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09Aug11 - Map Changes, other fixes

Printed From: Illyriad
Category: News & Announcements
Forum Name: News & Announcements
Forum Description: Changes, patch release dates, server launch dates, downtime notifications etc.
URL: http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/forum_posts.asp?TID=2247
Printed Date: 28 Mar 2024 at 16:32
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 12.03 - http://www.webwizforums.com


Topic: 09Aug11 - Map Changes, other fixes
Posted By: GM ThunderCat
Subject: 09Aug11 - Map Changes, other fixes
Date Posted: 09 Aug 2011 at 12:42
WORLD MAP CHANGES

Due to a number of on-going issues with the world map (e.g. alignment, performance, bugs etc.); we have changed the underlying technology we use to display it to HTML5 Canvas. 

Where this is not available in older browsers the previous world map will be displayed. (Internet Explorer needs to be version 9+ and Firefox 4+). Other browsers should work fine, including mobile devices; although please upgrade your browser if you do not see the new world map. 

These changes will allow us to more easily introduce features and well as improving the performance and responsiveness on players' computers.

If you were currently logged in when the world map changes were put live you will either have to log out and log back in - or refresh you browser to receive these changes.



Additional Information
  • Overall Combat type
  • Sovereignty Type and Level


Map Controls

You can now use a zoom slider to easily move to your desired zoom level. Marked on it with a small red crown is the point at which you need an active prestige account to zoom out further. Remember you can claim prestige as part of the  http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/04may11-free-daily-prestige-resources_topic1860.html" rel="nofollow - daily bonus  to keep your account active.


Overlay Controls

Rather than hiding the Map overlay options behind an "options" button we have added them to the bottom of the map.


Also we have added a "Share" button to share the current view of the world map. Currently this only works fully in Google Chrome.

Extra Zoom (to 25 Levels)

Players with an active Prestige account gain an extra 10 more levels of zoom. Remember you can claim prestige as part of the  http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/04may11-free-daily-prestige-resources_topic1860.html" rel="nofollow - daily bonus  to keep your account active.

For an example of this zoom size the vast Misted Lands is shown below at maximum zoom out:


New Control Methods
  • You can now drag the world map to move around
  • You can now use the mouse wheel to zoom in and out
Moving Units
  • Units now move on the world map
  • The moving units and camps automatically refresh and update their positions
  • Diplomatic visibility range is now applied to all diplomatic units, not just the ones attacking you. Diplomats are only visible when they are within: 
    (5 + Town Consulate Level/2) + (Visibility Discoveries * 2) squares
    of any of your towns. You do not need to switch towns to use the combined visibility of your towns.
  • Diplomatic units can be seen departing your town - while they are in your diplomatic visibility range
Map popup menus

The map popup have now been made properly context sensitive: 
  • "Send settlers" is now only visible if you have met the requirements for settling a new city from your current city (including correct number settlers) and the square is settleable.
  • Mystery squares now have the "harvest" and "send resources" options; whether this is useful or not is a mystery.
  • Impassable terrain only offers "center in map"
COLOUR AND ICON CHANGES
  • Purple - Faction
  • Red - At War or Hostile (incoming to you)
  • Yellow - Neutral
  • Green - Allied
  • Blue - Yours
Harvesting Caravans' Icons
Hostile 
or 
At War
Neutral
Allied 
or 
Confed
Yours
 
Occupying Armies' Icons
Factions
Hostile 
or 
At War
Neutral
Allied 
or 
Confed
Yours

Sieging Armies' Icons
FactionsHostile 
or 
At War
NeutralAllied 
or 
Confed
Yours

Blockading Armies' Icons
FactionsHostile 
or 
At War
NeutralAllied 
or 
Confed
Yours

Moving Armies' Icons
FactionsHostile 
or 
At War
NeutralAllied 
or 
Confed
Yours

Moving Diplomats' Icons
FactionsHostile 
or 
At War
NeutralAllied 
or 
Confed
Yours

Outstanding Items
  • Region borders and labels are currently outstanding but will be added shortly. 
  • Please raise a in game petition if you experience any other issues.

OTHER FIXES

ERROR MESSAGES
The AVG error message fix was suppressing real error messages and showing the AVG error messages. This has now been resolved.

