I was thinking about forge's map coordinates system when I had an idea and I didn't see it posted anywhere. I'm sure you remember those paint by number sets you can get that have the image mapped out with numbers that correspond with colors and you simply fill in the areas. In the end you have a painting of something and it looks like you know what the heck you are doing. Well my idea was similar in that you could forge by number. Create a piece of forge art or even a map first as usual Open a notepad file on your PC Select a piece and go to edit coordinates option Copy into a notepad file the piece name and all of the coordinate information Delete the piece (to help you keep track of your progress) and move to the next one and repeat the process until all pieces are recorded Save the notepad file, email it to your friend, and you are done. The "Painter" simple follows the coordinate instructions line by line The map is recreated! I am aware that this would be time consuming, but it is possible and it's something different you could do with forge. Some people like following instructions to build something and they like the surprise when they are finished. This is also a very time consuming way you could distribute a map to someone that doesn't have Xbox Live and wanted a copy of your map. Shoot, you could even print the notepad file and snail mail it to a friend and they, in theory, could recreate your map without internet access at all! There are some limitations in that if you have placed a piece that is off of the coordinates it will not be aligned exactly the same when the map is re-created, but it would be close. I may try this out with a small item like a base or small structure later and see how it turns out. What do you guys think of this idea?
Indeed. It's an interesting idea, and one that would have quite a few uses, but depending on how big the map is, it would take hours just to record the co-ordinates.
Thanks for the feedback guys! Perhaps if you made a spreadsheet form to make things a little easier to enter the info. It could have preset choices for the names of the pieces to make it a little easier. If you think about it, essentially this is what your Xbox does when you download a "map". You are really just downloading coordinate info and your box builds the map locally. It doesn't actually re download every piece because if you have the game, you already have that data. Another related idea I had is you could build a kind of scavenger hunt map using all of forge world. The document file would be your "treasure map" and would have coordinates to lead you to clues where to find pieces or objects. When you get to a certain spot there could be a partially build object and you follow instruction to finish the object and that would give you the next clue. One could get really elaborate with this type of game. EDIT: I just realized an even faster way to record the map data would be to take a picture of the coordinate info for each piece when it's up on the screen and then make an onlnie album of the images with Photobucket or Flickr. Put the camera on a tripod zoomed in where the coordinate data appears, then all you have to do is hit the shutter on the cam to take the picture of each piece's data. The end user would still have to take time reassembling the map though, but I think that's the point of this whole exercise anyway. Yet another method would be to make a video of just that area of the screen that shows the data. Then you just bring up the data for each piece. You could upload this to youtube. Simple!
It does sound like an interesting idea, but one would need a lot of time and patience to record every single detail. If you had nothing to do one day and wanted to kill several hours, this would be the ideal exercise, but you'd need the attention span of a statue to keep at it all day. Im not saying dont do it, Im just saying you'll need to be very dedicated to your own cause. Points if you end up getting something done, though.
Hahahah the funny thing is that this is exactly how bungie stores map information, except the coordinates aren't XXX.X (120.8) or something, but rather XXX.XXXXX (more detail). It would be an interesting concept if you could use say, google sketchup to build a map out of equivalent forge pieces, then use a "SKETCHUP to FORGE" program that translates it to the coordinate information of forge world, then you can upload it via USB drive to your xbox, and have the map built in forge, just a thought, but it sure as hell would be nice to have a PC forge map editor.
That would be a lot easier. A lot more precise too. I was actually thinking about something like this, but more along the lines of creating a program that lists all the items and their coordinates of a Forge map in a text file on your computer. This would probably be considered hacking though, and would inflict the banhammers rage. Still, would save a heap of time if one wanted to undertake a task such as this.