UESPWiki talk:Skyrim Map Design/Archive 1

This is an archive of past UESPWiki talk:Skyrim Map Design discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page, except for maintenance such as updating links.

Interior Maps

A bit of past discussion can be found in the CP Archive and at Skyrim talk:Maps. I tried out a scheme for local maps here. It's basically a map exported from the CK, with door symbols added. The result looks similar to the local maps ingame. The background is blackish there, so I think the black background is appropriate (it was paper colored for Oblivion ingame). Adding doors to the image directly will make them resize with the image automatically. The legend was added with {{Image Mark}}, not resizing them with the image assures that they will be legible on the article. Adding them with the template makes later additions and changes a bit easier. The example I created is more a proof of concept, so we can see whether we want to use that approach. It will be easy to add colored dots for traps or other things. I would like to name the maps images after the EDID, this is guaranteed to be a unique name, matches the image name created by the CK and isn't visible on the article anyway.

If we want to use this, things to consider beside map creation would be:

• A map specific version of the {{Perk Tree}} template
• A way to make finding the needed coordinates on the image easier (by pointing at a location on the image). Some javascript may help here.
• Several decisions as how and what to mark/display on the maps on an article, but this is largely independent of the map creation, if we use Image Mark.

--Alfwyn 17:27, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Exterior Maps

I've exported all of Tamriel to 256x256 exterior maps using the CK but the issue is the images are grayscale. I haven't generated LOD images yet but this is relatively easy to do. I suppose a grayscale map may be better than nothing for the moment. I've played with a few settings but nothing appears to give any color to the map. -- Daveh 18:13, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Oh, good! I was also looking into this and noticing the same, but it sounds like you're a step ahead of me (both in doing the process and understanding it <g>...image processing isn't my forté). Like Oblivion, all the CK is doing is dumping the local maps that you'd see in-game, and the local maps in-game are also greyscale. I'm hoping there's some way around that, but I'm not counting on it. One thing I noticed in testing is that they seem to not have the overlap that the Oblivion maps did. If I'm right about that, that may reduce the number of steps required a little bit. – Robin Hood↝talk 22:05, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Well if only you hadn't de-adminned me you'd already have a fully-zoomed, water-aware set of map tiles. I've been using my own local server to give me a perfect set of (monochrome) tiles since 24-hours after the CK was released. Unfortunately, you decided to go for "Oh, good!" and sycophancy instead of actual competence. Too bad. UESP would have had a full set of maps a week ago. Your choice, Dave. rpeh •T•C•E• 22:29, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

The map tile don't overlap anymore. We (Tamriel-Almanach, German page) have the tiles and working on the markers. But we've also found no way to get colors. And greyscaled the map looks really bad. --Killfetzer 00:20, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

First Pass Map Done

The first, mostly usable, version of the Skyrim Map is now available along with the Skyrim Map Editor for those with permissions. There is a large list of "todo" items for the map of course:

• Colored Tiles -- No idea at the moment how to go about getting this without involving Fraps, some scripting and code from SKSE.
• Missing Tiles -- Some tiles export as all or partial black from the CK for some reason.
• Missing Cities -- Only the exterior has been exported so far. Still have to do the city interiors and interior locations.
• Wiki Links -- All locations currently just have their wiki link set to their name which should work well for most, if not all, locations but this needs to be checked.
• Icons (Done) -- I resized the icons really quick to get them to be 16x16 or less but they need to be redone better for this smaller size.
• Logo (Done) -- Upper left needs a map logo obviously.
• Tweaks -- As the map gets more refined we'll eventually need to do various minor tweaks like search tags and label positions as needed.
• Extra Zoom Level (Done)

-- Daveh 17:08, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and added map links to both {{City Summary}}, {{Place Link}} and {{Place Summary}}. If anyone notices any other templates I've missed, please let me know. We may want to re-think the City Summary links, as the background colour on those often makes the links a little hard on the eyes (e.g., Falkreath). I'm just not sure what the best approach is there—maybe putting them in a separate cell with the regular background colour? – Robin Hood↝talk 23:09, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm planning to add markers for all doors later today. Which is necessary to get a large fraction of our maplinks working -- for places like The Arcanaeum or Jorrvaskr, and even for city gates. For now, I'm just going to use the brown door icon from Oblivion, but if anyone wants to create a monochrome version, I'll gladly upload it.