SITTERS
When taking control of an account unsuccessfully, it would not let you try again for 10 minutes; this has been corrected. We are still looking into why it sometimes sends you to the login screen.

MOBILE PHONE PAYMENTS
Some countries although displayed had no payment options, these countries have now had them added: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Italy, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Panama, Russia, Thailand, Turkey, United States, Venezuela. South Africa is currently suspended.

MARKET PRICES
The decimal places in the historical Market price graphs where not showing for players in all countries; this has been corrected.

RETURNING ARMIES
Armies returning from one of your towns to one of your towns would show as incoming to both. This has been resolved.

INCORRECT RESOURCE DISPLAY
The resource bar should no longer occasionally show negative values.

CHAT DISCONNECTS
We have tweaked the chat system and chat disconnect messages should now be less frequent.

BUY PRESTIGE
The mobile payment option ware preventing the Prestige purchase page from being shown on iPhones, iPads, and Mac Safari. The mobile purchase has been disabled on these devices.




Replies:
Posted By: Aneirin
Date Posted: 09 Aug 2011 at 12:53
Hmm like the moving army icons and the diplo icons to I guess...but I am gonna shed a tear or two for the old birdie icons though Cry
 
 


Posted By: Juswin
Date Posted: 09 Aug 2011 at 14:11
Yup, we'll miss the bird icons. They were pretty good.


Posted By: Ander
Date Posted: 09 Aug 2011 at 14:36
Yep, the bird icons were lovely. Anyways with the new visibility range we arent going to see many diplos around. Or are we.. ? Wink


Posted By: Sister Nikki
Date Posted: 09 Aug 2011 at 16:04
ok thanks a lot first of all GM ThunderCat for his help :)

Now the map zoom in - out is good even if when you go max out you cant see details :)
About vans, diplo armies i liked the hard working donkey or the dove or the army image. :)

Question : Before we could see our Army name and size of troops on the army icon and also our allies armies, shall this be fixed also on this map system?


Posted By: Iduna
Date Posted: 09 Aug 2011 at 16:43
are "borders" > "Sovereignty" gonna be a graphic option again ?
I liked that very much from the "old" map.


Posted By: HonoredMule
Date Posted: 09 Aug 2011 at 17:11
I'm disappointed that the performance is still quite poor (perhaps not if I had Vista+ with hardware compositing for browser hardware rendering).  Nevertheless, this is a vast improvement.

I have noticed a couple issues already, and will raise petitions for them.  I repeat them here so you might get fewer duplicates from others:
1) The strategic map doesn't update position as you move around.
2) The screenshot utility doesn't quite work because the image urls are unreachable.
3) The compass used to have separate tooltips for each section so you could tell what part you were about to click on.  (This was especially useful for Butler users who got instant rolling feedback and could use it to find the compass part they wanted.)  Now it all just says "Compass" which isn't so grand.  It seems there's a single title which gets altered on the fly--a unique scenario Butler will have to handle differently (if it can...I don't think there's a "title altered" event I can capture).  Also, there is no longer a "Page West" vs "Row West" anyway, so it isn't as important as it once was.


-------------
"Apparently, quoting me is a 'thing' now."
- HonoredMule


Posted By: Rohk
Date Posted: 09 Aug 2011 at 17:53
Does the range of seeing diplomatic units only emanate from the town or do Sovereign squares have a range of their own?


Posted By: GM ThunderCat
Date Posted: 09 Aug 2011 at 18:57
Originally posted by HonoredMule HonoredMule wrote:


1) The strategic map doesn't update position as you move around.
Fixed


Posted By: HonoredMule
Date Posted: 09 Aug 2011 at 21:43
Awesome.

-------------
"Apparently, quoting me is a 'thing' now."
- HonoredMule


Posted By: Klandor
Date Posted: 09 Aug 2011 at 22:47
I posted a petition on this, too, but I'll post it here in case anyone else is experiencing this:

I use the MOST RECENT version of Chrome, which I updated before I refreshed my display for this Illy update.

Now, the Next City/Previous City buttons seem to be working (partially), but the city NAME is not getting updated. If I select a city from the drop-down, it works, but then the Next City button doesn't, until I press Previous City first. But then the city name does not get updated again. Also, the numbers above each icon (showing how many buildings are under construction, inbound/outbound military/diplo/caravan, # of entries in the research queue) are not updating either.

