The Greatest Map

EARLY ALPHA / TEST BUILD. Version 0.1.x is being tested by its authors on their own server. Expect rough edges, missing polish and changes between versions. Back up your world before trying it, and please report anything odd. Do not install it on a server whose players are not in on the test.

One shared, living map for your server, without the cartography table mess.

Markers travel like exploration. What you record or place goes onto your own map, saved with your character. At a cartography table your map and the shared map merge both ways, and others pick it up at their next table visit. Two players standing together with their maps out compare and merge their maps directly, markers and explored areas alike, no table needed. An erasure is a dated tombstone that wins over older copies of the marker, so erased markers stay erased instead of coming back from someone else's map. Erasing is off unless the server allows it, and then goes through the marker's right-click menu or Shift + right-click. A server can switch "Sharing Mode" to Instant to have every change go out at once instead.
The cartography table only carries exploration. Stand at it and it syncs the fog of war by itself (or press the sync key), and it stays quiet unless something is actually exchanged. Player-placed markers are no longer written to or read from tables, and old ones imported from tables are swept away.
A map you carry in your pocket. No inventory slot. Press the map key and your character unfolds a map in the left hand and takes a pencil in the right. Recording happens only while it is out. Attacking, drawing a weapon, getting hit or swimming puts it away. Two server-synced settings control how strict the map is: "Require Map Out To Record" (on by default) and "Require Map Out To Edit" (off by default; when on, placing, erasing and crossing off markers on the map screen also need the map out).
Honest auto-recording. While the map is out, your character writes down the important things nearby that you actually found: berry bushes, mushrooms, herbs, ore, dungeon entrances, runestones, traders, camps, boss altars and portals. Something counts as found only if you looked straight at it, had it under your crosshair, or interacted with it. There is no radar and nothing is ever revealed for you.
Markers that look like the thing. A recorded marker uses the icon of the item it gives you: dandelion, thistle, raspberries, each mushroom, copper, tin, silver. Dungeons and camps use the trophy of what lives there, boss altars the boss trophy, traders coins. With icons this clear, plant and ore markers carry no text label by default, which is what keeps the map readable.

Install

Install on the server and every client (BepInEx). The server keeps the shared markers in BepInEx/config/TheGreatestMap/<world>_<seed>.pins.bin. In a non-dedicated game the hosting player is the server.

A player who does not have the mod can still join a server that has it; they simply see vanilla map behavior and no shared markers. A player whose version of the mod is older than the server's is refused at connect, so keep everyone on the same version.

Keys (configurable)

Key	Action
`Y`	Take the map out of your pocket / put it away
`U`	Read and write the nearest cartography table right now

Pick keys no other mod acts on. If another mod equips an item on the same key as the map, the map folds straight back up (equipping a hand item always puts it away).

Single player and hosted games: the game you host is the server, so the shared marker store lives on your machine and everything works without a dedicated server.

How recording works

Play normally. Things you look at, hover over or interact with are remembered as found. Looking counts only with clear line of sight and within a sighting distance that depends on the thing: plants 20 m, ore 40 m, buildings and dungeon entrances 80 m. Your character remembers a find for 30 minutes (seeing it again restarts the clock), and the memory is saved with the character.
Take the map out. After three seconds it writes down everything found recently, wherever you are now. Set "Record Range" if you'd rather only record what is near you.
Every plant gets its own icon (marker spacing 1 m for plants, 5 m for ore and portals, 20 m for locations), so a clump of four dandelions shows four dandelion icons. Only traders and portals get a text label by default; everything else relies on its icon. Each kind's label rule is configurable: never, always, or one label per so many meters. A short message tells you when something was skipped because a marker is already there; the find stays pending and is written if that marker goes away.
Erase a recorded marker and the map will not record that kind of thing there again. Admins can lift that with tgm_unsuppress.

Recorded markers are tinted pale gold on the map so you can tell them from placed ones.

Right-click a marker from this mod on the map screen for its menu: hide this one marker, hide every marker with that icon (say all dandelions), hide the whole kind (all herbs), cross it off or uncross it, erase it for everyone (only where the server allows erasing), and, once anything is hidden, show all hidden again. Hidden markers stay on your map and keep syncing; they are just not drawn. The icon and kind choices are the Display settings "Hidden Icons" and "Show <Kind>", so they can also be edited by hand, and tgm_show in the console brings everything back. Vanilla pins keep their vanilla right-click.

The marker button. Above vanilla's icon buttons on the right edge of the large map sits a map pin in the same pale gold as recorded markers. Right-click it to hide or show every marker from this mod at once, the pin turning gray while they are hidden. That is the same gesture vanilla uses on its own icon buttons, so right-click means the same thing everywhere in that column. Unlike the per-kind switches, it also covers markers that have no kind, such as ones you placed yourself. Left-click it for the list of kinds that have markers on your map, each with its icon. Click any of them to hide or show that kind without leaving the map, and the list stays open so you can change several. It also carries the hide-all row and a row that shows every kind again. Config "Marker Button On Map" turns the button off.