First, however, I've noticed that the Skyrim Map Editor isn't working -- saves don't do anything. I've tracked down and fixed one issue already (mapsedit didn't have permissions in the database). However, it's still not working, so I'll keep digging. --Nephele^Talk 23:55, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Update #1: one more fix made (Daveh: the passwords for mapsedit used by setmaplocs and the database didn't match. I changed the database to match setmapsloc. If that's not the password you'd like to use, it'll have to be changed in all places). And I can tell I'm making progress because now SRMap gives me an ugly error message when it fails instead of just failing silently. Yay, progress! So next task is to track down whether all applications are using the same session name. But that will have to wait until after dog walking. (And for those wondering, these problems are preventing any version of the map from being edited) --Nephele^Talk 00:36, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm around both here and in IRC if you need confirmation that it works for everyone once you actually get it working for you. As for the door icon, what about using SR-mapicon-Door.png? – Robin Hood↝talk 00:51, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Everyone can blame me for getting logged out of the site a few minutes ago. I'd avoided it for as long as possible, but in desperation I finally tried changing the wiki's session_name (aside to Daveh: commenting out wgDBname also changes the wiki's session_name, so it's probably something to avoid doing when tweaking DB settings). Nevertheless, it still didn't help to get map editing working. It's possible other people might have more luck at this point, because the root of the problem seems to be that the file containing my session data has 0 size -- no info is being saved with my session (even after logging out/in, clearing cookies, and everything else to reset my session). Other people's sessions have associated data, but I'm starting to suspect that something else in the wiki code is blanking my session data. Unless anyone else has any ideas about why even after setting a $_SESSION value and calling session_write_close(), a session data file can have zero size. --Nephele^Talk 03:56, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

(←) All map editing pages should now be working.

To summarize: There were five completely independent problems that were preventing maps from working (three of which were messing up all versions of the map; the final two were Skyrim-specific). Along the way, I killed everyone's sessions twice -- meaning I basically forcibly logged everyone out of the wiki. One of those changes could have been avoided, but I don't think there was any way around the second one (turning off $wgSessionsInMemcached). It has not been a fun evening. --Nephele^Talk 05:42, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Today's update:

I've added all doors to the database. For now I've set them up as a somewhat hidden feature. They don't show up if you zoom in the map, but if you search on a specific door, that door will show up. It's a way to get wiki->map links working for now, and to get searches working, without making the map so cluttered in cities that it's unusable. I'll probably experiment with gradually making a few of the more important doors (e.g., city gates) non-hidden.

However, to move forward properly with adding more features to the map, we're going to have to increase the resolution of the map. Look at Riften at maximum resolution right now, for example, and imagine it with labels for every door. For Morrowind, we de-sampled the map tiles to increase resolution by one step -- if there's any way we could do that for Skyrim, even as a temporary measure, it would be a huge help. The fact that the current resolution is less than what we need also needs to be kept in mind for any discussions about creating a new set of tiles.

I had been thinking about adding even more markers to the map (aedric shrines, treasure maps, chests shown in treasure maps, dragon mounds, ore veins for valuable ores, smelters, etc.) But right now I'm worried about the map getting much too cluttered. I'll probably ending up doing the same trick that I used for the doors, of basically adding hidden markers for now. But it makes the information much less useful if you have to know it's there and explicitly search for it before it even shows up.

