Excuse me sir but who gave you idea? 
you!
In other news, it's been a while since I've added stuff to the stats website and it's other pages. So, I have developed a somewhat-live server map, powered with SanMap. SanMap allows for the ability to use gtasa's top-down map through Google Maps and it's family of APIs. Here is a region of the map, for example:
Hopefully you get the idea. If you don't want to read about each and every functionality, you can either access it through menu of the stats website (it's labelled as
'Server map'), or you can just
click here to go directly to it. Otherwise, feel free to read below for the low-down.
1. FunctionalitiesThe map itself has a few functionalities I want to point out. It's primary purpose is to outline information about both occupied and unoccupied houses, so users who wish to buy a house can locate one with a reasonable price. I also intended it to be used to locate the houses of registered users, as well as displaying gang turfs and gang base zones.
1.1 Mouse controlsYou can hover your mouse over any of the icons to check who owns the house (cf. Fig 1a. below). A red house icon signifies an occupied house, whereas a green house icon signifies an unoccupied house. You can also click on one of these house icons to see more info about the house (cf. Fig 1b below). This can be closed by pressing the 'x' icon in the top right of the panel. It also gives you a handy link so you can view the stats of the player who owns this house!
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| Fig 1a. | Fig 1b. |
You can also use the default Google Maps controls to pan and zoom throughout the map. To pan, click and drag the left mouse button. To zoom, you can either use the mouse wheel, or the zoom controls in the bottom right of the screen.
1.2 MenuThe menu is displayed at the top of the page. It features a button to the left which takes you back to the stats website, if you wish to exit. It also displays the percentage of occupied vs unoccupied households, for shits and giggles. The real powerful tool here is the search box, which allows you to search for the houses of players. You can locate this by looking for
"Search for player houses", along with the magnifying glass icon on the top-right of the screen (or see the images below).
To search for players, it's fairly simple. Just click on the search box and type in the name of the desired player. This will then pop-up with a few results, in which you can either click, or navigate through with the up/down arrow keys and enter. Once you click/press a player from the results box, you will be took to their house on the map, and information about it will be shown. This process can be seen below.
In the future, I will probably extend the functionality of this to encompass other stuff from the server. For example, it's fairly straightforward to plot existing race routes onto the map. It could also potentially be used to create race routes (with the addition of a heightmap). If you have any suggestions about what other things I could add, please feel free to post about it.
I would also appreciate it if you guys would give me feedback about this. Test it to your heart's content, and please point out any issues you have. I'd also like to thank
Reggie aka
Zanny whose persistent requests for this type of map has resulted in me developing this!
If you missed the link earlier, just click the button below to go to the site.
