Projecting MUD maps

[BJörn Lindqvist]

Hello, I'm looking for an algorithm to project "MUD maps" such as the
following map: http://www.aww-mud.org/maps/MUD_Maps/Caerin-colour.jpg

MUD:s consists of rooms, each rooms has up to four orthogonal edges
(north, east, west and south) that connects it to another room. So it
is very easy to model a MUD as a directed graph. But projecting the
graph on a surface is very complicated. For example, Room A:s North
edge may connect it to Room B. But Room B:s South edge may connect it
to Room C. Or another tricky example: Room A:s East edge connects it
to Room B, whose East edge connect it to Room C, whose North edge
connects it to Room D, whose West edge connects it to Room E, whose
South edge connects it to Room A. In that example, there would be a
"hole" between Room D and E.

--
mvh Björn

[Diez B. Roggisch]

BJörn Lindqvist schrieb:

Hello, I'm looking for an algorithm to project "MUD maps" such as the
following map: http://www.aww-mud.org/maps/MUD_Maps/Caerin-colour.jpg

MUD:s consists of rooms, each rooms has up to four orthogonal edges
(north, east, west and south) that connects it to another room. So it
is very easy to model a MUD as a directed graph. But projecting the
graph on a surface is very complicated. For example, Room A:s North
edge may connect it to Room B. But Room B:s South edge may connect it
to Room C. Or another tricky example: Room A:s East edge connects it
to Room B, whose East edge connect it to Room C, whose North edge
connects it to Room D, whose West edge connects it to Room E, whose
South edge connects it to Room A. In that example, there would be a
"hole" between Room D and E.

try graphviz. You can also annotate some compass information ther, I
guess it should make for a better placement.

Diez

[Hakusa]

BJörn Lindqvist wrote:

Hello, I'm looking for an algorithm to project "MUD maps" such as the
following map: http://www.aww-mud.org/maps/MUD_Maps/Caerin-colour.jpg

MUD:s consists of rooms, each rooms has up to four orthogonal edges
(north, east, west and south) that connects it to another room. So it
is very easy to model a MUD as a directed graph. But projecting the
graph on a surface is very complicated. For example, Room A:s North
edge may connect it to Room B. But Room B:s South edge may connect it
to Room C. Or another tricky example: Room A:s East edge connects it
to Room B, whose East edge connect it to Room C, whose North edge
connects it to Room D, whose West edge connects it to Room E, whose
South edge connects it to Room A. In that example, there would be a
"hole" between Room D and E.

--
mvh Björn

I'm working on a text adventure where if the player types in n, w, e or
s he/she gets something back like "You go north, then turn around, then
look left, right . . . finally you realize that you have no idea in
which direction North is." It makes mapping more tedious, but also
simplifies it and gives you more freedom.

Or you could do something like this.

>>rooms = [class instance, class instance, 0 (because there's no room here),

.. . . . . . . . . . .0, , class instance]

But that would still only get you the mapping and not the
implimentation, and it's untested by me because I chose not to do it.

And for my closing remark:
You know the game Zork? The people who made that game never made a grid
or anything. I'd bet that in the class, they had a variable for NW, N,
NE, E, SE, S, SW and W, and they probably even had a U and D for
defining what rooms would be in those directions..

[Neil Cerutti]

On 2006-11-05, BJörn Lindqvist <bj*****@gmail.comwrote:

Hello, I'm looking for an algorithm to project "MUD maps" such
as the following map:
http://www.aww-mud.org/maps/MUD_Maps/Caerin-colour.jpg

Check out the Ruby project IFMapper for a mature project that
might accomplish your goal. You can write a new back-end for it
to produce MUD code (so you can design your maps graphically), or
you can write a new front-end to interpret MUD code (so you can
make IF-Mapper draw maps for you game in progress).

http://ifmapper.rubyforge.org/

--
Neil Cerutti

[BJörn Lindqvist]

On 11/5/06, Diez B. Roggisch <de***@nospam.web.dewrote:

BJörn Lindqvist schrieb:

