Wiki Swiss Tool/Spawn Maps

Spawn Maps

New Feature - (version 1.05)

A Spawn Map is a png image that is transparent except for red pixels showing locations where a particular spawn has been reported via Mob Tracker. This image is overlaid on a base map of Dereth that is shared across all spawn maps.

The first time you create a new spawn map or update an old spawn map there are a number of steps to take:

First Time

1. The Viewer utility is located in the Mob Viewer plugin folder if you have it installed or download it, MobSpawnViewer.exe.
2. Run the Viewer and set the zoom level to 50. Press ALT + PRT SCR to get a screen shot of just the program window. Paste this image into an image editor and save it as a bitmap named "Spawn Map Comparison.bmp" and place it in the same location (folder) as Wiki Swiss Tool.exe. The reason you create your own comparison map is the window borders will vary by OS and the Viewer may change its map if new land masses are added. It's also a large file and must be lossless.
3. Open the bitmap comparison file and find the coordinates of the first pixel of the map itself, e.g., in Windows XP the coordinates are probably 4, 58.
4. Open "Wiki Swiss Tool.ini" (located in the same folder where you saved the comparison file) with a text editor and in the [[SpawnMap]] section change the values for X and Y to the coordinates you observed in your own comparison bitmap. Save and close, close and restart Wiki Swiss Tool if it is running.

Create Spawn Map

1. Click "Get List" and wait for it to load then select the creature from the drop down list.
2. A highly detailed spawn map will appear, press ALT + PRT SCR to capture a screen shot of the program to the clipboard.
3. In Wiki Swiss Tool go to the Tools tab and press "Create Spawn Map" and a preview of the map will appear below the button. If there are no red dots anywhere except perhaps along the very left edge or in the middle (the Inner Sea) it means that the creature only spawns in dungeons and you may not want to make a spawn map for this creature.
4. A dialog will open asking for the name of the creature. If doing a lot of these, you can tab back to the Viewer window and press CTRL + C to copy the name, then tab back to the Swiss Tool and CTRL + V to paste. Use the exact name of the creature as it appears in game. This will save a png file in the same location as your panel (stats) images are saved. The resulting image is a filtered version that is smaller and the graduated spawn indications (more intense = more reports) are converted to an ungraduated display that is more visible at small resolutions and allows low spawn creatures like rare spawns to be clearly visible.
5. Once the file is saved you'll need to convert all white pixels to transparent pixels. You can use the free program GIMP, Layer>>Transparency>>Color to Alpha, click the color bar if it's not already white and change HTML notation to "ffffff" and OK, click OK, save the file and then upload it to the Wiki, tag it with [[Category:Spawn Map]].
6. You can now use the map on a page. For example if you had made a map for Dual Fragments, place {{Spawn Map|Dual Fragment}} on the page. Note that if no image exists the Image link will display as red text on top of the base map.