Talk:Map

What are the islands what float in sky called and would it be reasonable to add info about them here? --Nunuru 14:08, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

They are called "Floating islands" =| --Demki 14:10, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Ok, great. I could actually find one and put up some info and a picture. --Nunuru 14:45, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

[edit] XYZ co-ordinates

Noting from my favorite server map:

• North = -X axis, South = +X axis
• East = -Z axis, West = +Z axis
• Up = +Y axis, Y=0 at bedrock

Is this true for Minecraft in general? If anyone has a good 3-axis graphic it could illustrate this. Incidentally, is there any reason we say the rising sun is to the East in Minecraft, other than by convention/analogue with Earth? --JellyfishGreen 15:27, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Isn't East/West/North/South subjective? For example, if you were on a planet that wasn't Earth, you could say the sun rises in the North, or even "Ragthirtiki" Therefore, I feel it is best we say the sun rises in the East. IKaleb 03:21, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

I can confirm on at least 2 of my maps that Jellyfish's information about the various directional axes apply. As for what IKaleb says about which way is east, I agree totally that those directions are subjective.

I suppose north for a planetary body--from the convention of our solar system at least--is the pole of the planet's axis of rotation that, when viewed with your line of sight parallel to the axis of rotation, causes the planet to appear to rotate counter-clockwise. :P Which is why I've heard it said that for planets with a retrograde rotation, the north pole can be considered to be "upside down" relative to other planets.

In the end, unless you are an astronomer or somesuch, it doesn't really matter. One could generally just say that the sun rises in the east and be done with it. :)

That said, it does appear that traveling East causes your Z-axis coordinate to move toward the negative, etc. This is probably worth mentioning in the article, with East defined as the direction the sun rises from.--Isfppoet 21:16, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

According to Notch, that is North. He said on twitter that the sun rises in the North. --Chezzik 16:30, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Also--I am terrible at editing Wikis (although I have a mild amount of experience contributing to existing Wikipedia articles and more at mainly patrolling for vandals), but I am considering adding a bit about the cardinal directions and coordinates. If I do this, or if someone else would like to, should this go in a new subsection of the Map Features section, or in another section (which would put it sort of "by itself")?

Any thoughts on this? If I get ambitious I may play around with going ahead and adding the information, but wiki-tyrants may consider it "original-research". ^_^;--Isfppoet 21:23, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Latest update on this: I went ahead and took the liberty of adding a section about coordinates and their relations to north, south, east, and west. The table needs work and probably a shorter title, and I'm not known for brevity or succinctness, so of course you may feel free to edit/reposition anything I said. That said, if you remove any of this information, I'd at least appreciate an explanation so that it can be modified if necessary to make its presentation acceptable, as I believe this information is relevant and helpful. I'm not quite certain spatial coordinates in Minecraft deserve their own article, but I've searched the wiki for that very subject and turned up empty in the past. I think it might deserve its own article, to be honest, but this will suffice for now. :D Your thoughts and input are appreciated.--Isfppoet 22:34, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Also for the benefit of those who might beat me with the pro-wiki-editor stick and undo everything I just did, I also added a link from the article Debug_screen to the new section I created. ^_^ --Isfppoet 22:44, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm working on making an image representing the relationship between the XYZ axes and the cardinal directions...not gonna be super fancy I suspect, but it'll be better than that awful table I made.--Isfppoet 02:34, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Looks lovely now. --JellyfishGreen 11:51, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

The wiki really needs an entire page showing the different possible reference systems. As far as I know, there at least 2 popular ways to define the cardinal directions:

• The Sun Rises in the East (this seems to be the most popular)
• The Sun Rises in the North (Notch has confirmed via Twitter this was his intention)

The pages that mention cardinal directions should all define which convention they use. I'm really curious which of the popular mapping programs follow one convention versus the other. --Chezzik 16:30, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

[edit] INVgrid

What evidence is there to suggest INVgrid changing the map generating algorithm. IKaleb 03:25, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

[edit] Edge of world

That just looks like a chunk error to me... --The Ginger Ninja 07:34, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Ditto...or else it was rendered with some tool I'm unaware of (which wouldn't be surprising since I use very few addons/tools with Minecraft). The presentation appeared at first to be the "edge" of the world as seen from hovering above the world, and then viewed "from the side" pasted behind as a background or somesuch, i.e., what we're seeing is 2 combined views of the same thing. But on closer examination it appears a cloud is partially clipping into the weird-looking cliff with all the holes in it. So I suppose this is actually how this world looked.

In previous versions of Minecraft (pre-Beta, but that's as specific as I can get), I recall getting unusual edges generated in areas that were previously the far edges of the map until I abruptly went exploring (especially if I used a Nether portal on an old map). Like cliffs where mountains appeared to have been "cut off" in very rectangular, chunk-sized dimensions.

