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<item id="1">
<question>Why isn't area X marked in the maps?</question>
<answer>
There are basically three reasons why some location might not be included in
the PupuMaps data.

<ul>
 <li><b>We don't know about the area.</b><br /> This is probably the most
common reason. There's no conspiracy, all locations will be added eventually
when we find out about them. If something is missing, then nobody
involved in the mapping project has found it yet and nobody has bothered to
report it yet.
 </li>

 <li><b>The area is new and has no location marker (aka it is "hidden").</b><br />
  For new "hidden" locations, we have a grace period of varying length.
  This is because such area is probably intended to be hard to find. These
  will be added after the location has become "generally known" - whatever
  that means in practice. <b>:)</b>
 </li>

 <li><b>The coder of the area has requested the location not to be shown</b><br />
 If an archwizard or a wizard responsible for the area requests that his/her
 area not to be marked in the mapdata, PupuMaps project will respect this wish.
 However, as of March 2010, no such requests have been received and all "known"
 locations are included in the maps.
 </li>
</ul>

<b>NOTICE!</b> Under no circumstances locations will be left out due to
intimidation, threats or blackmail from players wishing to hide knowledge
of some area. <i>If any such notes or threats are received, they may be posted
publicly on this website.</i>
</answer>
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<item id="2">
<question>Who are behind the "PupuMaps" project?</question>
<answer>
The PupuMaps BatMUD mapping and data maintenance project
is mainly headed by <b>Ggr</b>, who developed the Pupunen "maputils"
software package for this purpose. The second in command is
<b>Jeskko</b>. However, during the history of the project, there
have been numerous contributors donating their time and knowledge ...

<ul>
 <li><b>Ooga</b> - Did the original mapping of new continents, providing raw
 mapdata and some locations. His work was invaluable in the early days of
 the project. He still maintains <a href="http://www.zerobelow.net/maps/">his own popular mapsite</a>, which is nowadays
 based on PupuMaps location data, however.
 </li>
 <li><b>Jeskko</b> - Did his own <a href="http://jeskko.pupunen.net/">Google Maps-style
 implementation</a>, which has become rather popular. Worked with BatMUD staff
 to assist development of Batclient's map feature (which was based on his
 map style). Has also helped with Laenor and Lucentium re-mapping, general project
 assistance, various locations, and provides pupunen.net hosting.
 </li>
 <li><b>Malacoda</b> - Loaned her ship for re-mapping of Lucentium and Laenor.</li>
 <li><b>Moonlord</b>'s website - Lots of area coder information.</li>
 <li><b>Nuane</b> - More area coder information.</li>
 <li>The wizard plaque - Bits and piece of information about coders current and past.</li>
 <li><b>Dryad</b>'s archived <a
 href="http://www.maroon.com/bat/logs/1996_conversion.asp">1996 BatMUD conversion notes</a> - Coder and addition date information.</li>
 <li>BatMUD newsposts were also searched through for area addition dates and coder info.</li>
 <li><b>Durand</b> made the HCBat raw mapdata available and has helped on
 other occasions.</li>
 <li><b>Osku</b> assisted with HCBat location data updates.</li>
 <li>And numerous other contributors have reported locations or knowledge about them, etc.</li>
</ul>

Please also see the next FAQ item concerning the history of the project.
</answer>
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<item id="3">
<question>What is the relationship between Ggr's, Jeskko's, Batclient's maps?</question>
<answer>
Currently, both two major mapsites (this and Jeskko's) and Batclient map are based on more or
less the same location data, centrally managed and known as the "PupuMaps"
data. The main differences come from representation and update frequency -
this site being the "authorative" source with the most up to date data,
Jeskko's and BatClient map are synchronized less frequently.
</answer>
</item>

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<item id="4">
<question>What's the history of this project?</question>
<answer>
A simplified timeline of PupuMaps project and various more or less related events:

<ul>
 <li><b> 2001 - 2006</b> - Tumi/Twomi maintains a popular site with an
colourized HTML map of BatMUD world and other BatMUD related tools.
 </li>

 <li><b>Early 2006</b> - Ggr starts developing first piece of maputils, to
 make an improved version of the BatCity map. mkbcmap is born and maputils
 code is imported into Subversion repository in April 27th. The map is
 eventually featured on bat.org website and Durand awards Ggr two
 taskpoints for it.
 </li>

 <li><b>09 May 2006</b> - <a
 href="http://www.bat.org/news/view_post?postid=32659&amp;page=4&amp;group_name=inform">B.A.T. ry announces plans</a> to produce a
 BatMUD specific game client, in co-operation with Mythicscape,
 later to be called simply "Batclient".
 </li>
 
 
 <li><b>Nov 2006</b> - Twomi does the "WELL FOLKS" routine and retires with
 some noise, taking his map and other projects, like the reinc-simulator,
 offline. Much whining and gnawing of teeth ensues.
 </li>
 
 <li><b>Nov 2006</b> - Almost immediately, several replacement maps are
 created, including one by Jeskko. Some people resort to using archived
 copies of Twomi's old map, from Google cache etc.
 </li>
 
