User blog:Jereth Khan/Lumber Tycoon Maze Map

Defaultio said something in a post I read from early March;

"The maze was a community challenge; I wanted to see how you guys would tackle it and familiarze yourselves with it and what tools you would make to help you."

So I started thinking, "what tools have I used for mapping games in the past?" So here was my solution:

I broke out the laptop and set it in between my two monitors. I installed Syngery on both the PC and Laptop, linked them with a crossover cable, and created a network with Synergy to clone my keyboard commands. Now, anything I do I my Desktops keyboard will also be done on the laptop.

I broke out the old install for Adobe Photoshop CS3, I have a plugin for this called "FreeDraw". What free draw does is allow you to draw using your arrow keys and other hot key; for this I only need the arrow keys. Pressing up will draw a stright line, left and right will spin the cursor to change the angle the lines are drawn in.

I poped open Roblox, hopped on to my private server, and started moving around using only the arrow keys. On the Laptop, the cursor on Photoshop moves as I do and turns when I turn. This is exactly what I want. I test this for a full 8 minutes as I wait for the ferry to arrive. I got on the ferry then reset Photoshop and the Synergy network.

8 More Minutes Later...

I entered the maze and took a hard left. From writing my other tutorial on how to navigate the maze, I know this is where to start. I get to the corner of the first wall and activate the Synergy Network. For the next 40 minutes or so I walked along all the outside walls, once I was back at the beginning I looked at my map and saw all the missing internals. I swapped the color to clear for FreeDraw and walked to the holes, making FreeDraw draw red again as I went. I manually marked all Black Wall locations then later added the one I knew was missing (#2 on my map if anyone is curious).

I now had a perfect outline of the entire maze. I transfered the file over to my main computer and dropped it into Photoshop, I overlayed a grid of around 25 pixels per inch and began filling in all areas of rock in with red squares. When I was done I had a 66x49 grid of squares in the image. I saved it on my desktop.

I then opened Spritecraft, a java program used to convert image files into Scematic files readable by Mine Craft plugins. I dump the image in and tinkered with the sizing for a good 20 minutes before I had a good size to workwith.

I opened Mine Craft with Forge and WorldEdit. I imported the scematic file and slowly begane to clean it up.

What I was left with at the end was an easy to read map of all the maze. I added some colored wool to show where the black walls were. I do have another map with colored wool showing all 7 ways through, but that is messy, so I'm not posting it. But the blank one is now here for use.

2 computers, 4 hours, and 4 programs later.

https://gyazo.com/88ecf43fbc436182f48cf3909545a62b