Better Than Wolves Forum

Hi there. I'd originally posted another thread requesting a different kind of help, but some further experimentation made me realize that I was closer to what I needed to know that I'd thought.

I'm in need of a fully-active village, as well as finding some desert / jungle temples. I have a full stack of 64 blank maps crafted, but I see numerous references in other threads about zoom levels on maps, and how portals placed ~256 netherblocks apart will be overworld-spaced approximately the span of a max-zoom map.

I can equip a map to my hotbar and right click it to populate it, and I can use it to navigate to adjacent map tiles to generate other maps as well. (I can't mount them on a wall yet, however, because lack of renewable leather is what's making me set out for wheat and other items anyway.)

I've searched the vMC wikis, and apparently v1.8 introduced some new map behavior, which doesn't help me since we play in v1.5.2. As a result, I'm having difficulty navigating the false positives and deprecated information that I keep running into.

Is it as simple as using the crafting grid with a recorded map in the middle surrounded by 8 blank pieces of paper? If this is the case, I kind of strained by reed supply to make the stack of maps, so I'll need to farm a little and work on some terraforming near my main base while that cycles up again.

Otherwise, how do I work with map zoom levels? Is there an ideal order of when to zoom them (before or after "writing" them by equipping them)? Do I have to be located somewhere within the original map frame to re-zoom it, or can I right-click the map now and bring it back to main to re-zoom it later (assuming that doing so requires paper which I cannot expend in large quantities right this moment)?

From what I remember, it's just 8 blank paper around the original map and it stays centered around the original map no matter where you are when you expand it.

Also you can't expand a map that hasn't been written. You have to activate it then expand it.

And you made a stack of 64 blank maps? That's a hell of a lot of wasted resources (although you can melt the maps down and get 3/4 of your iron back).

MisterFister wrote:Is it as simple as using the crafting grid with a recorded map in the middle surrounded by 8 blank pieces of paper?

Yes

MisterFister wrote:Otherwise, how do I work with map zoom levels?

Maps are all 128x128 pixels big. The first map you create is a 1:1 scale, meaning that for every block there is a corresponding pixel. As you 'Zoom out' maps by surrounding them by paper in a crafting grid the 128x128 pixel is preserved however the scale goes up by a factor of two. So the scales increment as 1:1, 1:2, 1:4, 1:8, 1:16 where 1:16 is the most zoomed out map possible. The 1:16 map covers an area of 2048 blocks by 2048 blocks, a number which is easily attained by taking the default map of 128x128 blocks and multiplying it by the map's scale of 1:16. (128*16=2048)
Also to be noted that it does not matter if you pre-populate a map before incrementing the zoom level of it. You can think of it that as soon as the map leaves the crafting table it is a 'new' map with no recorded information. This is unfortunate in my eyes, but I see no nice solution.

MisterFister wrote:I see numerous references in other threads about zoom levels on maps, and how portals placed ~256 netherblocks apart will be overworld-spaced approximately the span of a max-zoom map.

This is correct. For every block in the nether you travel, you travel 8 blocks in the overworld. We can see that 256 blocks * 8 = 2048 blocks, which is the amount of blocks covered by the 1:16 map.

magikeh wrote:

MisterFister wrote:Otherwise, how do I work with map zoom levels?

[snip]
Also to be noted that it does not matter if you pre-populate a map before incrementing the zoom level of it. You can think of it that as soon as the map leaves the crafting table it is a 'new' map with no recorded information. This is unfortunate in my eyes, but I see no nice solution.

Does this mean that re-zooming the map de-populates the information from it? I ask because I've had some issues getting crafted and populated maps to render properly, similar to how during certain play sessions certain chunks refuse to load even once I'm traveling through them. For both map and terrain rendering issues exiting and then reentering the game instance seems to solve the problem, but my behavior seemed erratic on map loading. If re-crafting maps de-populates them, this might explain some of my frustrations. (It also means I need to re-experiment by zooming the maps before populating them.)

magikeh wrote:

Map Scale Levels

Show

What's the difference between your upper and lower row in your spoilered examples? I note the green carat in the lower row, which I think I ran across in the wikis indicating stationary waypoint indicators.

