Contributing - Gjum/CivMap GitHub Wiki
How to contribute VoxelMap data
Note that this will contain only the terrain data, and no waypoints.
If you just want to update a small part of the map, delete your map cache (see below) and then map it in one go, this makes it much easier for me to update the map with your data.
First of all, quit the server and wait a bit, so the map data files are written to your disk. Now open the map data cache directory:
- Windows: go to
%appdata%\.minecraft\mods\VoxelMods\voxelMap\cache - Mac: go to
~/Library/Application Support/minecraft/mods/VoxelMods/voxelMap/cache
Then create a .7z, .zip, or .rar archive containing the directory of the server (e.g. civclassic.com), and send it to /u/Gjum or Discord: @Gjum#5146.
If it's a lot of data, you might need to upload it to a file hosting service of your choice (for example PixelDrain or MediaFire).
Done! Thank you for contributing. You will always be remembered.
It's possible that some of your map data might be overridden by someone else's (older) data, because of the way VoxelMap stores the map data. To ensure that the latest mapping of your city is used, you can clear your VoxelMap data (after backing it up somewhere else) and map just your city(/nation/...) and send that in addition to any other exploration data you have.
The latest combined cache can be found on my MediaFire.
When you use someone else's cache, please make sure the modification times on the x,z.zip files are set correctly, or your next contribution will mess up the map (draw old terrain over new for example), and this can't be mitigated. If the times are all a bit in the past, and not all the same (especially not the time you unpacked them), you're good.
Why VoxelMap?
VoxelMap caches the visited, but not loaded parts of the worlds in a way that is very useful for drawing custom maps. VoxelMap stores per x/z coordinate up to four kinds of blocks, the height, and both light levels, and generates the map images on the fly, making it possible to change any settings after you visited a region.
Because VoxelMap stores the rendered blocks, and not just images, it is possible to combine multiple caches into one, even if there are conflicts between them. For example: a new contribution contains old data for a region, but the current main cache has more recent data, so we use the more recent data instead of overwriting it with the older data.
Why not JourneyMap?
JourneyMap only saves the generated PNGs, only for the preconfigured modes, and only with the currently selected resource pack. While it is possible to combine the rendered images of VoxelMap and JourneyMap, it often looks ugly with different resource packs, and it also makes it very difficult to update the map later with more recent data. However if you have a lot mapped in JourneyMap, it might still be worth sending it in.
Why not Xaero/Mapwriter?
Xaero and Mapwriter actually have an even better cache format than VoxelMap, and I'll gladly take that data. At the moment, I cannot make use of it for the web map though, because I simply haven't written the code to combine contributed caches, but I will probably do that some time, and could also use the data for other projects.
Why not ...?
If you have considerable amounts of new map data in any format, I'll gladly take a look at it and try including it. However, many formats are not documented anywhere and thus are more difficult to use properly if at all.