I am researching the feasibility of setting up a mapping tool for my alliance in an online game.
The game is not based in the real world so I am not interested in the content of the map tools available, just the functionality.
Minimally, I would like the map to display information about where allied cities are located in the world. Ideally, I'd like to be able to display information about desired trades, levels of development, and military actions. All this should be editable by the map users.
I've been looking at the google maps API and it appears that I could use it to serve my ends by using my own map tiles with a custom defined map object and some custom overlays, but it looks like it would be a lot of work to set up.
Is there another tool that would be better suited to this task?
A List Apart has an article from the creators of EveryBlock.com. They use a full open-source stack (client side library, tile cache, map generator) as an alternative to Google Maps. That sounds like it has exactly what you need.
I would argue that the Goole Maps API approach is not as difficult as you imagine. The API provides a very nice interface to define custom tilesets to render your own maps.
This interface is actually quite simple to use. There is a detailed description of it here. When you create a GMapType object you can specify a vector of urls to your own image tiles, label images and fundamentally change the display paradigm.
There are quite a few examples of this on the web:
George R R Martin's Game of Thrones. I found the javascript they have written pretty clear.
The Oblivion Gameworld (as Matt mentioned).
World of Warcraft Gameworld
I reckon this is a really powerful way of implementing your own maps on the web.
There is a google map implementation of the Oblivion gameworld - this might serve as a reference.
Wouldn't defining your own overlay with a KMZ file in Google Maps work?
Related
I think the question says it all, I have a custom google map and want to put some geojason shapes on it.
In an ideal world scan them from a sheet of paper perhaps using a pre existant image.
Just looking and gimp might be a way forward.
Still though I'll leave this question open as might be useful for others.
Richard
The simplest way is to use the Data layer Look at the example in google maps api.
Basically, you use the loadGeoJson method and pass it a valid geojson file's url
map.data.loadGeoJson('https://storage.googleapis.com/maps-devrel/google.json');
This means that, whatever shapes you have already drawn in another source will have to be converted to geoJson format.
There are a lot of converters that can translate from-to KML, SHP, WKT, GPX and geoJson, but you still need to get from plain images to one of those formats.
In the end I ripped some code out from here.
http://blog.sallarp.com/geojson-google-maps-editor.html
Applied to my own map and got the coordinates that I needed and then had to play around with the json job done.
Feel that there should have been a program that made this all easier but can't have it all!
Richard
As I'm going over the documentation of https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/ios/overlays and https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/overlays
there is a huge gap, same goes for other functionalities and abilities, I was wondering if there is a way to "wrap" the javascript abilities in order to use them in IOS applications
for example create a custom overlay or dragable marker, or even use distance, geocoding and elevation services
You can use a UIWebView in your iOS app, and then use the JavaScript API in there. This gives you access to all of the features of the JavaScript API, but you would lose the iOS-specific features (like rotating/tilting the map, 3D buildings), and there are other downsides (like performance, offline use, etc).
You can use Google Maps data services like the elevation API from an iOS app by making a web request to the appropriate URL, and then drawing/displaying the results within the app. It's a bit more complicated than the JavaScript API which is already integrated with the underlying maps API, but it's doable.
But yes, the major limitation of the Google Maps iOS API is its minimal support for custom overlays. The latest version includes tile overlays, but if you want something more dynamic this might not be enough. There's a feature request for dynamic overlays here, but I don't think it's on Google's priority list. Something like a draggable marker might require you to implement the dragging yourself, or it might not be possible. Annotation and overlay support is one area where Apple's MapKit still offers more flexibility than the Google Maps SDK for iOS, so you might want to take a look at that as an option (but then you can't use Google Maps data services).
for the new company site, they want a textbox that has an address, once the person clicks search a google map should appear with lots of points on that area. These points are places pre-defined in a database.
Is there any way I can implement this? A great example of this is on laterooms.com:
http://www.laterooms.com/en/k16296355_manchester-hotels.aspx
Thanks
I believe what you want is a mashup between simple geocoding (example available here):
https://google-developers.appspot.com/maps/documentation/javascript/examples/geocoding-simple
And places (example available here)
https://google-developers.appspot.com/maps/documentation/javascript/examples/place-search
And you should be good to go.
you will find quite some good infos on this page here: see the examples and see what you can do with the code
https://developers.google.com/maps/
I just signed up for a Google Maps API key and was hoping for a wizard style application for setting up the map (not a static one), unfortunately I was immediately blinded by science!
Can anyone point me to a tutorial where I can find out how to create a simple google map and place a callout bubble including am image of the office and address details.
Give this a try
http://econym.org.uk/gmap/
The documentation for Google maps is pretty fantastic. That's how I learned to use it.
There's a section for Basics in the docs. That might be a good place to start.
If all you're looking to do is show a map with an infowindow, you might want to take a look at the embedding options here:
http://maps.google.com/help/maps/getmaps/quick.html
It'll let you easily embed a map on your site, without to much science!
Shameless self-promotion
If you are happy to use C# this may or may not help - Lookup on all postcodes on a webpage, and plot them with Google maps. It doesn't really need much ASP.NET/C# knowledge beyond the basics.
Is it possible to make zones in google maps, when provided with the zipcodes?
If it is possible I would really like some links to information about it :)
These is no simple way to accomplish this in Google Maps. You'll have to create your own GPolygons or custom tile layer. The site you noted in your comment has good examples of several different ways to accomplish this.
You can get zip code boundary data here.