Klandor


Posted By: Ander
Date Posted: 10 Aug 2011 at 04:59
Happens to me too (I use chrome) But it did not come with this update. The problem was there even before. And not really much of a problem, I switch the cities back and forth once more and it comes out fine.


Posted By: RatuJone
Date Posted: 10 Aug 2011 at 07:13
I think the grabdrag is fantastic; the additional zooming capability is also very good, but I would have appreciated a possibility of creating my own zoom position default- the position to which the zoom now defaults gives a screen size in which the icons are too small to discern properly especially the harvesting icons.

I am enough of a newb not to be worried about the new icon shapes Smile tho there will be a learning curve.

All in all, well done!

Ratu


Posted By: Stumpff
Date Posted: 10 Aug 2011 at 10:51
StarStarStarStarStar    Five Stars----GREAT JOB ON MAP UPGRADE

I use Google Chrome and it has brought nothing but happiness to Illyriad and my playing capabilities.
I cannot believe what a great job y'all have done with the World Map!  Clap


Posted By: Olek
Date Posted: 10 Aug 2011 at 11:22
UI is much more usable, thanks heaps.
Only issue I could say I have is seeing the resources & NPCs on the map, but then again it could be my age showing.


Posted By: scar
Date Posted: 10 Aug 2011 at 13:01
I have mixed feelings about the changes to the mapping, some are excellant others need refining
 
good points:
 
1.  dragging of map
 
2. zoom in and out via mouse wheel
 
3. van/diplo movement without refreshing page
 
bad points:
 
1. npc/harvest nodes indistinguishable
 
2. node colours very poor
 
3. sov fog
 
4. world map seems slightly blurry
 
5. bring back the birds
 
6. no info on self or alliance armies/diplos
 
sorry to say it but the bad points outweigh the good IMO, improving the game is always  appreciated by the players as can be seen by peoples comments in GC and providing some of the bad points are re-addressed then its another step in the right direction, until then, overall i'll remain slightly disappointed.
 


Posted By: alucardeck
Date Posted: 10 Aug 2011 at 14:15
well.. i have to agree with scar...

the zoom range is a lot better,  but the icons are poor (to not say ugly).. i still prefer the old ones..
also they are too small when zoom out so much, that is hard to see even the colors..
so there isnt a point of using that as a strategic map if u cant recognize nothing..


IMO, icons in a map should be something to call your attention, not to mix with the background making then almost invisible with Terrain active..


Posted By: HonoredMule
Date Posted: 10 Aug 2011 at 16:20
 - I've heard that the devs intend to improve the sov fog so it's not so overpowering.
 - As someone who never used the world map much, I don't think the new icons are less distinguishable, but rather just less familiar (i.e. the original icons weren't very distinguishable either).
 - When you visit a link with 3 numbers (i.e. #/World/Map/x/y/15) you still get the url-specified zoom level.  Because of this, users of http://illyriad.honoredsoft.com/wiki/Tool:Butler" rel="nofollow - Butler will still enjoy a user-configurable default zoom level (Butler applies the zoom level on-the-fly to any link pointing to the world map).  So this is also quite thoroughly a "no better, no worse" situation.

At least I don't have to wait a minute for each little graphic to fetch from Friedfox's fragmented and frayed freezer.


-------------
"Apparently, quoting me is a 'thing' now."
- HonoredMule


Posted By: Anjire
Date Posted: 10 Aug 2011 at 16:32
I would like to ask for a toggle switch for the mouse wheel zoom, so that I can turn it off from time to time


Posted By: Ander
Date Posted: 10 Aug 2011 at 16:42
Originally posted by HonoredMule HonoredMule wrote:

 
I don't think the new icons are less distinguishable, but rather just less familiar (i.e. the original icons weren't very distinguishable either).


The new NPC icons are a bit less distinguishable than before. The current purple/white disks camouflage with the terrain. Most NPC squares being dark, the blackish animals in a dark purple disk escape the eyes. The original icons were better in that regard.

On the other hand, with drag and move it is now easier to study the map at a higher zoom level.


