Both of you post screenshots!!!

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The 'shaded' areas seem to be happening since Ant updated the plugins so there seems to have just been a change in how the map renders. So eventually the whole map should be more like that I think.

Not seen that before. :/

Dunno what it might be.

Yeah that seems to be a "new" thing.

I have always assumed that the blocks on the map represent the chunks in the world, which could be 16x16

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everyone else: I came to find out about the grey shaded bits and you have no clue :(
maybe they are bits that have been explored but not visited recently?

This is the map at full zoom for me, flying over what I think is Xen's masterpiece. So, does each square represent 1 block in the game world?

dunno, but that messes up my theory about the grey areas

Aye, there be people in there - though the grey bits could be areas /you've/ not explored recently.

Impossible, the online map is essentially anonymous.

Hmm - so why block out large areas of the map at all - what purpose could it serve? :-/

No idea.

Nah, it's just the updated map plugin draws darker than it did before. So as people re-explore areas they'll all get darker until it's all the same.

Right you are.

 

Carry on. :|

the black bits? chunks don't exist until someone goes there

Yes and no. :S

That yellow 8px square in the center is the size of a 1x1 block... but it's actually representing a torch (which is much thinner than a block).

I guess you can say, every coloured square on the map is a single block, but it's colour may be different to it's actual colour based on having something on-top of it which is actually smaller than one block (torches, signs, doors, ladders, flowers, etc).

Oh, and also in-game the blocks are not solid colours, or sometimes not even close to those colours.

Still it looks like the new darker map images are improving things - if you head north from the Citadel until you reach another shaded area - the dark green in there is grass, which used to be coloured purple as you'll see if you look at the surrounding areas.

To be slightly more accurate, chunks don't exist until somebody goes nearby (at which point they are generated from the game's current algorithms).

However, the black areas on the map might exist as chunks, but haven't been rendered because they've not yet been visited/modified by players.

Oh, and sometimes a black area is just your browser/connection not loading the image for some reason - can generally be solved with a force-reload.

Chrome (here at least) gives different results to IE and Firefox (when zoomed in), the blocks are blurred instead of square so some scaling/blending thing going on.

Bloody browsers! :@