In reply to AlexYoshi on worldofwarcraft.com

[Sir.Bender]

This is a reply to the post of AlexYoshi on worldofwarcraft.com (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-interface-customization&t=9591&p=1#post9591).

I suggest making a simple JavaScript, that handels the "map generation" combined with a kind of mappack, that saves the clean maps on the users computer (or on a location providet by him, i.e. his own webspace). I've coded a simple page to show, what I mean:

Link (http://wow.metelmann.ws/thottbot/map.html)

Here's some code of the html page:

<script language="JavaScript">
mapnr = 100;
gp="";

var yl = new Array();
var yf = new Array();
var wl = new Array();
var wf = new Array();

yf[0] = 2415;
yf[1] = 1265;
yf[2] = 2347;

yl[0] = 3370;

wl[0] = 7071;
wl[1] = 7171;

wf[0] = 7072;
</script>

mapnr: which is the map below the dots.
gp: (GraphicPack) defines the path to the GP (here: same directory)

yf[i] = 2415; : Creates a yellow-full dot at 24 in x-direction and 15 in y-direction. (Because the size is 10x7 there is only the possibility of 100x95 dots (0-99)x(0-94))

yl[?] = ????; : creates a yellow-light dot
wf[?] = ????; : creates a white-full dot
wl[?] = ????; : guess...

It's simple to calculate the value (x*100+y) and much less data to send, if not the whole map is full of dots. If you generated the images once a day (or something similar) you could also do this here, simply generate a *.js file for every map and load this in the html part.

The GP-location has to be stored for every user on thottbot.com. This could also be voluntary and only the maps for users that do not login are loaded from thottbot. Thease map would also not be loaded every time because of the brwoser cache...

(1.000 dots take ~15kByte and there are possibilities to compress this.)

[AlexanderYoshi]

An effective way to save space on this idea.

Thanks.

[metaphis]

Going on that idea a way to reduce server load would be to release a somehow standalone thottbot so the map could be generated on your computers. The first release (it would probably be very large) could be release using bittorent. That way most of the processing power could be transfered to the server, maps wouldn't need to be transfered and regenerated each times. Only a list of tloc wich I guess would be fairly small.

So lets say you support maps functionnality only in the standalone (well not really stand-alone but stand with a bit of help) and you can keep it free.

[Sir.Bender]

That's exactly how the idea above works ;-) .

[metaphis]

yea but I think it is not necesserly the best solution to keep it web based if there is a make pack to be distributed though I understand it would make thing a lot easier then converting the whole thing to a stand-alone application

[Sir.Bender]

I don't see the advantage of a standalone version, think about Mac users.. maybe they want to look at maps too. Another option is to have big sites hosting the maps graphics as mirrors and parse their address if the user is not logged in to use the maps on his computer. I don't want to say that this is an optimum solution, but I don't see one real advanage over a web based solution (and if I havn't read it over you havn't posted what the advantage over a web based solution (not necessarily the one above) is)