--Nephele^Talk 00:35, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Why don't you generate the map tiles with higher resolution? When you generate them with resolution of 512 you get tiles in the same resolution as the mximum zoom level in the Oblivion map. And if I might ask: how did you get the door reference data from the game files? --Killfetzer 09:52, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Btw. I can give you a list of all dragon mounds, aedric shrines and tresure chests (I have already done them for our map). --Killfetzer 09:54, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Quickest would to just be doubling the base image size, which I'll try to do today. Exporting at 512 pixels would be the next step but is time consuming as the CK crashes frequently during exporting (out of memory errors) and I was hoping to figure out a way of getting color maps done before that. I assume Nephele got the door data directly from the Skyrim.esm file, just like I exported all the map markers. I don't know the exact format of door data but I'm guessing it would be references to activators/statics with certain sub-fields set specifying the door destination. -- Daveh 13:27, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

The "extra" zoom level has been added. -- Daveh 15:16, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, Daveh, the extra zoom helps alot, and I agree that the quick solution is best for now -- best to figure out if/how it's possible to colorize the map before putting a lot of effort into generating a new set of tiles.

I've added markers for the various items I mentioned previously. If anyone thinks of other locations that would be useful to add to the map (in particular, any instance where we're using x/y coordinates right now on the wiki), post them here and they can probably be added pretty easily.

Killfetzer: thanks for the offer but, as you can probably guess, I already had the data. I generated the doors by listing all of the REFR objects that are based on a DOOR record. Along with filters to limit the list to doors located in the Skyrim and/or city worldspaces. The name of the door comes from following the REFR's XTEL field to find out where the door teleports you to. I could give you the list I've used, although I'll probably still do some more cleanup on the list (in particular to remove double doors). --Nephele^Talk 18:21, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for the offer. What programm did you use? --Killfetzer 23:44, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

I believe Nephele uses her own code for loading/parsing the data from the Skyrim.esm file but don't know the exact details. I used my own code, the basic of which is [tes5lib] and the fuller code in [SkyEdit]. There's no particular function in SkyEdit at the moment for doors/references but it can be easily added as needed along with any other data I need. -- Daveh 01:53, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

(←) *Suggestion-Allow seaching by the icon type, for example be able to searcch for "Daedric shrine" --Subhogue 02:28, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Build the map on Mashupforge?

Hello, developer of Mashupforge here. I hope you excuse the shameless self promotion, but I was wondering if you'd be interested at all to build this map on mashupforge.com? There's already one made from GameBanshee's high resolution image http://mashupforge.com/582/AQOfHyq4Omzp0fEfFIN70sy9yp9X8K/ but if you have access to high resolution imagery for the base layer of your map, you can just upload it to MF and build on top of it. So far it looks like it provides exactly what you need, and I'd be happy to assist you, just email support@mashupforge.com. Thanks!24.9.79.188 22:28, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the offer but we're pretty good for the actual map server hardware and more short on people with the right skills and available time. The current Skyrim map also appears to exceed Mashup's current capabilities at around 400 locations (will probably need at least 1000) and a map size of 800 Megapixels (will probably quadruple that as well). Running our own map server essentially means there are no practical limits on map size or location count as well as the ability to tweak the map software as needed. -- Daveh 00:28, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Wiki Links

Excellent work on the map! I did find one issue. Links where the location name has an apostrophe are not working properly. The apostrophe is being converted to a code and clicking on the link returns an error. Using Firefox 10.0.2.

Could you possibly provide a few links to such pages with issues, as to make them easier to source for those with knowledge? --kiz ^talk_email 18:48, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Links would be very useful, as looking at Bard's Leap Summit, for example, it seems to be fine. We've had that exact problem historically, though, so perhaps there's some coding where it still occurs under certain circumstances, or there's some other issue at play entirely. – Robin Hood↝talk 23:00, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Going to the map from the wiki is fine; it's when you go to the wiki from the map. The links get converted to things such as Skyrim:Bard%27s Leap Summit, which is obviously a bad title. elliot (talk) 23:04, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

