World of Warcraft Pocket Atlas for Tomeraider

[foebea]

I have compiled a collection of maps and completely crosslinked everything. I am in the process of categorizing all the towns and areas, and will at some point include quest refrences. Yes, I get bored at work easily.

The tomeraider file is currently just over 13 megs, and will probably finish off at 15-20. I have no hosting currently, but if enough people seem interested in this I will get some. Otherwise it will be sent out through email on request.

Current Version is 0.7
I expect to have version 1.0 by the end of the weekend, with everything mentioned above.

Let me know what you think.

[Constant Caffeine]

Do you have any screen shots?

[foebea]

I'm on it. Will put some tomgether when i get home from work (8pm est).

It is up to version 0.8c now and has been really useful to me. I've sent a copy of it to worldofwar.net where i got the images from and he is reviewing it. maybe the webmaster there will post it on his site if he thinks it is useful enough.

[foebea]

This is a screenshot walkthrough of the new World of Warcraft Pocket Atlas.

The Atlas is a great tool for new players who find alot of the acronyms used in game difficult to remember or understand for a while. The best hing about this atlas is that it is convenient. On your pocket pc. So when you are playing the game, you dont have to alt-tab out of the game to visit a website for location questions. If i get really bored, and I mean REALLY bored, I may include quest info by region as well. But thats about 50 times more work than i have already done, so dont hold yer breath. :twisted:

Also it is a easy to use quick reference to all the frequently traveled areas and not only helps you find out where a particular point of interest is on the world map, it also shows you where exactly it is on a local region map.



This Atlas is created for use with the Tomeraider 3 software. Those of you who have used the Wikipedia with tomeraider know how easy it is to use and how nice a quick refrence can be. The maps I gathered from WorldofWar.net's cartography project, and have sent this to the webmeister there to review. All of the entries in the atlas were put together by examining each map and writing down what I saw. :)

It currently contains 667 subjects, with 49 images, is sorted into 2 categories and is thouroughly crossrefrenced with 1260 clickable links.

When you first open the file, you see the index.



http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v603/foebea/image0001.jpg



Clicking on the highlighted entry takes you to the first page showing off the world map.



http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v603/foebea/image0002.jpg



In the lower right corner of the map image you see two small grey boxes. This shows that the image is curently scaled down and by clicking anywhere on the image you can view it at the full size. I will show this later on.



For now, we will go to a real world example:

Imagine you are a new character, and you are playing in the low level region called Westfall. There is an instance (dungeon type thingee) here called Deadmines made for players at level 17-26.


Now comes the difficult part. In the game, you may see people looking for additional people to join them in a DM run. When you ask if you can join up you would be pushed away pretty quickly, and for good reason. Instances are not referred to by name, they are abbreviated, Deadmines is not called DM suprisingly enough. That would be too simple. Deadmines is abbreviated as VC (standing for Van Cleef, the big boss man in that area). DM is actually the abbreviation for another instance called Dire Maul, designed for players 55-60. Way out of your league at this point. There are at least 29 instances in the game, and the majority of them you will not see for a long time in most cases.



So if you see DM on the screen, and you ask to join and get pushed away, just look up DM in the atlas by clicking on the icon on the lower right that looks like a magnifying glass.



http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v603/foebea/image0003.jpg



Type in what you are looking for and the list automatically goes to what you are typing in. Click on the highlighted name.

The page it pulls up tells you what the abbreviation is for, and provides a link to the main page for that entry.



http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v603/foebea/image0004.jpg



Clicking on the entry shows you where the instance is located.



http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v603/foebea/image0005.jpg



Clicking through to the next page gives you some information about the region and provides a map so you can see exactly what is where.



http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v603/foebea/image0006.jpg



Also on this page is a list of each point of interest in this region. Clicking on these links currently just go to a page saying what region the named place is in, like Dire Maul above. Maybe someday this will be fleshed out further, but that would be a lot of work and would require much boredom to motivate completion.



http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v603/foebea/image0007.jpg



Clicking on the image brings up the full scale image. You can drag it around by taping and holding on the screen.

Clicking on the button highlighted in red below will let you zoom out.



http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v603/foebea/image0008.jpg



There it is, right at the base of the mountains, and you can see where it is in relation to other towns nearby and easily find your way.



http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v603/foebea/image0010.jpg



Hitting the green back button will take us back to the Feralas page where you can find a link that says Part of Kalimdor. Clicking on this takes you to the Kalimdor page which has a description and links to all the regions in kalimdor. Also included is a travel path map of the whole continent.



http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v603/foebea/image0011.jpg



http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v603/foebea/image0012.jpg



http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v603/foebea/image0013.jpg



At the bottom of the list is a link back to World Overview. This bring us full circle.

Click on the little black triangle next the the green back button on the left hand side, then choose index to go back to the index.



http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v603/foebea/image0002.jpg



Now click on the Category View icon I have highlighted below.



http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v603/foebea/image0015.jpg



This is still in its infancy as far as details goes, but it includes level range for every entry in the atlas. Tap Suitable for Levels, then tap the range you are looking for. If you want to select multiple ranges, such as everything level 30-45, just select the first one, then tap the & symbol in green near the bottom, then select each of the other category entries you want. When finished, hit OK in the upper right.



http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v603/foebea/image0017.jpg



This shows you a new Index, with only the items which match the category you selected. This behaves exactly as the regular index, just a little easier to look at. :)



http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v603/foebea/image0018.jpg









That is all I have for the moment! If you made it this far, thanks for stickin with me, and I hope this may be of some value to you. If not in World of Warcraft, then at least in operation of the Tomeraider program.



If any of you are wondering how this is made, here is a sample bit of code which includes everything (I think) that I used in the creation of this file.



<catdef>
name = "Suitable for Levels"
</catdef>
<catdef>
name = "Zone Type"
</catdef>

<new>Eastern Kingdom
The eastern island and home to the Undead, Humans, Gnomes, Dwarves and a whole host of vile creatures.
Go back to the <a href="_WoW Pocket Atlas">World Overview</a>.

This accurate and detailed map also includes all travel routes.
<center><img src="c:\atlas\b\easterncont.jpg"></center>

<a href="Alterac Mountains">Alterac Mountains</a>
<a href="Arathi Highlands">Arathi Highlands</a>
...
<<snipped>>
...
<new>Redridge Mountains
<catset>"Suitable for Levels"= "15-25" </catset>
A mountainous and arid region, resourceful humans have settled down by Lake Everstill at the town of Lakeshire. However, the region is troubled by increasing numbers of bandits and murlocs.
<br><center><img src="c:\atlas\b\redridge.jpg"></center>
Part of the <a href="Eastern Kingdom">Eastern Kingdom</a><br>Points of interest in this area:<br>
<catset>"Zone Type"= "Region" </catset>
<a href="Lakeshire">Lakeshire</a>
<a href="Lake Everstill">Lake Everstill</a>
<a href="Stonewatch Keep">Stonewatch Keep</a>
<a href="Tower of Ilgalar">Tower of Ilgalar</a>
<a href="Renders Camp">Renders Camp</a>
<a href="Rethban Caverns">Rethban Caverns</a>
<a href="Alther's Mill">Alther's Mill</a>
<a href="Three Corners">Three Corners</a>
<a href="Lakeridge Highway">Lakeridge Highway</a>
<a href="Renders Valley">Renders Valley</a>



Questions? Comments? Feel free to post em.

[Hammy]

Sounds fantastic!

How do I get hold of a copy?

[faelinis]

Looks great!
How do i get a copy of this piece of art! (i get bored on my job too, so something to keep my mind off the job would be great!)


Faelinis