As mentioned in my previous blog entry getting the lines on the map wasn’t really all that much of a challenge. What turned out to be the biggest piece of work was getting the editing tools working. And perhaps more importantly: getting them implemented in a way that didn’t break the ones I already have in place for normal markers.

Getting all this done required me to – once again – re-factor large parts of my code. Usually something that isn’t a big issue when you normally write code in decent IDEs. But the loose nature of JavaScript makes it hard to write good re-factoring tools I suppose. At least the ones I’ve found don’t do any magic in that field.

This latest re-factor did result in my first real piece of polymorphic JavaScript code tho. Specifically I needed the normal markers and the transport lines to work as much the same as possible. And also the editors for them needed to work the same so I didn’t have to add a lot of redundant code. It’s not really all that pretty at this point. But at least it’s reasonable easy to move on from the point I am at now.

With transport lines in the need for map editors have increased a bit. So I will continue to add some more of those as I find trustworthy people who are willing to take on the job. Recently one member of Mystical Alliance was added to the staff. And hopefully one more from the same guild is interested in contributing. Still haven’t found any Dark players who I feel I can trust enough for this (and also have the time/interest to do it). So the search goes on in that direction too.

Moving on from here I have several ideas what I would like to do. But I suspect my progress from here on will slow down a bit due to my somewhat limited motivation to actually play Dark & Light. Most of my current guild seems to have decided not to play. And most of the reasons I initially wanted to play this game seems to have died when NPCube had to rush out the game to make some money.

If I do go on with this project my next goal will be more focus on allowing people managing their own map with marker sets of their own types and icons. Parts of the code has already been prepared for this. But more changes needs to be made. And also I need to implement some pages where people can sign up and manage their profiles and map. So even if I manage a high level of motivation it is going to be a while before I have that ready.

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Next up is transport lines. I already have some of the frontend code working in the development environment. But before you all start holding your breath you, I still have editing, XML generation, XML parsing and the database backend to complete. Hopefully I’ll have time to get this working this week so the editors can start adding them all.

The update was mainly to fix IE compatibility. The marker info windows didn’t show any text. And the drop-down menus didn’t really work well in IE. Both of those issues where fixed. The latter one I completely went around by moving the marker list into a separate marker floating window. For the current amount of markers it may not make much sense. But as I progress with adding features (and markers) it is much more flexible to show them this way. And allows me easily add more drill-down methods (like by domain) without having to figure out how to put it into the design of the page.

IE6 still don’t show the info windows 100% correctly. No idea why it don’t pick up the CSS formatting. Damn I hate that browser.

Next up is either adding support for transport lines or preparing the map for 3rd party editing (as in someone else but me). I won’t have much time for it for a couple of days. So I’ll leave it as a surprise (to myself and everyone else) what I do first.

My plan was to add a domain borders overlay for users to switch on and off. In theory it would be real easy since I already have the overlay in a separate layer in my map source file. But in practice it turns out to be very tricky. The problem is I have a script that makes Photoshop make all the tiles needed. And I do that by coping each tile from the source file. And the paste it into a new window that then is saved as the tile. So far so good.

Trouble is a lot of an overlay is clear space – since you want it to be transparent. And Photoshop basically ignores clear space in copies. So when pasting tiles with clear space you end up with with just the area that have actual pixels in it with no way of knowing where that data was in the tile you copied. And no idea how to correct the specific. Damnation!

So until I get a good way of handling overlays I guess I’m stuck. Instead I will be working on adding transport routes to my map. And I should be able to make an overlay with a grid on. Hopefully I can do that dynamically on the server since it’s just a couple of lines and some text. So look for that soonish.

But first I’ll get the actual map up. Should be public in a day or two.

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