Indie-Resource.com

Hey guys, I have been trolling these forums for a while now. I have found a lot of useful tips etc and have decided to make a game.(I decided this before coming to these forums and googled game making and this forum was near the top).
I am currently trying to develop a world map as per my topic subject and am needing help to even get it started. Everyone of course knows about google maps. I would not like to use googles software at all but would like to develop a map similar to that.
*Where you can scroll in by moving the mouse wheel or pressing some sort of plus sign on the side.
*Where you can scroll left and right by left clicking and dragging your mouse in the direction you want.
*Where it only loads the tiles you wish to look at and then caching them for later use.
*Then ultimately making it phone/tablet friendly by making it so that instead of using the mouse wheel to zoom in and out they do it by touch screen movements(pushing two fingers out to zoom in and pushing two fingers in to zoom out). and using one finger to scroll left and right by sliding the map over.
*Then I need to be able to add data to this map such as players cities, as people join the game etc...

I sort of know what to do but will need help along the way and would like to be corrected if my ideas are bad.
*Step one: I have drawn a picture that somewhat resembles Australia(Lol, I'll eventually do the world but for now I have just stopped at one country).

*Step two: Obviously I have to break this picture up into pieces so that it has tiles etc... Therefore I have to decide on the different size tiles.
-For example the whole world will be one tile.
-Then if you zoom in on a certain area (Let's say the lower western region, it will zoom into that and once again that will be broken up into smaller tiles yet again, it will only load those tiles though. Unless they scroll to the right, over to the lower eastern region, then it will load those tiles as well and cashe the other ones.
- Now if they scroll left back into the lower western region, and they zoom in again on a section of the lower western region, it will go to the next level of tile, which will be smaller yet again and only load the ones from the section they zoomed into, unless they scroll right to another section of the western region.
- I want to be able to zoom in 4 times.
Zoom 1 map.
Zoom 2 Different regions.
Zoom 3 Different sections of those regions.
Zoom 4 Different cities on those sections of those regions(Lol tongue tied much?).

*Step three: Coding the above step so that it works correctly and it stores info for every section of the map on a database.
---------------------End of steps for now, will continue once the above are done---------------------

I have not started anything beyond step one. But have I approached this the right way?
If so, can i please get some tutorials where not only can i position stuff correctly on the map using css/php/html.
But so that it loads different sections on demand and displays the info for those sections.

I have found a map making topic in these forums and will try to refer to that topic for some of my steps at the start.

Well, im not sure how can i help you, but i think you need to give "us" some more information.. what's the platform for the map? What language are you coding it in? PHP? C++ using a Graphics Lib?

What's the objective of the map, is it for a game? What kind of game?

yep need some more info. What platform/engine/language are you using?

Welcome to the indie-resource forum, Alph

Now, you said "I have found a lot of useful tips etc and have decided to make a game" and mentioned "css/php/html" there at the end of the post, so - I might be wrong on this, of course, but - it seems you're not having great many experience with coding? Keeping that guess in mind, I'd say forget about google earth types of maps and zooms and start with regular click-then-enlarge approach. Make a map with clickable regions, have them open smaller regions on click etc. Then, with your idea of click/drag, you can try the next step: to make each 'zoom level' actually dragable (initially maybe focused on the 'home' region of a player or something like that). In other words, if you're not too familiar with some language or engine, I'd suggest making something that works right away, then add new stuff as you go/learn.

Welcome!

I have to second Nihilant's advice. Even for an experienced developer I could not suggest trying to emulate Google Maps for your in-game map system. Google Maps is a sophisticated mapping system built by a large corporation. You could easily get caught up for months trying to make something similar, and really it basically boils down to eye-candy, so it would probably not be the best allocation of resources for an indie developer. Most games (even large commercial browser MMOs) typically go with single-page maps that you can click to zoom if needed (and most games don't need a zoom, but of course yours might depending on your design). Spend the time on gameplay rather than making a neat map would be my best advice

If you want to go with this you can look on net how to use Google map engine to scroll and zoom your static images. Also you can use all functionalities of Google maps, and i think that they cower most of things you mentioned in you post.
You need to be careful about license if you want to sell game, and usage of Google maps.
I think that ii seen some examples for this on net, use Google.

I actually toyed with google maps for a while. Was working on a Zombie run game but a company beat me to it. I think I also have a screen or project post on here about a project I was working on with Google maps. Very kewl API and easy to use .

What I can't figure out from their website is if you can use their engine for your own custom maps. All of their screen shots are of the real-world map. If you can use it, and alter it to fit the mechanics and motif needed for a game, that may be easy then. I was only speaking as to making it from scratch, which would be quite difficult as Google Maps is extremely sophisticated.

I think tat i have seen example using your own local pictures as maps. If i find links to the site i will post on forum. I found it over Google so it should not be a problem to locate by same way.

Found some links, maybe you can use something from here

http://www.maplib.net/map.php?id=4355#
http://www.maplib.net/
http://forevermore.net/articles/photo-zoom/