Detail/Minimap alignment OR Minimap Indoor Transparency

[Doskious]

Not quite sure if this is a bug, or just an unavoidable aspect of the way things work...

I really like having the Minimap folded into and overlaying the Carbonite map, and I really like the Carbonite Map's minimap-like detail option. I've found, though, that leaving the minimap partially or totally transparent is somewhat problematic for indoor areas (where Carbonite's Detail map is not defined), as the minimap doesn't seem to display the actual indoor map area unless it's fully visible. However, if set to 100% visibility, while properly displaying indoor area maps, in the outdoors the minimap overlay is noticeably offset from the Carbonite Detail Map. This is most obvious while moving, but is observable in a number of locations while stationary. In all cases, from what I can tell, the Carbonite Detail Map seems to be offset slightly West and South, compared to the image displayed in the Minimap.

I'm sure that this is an issue of tertiary importance at best, but it would be really spiffy if the detail layer and the minimap could be properly aligned, OR, the minimap be allowed to take conditional transparency options (100% transparent outdoors, 100% visible indoors). (Or anything else that might address this, I dunno.)

Or is this {Detail/Minimap alignment OR Minimap Indoor Transparency} issue only affecting me, and if so what might I be able to do about that? ^_^;

[semlar]

Let me preface this by saying I haven't worked with carbonite, but I have done extensive work with the map system.

The indoor minimap transparency issue is unavoidable, it can only be fully hidden or visible.

The alignment issue sounds like a miscalculation in carbonite. Even indoors the minimap lines up no-problem with the map:


This is a bad example because it doesn't look like I lined it up correctly (if they were, the other textures would be even bigger), but it's the only indoor shot with terrain tiles I have right now. They *can* be lined up, but the problem is it still looks looks like crap because the terrain tiles are completely separate from the textures they use indoors.


Outdoors there's no reason it shouldn't line up:

[Doskious]

I have discovered something interesting in the genesis of the following screenshots...

When my pointer is not hovering over the Carbonite map, the minimap overlay is clearly offest.

When my pointer is over the minimap, however, the minimap overlay pops into alignment. Note, in the second image, the two red dots - these represent the locations that my character is identified as being at, the right one when the pointer is over the Carbonite map, the left when it's not. >.> Sense, it makes none...

[semlar]

That actually does make some sense if you understand how your coordinates on the map are determined.

Basically, if you're hovering over the zone it's as if you're looking at the normal zone map, but when you mouse off I believe it's zooming out to the continent level.

You'll notice your player coordinates actually change there at the top left from (86.1, 21.6) to (86.6, 21.9).

There are a few potential reasons for this that I can think of:

1. The zone map's position on the continent map is incorrect
2. The zone map's size is incorrect
3. The continent's offsets or size are incorrect

If it helps to understand, this is kind of a rough example of how the zone maps fit together on top of the continent map:


Your coordinates at the zone level are counted from the top left of the zone map and are accurate, but your coordinates at the continent level have to be scaled down and translated over to calculate what your zone coordinates should be since it can only request your position from one map at a time.

[Doskious]

And everything makes sense now. ^_^

Thanks very much for the cogent explanation. From what you've said and what I can tell this behavior is Working As Intended, and the offset that results from the difference between continental coordinates and zone coordinates is very likely an unavoidable product of the best possible implementation of the intended mapping functionality. Which is fine!

Assuming this to be the case, then, I'd humbly like to request the implementation of a variable-state transparency setting for the minimap, allowing it to be configured to use one transparency setting while the character is "outside" and another while the character is "inside". (Knowing something about programming, I would hope that this would not be too challenging to implement, as I would hope that such an implementation could be hooked on the same function that presently detects when the character in indoors and allows the minimap to dock in those cases. I would also hope that such an implementation would be separate from the setting to dock while indoors, though.)

[semlar]

It's definitely possible to translate between the two coordinates, but you need the exact sizes and offsets of the two maps. I'm guessing somewhere in carbonite they have the numbers a little off, and they really must be pretty close because it's not off by that much considering the scale.