Posted By: Kurfist
Date Posted: 10 Aug 2011 at 17:06
I seem to recall people disliking Ui2 when it first came out for player testing, now everyone claims they never hated it etc. Give this enough time and you'll realize you love this too.

-------------
Patience is a virtue, resource giving is a sin


Posted By: scottfitz
Date Posted: 10 Aug 2011 at 17:20
I second Iduna, I would love the Sov borders back, managing sov just got much harder.
But overall I love the new map, thanks!


Posted By: Mandarins31
Date Posted: 10 Aug 2011 at 21:03

just noticed an issue: when you come back again on the map by using the "previous" button, things appears like before they were the update... at least we see armies  icons as they were before.  (im using mozilla if it can help)


Posted By: The_Dude
Date Posted: 10 Aug 2011 at 21:18
Manda - the map is flipping back n forth with new and old graphics today.  I suspect a lot of work and debugging is going on.  :)


Posted By: GM ThunderCat
Date Posted: 10 Aug 2011 at 22:21
Originally posted by Mandarins31 Mandarins31 wrote:


just noticed an issue: when you come back again on the map by using the "previous" button, things appears like before they were the update... at least we see armies  icons as they were before.  (im using mozilla if it can help)
This has been resolved - refreshing the page should bring things up to date


Posted By: Ecophagy
Date Posted: 10 Aug 2011 at 23:19
Quote I posted a petition on this, too, but I'll post it here in case anyone else is experiencing this:

I use the MOST RECENT version of Chrome, which I updated before I refreshed my display for this Illy update.

Now, the Next City/Previous City buttons seem to be working (partially), but the city NAME is not getting updated. If I select a city from the drop-down, it works, but then the Next City button doesn't, until I press Previous City first. But then the city name does not get updated again. Also, the numbers above each icon (showing how many buildings are under construction, inbound/outbound military/diplo/caravan, # of entries in the research queue) are not updating either.

Klandor

I have a smilar issue, and I've also made a petition for it.

EDIT: It appears to have fixed itself...

Is anyone else getting stupid coordinate values when they zoom?


Posted By: Gruntfuttock
Date Posted: 11 Aug 2011 at 01:33
It could be my browser, firefox 5 now, or it could be my computer, 6 month old midrange desktop, but I now find it a lot harder to see some things  on the map now. Both resources and NCPs are fuzzy and I can't make them out at all at max zoom out (with prestiege) even with everything else turned off. I have tried zooming in and out on my browser, thinking I might hit a sweet spot  but that doesn't work.
In general I like the changes, but for me in my present state of Illy development, still harvesting some resources and going after NCPs to level up my commanders, it is actually a downgrade as far as functionality is concerned. I have to actually click on the square to see what is there now, and before I didn't
Is there any way, except using an old browser, of going back to the old map? 
Can I get a sharper view any other way?
Thanks


Posted By: Finrod
Date Posted: 11 Aug 2011 at 02:21
I think pretty much everything looks great.  I like the zoom adjustments a lot!

Just two concerns:
a) I think it's a little tough to see the resource spawns on the map if zoomed out any appreciable distance
b) i prefer moving the map one full page at a time, rather than a half page.  I'm just being picky with this, as I find it easier to lose track moving at half pace than full pace when I circle my town looking for resources/npc's.  

Overall, I salute you!
Regards, 
Finrod


Posted By: HonoredMule
Date Posted: 11 Aug 2011 at 04:14
I never liked any of the old movement options.  Nothing short of drag-n-drop gives any sense of proportion or relation.  Dragging around my city enables natural spatial reasoning and is a lot easier on my noggin'.

-------------
"Apparently, quoting me is a 'thing' now."
- HonoredMule


Posted By: Llyorn Of Jaensch
Date Posted: 11 Aug 2011 at 08:47
Originally posted by scottfitz scottfitz wrote:

I second Iduna, I would love the Sov borders back, managing sov just got much harder.
But overall I love the new map, thanks!


+1


-------------
"ouch...best of luck."
HonoredMule


Posted By: Mandarins31
Date Posted: 11 Aug 2011 at 19:55

same


Posted By: WarePhreak
Date Posted: 16 Aug 2011 at 12:57
Another vote for sov borders to be added back.
 
Also, the right location display used to also show the resources/creatures but doesn't anymore, maybe that is what we are all really missing.



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