Hello, I'm looking for an algorithm to project "MUD maps" such as the
following map: http://www.aww-mud.org/maps/MUD_Maps/Caerin-colour.jpg

MUD:s consists of rooms, each rooms has up to four orthogonal edges
(north, east, west and south) that connects it to another room. So it
is very easy to model a MUD as a directed graph. But projecting the
graph on a surface is very complicated. For example, Room A:s North
edge may connect it to Room B. But Room B:s South edge may connect it
to Room C. Or another tricky example: Room A:s East edge connects it
to Room B, whose East edge connect it to Room C, whose North edge
connects it to Room D, whose West edge connects it to Room E, whose
South edge connects it to Room A. In that example, there would be a
"hole" between Room D and E.

try graphviz. You can also annotate some compass information ther, I
guess it should make for a better placement.

Sorry, I think everyone misunderstood what my problem is. Which is not
very strange since I see now that I didn't explain it very well.

In the code below, I have created a simple Room class. It has up to
four edges; north, east, west and south. The Room class also has the
method get_projection() which recursively traverses through all
reachable rooms in the graphs and gives them x,y coordinates and
returns a dict containing x,y-coordinates and rooms. The function
project_dict() simply plots the dict on stdout.

The main() function demonstrates how a map consisting of nine rooms
should be plotted. All well so far. But if there had been an east-west
edge from G to I, then that edge would have overlapped C:s position.
That would have been wrong and I want the algorithm in
get_projection() to detect such overlaps and automatically fix them.
In this case, the fix would have been to add 2 to G and I:s
y-coordinate. Then the east-west edge from G to I wouldn't overlap any
room.

So I wonder if there is any algorithm that can do what I'm asking for?

----------------------- mudgraph.py -----------------------
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
import sys

class Dir:
dirs = ['n', 'e', 's', 'w']
@classmethod
def opposite(cls, dir):
"""
Return the opposite direction, i.e Dir.opposite('n') ='s'.
"""
opp_idx = (Dir.dirs.index(dir) + 2) % 4
return Dir.dirs[opp_idx]

class Room:
"""
A Room is a node in a mud map. Each room can have up to four
connections (edges) to other rooms in the cardinal directions;
north, east, south and west.
"""
def __init__(self, name = None):
self.name = name or "+"
self.n = None
self.s = None
self.e = None
self.w = None

def connect(self, dir, room):
"""
Create an edge dir from self to room. Also create an edge in
the opposite direction from room to self.
"""
setattr(self, dir, room)
setattr(room, Dir.opposite(dir), self)

def north(self, room):
self.connect('n', room)

def east(self, room):
self.connect('e', room)

def west(self, room):
self.connect('w', room)

def south(self, room):
self.connect('s', room)

def get_projection(self, x = 0, y = 0,
proj_dict = None,
visited = None):
"""
Return a dictionary containing all Rooms in the map as
values. Each key is the projected x and y position of the
room.
"""
if proj_dict is None:
proj_dict = {}
if visited is None:
visited = set()
visited.add(self)
proj_dict[x, y] = self
if self.n and not self.n in visited:
self.n.get_projection(x, y - 1, proj_dict, visited)
if self.e and not self.e in visited:
self.e.get_projection(x + 1, y, proj_dict, visited)
if self.w and not self.w in visited:
self.w.get_projection(x - 1, y, proj_dict, visited)
if self.s and not self.s in visited:
self.s.get_projection(x, y + 1, proj_dict, visited)
return proj_dict

def project_dict(dict):
coords = dict.keys()

max_x = 0
max_y = 0
min_x = 999
min_y = 999
for x, y in coords:
if x max_x:
max_x = x
elif x < min_x:
min_x = x
if y max_y:
max_y = y
elif y < min_y:
min_y = y

