Map display addons and map data sources

[Adirelle]

Wait, I overlooked the "navigation system" part.

Now I think you should take a look a how TomTom works and simply provides smart data to it. TomTom takes care of displaying the points on the maps and optionally display the arrow to help reaching them.

[Tekkub]

Yea, you're looking to do EXACTLY what TourGuide does, give the user a route. I still say you just need a tiny chunk of code to send waypoints to TomTom or Carto, that's all.

[OrionShock]

Hell make it simpler, make a predefined setup in routes and then make it exportable / importable.

wonder if Xin would be interested in adding that "feature" to Routes properly so that it dosn't have to be hacked togeather.

[Graveeater]

Actually, I'm not sure if either TourGuide or Routes do something I'm Interested in.
Routes (which I use) solves the TSP, which is fine if you want to farm, but has absolutely nothing to do with solving the shortest path problem (which I'am interested in): Usually the shortest path does not contain all nodes.

I'm not sure what TourGuide actually does, but I suppose I could use it. However, I am pretty sure that this would not be the intended use.

Having to hard depend on an addon which actually has a different purpose does not feel right...

[Adirelle]

TourGuide provides smart questing paths (e.g. in which order to do quest to minimize travelling time). Actually it does not display anything on the map unless you have TomTom or Cartographer installed. In other words, TourGuide just provides map points, and TomTom or Cartographer are used as renderers.

[Graveeater]

Yes, I figured that out. I can't use TourGuide for solving the SPP. Ofc, I could create a Tour with the calculated route, and hand it to TourGuide which displays it using Cartographer/TomTom... Well... no.

On the other hand, I could use (assuming Tekkub's permission ofc) TourGuide's code for that. Still not convinced.

However, thanks for all your input, I think I will need to experiment a bit with the stuff.

[Adirelle]

IIRC, TourGuide does not have any algorithm on its own. The guide database is "hand-optimized".

In short, you should concentrate on making your path and them provides them to TomTom and/or Cartographer. As this is exactly what TourGuide does, you could look at the piece of code doing it.

[Xinhuan]

Originally Posted by Graveeater

Actually, I'm not sure if either TourGuide or Routes do something I'm Interested in.
Routes (which I use) solves the TSP, which is fine if you want to farm, but has absolutely nothing to do with solving the shortest path problem (which I'am interested in): Usually the shortest path does not contain all nodes.

I'm not sure what TourGuide actually does, but I suppose I could use it. However, I am pretty sure that this would not be the intended use.

Having to hard depend on an addon which actually has a different purpose does not feel right...

I'm not sure what you actually want.

You say you want something to calculate the "shortest possible path". What exactly do you mean by that?

A) Shortest possible path from point A to point B, passing through other points (given as a graph)? Dij's algorithm solves this easily.

B) Shortest possible path from point A to point B along with visiting every other given point in a graph? A slight modification of the Ant-Colony-Optimization algorithm in Routes solves this easily by making the ant travel to point B at the last step instead of returning to the starting point A, and by making the ant start at point A instead of a random point, and by making the ants not consider point B in any part of the route until the last step.

You'll notice that (B) is almost TSP, except you don't have to return to your starting point.

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Anyway, the algorithm to find the shortest path isn't exactly the topic of this thread, it seems to be that you want to design an interface that all map data addons should subscribe to to provide data, and all map display addons should subscribe to to display said data.

Almost LDB, but only specific to map-data. So an addon like Routes would be able to subscribe to it and make routes from such data for display (since it is a display addon). Right now, Routes does hardcode support for each map data source (in the Plugins folder), something you said you want to avoid.

I could possibly give you permission to add to Routes addon directly depending on what you are doing and where this thread is headed.

[Xinhuan]

Originally Posted by OrionShock

Hell make it simpler, make a predefined setup in routes and then make it exportable / importable.

wonder if Xin would be interested in adding that "feature" to Routes properly so that it dosn't have to be hacked togeather.

Possibly. But I'm interested in hearing what Graveeater is trying to do first (as the post above).

I've also noticed you're almost overtaking me in post-count. :P

[Tekkub]

Originally Posted by Xinhuan

I'm not sure what you actually want.

You say you want something to calculate the "shortest possible path". What exactly do you mean by that?

My guess, using 3.3's quest mapping data and making the whole "shortest route" crap QuestHelper tries to do.