 <li><b>7 Dec 2006</b> - Old BatWorld sinks and <a
 href="http://www.bat.org/news/view_post?postid=36006&amp;page=4&amp;group_name=inform">Age of Exiles
 starts</a>, players find themselves on shores of
 continent of Laenor. During the other whining and gnashing of teeth,
 archwizards inform that their immediate plans do not include making
 continent mapdata public, thus creating the need for player-led mapping.
 </li>
 
 <li><b>8 Dec 2006</b> - Ggr creates first version of  mkmap utility to stitch
 together map pieces from logfiles mapped via walking around. Ggr and Jeskko
 start mapping Laenor. Ooga starts his own mapping effort, which ultimately
 progresses much faster.
 </li>

 <li><b>9 Dec 2006</b> - Ooga publishes the first map of Laenor.</li>

 <li><b>12 Dec 2006</b> - Ooga finishes mapping Rothikgen and Lucentium, though
 the Lucentium map has some bugs and misses a smallish part of the map
 (this remains to be the case for a rather long time). Several utilities are developed by Ggr,
 the first results of Pupunen mapping project are published.
 Lots of locations are added during the next two weeks (to the maps and few in the game itself, as not
 all areas were immediately added back in game.)
 </li>

 <li><b>15 Dec 2006</b> - Ooga finishes mapping Desolathya and
 Furnachia.
 </li>

 <li><b>15-16 Dec 2006</b> - Jeskko publishes first version of his <a
 href="http://jeskko.pupunen.net/map/">Google Maps</a>-style
 continent map, based on PupuMaps data.
 </li>

 <li><b>17 Dec 2006</b> - Ggr adds PNG image versions of maps to his site.
 </li>

 <li><b>28 Dec 2006</b> - Batclient v1.00 is <a
 href="http://www.bat.org/news/view_post?postid=36550&amp;page=3&amp;group_name=inform">released</a>.
 </li>

 <li><b>22 May 2007</b> - Ggr and Jeskko re-map Lucentium, the
 artifacts and bugs left from Ooga's original mapping are fixed.
 Additionally they do a quick re-mapping of Laenor, which gets finished on 25th of May.
 </li>


 <li><b>18 Jun 2007</b> - PupuMaps metadata format <a
 href="http://www.bat.org/news/view_post?postid=39132&amp;page=26&amp;group_name=bs">is
 extended</a> to support coder, SS and freeform information. Jeskko's
 map implementation supports it one day later.
 </li>

 <li><b>01 Jul 2007</b> - Batclient v1.40 <a
 href="http://www.bat.org/news/view_post?postid=39269&amp;page=2&amp;group_name=inform">released</a>, with the new
 realm map functionality, based on PupuMaps location data. Development
 of the feature occured partially in collaboration with Jeskko.
 </li>

 <li><b>13 Jul 2007</b> - Metadata gets extended again,
<a href="http://www.bat.org/news/view_post?postid=39392&amp;page=9&amp;group_name=general">adding support</a>
for location timestamps, enabling the creation of <a
href="http://tnsp.org/maps/latest.php">latest locations</a> list feature.
 </li>

 <li><b>21-22 Dec 2007</b> - The official raw ASCII mapdata for Age of Exiles
 continents gets published officially at last.<br />
 <small>
 Gore tells Jeskko, Ooga and you 'unless I get some heavy objections tomorrow, I will arrange to make the
 rawdata available to ease up map updates.' (Fri Dec 21 01:04:11 2007)<br />
 Ooga tells Gore, Jeskko and you 'excellent'<br />
 Jeskko tells Gore, Ooga and you 'cool. Amarth might have some already
 working scripts for generating the raw files if you ask him nicely. :)'<br />
 Gore tells Ooga, Jeskko and you 'I doubt it, the batclient mapdata seems to
 be last updated October 14th :)'<br />
 </small>
 </li>

 <li><b>23 Feb 2008</b> - Nosunrise <a
 href="http://www.bat.org/news/view_post?postid=42168&amp;page=3&amp;group_name=general">announces</a>
 the first early beta of his "<a
 href="http://batshoppe.servegame.org/">ReincSim 2</a>", replacement for
 Twomi's famous (and by then long absent) reincarnation simulator.
 </li>

 <li><b>4 May 2008</b> - Twomi finally <a
 href="http://tuminoid.blogspot.com/2008/05/batmud-tools-by-tumi-sources-released.html">releases</a>
the <a href="http://code.google.com/p/batmudtoolsbytumi/">sources and data</a> for his tools
(now somewhat obsolete, though.) [<a href="http://www.bat.org/news/view_post?postid=42961&amp;page=1&amp;group_name=general">BatMUD news post announcement</a>]
 </li>

 <li><b>20 Jun 2008</b> - <a
 href="http://tnsp.org/maps/quests.php">Quest information</a> page is added
 and <a
 href="http://www.bat.org/news/view_post?postid=43414&amp;page=1&amp;group_name=general">announced</a>,
 generated from the recently added LQ/AQ information in location database.
 </li>