A marker you have just recorded is drawn on both maps for thirty seconds even when its kind or its icon is hidden, so writing something down always shows you what you wrote ("Reveal New Markers Seconds", 0 turns it off). It does not override the button's own hide-all or a marker you hid by hand, and it cannot reveal a kind whose icon vanilla's button has switched off.

Structures, portals, camps and boss altars are not in that list, because they draw on vanilla's own map icons (house, portal, campfire, boss). Vanilla's icon buttons on the right edge already hide and show them, and those buttons cover the pins you placed by hand with the same icon, which a switch of ours never could. The other kinds have icons of their own and are ours to control.

Things that run out get crossed off, not forgotten. Mining a deposit to nothing, or picking a plant that never grows back, crosses its marker off for everyone instead of erasing it, so you can see which ground has already been worked rather than walking back to an empty spot. "Show Cleared Deposits" hides them once cleared if you would rather have a clean map; the record is kept either way. Structures are separate, since their cross-off means you have searched them, not that they are gone.

Portals are kept current, not remembered. Everything else the mod records stays where you found it, so writing it down once is enough. A portal is built by players and gets renamed and torn down, so instead the server reads the game's own list of portals and the markers follow it: a renamed portal's marker is renamed, and a portal that is gone has its marker erased for everyone. "Map All Portals" (on by default) goes further and draws every portal that currently exists, not only the ones someone has seen, which suits a server where everyone is in the same group. Turn it off and portals are learned the way everything else is, by seeing one yourself or by someone sharing their map with you. The extra portals are drawn only, never saved and never shared.

Portals get their own color, since they are the points you travel between and are worth spotting at a glance. By default they fade slowly between pale gold and violet; set "Portal Marker Color" and "Portal Pulse Color" to any hex value or color name, clear the pulse color for a steady one, and use "Portal Pulse Seconds" for the speed.

Pause while the map is open ("Pause While Map Open" in the Display section, off by default): the game pauses while the large map screen is open, the way the ESC menu does. Solo or hosting alone it works by itself. On a dedicated server it takes the Pause My Server mod, which then pauses the world only while you are the only player online; with others online nothing pauses. Closing the map resumes.

Structures (abandoned houses, log cabins, stone tower ruins, swamp huts, stonehenges, dvergr towers and so on) are recorded too if you turn on "Record Structures", which is off by default. They use the vanilla house icon, without a text label. It is meant for people who like to track which ruins they have already searched: opening a chest inside one crosses its marker off for everyone (config "Cross Off Structures When Searched"), and you can always cross one off by hand with a click on the map. Common structures are matched by name prefix; any other outdoor location counts as well unless "Structures Include Unlisted" is off or its prefab name is in the exclusion list.

Console commands

Command	What it does
`tgm_status`	Counts of shared markers, erased spots and pending discoveries
`tgm_list [n]`	Nearest shared markers
`tgm_import`	Share your existing local markers (the five standard icons) with everyone
`tgm_clearlocal`	Delete your local, non-shared player markers, including stale ones imported from tables
`tgm_sync`	Sync the nearest cartography table now
`tgm_resync`	Re-download shared markers from the server
`tgm_forget`	Forget found-but-unrecorded things
`tgm_wipe [auto\|all]`	Admin: erase recorded markers (default) or every shared marker, for everyone
`tgm_unsuppress`	Admin: allow recording again where recorded markers were erased
`tgm_reicon`	Repair dungeon markers that took the swamp crypt key because their cave was not in the catalog
`tgm_show`	Show every hidden marker again (single markers, hidden icons and hidden kinds)

Configuration

BepInEx/config/DeathMonger.TheGreatestMap.cfg. The sharing rules (require the map to record, require the map to edit, share placed markers, whether the table carries player markers) are server-synced. Everything else is per player: keys, auto-sync radius and cooldown, record radius and dwell times, which kinds of things to record, marker and label spacing, marker size per kind (plants draw at 60% by default), whether each kind shows on the small minimap, the prefab lists behind each kind, the fallback icon for each kind, and the position, rotation and scale of the parchment and pencil in your hands.

Notes

Boss, Hildir and memorial pins still share through the cartography table exactly as in vanilla.
Server admins: some hosts' panel "stop" kills the server without a world save. On the server, a file named save-now in BepInEx/config/TheGreatestMap/ makes the game save the world and all player profiles at once (create it over the host's file API before stopping), and "Server Autosave Minutes" in the server's config adds an extra periodic save.
Pings work as always and never need the map out.
The parchment shows the real world map around you; its position in the hand may need a tweak in the Visuals section for your taste.
Version 0.1.0 is the first playable build. Expect rough edges, and please report them.

Source

https://github.com/gbahns/ValheimMods