map of the realm

[bonecold]

Anyone ever tried to map out the realm before? I have an idea in my head of how most things are laid out, but wanted to see how it actually was. And also some places I just tell mega to go to without actually paying attention and had no real idea where they were.

So I stiched this map together copy and pasting from MME: https://imgur.com/a/9r5Ng2y

Would be cool to find a way to generate this map programmatically instead. I did it pretty lazily so its unfinished in certain areas, was mostly just trying to get an approximation. Also haven't added in any of the mod10 areas.

Some of the elevation changes are hard to map in a 2d format, but it brought up some interesting questions and observations:

• Fungus forest appears to actually be directly under the green dragons section of darkwood, meaning lava fields is kind of under misty bog, or close at least.
• Dark-elf city is deep underground, almost near rhudaur
• I always thought of the Ocean/Lost city as super far off to the northwest, but the underground river/lagoon/jungle actually doubles back south and east from wounded sailor, meaning this whole area is under dragon teeth hills and silvermere, and lost city is approximately under the labyrinth???

Is this how you visualized the realm? How would you shift things around on the 2d map to make more sense?

[Greater]

• I always thought of the Ocean/Lost city as super far off to the northwest, but the underground river/lagoon/jungle actually doubles back south and east from wounded sailor, meaning this whole area is under dragon teeth hills and silvermere, and lost city is approximately under the labyrinth???

I did a basic map of the geographical layout of the realm when we started planning for a large mod, and it's pretty close to yours besides the likely incorrect overlapping of mod 7. Because the river delta was in the unfinished portion of Metro's last dats, we do know the coast in this spot is west of the northern forests and DTH.  I took the license of imagining the coast continuing south and west from the Silver River delta, winding around the Black Mountains which border part of west DTH, which is why I built Port Blackwater where it is with the full descriptions of the coast all along that west side of the Rugged Plateau. 

At the Sandbar you actually go through Seher Saham's water portal, so this area isn't actually directly connecting continuously. It's pretty ambiguous where exactly it sends you, but it's probably fair to assume it's not sending you right next door. I think your original approximation of northwest is correct, but the distance is unclear at best because we don't know exactly how far the water portal sends you.

Here's what Seher has to say about his portal:
greet
Seher'Sahham says, "Hello there adventurer, you seem to be quite a ways
from your home.  I imagine you are here to use my water portal.  It is
quite the marvel of magic isn't it.  The mages of Cirgathil told you of
it didn't they?  Such a jealous bunch they are always in competition
with each other as to who's magic is more powerful, having summoning
contests that last for days.  Transportation is where the real magic
is my child.  It doesn't matter how powerful you are if you can't get
anywhere to do anything with it."

water portal
"Ahhh yes the water portal.  I'm not quite sure where it takes you
but it gets you there quickly none the less.  It took me years to
build it and I alone know the workings of its magic.  I'm a reasonable
man though and seeing as I haven't been home for over 500 years I'm sure
my wife has sold off all my belongings.  So for a small fee to help
a poor old man out I'd be more then willing to help you pass through
the portal."

I've always found digging into the map quite fascinating, as it highlights obvious places where logical expansion could happen. We've tried to keep everything we have done geographically sound as we understand it from my map. In a way this is part of why I made the ship travel system as well, because it offers an in-game vehicle to content that doesn't have to be geographically or conceptually constrained to blend in with the content around it.

[bonecold]

OOhh cool, I seemed to remember that about Seher but wasn't sure, since you can't actually see the texblocks or room descriptions in MME. So it's safe to say the underground river does indeed go under DTH a little, but after the portal, who knows. Do you know why this area is called 'Ocean'? I didn't see any obvious references to the ocean, its just lagoon and underground river as far as I can tell. Maybe need to pull it up in NMR and look at some of the descriptions of this area. And I totally missed black foothills, need to get that added in with the other mod10 stuff for the full picture.

A couple other areas that are a little confusing is the overlap of mossy tunnels and rocky trail area. And also never realized that the undermountain caverns branch off from storm mountain, down to the volcano... so is the volcano within storm mountain? Is it not a mountain then, and should be called storm volcano?? Or is the volcano right next to storm mountain?? lol

Do you have anything worth sharing with your map? Would be cool to see other interpretations.

Would also be cool to see a sketch of the realm, like not the blocks but just some artistic rendering. Maybe I'll hire someone off fiverr haha.

My bigger idea for this is to create a UI for selecting where you want to GOTO or LOOP. Since the list of locations is quite long, and sometimes I forget what category things are in, or what they're named, but I have a good idea of where they are. Thought it might be cool to have a 'normalized' / not-to-scale map where each area is about the same size, but drawn out in a way that's distinct visually and easy to find. Then you can drill down into the individual areas and see the actual points of interest. May not ever do this but just an idea I had. Not even sure the best way to pipe these commands into mega, maybe something like auto hotkey.

[Greater]

I think the Ocean label was Winter's doing with his paths years ago, probably because of the Reef and descriptions of pre jungle areas.

As far as the Volcano, I think it's a lesser mountain next to Storm Mountain, but who knows for sure.

My map is pretty similar to yours but just uses shapes for areas rather than sections of game map.

Cool idea.

[Winterhawk]

If you go too the reef to putakwas you can go downstairs to a viewing room where you can look out into the ocean plus sahuagin live in oceans