Yeah, it's in development now. I've got it so you can see underground deposits too, like diamond, but with an isometric view, unless you have a mine nearby, it's not going to easy to figure out exactly where to dig.
We've got a whole mess of stuff. This release was a huge amount of work and I've learned a lot about Cocoa. User defaults, file management, Application Support folders, table views, dealing with multiple windows, subclassing controllers and delegates... whew! When I'm done with this, I should quit my day job and become an Objective-C developer!
Now we just need to get more people using the thing! I see way too many lost Mac users in the Cartograph thread looking at the decrepit Java version, or sad 10.5 users trying to use Minutor MineMap and finding their Java version is lacking. Or non-technical users finding c10t is really hard to set up and use on Mac OS X. Or... ok, people don't seem to know about command line mcmap either. But they should! They should know about minutor too! (Don't spam any of those threads to get users though, that's a really bad idea.)
Edit: Fixed a minor bug in the 1.1 release (there's always one!!). Hopefully no one grabbed it yet. But if the app doesn't quit when you close the main window, just grab it again from the link above.
On really super big maps, something about the way I swap in and out textures to manage VRAM actually breaks quartz extreme. As in, the window server in mac os x has to fall back on to software rendering and just moving windows around the screen gets really really choppy and laggy. MCMap Live stays responsive however, because it accesses the video card directly!
The current workaround is to quit MCMap Live when you're done, sleep your computer, and wake it back up. It'll fix instantly. If you don't notice anything wrong, you don't have to bother doing this. It only happens on really, really big maps. I'm looking into a fix but it's looking like a bug in the windowserver, not my code, so there's a limit to what I can actually do.
Registered just to state how much I'm loving this program. The only thing that could possibly make it any sweeter, would be full swivel (viewing from any direction).
I'd want to keep the same 4 direction it has now, to provide a consistent view when showing off to friends, but I have a few structures that just don't render well from those angles.
Not really possible at the moment, unfortunately. Isometric map drawing takes each block and draws it as a fixed pixel shape, so it only works from certain angles. It's more of an illusion of 3D than an actual rendering.
Loving the progress on this app. I know there'll be some changes required to mapping apps post-Halloween.
In the meantime, it would be nice if the "Flush Cache" command also checked if the world had new chunks, especially outside the previous extent range. If I explore past a sea in my little wooden boat in one window, it'd be nice to see the new area in the "Live" view without reloading, rezooming, repanning to the same view.
Minotaur is a fine program in and of itself, I have it and use it sometimes to search for deposits.
You windows people have plenty of mapping programs, let us have ours :smile.gif:. Just because 80% of users here are Windows doesn't mean us 20% who use Macs should have to suffer through subpar mapping support (entirely excluding MCMap command line, which works excellently). DK can develop however he wants, and I for one am glad he made MCMap-Live. This program allows those non-technically savvy people an easy way to map their worlds on a Mac.
Pushing out a little update in a minute. After talking a bit with Zahl, we found that a speed optimization in mcmap was causing the blockfinder's x-ray setting to malfunction. I made a little patch to mcmap to switch the optimization on and off and this is the result.
Searching for coal deposits:
Pretty rad, huh.
Oh, the update includes two other tiny things. The path in preferences where the colors are saved is now clickable and the flush cache option now rescans the level bounds as requested. Note, this does add some delay to the commands because that's not a cheap operation, but unless your worlds are as big as some of my test data (500MB+), you should be fine.
This app is seriously amazing. I've been searching for the past few weeks for a Mac cartographer and you sir are a God among men for creating this.
One small thing that I would love to see (if possible) is a level counter. So as you are sliding up or down through each slice, there would be a number somewhere letting you know which level you are currently viewing.
Again, thank you so much for making this fantastic app.
I figured I'd let you guys know where this program is going. Here's my current development roadmap:
Development Roadmap
Keeping up with Minecraft:
- New block types
- Biome labels
- Mapping hell?
Soon:
- Color set editor with live preview
- Info panel showing camera location, slice depth, resource counts
- Player Locations
- Better offscreen texture culling (come on, it's been a month!)
- Progress bars for rendering operations
- Fix opaque glass bug when generating colors
Long-term:
- Place Marks (need world id: random seed?)
- Nifty animations
- Basic editing features: cut, copy, paste chunks
- Replace block types (exchange dirt for sand, etc)
Require Changing/Replacing mcmap:
- Full 360º rotation
- Overhead, Oblique views
Hey Donkey, would it be possible to add some CLI commands? so you could script having it re-xray your level and render it via CLI?
That would be super sick.
Edit: Also, the slice sequence spits out pngs, but the standard render doesn't... Plans for that?
