Support for the Nether and custom cave worlds are coming soon. I need to write a more clever slicer algorithm to render large halls instead of small caves above them.
When I first saw this Nether map today I had no idea what those grey artifical structures are.
I actually like how sharp the contrast is for those nether fortresses. If they were the same color that they are in game it would be nearly impossible to figure out what they actually were or even where they are.
I have a suggestion. Instead of trying to make your algorithm ‘more clever’ why not just make it so that it slices the nether into horizontal pieces and then let the user be able to decide which pieces they want to view. As an example, you have layers A,B,C,D, and E. W’ere viewing this from the top so E is the very top. If you turn off layer ‘E’ you would, of course, be able to see what layer ‘E’ is blocking from view. You could then turn of layer ‘D’ and see even farther in.
This would work very well with the Nether and those super cave maps people seem to love. The only problems I foresee with it is that it may increase the time it takes to render the map and it may eat up more ram. But I don’t really know as this isn’t my area of expertise.
Also, another feature related question. Have you considered the idea of making a version of this that works as a web client? It seems to be a VERY lightweight mapper and is very detailed. If you made a web client version and made it work with bukkit servers you would become a very serious competitor with dynmap.
Third comment! Holy crap you’ve been pumping out updates like MAD.
I’m planning to implement slice layers you mentioned and tile generation for Google Maps.
Oh, so grey is anything that’s not generated by the world? That’s pretty cool.
Not exactly, grey means artifical things like buildings, farms, rails, etc. These can be built by players or generated by the world like NPC villages or Nether fortresses.
I plan to implement a diff layer to highlight changes compared to initial world state or previous world backups. This will be able to highlight things are not generated by the world.