Dungeon Helper 5 release notes

Mapster release notes

Mapster 3.0 is the Dungeon Helper 5 rebuild of Mapster 2.3. The map window does what it did before, and around it are four things Mapster 2 never had: community map data, recorded routes, party trails and trap outlines. This page lists what changed. The Mapster user guide explains how to use it.

New things drawn in the game world

Dungeon Helper 5 lets plugins draw in the game world, not only in their own windows, so Mapster can now put things where you are looking instead of only on the map. All of these are new, all are off until you turn them on, and all of them work with the map window closed.

• Recorded routes as a tube just above the ground. See Routes in the game world.
• Party trails behind your party members, each with a floating name tag. See Party trails.
• Trap outlines around traps and their control boxes. See Trap outlines.
• Explorer and journal markers: a star over each explorer point and a scroll over each journal. See Community map data.

Walls and floors hide these properly. Where something is hidden, Mapster draws a dimmer version so you can still tell it is there: a thin outline for a route or trail, a faint copy for a trap or marker.

Each has a range. Routes and trails fade out with distance and stop at 140m. Explorer and journal markers stop at 120m. Trap outlines use the Draw distance you set.

Community map data

New in 3.0. Mapster 2 only showed what your own game had loaded around you. Mapster 3.0 also downloads community sightings for the area you are in and draws them as pins, including things you have not reached yet. The sightings come from players running Collector. The guide covers it under Community map data.

• Enable Crowdsource Data on the Main tab is on by default. Turning it off stops the downloads as well as the pins.
• The map window has its own Crowdsourced Data option, also on by default, to hide the pins without stopping the downloads. It is greyed out while the main switch is off.
• Pins cover rares, bosses, raid bosses, chests, explorer points, journals, traps, control panels, collectibles, keys, levers, rest and resurrection shrines, NPCs, waypoints and crests.
• A pin for something that only spawns sometimes is drawn in grey until you are close enough for the game to confirm it. A boss pin steps aside once the real monster is in range. A chest pin turns to full colour while the chest is in range and goes grey again when you leave.
• In a quest you only see pins recorded for that quest at your tier: heroic, or epic and legendary together. In town nothing is filtered.
• Each pin is drawn only on the map of the floor it belongs to, and pins that would sit on top of each other are nudged apart so you can see them all.
• Trap, control panel and secret door pins follow the Spoilers option, like the live icons.
• Downloads are kept on your PC and fetched again only when newer data is published. Lamannia has its own data.
• Show Explorers in 3D area and Show Journals in 3D area are off by default, are saved per account, and are greyed out while Enable Crowdsource Data is off.

Routes

New in 3.0. Mapster 2 had no way to record or show a route. See Routes.

• Record a route with Start Recording, or with the new Record Path hotkey, which starts and stops a recording using the name in the box. Recording works with the map window closed.
• Pause and Resume, also on the new Pause Recording hotkey. The timer keeps running while paused, and the status line says PAUSED.
• The route saves itself every few seconds while you record, and stops and saves on its own if you log out, change area or walk into town.
• A blank name records as “Default”. A name that is already taken gets a number added, and the panel shows the name it will save as before you start.
• The Mapster toolbar icon shows a red dot while you are recording.
• Saved routes are listed per area on the Main tab under Path - Display. Each has its own 2D and 3D switches, its own colour, click-to-rename, and a delete button that asks first. A new route starts with both switches on and takes the next of eight colours.
• You can show as many routes at once as you like. The one you are recording is always shown on the map.
• Routes are .mappath files, one folder per area. Folder in the map window opens it. A file you copy in, or one saved by another of your clients, appears within a couple of seconds.
• Record / Show Paths In Town is off by default, so routes are neither recorded nor shown in town.
• Save PNG now includes your routes.

The Path Appearance tab is new with it. Draw path in the 3D world is off by default and marked experimental. With it on you get:

The tab also tells you why nothing is being drawn when that happens, for example “No recorded path to draw.” or “Paths are hidden in town.”

Party trails

New in 3.0, on the new Party tab. See Party trails.

• Show trails for has four choices: Off (the default), Everyone, Leader only and Everyone, leader highlighted.
• Each member gets one floating name tag on their trail.
• Trail color has its own picker. Width, opacity and tube shape follow the Path Appearance tab.
• Fade old trail is off by default, so a trail stays until the party leaves that instance. Turn it on and Trail duration (sec) appears: 1 to 3600, default 300. Trail older than that fades out over the next 30 seconds and is removed.
• Others’ opacity appears in the highlighted mode: 0.05 to 1, default 0.35.
• Trails are live only. Nothing is saved, a member who leaves the party loses their trail, and logging out clears them all.
• A trail holds about 8 km per member. Past that the oldest part drops off.
• In Leader only mode while you are the leader, the tab says “You are the party leader - there is no leader trail to show.”
• A member too far away for the game to send regular updates gets a rough trail that can cut corners. It sharpens up once they are close.