Also, slight tangent, do you have any info on how you got your wall-framed maps to go to the edges like that? I have absolutely no vMC experience outside of BTW, so my modding ability is nonexistent. I downloaded one from viewtopic.php?f=12&t=6808 and inserted the included .class into the operative .jar for my BTW instance, which does seem to afford some improvement over stock behavior but only marginal. I think the key improvement might be once I have a surplus of leather to work with for framing.

Thanks so far!

PS -- I recall your aquaforming tutorial from back in the day. I haven't forgotten about my challenge to apply your techniques on a very large scale. Alas, my save from before became irretrievably corrupted right around the time that Timing Rodent went live, but I'm playing on the same seed and I've managed to already accomplish much of what I'd set out to do. The remainder will prolly have to await SFS, and in any event will prolly have to be scaled back as a result of a poor understanding of the sheer options available with stock-generated coastlines in the area (unless I go out thousands of blocks to the ocean, which is an unappealing thought. Possible, though, given that my preferred squid farm design requires flooding my main base lagoon to a 3-block depth with source blocks before capping the 2-block depth with blackstone.)

MisterFister wrote: Does this mean that re-zooming the map de-populates the information from it?

Correct.

MisterFister wrote: I ask because I've had some issues getting crafted and populated maps to render properly, similar to how during certain play sessions certain chunks refuse to load even once I'm traveling through them.

Maps that are in item frames can be a little (a lot) funny when you exit and rejoin the game. The map data is stored in the save file and it isn't quite high priority to draw the map on world load.
However for when you are looking to populate the map by walking around it must be remembered that the maps can only be drawn in when Steve has a view of the sky (navigation ftw!) and when the chunk is actually loaded. So if you're having issues with single chunks not getting drawn in you can press [F3]+[a] at the same time to force minecraft to reload all the chunks. This solves most issues for me.

MisterFister wrote: What's the difference between your upper and lower row in your spoilered examples? I note the green carat in the lower row, which I think I ran across in the wikis indicating stationary waypoint indicators.

The difference I was looking to display is a fully populated map versus the area that is 'within sight' immediately after crafting each map.

MisterFister wrote: Also, slight tangent, do you have any info on how you got your wall-framed maps to go to the edges like that?

Try right clicking on the map in frame with an empty hand. That's how you switch from 'framed' mode to 'canvas' mode.

magikeh wrote:Maps that are in item frames can be a little (a lot) funny when you exit and rejoin the game.

Note that I've yet to devote any leather so far this playthrough to making item frames, and I'm still getting the same issue.

Please note my exemplar videos at https://www.dropbox.com/sh/cydz4d97wjdo ... hRt0a?dl=0. In the first video, I get largely correct map-zoom behavior while at my OSB, despite the fact that I was unable to get it to cooperate before recording (that actually led to my decision to record, in fact.) In the second video, repeatedly wasting paper on the crafting menu refuses to result in correct behavior, even with exit-reentering the game instance (in lieu of F3+a). Infuriatingly, after concluding that video, I managed to get it to zoom properly...?

Is this just an example of the vMC functionality of map populating being something of a Notch-infested bugfest? Or am I doing something wrong that's visible in these clips? Or, is there something specific you'd care to view on a subsequent clip that would assist in troubleshooting?

Thanks for the help so far, btw.

MisterFister wrote:-snippy- Or am I doing something wrong that's visible in these clips? Or, is there something specific you'd care to view on a subsequent clip that would assist in troubleshooting?

Thanks for the help so far, btw.

I'm sorry, I misunderstood your issue. The videos helped clarify what was going on. That is incredibly strange behavior for sure, what's going on is when you craft the map and shift click it out of the window into your inventory it doesn't scale (however it does consume the paper) The only remedy to this is to grab the item out of the crafting window with your mouse and move it to your inventory. Using the number keys while hovering over the map does not work either, alas yes this is a Vanilla bug.

magikeh wrote:-snip-

Well at least I feel validated in deciding to record my issue. Thank you very much for your help.

MisterFister wrote:Well at least I feel validated in deciding to record my issue. Thank you very much for your help.

^-^/ Glad to help