No, the problem was going from the map to the wiki, but I did a global search-and-replace on the database side. --Nephele^Talk 23:06, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that is what I said. elliot (talk) 00:38, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Hi - I posted the issue here. Sorry about not figuring out the signature. I also was not 100% clear with my description but you guys figured it out pretty quick. I tested and the links work fine now. Again great work on the map and the wiki in general. Thanks - Mike 198.95.226.238 23:16, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Zooming with trackpads

This map seems to hate zooming via two-touch scrolling on trackpads. Zooming up (in) results in zooming all of the way in, then out, then in, then out, etc. Zooming down (out) is the same deal. Is there any real fix to this? Jak Atackka 03:34, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

It is likely something to do with the Google maps library code itself. We are using the "old" v2 map and I can look at if using v3 requires much work. Whether this fixes this particular issue or not is another question. I can see if I can duplicate the issue on my laptop and see if there's an easy fix or not. -- Daveh 15:20, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Map Icons

I've done some icons for the other marker types in the map. It just a first try:

• Nirnroot
• Aedric Shrine
• Vein

The shrine icon depicts a shrine of Arkay. This is the only shrine with simple engough form to get it to 16x16. --Killfetzer 11:03, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the icons. When I get a chance later I'll upload them to the server and change the appropriate map markers over to use them.

Except I'm not sure about using the Nirnroot marker. Definitely so far I haven't added any nirnroot locations to the map, and my thought was that it didn't need to be added to the map for Skyrim. It's lost its "specialness" in Skyrim -- it regrows, it can be bought from merchants, it doesn't have a quest that requires you to collect a hundred samples (yes, there's one that requires 20 samples -- but there are a half-dozen other ingredients that also need 20 samples). Eventually we'll be providing some type of map info for each ingredient, including nirnroot, but I doubt that will be in the form of individual map markers. In any case, there's nothing to use the nirnroot icon for right now.

While I'm thinking about it, some other markers that would be good to have at some point are:

• A book icon (for the skill books, perhaps also for the treasure maps)
• A chest icon (treasure chests)
• A dragon mound icon (I considered reusing the Dragon Lair icon... any opinions on that?)
• An other icon. Right now "other" is just defaulting to the same shield-type symbol used in the game for landmarks. I think perhaps just a simple "x" icon might be a better generic symbol.

--Nephele^Talk 17:33, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

I think the dragon lair icon would be fine to reuse, a treasure map icon would also be a very good idea. RIM 17:37, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Aedric Shrines and Veins are using the new icons, and Dragon Mounds are using the Dragon Lair icon. The Shrine icon looks good, IMO, but the Vein doesn't come out so well against a dark background (e.g., (map)). Perhaps if the pickaxe is made a pixel thicker? --Nephele^Talk 07:14, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Another thought is to re-colour it. The game may all be in black and white on the local maps, but nothing says we have to do that too. – Robin Hood↝talk 07:50, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

I thought of coloring the map icons but I've been trying to figure out a way of getting colored map tiles out the editor or game somehow first and seeing how the black&white icons look on a colored map. Mind you its easy enough for someone to make a colored version for now if they want and we can revert to a non-colored later as needed. -- Daveh 17:06, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Currently Solitude uses the icon for the Blue Palace and Winterhold the icon for the College of Winterhold. It looks like the icons are shifted by one at the upper end. --Alfwyn 14:59, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Good point. It's actually that the images were misnamed, but in any case it's been fixed now. However, it does take a hard refresh to force your browser to see that it's been fixed. --Nephele^Talk 15:21, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

I've redone the vein icon: --Killfetzer 20:46, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Coordinate Strangeness

When I use the coordinates -70507/119408 [1] it doesn't match up with the game location (game data and getpos used for coordinates, ingame map for map location). The map location I would expect to see at those coordinates is displayed around -70507/139408 [2] . --Alfwyn 14:01, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Nephele or Daveh, have you deleted the 241/256 factor from Oblivion in the coordinate transformation? In Skyrim it is no longer needed. --Killfetzer 14:50, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