max_x += 1
max_y += 1
for y in range(min_y, max_y):
x_range = range(min_x, max_x)
for x in x_range:
if dict.has_key((x, y)) and dict[x, y].n:
sys.stdout.write(" | ")
else:
sys.stdout.write(" ")
sys.stdout.write("\n")
for x in x_range:
if dict.has_key((x, y)):
room = dict[x, y]
if room.w:
sys.stdout.write("-")
else:
sys.stdout.write(" ")
sys.stdout.write(room.name)
if room.e:
sys.stdout.write("-")
else:
sys.stdout.write(" ")
else:
sys.stdout.write(" ")
sys.stdout.write("\n")
for x in x_range:
if dict.has_key((x, y)) and dict[x, y].s:
sys.stdout.write(" | ")
else:
sys.stdout.write(" ")
sys.stdout.write("\n")

def main():
a = Room('A')
b = Room('B')
c = Room('C')
d = Room('D')
e = Room('E')
f = Room('F')
g = Room('G')
h = Room('H')
i = Room('I')

a.east(b)
b.south(c)
b.east(h)
c.south(d)
a.north(e)
a.west(f)
f.south(g)
i.north(h)
dict = a.get_projection()

project_dict(dict)

if __name__ == "__main__":
main()
--
mvh Björn

[Diez B. Roggisch]

BJörn Lindqvist wrote:

On 11/5/06, Diez B. Roggisch <de***@nospam.web.dewrote:

>BJörn Lindqvist schrieb:

Hello, I'm looking for an algorithm to project "MUD maps" such as the
following map: http://www.aww-mud.org/maps/MUD_Maps/Caerin-colour.jpg

MUD:s consists of rooms, each rooms has up to four orthogonal edges
(north, east, west and south) that connects it to another room. So it
is very easy to model a MUD as a directed graph. But projecting the
graph on a surface is very complicated. For example, Room A:s North
edge may connect it to Room B. But Room B:s South edge may connect it
to Room C. Or another tricky example: Room A:s East edge connects it
to Room B, whose East edge connect it to Room C, whose North edge
connects it to Room D, whose West edge connects it to Room E, whose
South edge connects it to Room A. In that example, there would be a
"hole" between Room D and E.

try graphviz. You can also annotate some compass information ther, I
guess it should make for a better placement.

Sorry, I think everyone misunderstood what my problem is. Which is not
very strange since I see now that I didn't explain it very well.

In the code below, I have created a simple Room class. It has up to
four edges; north, east, west and south. The Room class also has the
method get_projection() which recursively traverses through all
reachable rooms in the graphs and gives them x,y coordinates and
returns a dict containing x,y-coordinates and rooms. The function
project_dict() simply plots the dict on stdout.

The main() function demonstrates how a map consisting of nine rooms
should be plotted. All well so far. But if there had been an east-west
edge from G to I, then that edge would have overlapped C:s position.
That would have been wrong and I want the algorithm in
get_projection() to detect such overlaps and automatically fix them.
In this case, the fix would have been to add 2 to G and I:s
y-coordinate. Then the east-west edge from G to I wouldn't overlap any
room.

So I wonder if there is any algorithm that can do what I'm asking for?

It depends - it is complicated and very sophisticated and generally
considered a hard, even unsolvable problem. However, a good general
solution is written in the graphviz toolkit. Which is the reason I
suggested it.

But there is no cookbook-algorithm that will produce perfect MUD-maps. For
such a beast, you have to cough up one on your own, with things like
constraint solvers and the like. Certainly over _my_ head, at least without
deep studies of planar graph representation problems.

Diez

[Scott David Daniels]

Diez B. Roggisch wrote:

But there is no cookbook-algorithm that will produce perfect MUD-maps. For
such a beast, you have to cough up one on your own, with things like
constraint solvers and the like. Certainly over _my_ head, at least without
deep studies of planar graph representation problems.

To convince yourself of this, here is a small problem
that does not flatten to any simple 2-D solution.
Consider :

A, B, C
a, b, c

A.south, B.South, C.south = a, b, c
a.north, b.north, c.north = A, B, C

A.east, B.east, C.east = a, b, c
a.west, b.west, c.west = A, B, C

a.east, b.east, c.east = A, B, C
A.west, B.west, C.west = a, b, c

--
--Scott David Daniels
sc***********@acm.org