83 lines
3.9 KiB
Markdown
83 lines
3.9 KiB
Markdown
# World Map Engine — travel between places on a drawn map
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World Map Engine shows a full-screen picture of the game world with places marked on it. The player opens the map, picks a place and travels there: the game switches to that place's scene. Scenarios can open, close, hide and show places as the story goes on, and the game saves those changes.
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It is used by Cthangover. It is a different thing from the tile maps of RPG World: a world map is one picture with clickable areas, and travelling changes the scene; a tile map is a grid the hero walks on cell by cell.
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## The map in the game
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Open it with the map icon on the toolbar.
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- **Places** are areas drawn over the picture; hatching shows them. Some places also have a round emblem with an icon.
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- **The legend**: green — where you are now, gold — available, grey — closed.
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- **Click a place** to see its card: state, description and the **Travel** button. **Esc** or **×** closes the map.
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**Travel** switches the game to the place's scene:
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A place is closed — the card says "The path is not open yet." and offers no Travel — when a scenario has closed it, when it has no scene, or when its scene does not exist in the game being played.
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## Adding a world map to a game
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A game needs two things in its mods:
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1. **The picture** — a background named `map` (for example `backgrounds/map.png`).
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2. **The places** — JSON files in a `map/` folder. All positions are fractions of the picture's width and height, from 0 to 1, so the map works at any size.
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This is the town entrance of Cthangover, shortened:
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```json
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{
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"Items": [
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{
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"ID": "town_entry",
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"points": [[0.7099, 0.2493], [0.7334, 0.2630], [0.7348, 0.2906], [0.7091, 0.3429], [0.6974, 0.3264]],
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"title": "",
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"scene": "town_entry",
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"description": "mapzone/town_entry/info",
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"locked": false,
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"hidden": false
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},
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{
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"ID": "town_entry_label",
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"points": [],
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"title": "mapzone/town_entry",
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"label_pos": [0.7246, 0.2163]
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}
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]
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}
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```
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- `points` — the outline of the area that can be clicked.
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- `scene` — the logical scene Travel switches to.
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- `title`, `description` — translation keys; the title is the place's name on its card and emblem.
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- `image` and `image_pos` — an icon and its position, to show a round emblem on the place.
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- `label_pos` — a free-standing name on the map. A zone with only a title and a label position (like `town_entry_label`) is a name, not a place: it cannot be clicked.
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- `locked` — closed at the start; `hidden` — not shown at the start.
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Cthangover keeps the names of its places in separate label zones and leaves the places' own `title` empty, which is why the card above has no name at the top.
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The world map can also be drawn and edited in the map editor of Editor Tools.
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## Changing places from a scenario
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```scenario
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action map.open_zone zone_id=town_entry
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action map.close_zone zone_id=town_entry
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action map.show_zone zone_id=town_entry
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action map.hide_zone zone_id=town_entry
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```
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The change is kept in the save and stays after loading; a new game starts from the values in the JSON.
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## If something goes wrong
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1. **"Map unavailable".** No mod of the game has a background named `map`.
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2. **A place cannot be entered.** Its `scene` is empty or misspelled, or a scenario closed it.
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3. **A place is in the wrong spot.** Positions are fractions of the picture (0–1), not pixels.
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