through it. You can also choose to show/hide all Creep, Freep, or Delving controlled NPCs or objects by filtering on Allegiance.

Since we have no access to Fog of War info, there is no way to hide things until the user encounters them if that is what you are saying. It's an all or nothing kind of situation where the user is left to choose whether to show them or not. I've considered allowing users to have an option to manually select which areas have been explored, but that creates a great deal of complication, especially when considering the external interface used by plugins like Compendium, with very little benefit. That doesn't mean that I won't ever implement such a filter, just that it has a fairly low priority due to its value/cost ratio.

Edheliases

Really Nice Work!!!!

Is there a Way to delete all the "Standart" Annotations.
Like pois , Shops...

(for a "blank" map at first use)

Thanks
Edheliases

Garan

That would be a great help, but it is incredibly boring and time consuming since you often have to travel around terrain barriers (several times in some cases) to acquire the data and I usually at least double check my findings.

The zones are made up of .8x.8 squares, so no border seqment will be less than .8 units, but by tracking just the points where the border shifts, I can create line-segments that can be tested quickly and efficiently to determine whether a point falls within the map.
The data I need are a series of points which define the four borders of a zone, for instance the western border of the Lone-lands is defined by the points:
28.4s 40.4W * northern border of northern most square that can be reached along western border
29.2s 40.4W * border turns west
29.2s 41.2W * border turns south
30.8s 41.2W * border turns west
30.8s 42.0W * border turns south
33.2s 42.0W * border turns east
33.2s 41.2W * border turns south
34.8s 41.2W * southern border of southern most square that can be reached by character along western border

My borders may not perfectly match the borders that Turbine has, but the differences will be in areas that are unreachable and thus irrelevant. However, the borders must be as accurate as possible, so please only submit coordinates if you can really spend the time to ride the whole border, testing and double checking the map on each side of each segment of the border. Note, you can NOT trust the "area" change messages, especially when in a sub-zone like The Old Forest or Barrow Downs, you have to actually open the ingame map and see which zone the Turbine map displays, closing and re-opening the map for each point being tested. This is because some "areas" like The Old Forest Path actually span maps. The border points listed above seem simple enough until you realize that an uncrossable ravine cuts diagonally through the northern part of that area, further complicated by several waterfalls. It took over half an hour to verify all of the points on both sides of the ravine, but that kind of dedication is necessary for accuracy. Some borders literally take 15 minutes to plot their entire lengths, others take hours.

So, if after all that, anyone wants to volunteer to plot some borders, any help would be appreciated (and may cut weeks if not months off the time needed to acquire this data), you can post your findings here in this thread.

ickypoo

Can we help get the loc coords for you?

Garan

I have actually been doing some more work on the map boundaries and have come up with a workable solution to the boundary issue (a few posts ago I commented on how map boundaries are irregular, not following straight lines). Unfortunately, it will require me to travel every possible boundary, mapping all of the points where boundaries change between zones which is a very time consuming task so it won't be completed until after all of the default data is in (several months away at best). I have so far only mapped half a dozen or so boundaries which is just a drop in the bucket Once that is done, I will be able to accurately determine the correct map for a set of coordinates (with-in an acceptable margin of error since ;loc coordinates are not precise) which will allow me to display the correct map with a location indicator in response to a user click - it won't update automatically, but it's better than nothing. So, short answer, yes. Eventually. Or as Sapience would put it... somewhere between Soon™ and "At some point in the future".

Crackpot370

Awesome work Garan. Thanks once again.

This is still my favorite plugin for this game.

Take a well deserved break!

One question. I know they won't open up the code to allow automatic determination of the character location for use on the map. Would it be possible to add a button that when clicked would show the location on the map? I know it couldn't show heading, but I for one would find it useful to see where I am among the metal deposits & branches, etc even if I had to manually click it to see my location each time I needed it. I'd find that really useful when I'm out specifically farming materials.

Garan

Ver 1.10 is posted containing The Shire, Shire Homesteads and Trollshaws default data which is the last of the default data for the Eriador parchment maps (not counting a few instanced areas). This will be the last update for a little while - I am taking a break before starting in on Rhovanion default data so there probably won't be another update until some time in August.