I don't know what 241/256 factor you're referring to, Killfetzer. I also don't know why you're having problems with coordinates matching up, Alfwyn. There are now more than 2000 map markers on the map, and all of their coordinates are directly taken from the game data. Those map markers are all showing up in the correct places on the map. For example, in the same region as your examples, check the door locations for the Thalmor Embassy (map). Or at the other extreme of the map coordinates, you can look at Riften's doors (map). I've checked hundreds of manually entered coordinates at this point (e.g., all of the skill book and ore vein locations), and looked closely at every city, town, etc., and haven't noticed any coordinate discrepancies. The only check I haven't done much of is comparing game-data coordinates with in-game locations from getpos, but it seems like PC players have been successfully using game-data coordinates to find things (for example, based on the coordinates previously displayed at Skyrim:Map Notes) --Nephele^Talk 17:19, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

I stumbled upon it when adding a map link for Skyrim:Guide_to_Better_Thieving. It shows SE of Shadowgreen Cavern on the map, but shows NE ingame. The reference in question is ARCH 0x000c6380. But there's definitely something really strange going on with the ingame 3d-map around there, apparently making it useless when it comes to finding out ones position in relation to map markers. --Alfwyn 19:06, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

That's a good point that we probably will need to add to the map documentation somewhere. Our map is completely flattened, and represents a view looking strictly straight down on the location. Whereas the in-game map is three-dimensional and therefore is a fundamentally different perspective that can be noticeably different. The most obvious example probably being the Throat of the World -- you can clearly see locations on the mountain changing in location relative to Whiterun and other nearby locations as you pan around the in-game map. --Nephele^Talk 19:53, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Neph, the 241/256 thing that Killfetzer is talking about was for the Oblivion map where there was overlap, so they were cropped to 241 pixels square, then resampled back up to 256 pixels. Presumably that would have required some math on the server side to compensate for that when finding coordinates on the Oblivion map. If that were left in on the Skyrim map, that could explain coordinate difficulties when specifying coordinates via a URL, but not when actually placing the icons. Of course, if that were the case, I would expect that coordinates typed in manually wouldn't match up with their respective locations, and as you point out, they do. I'm just checking Alfwyn's coordinates in the CK now. – Robin Hood↝talk 21:14, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Alfwyn, when I go to those coordinates either in the CK or in-game with GetPos, I see the same thing as I see on the Skyrim map (give or take the black box Bethesda's buggy export seems to generate). Did you maybe have an object selected accidentally when you did getpos? – Robin Hood↝talk 21:38, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

I guess the issue was already resolved, but just in case I have some unusual settings or so: So we speak about the same thing, enter the following in the console tmm 1 - coc POINorthernCoast08 - player.moveto c6380, then looking at the map, the location marker always shows "north" of Shadowgreen Cavern, no matter how I scroll the map. Now looking at that posistion on the map (map) the place is clearly southeast of Shadowgreen Cavern. This seems to be a problem of the 3d-map, not allowing me to look straight down. Of course this makes it a bit harder to find things using a map. --Alfwyn 22:23, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

(←) Sounds like you've figured out what's going on. To really make it obvious, though, take a look at Shadowgreen Cavern. On the in-game map, it looks like it's just a short walk away from the Thalmor Embassy. If you TCL yourself and move straight upwards from the Shadowgreen entrance until you have a good view of the surrounding area, though, you'll see that you're in fact on the opposite side of the mountain from where your marker appears to be on the in-game map, and right where we show on our map. I think the discrepancy lies in the 2d to 3d conversion making it look like locations are on the surface, when in fact they're behind an intervening landmark, above it, or whatever else instead. – Robin Hood↝talk 23:58, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

How many locations can be discovered? How many cleared?

