Forum:Ultima V city maps

Anyone know if computer generated maps of all the towns of Ultima V, like we have for Ultima II --> Ultima IV, exists? Dungy 16:27, September 11, 2010 (UTC)

Ultimatrix might be able to do it. I've never been able to get that thing to work though. -- Fenyx4 18:17, September 14, 2010 (UTC)

Utimatrix worked, but it's far from perfect. I'll get those maps on here once I'm finished getting a photo for every Ultima IV NPC, fixing all the he/she his/her stuff that is still hidden, and rewriting the character class pages. Geesh that is a big todo list. Dungy 20:56, September 14, 2010 (UTC)

I've been slowly but surely making Ultima V maps, but I'm not really happy with my presentation for the multi-level maps, and the big 5-level places like the castles are going to look even worse. I just thought I'd ask, since you guys can work more coding magic than me, is there any way I could use rollovers or something to better display these maps, like maybe you have a map display area, and beside that you'd have "level 1", "level 2" etc., and when you selected that level, the correct map would appear, and you could select the map for a larger view? Dungy 14:52, September 25, 2010 (UTC)

Ultimatrix probably can do it, and I was able to get it to work. I didn't use it on the townes though, I just walked around the Serpent's Spine a bit, then went into a dungeon. It's a remarkable bit of software, but the last part was awkward and weird to use. AngusM 19:22, September 25, 2010 (UTC)

I've been able to set Ultimatrix so I can see the entire city map at once, so taking screenshots is not too hard. I couldn't find any other piece of software that would display them nicely. I'm sure I've been doing it the hard way, but I really don't know an easier one. I have 0 ability to write code, so I can't make nifty templates or anything myself, heck, I can't even figure out how to let wikia let me display two images adjacently. Dungy 19:56, September 25, 2010 (UTC)

What do you mean nicely? I just went into Britain on Ultimatrix and it looks the same way I remember the real thing looking. Can I see a sample of what you have that doesn't look nice?

It shouldn't be necessary to write any code here. Semi-deft use of Photoshop or any other image editing software should be sufficient.

Oh, and if you want to splice two images together on Wikia, I suggest you try clever use of tables (but you'll have to use the RTE to maximize cleverness). AngusM 03:53, September 26, 2010 (UTC)

This is sort of related but opens up an entirely different kettle of fish. Should cities be split off into separate articles for each Ultima? Similar to the organization that dungeons are moving to? Britain is getting pretty huge and splitting it up would make the articles easier to read. And, the reason why it was pertinent to this conversation, it might make putting all levels of the town/castles in the article easier. -- Fenyx4 05:15, September 27, 2010 (UTC)

I agree they are becoming too long, especially Castle Britannia, which is entirely my doing. The maps aren't really making the files much longer, since they're always placed beside the NPC character list, the length seems to largely derive from the massive number of NPCs, especially in Britain. Is it possible to use expanding menus, similar to what you use for the Britannia/Pagan geography boxes? Dungy 12:28, September 27, 2010 (UTC)

This also makes me wonder if we are putting too much into articles. Dungy, is it your intention to put every map of Britain into the Britain article? I don't really see that as being conducive to the article. But perhaps we've never worked out some of the more concrete details to the purpose of Codex articles. AngusM 22:29, September 27, 2010 (UTC)

I'm certainly open for suggestions, and I don't intend on putting complete maps of LB's castle in the article, since it just seems like too much. I'm at a loss for a good way of doing this though, but I feel they should go somewhere. There were already complete maps for Ultima II, III, VI, VII, and IX, and every other town in all the other games, so I felt like I should probably fill in Ultima IV and Ultima V for completeness. It seems to me that it is primarily the NPC lists that are bulking up the articles, the maps just tend to fill in some of the white space to the right hand side of these excessively long NPC lists (who would have thought we'd ever get this close to finishing every NPC?). I agree we need to come up with some sort of idea though, since these particular articles are suffering from severe bloat. Either we need to create separate NPC and map pages for each city, or we need to design some sort of roll-over menu (Something like what we see in the geography nav, where if you press a little "+" button, all the Ultima IV NPC and map information appears, and if you hit the little "-" button, it folds back up again, and then you can move onto the next Ultima game. I prefer that solution, but I haven't the foggiest idea how to do it, but I guess it can be done judging by the geo navs).

As for what belongs on this Codex in general, that's a difficult question. We've decided specifics about Ultima Online events are a no go (see: thread of life), but what about the Ultima Online skills sections that have been appearing? What about game creators and designers? posters? real-life miscellany? trivia sections? Nitpicks? Book lists? Fan projects? I mean, I'd hate to take a vote on every individual subject, but if it'd make a more concise definition of appropriate material for the Codex, maybe we should. I think town maps are at least as relevant as the multitude of dungeon maps that make up the Codex, since in the early Ultima games, there are a number of secrets hidden behind secret walls. Dungy 22:54, September 27, 2010 (UTC)

Maps of Britain in the Britain article seems perfectly logical to me. One of the advantages to moving into game specific articles would be the maps wouldn't just be to the right of the NPC Lists it would also be to the right of the shops that are there in that game and provide us with a bit more flexibility to add even more information in without bloating up an article that is already large.

We could put the lists into expandable tables but I feel that if we're going to make people click anyways we may as well take them to a separate page. I definitely feel there is enough information about the cities in each Ultima to support it's own page. I guess the question is do we get an advantage to keeping it all on one page that we would lose by only having a general big-picture article that leads into sub-articles like we have for Dungeons? -- Fenyx4 00:16, September 28, 2010 (UTC)

The truth? I'm just a merger, I like to stick everything together in a big pile. I don't really see any advantages to making them into one large article, other than to suit my subconscious desire to try to stick everything together. :P Dungy 01:02, September 28, 2010 (UTC)

Hehe, I agree with Dungy, I tend to like having everything in one place for easier access. But it may be better to start splitting the town's articles.--Sega381 01:33, September 28, 2010 (UTC)

I don't see a huge disadvantage to having long articles, as long as the table of contents works properly for each of them. It's annoying to have to search through seperate articles when you're looking for a particular piece of information. The only thing I could see make sense is if we have a "Town Maps (Ultima IV)" article and so forth rather than create one new article for each town. --Warder Dragon 12:46, September 28, 2010 (UTC)

I'm just concerned that we are taking all the mystery out of it by filling the article with all the computer-generated maps. Although, this isn't the only article I'd apply that concern to. AngusM 19:27, September 28, 2010 (UTC)

That's actually a valid point, and one I'm inclined to agree with. If we do seperate the articles, how would we go about it? I really don't think creating a new page for each city and settlement just for the map is the way to go. --Warder Dragon 20:12, September 28, 2010 (UTC)

Until we come to a consensus on this, I'm going to limit my Ultima V map making to just finishing off the lighthouses, since those pages are still plenty short, and there's not a lot of secrets there. I'm also going to being drastically reorganizing Category:Location Maps and :Category:Walkthrough Pictures and a few others categories, so that it's easier to keep all these maps organized. I started work on that today. Dungy 21:20, September 28, 2010 (UTC)