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Thread: Help!! :( Can anyone help me on creating an INTERACTIVE MAP.

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    Guild Applicant jajaef's Avatar
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    Post Help!! :( Can anyone help me on creating an INTERACTIVE MAP.

    Where you can see the information once you select your ORIGIN to your DESTINATION. And on the MAP, those area that you selected will automatically either [BLINK,GLOW, or it will draw a line].

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    Community Leader Guild Sponsor Gidde's Avatar
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    Hi Jajaef! I've moved your request to the Mapmaking requests subforum. You may want to read the sticky at the top of the subforum which shows information that artists generally need before they can attempt to fill a request, and add in some detail. Good luck!

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    Guild Expert jbgibson's Avatar
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    jajef, how many possible origin and destination points are you talking about? For a huge number, it's called Google Maps or a portable GPS :-). If it's a really small list, I could imagine an HTML imagemap, where clicking on a region or point kicks you to a second-level page whose start-point is highlighted, and the other points now link to yet a third level of images, each of which shows an A to B route. Do you need this done for you, or (preferable) do you want to know how you might do it yourself? What drawing or mapping tools and skills do you have? Do you know anything at all about web page coding? What I describe is clunky but straightforward, if that combination of adjectives makes sense.

    I'm describing a series of distinct maps, but since they would be all matched to one another, changing maps would make a route or endpoint "appear". If you want more action, the route maps could be animated gifs, which progressively show part, then more, then all of that path, winding up and staying at the "all" variation.

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    Animated gifs? Ick! I'd use Flash for that kind of functionality.

    Google Maps or Earth would be a pretty good solution, though. You'd get the capability to zoom and pan, add points of interest, and possibly generate routes, although I don't think Google will yet add a route line to the map.
    Bryan Ray, visual effects artist
    http://www.bryanray.name

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    Guild Expert jbgibson's Avatar
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    Yes, Flash would be a good tool ... if I knew how to use it and if I had something that would create flash files. Sometimes ya use what cha got.

    Here's an example of doing routes with a flock of little html files and little animated gifs. There's just one full map. The actions for selecting a town and for drawing the route are sparse .gifs , overlaying the map. This whole mess of four .gifs and four .htms is only about 80kb, so at least it's lightweight.

    http://worldspinner.net/worldofauror...nPolitical.htm

    Pull that up, and size it so you can see the bottom of the map (control-scrollwheel, or however your browser does it). Sorry, I picked towns at the bottom - I should've used ones at the north to minimize fussiness. I checked it on Windows with Firefoix, Chrome, and IE.

    click on Pyna Demopolis - its in the south, on the Zophos border. Origin is selected.
    then click on Prynippia, kind of middle-west in the green. Destination is selected.
    click on Prynippia again, and it'll draw the route.

    It's a hack, unpretty, but shows one way to do it. Of course the original poster hasn't said if this sort of thing is even what's needed. jajaef, how about it? Midgard brings up another question - are you dealing with real-world places, or imaginary ones?
    Last edited by jbgibson; 02-12-2011 at 10:31 PM. Reason: browser compatibility note

  6. #6

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    Even if you are working on a fantasy map, you can still use Google to navigate it. I don't know the ins and outs of that process, but I know it's been mentioned a few times.

    You might also be able to do something with SVG and scripting to dynamically create vector route lines.

    jb, are you using a tool that automatically does the inbetweening on an animated gif? The last time I worked with gif in PhotoPaint I had to construct every frame manually, which was just a pain. Of course, I have access to all kinds of animation tools now, so I haven't even wanted to touch PhotoPaint in ages.
    Bryan Ray, visual effects artist
    http://www.bryanray.name

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    Guild Expert jbgibson's Avatar
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    I just did the inbetweens myself. PhotoPlus 11 will do some inbetweening but I'd rather be driving. Some of you guys could build a world map in the time it took me to fiddle around with that :-).

    Like I said, clunky. Flash would be a good tool !

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