I word my title thus, since I wonder. I took the Stormcloak path, and have done every other quest in the game, and have 344 locations discovered with 203 cleared, and the wiki says I should have 26 more. Since our "Hold" pages are not updated with every location, it makes it hard to claim to have completed the game. And the way the map works, I cannot toggle off locations or while dragging have it simultaneously load new areas, which is a drag. Though the map rocks. --Minimang 21:54, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Some mapmarkers aka locations are only temporary availible (the Stormcloak/Imperial camps, marker for the city battles). This could explain your missing markers. --Killfetzer 22:01, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Hold Marks

I would like to make a suggestion to color in portions of the map to separate the holds in Skyrim. Not that this would really help the player find anything but it would give a more in depth feel to the map and also help players familiarize themselves with the inter workings of Skyrim. And on a side note just some color in general would make a fabulous difference. Making it easier for people to identify areas on the map by matching them up to blotches of green or white from the in game map.

[suggestion] more google map functions

First I want to say I love this map, a few others and I are making a minecraft Skyrim map and it has proven to be really helpful! Now onto the suggestion.

Suggestions:

Pictures of town areas embedded in the map. Routes from place to place with option for shortest route, follow roads, midpoints. Estimated Game travel time, real life travel time, and distance for routes. (for on foot, fast travel, carriage, and etc.)

Thanks you for reading! Sharqman 03:20, 21 May 2012 (UTC)sharqman

Klasvich - I have suggestion that you should be able to select only a certain type of location to show up on map. Like Giant camps or daedra shrines. — Unsigned comment by 68.97.118.218 (talk) at 19:13 on 3 June 2012

satori78 - The most useful functions would be to have the marks grouped into some categories, with toggleable visibility. I also wonder why the map background image is that black weird thing instead of something like this [3], which would be just perfect.— Unsigned comment by Satori78 (talk • contribs) at 15:21 on 6 June 2012

ingredients

Maybe you could put in icons for ingredient plants (or maybe just the rare ones) in the google api map?

92.14.181.206 21:46, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

it would be really cool if all of the elder scroll maps could be combined into a .kmz file

Just throwing it out there that making a kmz file would give more users the ability to contribute using sketchup and pins. It would be great if it included all of the elder scroll maps ie oblivion and morrowind and such. — Unsigned comment by 216.227.59.34 (talk) at 14:55 on 23 June 2012

Search functions

It would be nice to be able to filter loactions by type, for instance dwemer ruins or giant camps only. — Unsigned comment by 74.215.31.129 (talk) at 16:29 on 29 June 2012

Dawnguard locations?

Are there plans to incorporate the new locations discoverable in the new DLC (Arkngthamz, Fort Dawnguard, etc.) into the Skyrim map? — Unsigned comment by 97.66.192.139 (talk) at 17:49 on 1 July 2012

Silent Moons Camp

missing it. its west of halted stream camp. — Unsigned comment by Jpalmss (talk • contribs) at 17:57 on 1 July 2012

No, it's there. – Robin Hood↝talk 04:19, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Landmarks during searches

It would be nice if the major cities were always displayed on the map, even when you search for a particular location. It would give a landmark to make it much easier to reconcile the online map to the in-game map. — Unsigned comment by 108.79.211.157 (talk) at 21:48 on 20 July 2012

The major cities are already always displayed on the map. You can also move the map around and zoom in/out. — Kimi the Elf ^{(talk | contribs)} 22:01, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

This is not true. While the outline of each city is visible, the clickable icons are not whenever a search is performed (example). I agree with the OP that all in-game map landmarks should be permanent or at least togglable during searches. — Unsigned comment by 24.21.84.118 (talk) at 23:21 on 12 August 2012

While the major cities are displayed at all times (except when displaying search results), when you zoom in and there are many locations displayed, it is nearly impossible to find the major cities within the clutter. They could either be displayed larger or with a different color so they are easier to find for reference when moving around the map. — Unsigned comment by 24.251.11.36 (talk) at 03:32 on 21 August 2012

lockbox and a sleeping bag in an unmarked camp

http://www.uesp.net/maps/srmap/srmap.shtml?locx=125952&locy=86696&zoom=17

Added to article for Journeyman's Nook. --Xyzzy^Talk 05:28, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

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