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The server spawn point from a new perspective...

A Whole New World Through Dynmap

When I first saw our Minecraft world through Dynmap, a plugin that's like Google Maps for your server, it looked like a whole new world through my eyes. In a new way I saw the hustle and bustle around spawn, thanks to the efforts of BraveSirRobin and others. I saw trader's area, impressive enough in-game, but now looking like something that would be in a RPG. I saw my own more humble contributions, Skyhold Castle, Peacefield, and my still unfinished vacation home. I followed the networks of roads that people have built, some I never even knew existed, and I marveled how we've extensively explored in some directions over the years, yet hardly at all in others.

Seeing our world as a map makes me want to keep making my own mark on it, and instills an even greater commitment to keep this world as we upgrade the server in the future.

And you can see it too.

Even better, you can add markers to the world to note the things you want people to notice. You can see I've already placed a few myself. There are two ways you can add markers to the map:

Method One: Signs
When creating a marker by sign, the first line should be [dynmap], with your text on the remaining lines. If you want an icon that's different from the default (a house), on one line you would put icon:iconname (the list of icons and icon names is below). Once you place the sign, the [dynmap] and icon data, if added, will disappear, just leaving your text in the game world, but you will also see your marker on the map. If you destroy the sign, the marker will also disappear.

Example Sign - (Lines in italics do not show on the sign once placed)
[dynmap]
Skyreach Castle
Owner: Wintermoot
icon: tower

Method Two: Commands
As a player, you have access to several commands to add, update, and remove markers without using a sign. If you add a marker using a command, it will be placed at your character's location:

/dmarker add text
Adds a marker with this text (you can also specify an icon by adding icon:iconname after the text)

/dmarker delete text
Deletes a marker with this text

/dmarker update text icon:newiconname newlabel:newtext
Replaces the marker with this text with the text specified after newlabel. The icon portion is optional for if you want to change the icon as well.

Dynmap Icons and names

I hope that our new world map has been as inspirational to you as it has been to me.

The size of these Minecraft world's never cease to amaze me.

This is great! I already had my own map but it's great seeing the places I've never been to before.

But, the map seems incomplete? There are absolutely bits of the map that I've visited (including the tower where I'm located right now) yet they appear black/unexplored on Dynmap.

@taulover: I'm not sure why that happened, perhaps the world didn't fully render initially? I'm rendering it again from the tower location and it appears to be filling in.

Edit: After doing some more poking around, I discovered that by default Dynmap only reads chunks last loaded after upgrading at or past 1.13.1 (when MC change the map format), or roughly within the last year for us. I've enabled an experimental option for Dynmap to convert chunks in the older format to the modern format, and we'll see how that goes.

@taulover: I'm not sure why that happened, perhaps the world didn't fully render initially? I'm rendering it again from the tower location and it appears to be filling in.

Edit: After doing some more poking around, I discovered that by default Dynmap only reads chunks last loaded after upgrading at or past 1.13.1 (when MC change the map format), or roughly within the last year for us. I've enabled an experimental option for Dynmap to convert chunks in the older format to the modern format, and we'll see how that goes.

Well, it does display now. It still isn't displaying some bits connecting my base to that tower, which I've definitely traversed in the past, though, so I think it's just you loading it.

Also, do you know why it only loaded after you visited the tower location? That seems strange considering that I was there in 1.13.2 both before and after you added Dynmap.

Hmm, not sure how to feel about the option to reveal caves and tunnels. That one definitely would show things that are meant to be hidden...

Hahaha yeah if we reveal caves and tunnels that'd definitely remove the one last way to keep things a secret lol.  Also the footprint of my random stuff is pretty hilarious xD

But luckily there does seem to be lots which I've done in places that haven't been revealed... its just that I can't visit them again without revealing them 

Well, it does display now. It still isn't displaying some bits connecting my base to that tower, which I've definitely traversed in the past, though, so I think it's just you loading it.

Also, do you know why it only loaded after you visited the tower location? That seems strange considering that I was there in 1.13.2 both before and after you added Dynmap.

At the time you posted that it was still rendering. In fact, it may still be rendering, given the that map still seems to be growing. The additional code to convert pre-1.13.1 chunks makes it run even slower, but thankfully it only needs to be ran once under that option.

If we don't want the underground view on there, I'm pretty sure there's an option to remove it. I'll look into it once I'm sure that the server has finished rendering.

Well, it does display now. It still isn't displaying some bits connecting my base to that tower, which I've definitely traversed in the past, though, so I think it's just you loading it.

Also, do you know why it only loaded after you visited the tower location? That seems strange considering that I was there in 1.13.2 both before and after you added Dynmap.

At the time you posted that it was still rendering. In fact, it may still be rendering, given the that map still seems to be growing. The additional code to convert pre-1.13.1 chunks makes it run even slower, but thankfully it only needs to be ran once under that option.

It looks much better now for my home area. Thanks!

If we don't want the underground view on there, I'm pretty sure there's an option to remove it. I'll look into it once I'm sure that the server has finished rendering.

But yeah, I definitely think we should remove cave function. It's basically X-ray, with all the implications it has for both exploring naturally-generated terrain and revealing people's private things.

A quick Google search suggests that you can definitely disable the cave overlay; found some discussion on it here.

Full render of map 'flat' in progress - 297300 tiles rendered (369.81 msec/tile, 174.80 msec per render)

Full render of map 'surface' in progress - 1138000 tiles rendered (152.47 msec/tile, 111.39 msec per render)

Can players use the sign method? It doesn't seem to be working for me...

They should be. Katie and Ender have placed markers on the map.

To be fair I used the command method, not the sign method