Just name your regular renders with a .png at the end and it'll save them in PNG format.
The xray uses a special colors file, which you could easily feed to regular mcmap on the command line. I'll add a button to save that file. If you want it now, start up an xray and copy it from /tmp/block_finder.txt
It won't produce proper output with mcmap at the moment unless you use the version bundled with Live, which you can get by right clicking the app package and looking in Contents/Resources/mcmap
Be sure to give it the additional flag -blendall, that turns off some optimizations that cause xray colors files to malfunction.
Just tried block finder, it's really nice. I like being able to select multiple blocks types to find simultaneously, and the ability to find whatever type I want (like torches!).
Now THIS is an excellent feature. Can't wait. I really dig the greyscale background and the red colored target blocks.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/107712/MCMap/MCMap-Live-v11.zip
We've got a whole mess of stuff. This release was a huge amount of work and I've learned a lot about Cocoa. User defaults, file management, Application Support folders, table views, dealing with multiple windows, subclassing controllers and delegates... whew! When I'm done with this, I should quit my day job and become an Objective-C developer!
Now we just need to get more people using the thing! I see way too many lost Mac users in the Cartograph thread looking at the decrepit Java version, or sad 10.5 users trying to use
MinutorMineMap and finding their Java version is lacking. Or non-technical users finding c10t is really hard to set up and use on Mac OS X. Or... ok, people don't seem to know about command line mcmap either. But they should! They should know about minutor too! (Don't spam any of those threads to get users though, that's a really bad idea.)Edit: Fixed a minor bug in the 1.1 release (there's always one!!). Hopefully no one grabbed it yet. But if the app doesn't quit when you close the main window, just grab it again from the link above.
Minutor is Objective C, and works on 10.5 just fine. In fact, some versions were compiled and packaged on a G5 running 10.5.
If you're gonna disparage minutor, use the fact that it's top-down only, no oblique modes at all :smile.gif:
Sorry! I was thinking of MineMap!
Minutor is the one with the really responsive depth slider, right? That one is rad.
Edit: (And you are the developer! Nice work on three different native GUIs. That's tough to do.)
On really super big maps, something about the way I swap in and out textures to manage VRAM actually breaks quartz extreme. As in, the window server in mac os x has to fall back on to software rendering and just moving windows around the screen gets really really choppy and laggy. MCMap Live stays responsive however, because it accesses the video card directly!
The current workaround is to quit MCMap Live when you're done, sleep your computer, and wake it back up. It'll fix instantly. If you don't notice anything wrong, you don't have to bother doing this. It only happens on really, really big maps. I'm looking into a fix but it's looking like a bug in the windowserver, not my code, so there's a limit to what I can actually do.
I'd want to keep the same 4 direction it has now, to provide a consistent view when showing off to friends, but I have a few structures that just don't render well from those angles.
In the meantime, it would be nice if the "Flush Cache" command also checked if the world had new chunks, especially outside the previous extent range. If I explore past a sea in my little wooden boat in one window, it'd be nice to see the new area in the "Live" view without reloading, rezooming, repanning to the same view.
Minotaur is a fine program in and of itself, I have it and use it sometimes to search for deposits.
You windows people have plenty of mapping programs, let us have ours :smile.gif:. Just because 80% of users here are Windows doesn't mean us 20% who use Macs should have to suffer through subpar mapping support (entirely excluding MCMap command line, which works excellently). DK can develop however he wants, and I for one am glad he made MCMap-Live. This program allows those non-technically savvy people an easy way to map their worlds on a Mac.
Searching for coal deposits:
Pretty rad, huh.
Oh, the update includes two other tiny things. The path in preferences where the colors are saved is now clickable and the flush cache option now rescans the level bounds as requested. Note, this does add some delay to the commands because that's not a cheap operation, but unless your worlds are as big as some of my test data (500MB+), you should be fine.
One small thing that I would love to see (if possible) is a level counter. So as you are sliding up or down through each slice, there would be a number somewhere letting you know which level you are currently viewing.
Again, thank you so much for making this fantastic app.
That would be super sick.
Edit: Also, the slice sequence spits out pngs, but the standard render doesn't... Plans for that?
Just name your regular renders with a .png at the end and it'll save them in PNG format.
The xray uses a special colors file, which you could easily feed to regular mcmap on the command line. I'll add a button to save that file. If you want it now, start up an xray and copy it from /tmp/block_finder.txt
It won't produce proper output with mcmap at the moment unless you use the version bundled with Live, which you can get by right clicking the app package and looking in Contents/Resources/mcmap
Be sure to give it the additional flag -blendall, that turns off some optimizations that cause xray colors files to malfunction.