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? :-/
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.
EDITED: 18 Jul 2011 22:14 by CHRISSS
We've lost the /time ability!
Firefox has a CSS property you can use to affect the rendering of scaled images (something like image-rendering: mozOptimizeSpeed), which obviously isn't supported in Chrome. I think IE does nearest-neighbour interpolation by default. It caused me a lot of grief when making
piXY :C
I want to connect a few places I have built/am building with railways, possibly connecting them to the network if that's possible. How is the best way to go about that, and how many of each kind of rail should I start stockpiling?
How long of each piece of string should you start stockpiling?
It depends how far you want to go! :P
Without major hills, two powered rail per 64 normal is probably enough, but with hills then you'll need power just before the hill and I think every other piece going up it.
If you want to build it yourself, just gather as much gold and iron as you can.
six gold + one redstone + one stick = one powered rail.
six iron + one stick = sixteen normal rails.
Oh, and powered rails are only powered when they're receiving power, so you'll need redstone torches or levers to turn them on (or pressure plate rails, but I find them a bit buggy).
Of course, you can probably just ask Xen or Kev and they'll give you as many rails as you want. :)