What I'm getting at is, I don't think this is the norm for current versions of Minecraft, and possibly not the norm anyway. The "edge" of the map is not normally viewable in the game because as you approach it, the edge gets pushed back. However, mapping tools allow you to see the existing edges of course.

At any rate, this image is interesting but doesn't necessarily accurately represent the edges of a Minecraft map.

That said, I could care less. *shrug* Looks cool, lol. I don't know if it contributes to the article or not, but it's interesting.--Isfppoet 02:32, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Tacked in the reference to the Far Lands page, to fix an orphaned page situation. However, where does the name actually come from? The playerbase? One person? Notch? Anyone have any factual info on this? -Wulfenbach (not on fire for once) 08:44, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Notch has called it far lands on his blog. –ultradude25 ^(T|C) at 09:20, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Fascinating...seriously. That is pretty cool. ^_^ Never knew about this; I figured it was just a more pronounced effect of the funky chunk edges I used to get, hehe. --Isfppoet 13:50, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

[edit] South-West?

Is it coincidence that your coordinates increase as you go South-West-Up, and the South-West rule? Up is affected by gravity, but I think the South-West rule may origin here...–The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jippiedoe ^{(Talk|Contribs)} . Please sign your posts with ~~~~!

Please sign your comments! ^_^ And I noticed that too, about the South-West rule, but lacking any knowledge of the inner workings of Minecraft's code, I neglected to comment in the article. I suspect the reason the South-West rule applies to a lot of things is because objects prefer going from negative to positive coordinates or somesuch. Not that that necessarily makes any sense logically, but if there has to be a default behavior, arbitrary or not, you may as well assign it to tend toward the positive, right? Think positive!

But yes, I believe there is definitely a connection there. ^_^--Isfppoet 13:35, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

I briefly mentioned this fact(?) in the article, since at least 2 people appear to have noticed and the information may be of interest. :) I suppose speculation may not belong in the article, but I did carefully say "may" and refrained from extensive speculation beyond simply mentioning it. ^_^ --Isfppoet 14:01, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

[edit] Wrong pic

Looks like somebody changed the top pic to the screenshot of the new maps notch is adding. the discription dosn't match the picture. should we put the old pic up or change the discription to the new maps?

I think that if someone can get the old picture back that it should be replaced as the current image is for Map (Item). Ordona 23:15, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

[edit] The Map is Not the Territory

This is a famous quote relating to the human tendency to confuse things with their abstractions, but it seems appropriate here.

Now that there are actual maps in this game, it seems very very silly to use this word to describe the actual Minecraft world. Maybe we should stop doing so and refer to it as "the world" or "the territory" or "the terrain" or some such. And then rename this page so that the page about the item which is more appropriately be named simply "map". --Ericjs 05:34, 30 May 2011 (UTC) I agree. Terrain would be a good name. Most people searching for map are searching for the item, and it should be changed that map directs to the item. I might as well as do that... --TheKax 14:47, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Ok, so do you approve that we rename this to Terrain or Map (Terrain) and make map point to map (item)? Opinions? --TheKax 14:51, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

[edit] Overworld Merge

The Overworld and Map are about the same thing. It has been suggested that Map needs an overhaul, and The Overworld is severely lacking in content. I suggest we merge Map into Overworld (so that the overworld page remain and this one redirects to the item). I am working on a draft for the proposed page in my userspace. Qcdynamics 19:50, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

I suggest this page will contain info about the map for both the overworld and the nether and link to here in the overworld page.

I have an alternate suggestion - let "Map" redirect to this disambiguation page, and let the people searching for the term choose the item page or the link to this retitled page (I like the idea of a merge with The Overworld). Miner Key 05:23, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

I also like to know what exactly does a "map" page should contain.--Yurisho 19:52, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Personally I think Map is confusing to begin with. I would imagine many people confuse it with Map (Item) (which is more likely what they are searching for if they type "Map"). --Warlock 19:53, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Absolutely. My main issue is that the term 'Overworld' isn't universally accepted and may add to the confusion for when the player is actually looking for Map rather than Map (Item). I understand the idea of sending the reader to a disambiguation page, but I'm not fond of it. I think searching 'Map' should lead to the officially named in-game item rather than the unofficially named concept. Has Notch or any of the team ever referred to it as overworld, or any other term? landscape, terrain etc? Yurisho, could you please rephrase that? Qcdynamics 16:20, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

Overworld is a wildly used word in the video game industry meant to describe the part of the world that isn't any thing else, and thus is better then "map". my earlier sentence , thanks for asking, was a question of what exactly does a generic name like "map" says about the page, if a page is too generic it has no right to exist.--Yurisho 06:35, 28 June 2011 (UTC)