When I was beta testing Dungeon Siege, I ended up automating Photoshop and putting together a set of interactive maps which allow you to navigate through all of the zone.
Gaming
When I was playing City of Heroes, I reverse engineered all the badges and locations. This is a little out of date at this time though, but worth remembering.
To help out Brady Games with World of Warcraft Dungeon Companion and World of WarCraft Dungeon Companion, Volume 2, I wrote a series of programs that pull apart the data files, converts the proprietary graphics to PNG format, extracts coordinates from the 3D models, determines corresponding minimap images, and then automates Photoshop to place them all correctly in layers.
- Install WOW :-)
- Create a directory to place everything into. If you call it C:\WowMaps you can skip step 5
- Copy down this zip file and unarchive it into that directory (hint: C:\WowMaps)
- Launch a command prompt and set the current directory to where you extracted the files
- Edit doit.bat to change all occurrences of the directory (C:\WowMaps) to point to where you put the files.
- Run doit.bat which will extract everything and generate the photoshop javascript automation files
- Launch Photoshop CS2 and select File::Scripts::Browse and navigate to the directory you created in step 2
- Select one of the scripts and watch it run
- Save the generated .psd wherever you want
You might also want to have wowmodelview to figure out which model you want to generate a map for.
I used to play MiiB as a part of the Vindicators Super Group on the Virtue server.
To keep track of badges and locations I visited, I combined information from several sources:
- coh.warcry badge list
- vidiotmaps COH Maps
- upallnightgaming COH Badge list
- My own PiggViewer program that I haven't quite finished (with thanks to Keith DeGrace who did the original PiggViewer).
(Pigg Viewer 5.7)
These are detailed maps that I have made by combining in game maps with accurate position information to generate a complete map of the entire island including the major cities. In addition I have filled in all the dead areas with mountains and smoothed all the edges. Lastly I have carefully recreated the original zone map without any titles and put in consistent titles for all maps along with the flight routes. These are the lo-res versions of the maps, the originals are at 600dpi for a 24"x18" sheet of paper. If you are interested in the original high-resolution versions, just let me know.