 <li><b>13 Mar 2009</b> - A more up-to-date HCBat map is introduced, thanks
 to Durand for making the raw mapdata available.</li>
 
 <li><b>06 Apr 2009</b> - OpenSearch support is added and
 <a href="http://www.bat.org/news/view_post?postid=46401&amp;page=1&amp;group_name=general">announced</a>,
 along with improved map of Arelium (other citymaps got certain
 improvements for the same price, too.)
 </li>

 <li><b>14 Sep 2009</b> - <a
 href="http://www.bat.org/community/player_atlas">Player Atlas</a> bat.org
 website feature <a href="http://www.bat.org/news/view_post?postid=47382&amp;page=1&amp;group_name=inform">is announced</a>. Originally a "quick concept hack" by Ggr a
 week earlier, wizards (Amarth, Dralith, Durand) become interested and
 official version is quickly refined, with automatic integration of the
 'atlas' database.
 </li>

 <li><b>19 Sep 2009</b> - After a lengthy testing period on a separate test game server, <a
 href="http://www.bat.org/news/view_post?postid=47332&amp;page=1&amp;group_name=inform">BatMUD
 moves to use 64-bit version of the MUD driver</a>. Few next weeks are plaqued by semi-frequent
 crashes due to some remaining <a
 href="http://www.bat.org/news/view_post?postid=47480&amp;page=1&amp;group_name=inform">driver</a>
 <a href="http://www.bat.org/news/view_post?postid=47526&amp;page=1&amp;group_name=inform">bugs</a>,
 but they are promptly <a
 href="http://www.bat.org/news/view_post?postid=47573&amp;page=1&amp;group_name=inform">addressed</a>
 by Favorit along with other wizards.
 </li>

 <li><b>14 Apr 2010</b> - BatMUD 20 years anniversary.
 </li>

 <li><b>17 Apr 2010</b> - <a
 href="http://www.bat.org/node/104">BatMUD 20yr Anniversary Gala</a>
 at Kaivohuone, Helsinki. BatMudders from all around the world gather
 for drunken fun etc. The amount of attendees is diminished by unexpected
 volcano eruption of Eyjafjallakokull in Iceland, that causes disruption and
 closing of almost whole north-European airspace.
 </li>

 <li><b>08 Jul 2011</b> - PupuMaps site finally gets a new layout and various
 smaller improvements.
 </li>

 <li><b>31 Jan 2012</b> - Ggr immorts, but continues the map data
 maintenance as before for the foreseeable future,
 despite ascending to higher realms.
 </li>

 <li><b>09 Sep 2012</b> - Jeskko ascends to immortality as well.
 </li>

 <li><b>?? Mar 2014</b> - <a href="http://pupunen.net/hg/gmap2/">GMapsNG project</a> is finally finished by Ggr
 (or at least brought to state that it is usable and mostly on feature
 parity with the old version), and replaces the old BatMUD GMaps hack.
 </li>

 <li><b>03 Mar 2015</b> - Various minor updates made to the PupuMaps
 pages, and maputils tools revamped. HTML maps switched to HTML5 and
 given some JavaScript-based multimedia goodness.
 </li>


 <li><b>14 Apr 2015</b> - BatMUD 25 years anniversary.
 </li>

 <li><b>27 Apr 2016</b> - The Pupunen BatMUD Maps Project reaches
 the mature age of <b>10 years</b>! Hooray!
 </li>

 <li><b>19 Oct 2017</b> - HC-Bat map gets updated, after a 5+ year gap
 in updates. Additionally few other improvements to the map site and maps
 themselves were made.
 </li>
</ul>

More to come...
</answer>
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<item id="5">
<question>Is the location / map data available?</question>
<answer>
<b>Yes. PupuMaps location data is freely available to anyone who wishes to use
it</b>. Naturally some kind of acknowledgement would be preferred, if you use it in your
own projects.

<p>
Currently this data is available through the Mercurial repository of
<a href="http://pupunen.net/hg/maputils/file/tip/world">Ggr's MapUtils</a>.
You may also be interested in the utilities themselves
<a href="http://pupunen.net/hg/maputils/">http://pupunen.net/hg/maputils/</a>
and especially the file "README.loc", which contains some documentation
on the format of *.loc-files.
</p>

<p>
Bat Ry provides the raw ASCII map data for the BatMUD continents, which
is updated at every game reboot:
<ul>
 <li><a href="http://www.bat.org/maps/raw/laenor.txt">Laenor</a></li>
 <li><a href="http://www.bat.org/maps/raw/rothikgen.txt">Rothikgen</a></li>
 <li><a href="http://www.bat.org/maps/raw/furnachia.txt">Furnachia</a></li>
 <li><a href="http://www.bat.org/maps/raw/lucentium.txt">Lucentium</a></li>
 <li><a href="http://www.bat.org/maps/raw/desolathya.txt">Desolathya</a></li>
 <li><a href="http://www.bat.org/maps/raw/renardy.txt">Renardy</a></li>
</ul>
</p>
</answer>
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