Scriptable Map Mods

Inspired by Juro Kothari

How about allowing us to create special objects that exist solely in our inventories that contain an icon, a special script call, and landmarks that allows us to apply icons to our maps? These modifications could be bought or given away, and could allow people to either mark their own points of interest on the map, or themed areas, such as airports, or clothing stores, or anything else.

These objects would need to be able to be updated remotely by the creator.

They would also need to be toggleable. This might be possible to do by making them attach to an 'invisible' attach point that isn't seen or accessable in the game world or on our avatars, and then "Wearing" the ones we want on the map. There should be no limit to this particular attachment point, so we can have an unlimited number of modifications on at a time.

Oooh, not a bad idea.
I can imagine putting notes all over the map so I remember what different sims contain, place flags where my stores are, draw flight plan lines or boating trips... yes.

What about a new inventory type, call it... hmmm... Map-Addons or something, that allow you to create this map-addon object, you can then list different categories with different image keys, each category would have its own image, under each category would be a list of landmarks for that category.

So something like:

-Airports
Image Key: (UUID)
Landmarks: (draglandmarksheretoaddtolist)

---

Then! You can give an addon that contains as many different categories as you want to someone, basicly though you give them a pointer which they can't edit, but it points to your category in your inventory and gets the information in it (so you can easily make additions/changes). Then when you load up your map, it has a drop-down box that lists all the Map-Addons you have, you select an addon and it displays each category with check boxes and icons to toggle them on/off, on the map it shows each category you have toggleed on.

So basicly:

User A makes Map-Addon containing various categories, icons for these categories, and landmarks.

User A gives User B "Map-Addon By User A"

User B then opens Map, selects "Map-Addon By User A" in their Addon drop down, on the map key then is displayed the categories and icons for each to be toggled on/off, User B can then see all the locations and such.

User A can then at a later time, change/add to the map-addon and everyone who has his addon will see the changes.

---

I would think a new tab to the Map window would be added for these add-ons with the drop down at the top and the user-defined mapkey under it in the space, simular to how the current map is setup.

---

The map addon editor interface would give you the Name of your Map-Addon, description, and would have a list of Categories, clicking a Category would bring up info such as the icon for that Category and a list of landmarks in that Category that you can add/delete onto (add by dragging landmarks or manualy typing in coords).

Here's a more generic version of what all 3 of you propose, so it could be used for more things.

1. First of all, let's think of these things not as map add-ons, but as References. The idea is something along the lines of creating a package of links to various resources owned by a 3rd party, and using that package in several different ways. The archetypal way would be to drop such a Reference onto your map, which would cause the embedded landmark to locate it and the embedded icon to display it appropriately. The Reference object should be a container, ie. contain a folder, as explained below.
   
   To whet the appetite, a non-archetypal use (it's common in MMOGs but new to us) is to paste the Reference into vicinity chat or into IM lines. Combine this with script-driven IMs and you have some pretty nifty functionality possible.

1. Landmarks are already give/droppable objects, and the current implementation which places them on the map for us (doubleclick->Map) is the the correct one because you could never attach a marker both quickly and exactly right by hand. So, let the positioning of icons be automatically controlled by the embedded landmark when you map-activate the Reference.
   
   (This is in answer to the "allow people to mark their own points of interest" part --- Yes fine, but by default let the landmark handle it; it's messy otherwise, and people tend not to be too good at numeric coordinates, even when the map sliders allow it.)

1. If you want this to give you access to various 3rd-party resources, then the details of those resources should appear in the existing information panels (Find->People, Find->Groups, etc) for the appropriate 3rd parties, expanded as required. You would't want the information to be available ONLY through the map, that would limit searching and browsing.
   
   This could be accommodated by adding a Public Resources tab to a person's Profile and Groups windows, and allowing the person to drop objects they wish the public to know about in there. The objects could be References containing a full package of details, but they could also be any of the other types of droppable object too --- actually just UUID references to them.

1. As you all suggested, we would need a new Mapicon object which we could customize with an image (not sure how to prevent M-type images from being used, maybe just through community pressure). We would also need a new Mapline object which displays lines between all the landmarks we dump into its container. So, Hiro could light up the map with his various stores and flight plans, etc.

1. Any of the items in a person's or group's Public Resources tab should be visible to everyone in the appropriate Find entry. From there, any Reference that the person or group has provided would be usable directly, or copied/dragged into the viewer's own inventory. Alternatively, a person could create a New Reference in her inventory, and then copy or drag any ordinary objects provided as Public Resources into it. The key point here is that any objects within the container of a Reference are actually merely UUIDs. Some provide useful data, like the Mapicon and Landmark, but a prim or an item of clothing just provides the details that one finds in Properties.

1. Note that a Reference cannot run an embedded script automatically because that is asking for major trouble and abuse, which asking for permission first doesn't really overcome. The automatic placement of landmarks and icons on the map is benign compared to that, and since the Reference merely points to objects in the person or group's Find window, it cannot pollute your inventory with the SL equivalent of spam advertising.

This covers the proposal more flexibly I think, and development can be split into two parts. First a new Reference object with a container into which we can place a Landmark and the other new objects, the Mapicon and Mapline, because this requires no development beyond what the original proposal already entailed. And second, the additions to Profile/Group and to Find->People/Find->Group windows to provide additional access to the information for references remotely.

I love that idea, It'd be great if we could each have our own individual "Library" folders simular to what the Lindens have now, where we could share any item even multiple folders with the general public. Putting it in the Find would be great also.

Good ideas.

why not take this a bit further and make client plug-ins?
This makes me think of the Wasabi media player (the doomed opensource next generation of winamp made by nullsoft, aka winamp3) it was designed to have plugins attach ever where and change anything (which they did). (they bit off more then they could chew and ended up scrapping winamp 3 moving straight onto version 5 trying to put the failure behind them. Would be very cool if there was an in world skin & plug-in interface and distribution of said skins. A nice skin editor would be... nice.

My only issue with plug-ins would be that they would break the platform independence of SL. Else I'd have to write a version of my plugin for Windows, Macintosh, and Linux.

I doubt SL has the time/resources currently to develop a plugin programming language.