Trap outlines

New in 3.0, on the new Traps tab. Mapster 2 could only show traps as icons on the map, under Spoilers. That is still there. See Trap outlines.

• Outline traps in the 3D world is off by default.
• Traps are outlined in orange. A trap with no body to outline gets a spinning ! marker instead.
• Control boxes are outlined in cyan with a floating cog marker, and stay marked until the trap is disabled. Finding the box does not clear the mark.
• Opacity: 0.15 to 1, default 0.50. Draw distance: 15 to 150, default 60.
• The outline shows where a trap is, not how far it reaches.

The map window

The map is still its own window outside the game, and the basics are unchanged: it follows you north-up, you drag to pan and scroll to zoom, hovering names an icon, clicking targets it, Find points at off-screen matches with edge arrows, and party members get edge arrows too. See The map window. What is different:

• Typing in Find always filters. Mapster 2 had a separate Filter tick box: without it, matches blinked and everything else stayed. Now the map shows only the matches while there is text in the box. Clear brings everything back.
• Zoom has limits, 10% to 800%, and zooms around the middle of the view. Mapster 2 jumped back to your character on every zoom step.
• UI scale is a new slider in the Options panel, 50% to 250% with a Reset. It sits on top of your Windows display scaling, which the map window follows.
• Hover puts a soft glow under the nearest icon as well as naming it, and the glow stops when the mouse leaves the window.
• Options opens a panel that stays open until you press the button again. In Mapster 2 it closed when the mouse moved away.
• Folder is a new button in that panel. It opens the route folder for the current area.
• Save PNG always exports the whole map at full size, whatever your zoom. It leaves out your own arrow, party members and anything you were hovering, ignores Fade by Z, and suggests the area name as the file name.
• Opening the map brings it to the front even if it was already open but buried or minimised, without taking the keyboard from DDO.
• A window you snap to a screen edge is remembered the same way a dragged one is.
• The title bar reads “Mapster (area name)”.
• The map is drawn at a steady rate of its own, whatever the game’s frame rate is doing.

Icons and names

• Journals have their own icon. Mapster 2 drew them with the explorer star.
• Chests show their real name, so “Epic Chest!” no longer reads as plain “Chest”.
• Keys have names and can be found with Find. In Mapster 2 a key had no name to search for.
• Rest and resurrection shrines have names when you hover them.
• Boss and mini-boss icons are only used for a monster that also has a title. One without a title is shown as a champion, a reaper or an ordinary monster.

Settings, hotkeys and chat

• The settings panel has four tabs: Main, Path Appearance, Traps and Party.
• Three hotkeys instead of one: Open Map, Record Path and Pause Recording. Each has Set and Clear, Esc cancels a capture, and none is bound until you set it. See Getting started.
• /map show opens the map. Dungeon Helper 5 lets plugins add chat commands, so this is the first one Mapster has had. Anything else after /map prints a hint.
• 3D settings are saved per account. Dungeon Helper 5 can tell a plugin which account is logged in, so everything Mapster draws in the game world (routes, trails, traps and markers, with all their sliders) is remembered separately for each account. A multi-boxed follower can leave them off while your main has them on. They stay off on a client until a character is logged in.
• Hotkeys, map options, window position and your saved routes are shared by every account on the PC.
• Add Selected Object and Remove Selected Object work with the map closed. Mapster 2 made you open the map first.

Coming from Dungeon Helper 4

What carries over

• There are no routes, pins or notes to bring across. Mapster 2 had none of them.
• Your Open Map hotkey has to be set again. Mapster 3.0 keeps hotkeys in a different file and does not read the old one.
• Map options start at their defaults. They now live in mapview.json in Mapster’s plugin folder, with window position, zoom and UI scale.
• Your list of added objects is still kept in settings.json, in the same format as before. A fresh install starts with an empty list.

Changed defaults

• The map is no longer always on top. Mapster 2 had Always on Top ticked by default. In 3.0 the switch is Keep map above other windows, it is off by default, and it has moved from the map window’s options to the Main tab.

Renamed

Removed or not back yet

• Submit Anonymous Recommendation is gone. Adding or removing an object changes your own map and sends nothing to anyone.
• The Filter tick box is gone. Find filters on its own.
• The Distance and Opacity boxes for fading are gone from the map window. Fade by Z uses 30 and 15%. To change them, edit FadeDistance and FadeMinOpacity in mapview.json with DDO closed.

Things that may surprise you

• Boss Labels only controls names. Mapster 2’s Boss Monsters box also hid the boss, champion and reaper icons. To hide those icons now, turn off Monsters.
• Reset Map reloads the current area’s map. It no longer resets the window’s position and size. Use Reset in the map window to go back to 100% zoom.
• Grey icons are new. They are community pins for things that may not be there this time.
• You may see icons for places you have not been. Those are community pins too. Turn off Crowdsourced Data in the map window to see only what your own game has loaded.

Mapster guide and download · ← Dungeon Helper 5 release notes