Overview

Maps in AW are a great way to see the fruits of your labor all at once. Well made maps can help in planning new projects, and also useful for tourists trying to get around. The most publicly accessible way of making maps is using Andras's Mapview program. Due to popular request, here is a step by step guide to making your own maps.

Downloads

Before getting started, we need to get everything we need.

• Mapview itself, available here. Extract this wherever you'd like.
• A copy of the registry (registry.txt). For Alphaworld OP users, use this. For other worlds, you must supply your own registry. If there is no registry, you can generate one by running your objects through Reggen. Extract and place this file in the mapview directory.
• An object color directory (objcolor.dat). For Alphaworld OP users, use this. For other worlds, you must create your own. See step 3 on the official website for details. Extract and place this file in the mapview directory.
• You need a way of making surveys to feed to the mapper. There's a few ways you can do this, but YASBB is highly recommended due to its speed. This guide will also go over how to use YASBB.

Creating a Survey

This step assumes you are using YASBB to create a survey. You could probably use other survey bots, but I've never tested it recently to know if they still work.

1. Download, extract, and run the .exe to start the survey bot, and the punch in your citizen login information like you would any other bot. The login fields are located on the right side, then click start bot.
2. If it's loggeed in, click the survey tab.
3. Simply check Use Query and Use Corners, and the punch in the coordinates on each corner of the area you wish to map. YASBB asks for the north-west and south-east corners. All four coordinate fields must have a number, so if one of the coordinates are "0", you must enter that, not leave it blank.
4. Start the survey, chose where to save it, and wait, it takes awhile. While that's going, let's prepare Mapview.

Mapping

Go to where you installed Mapview and run the .exe.

1. First, we need to generate the registry database. Assuming you already have the registry in the mapview folder covered in the above steps, go ahead and click it. It's the button at the bottom right.
2. Next, we need to figure out about where the center is of the area your wishing to map. Just take a rough estimate, you can fine tune it later. Punch these coordinates into the Center Coordinates fields located sort of in the bottom left quadrant of the window. Do not include the quadrant letter in your number. For example 400N is 400, and 400S is -400.
3. Now tell Mapview how big the map is, down where it says World Width. This is the width divided by two. So if your mapping an area that's 3000 coordinates wide, then enter 1500.
4. Next, we pick the resolution of the map. For SW City maps, I've always used 5x the resolution of the width. So a 1500 width, I use 7500. When you get around to generating your map, you may notice it created unsightly grid lines in some places. You simply have to experiment with different resolutions to fix this. Note that resolutions over 10,000 tend to fail.
5. That covers all the critical settings. The only checkbox I have checked is z-buffering. You can also set a background color (the color of the world's ground, like the grass) by press the BG button. You can have the map ignore objects below or above certain elevations down where it says ElevLimit. Everything will be ignored below the elevation (in decameters) of the first field, and above the second field. I typically set this to -.1 - 1000. Last, be sure object is selected in the ColorBase section.
6. To start the mapping process, simply click the survey .txt file in the file list on the top left. You can even click it while the survey is being taken, and it will map what's been surveyed so far.
7. If all is well, you simply click save bitmap as..., and you can probably take it from there.

See a map created with Mapview