Frequently Asked Questions - F.A.Q. | BloodSucker Unofficial Eternal Lands Maps
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Frequently Asked Questions - F.A.Q.

Eternal Lands - what is this? - Eternal-Lands it's free, mmorpg game. If you're interested or never heard of it - visit official website at: www.eternal-lands.com

What about those maps? - First thing first: Eternal-Lands client uses bitmap files as maps for lands, caves and other places you can find in game. The original maps are simple, done well, but without any specific details. Also, the original EL Client contains only few maps, and most of them shows only the "outsides". There's - as far as I remember - only one map for a cave. If you enter any other cave it will be very hard for you to find exits, minerals other corridors or paths. All those things are clearly showed on unofficial maps.

Why should they be better than the original maps? - Read the answer above, or - in short - mappack contains maps that aren't included in the original client, and the original maps doesn't have such markings like minerals, exits, flowers etc. etc. They are also done in better quality (especially for high-resolution screens).

How should I use them? - First, download the mappack (or single map), then unpack (unzip) the bmp file(s) to you EL/maps directory. In example: C:/program files/Eternal Lands/maps or /home/elc/maps. Remember to overwrite the existing files when prompted.

This maps takes more disk space than whole EL client! - Sure they do, and there's nothing I can do about it at the moment. The BMP file is a specific format of an image, which doesn't use any kind of compression. The 1024x1024 pixel large image, saved in 256 colour palette must take 1MB. I could, of course, resize the image, to i.e. 512x512 pixels, then it would take 256KB - as the original maps, but the quality of such file would be much lower.

Is there a way to compress these maps? - No if you need them in game. There was an idea of using gzip compression for bmp maps, the EL developers worked on it, but it's not fully implemented yet. As soon as it will be -- I make a new mappack, with compressed maps.

I'm using a mappack but there's a new version, must I download whole mappack again? - No, you'll need only the update file. Each time new mappack occurs, there's another file released, file which contains only those maps who has changed.

What can I find on those maps?You can find:

  • Caves
  • Minerals
  • Flowers (only those nearest to storage)
  • Taverns
  • Storages
  • Map exits
  • Map names
  • Teleports
  • Ores
  • Ships
  • General stores
  • Magic Shops
  • Skill Schools
  • PK Arenas
  • Temples
  • Rivers, mountains, islands, towns, buildings etc. etc. names

I have the mappack installed, but I get the "There's no map of this place" message while trying to open a map. - Most propably: you failed! Check you EL/maps directory, open random bmp file and verify is this the original map or not. If it is - that means you didn't install the map(s) correctly.

My EL Client crashes on map opening! - Happens. The most common reason of that comes from the wrong map size - it should be a square map, with size calculated as 2^x, where x is an integer (i.e. 128, 256, 512, 1024). So, in example, it should be 1024px width, and 1024 height.

Can I make a map of my own? - Sure you can, but remember: it has to be 512 or 1024px large bmp file in 256 colour (8bit) palette!

Can you tell me how to make my own map? - I'm working on a step-by-step tutorial: how to make EL BMP maps. Just stay tuned.

ELM and BMP files - what's the difference? - Both are map files, but the ELM file contains informations about editable (under EL map editor) 2D and 3D objects. The BMP file is just an image contains informations about points (pixels) and they colour.

Can I be banned because of using unofficial maps? - No, if you're using just the BMP maps. If you've changed, and you're using modified ELM files - you can be banned!

  • By BloodSucker at 26.12.2008 - 21:40