I’m delighted at how well the JourneyMap mod for Minecraft has been received in the 45 days since it was released on November 26, 2011.    As of sometime today there have been over 10,000 downloads of version 1.0.0 for Minecraft 1.0.0.

Thanks to everyone who has provided great encouragement and feedback along the way.

Coming soon: Snow and Biomes

I’m busy at work on a huge update.   I can’t decide whether to call the next release JourneyMap 1.5.0 or 2.0.0, but there’s a lot to it.  The big-ticket items are:

• Biome coloring, including snow
• A fully-featured in-Game UI if you don’t want to use a web-browser
• A properties file for a number of tweakable settings (by popular request)
• A Save button that saves the entirety of your map to file, not just what you can see
• Improved I/O with fewer files

Stay tuned, and happy journeys!

I’m happy to (belatedly) announce the release of:

• JourneyMap 0.9.0 for Minecraft 1.8.1
• JourneyMap 0.9.0 for Minecraft 1.9pre5

[ What is JourneyMap? | Requirements | Download & Install]

Screenshots:

Here’s the goodness you’ll find inside: (From the release notes)

1. New feature: Topography shading
2. New feature: Cave mapping
3. Nearby monster icons now look like the real thing
4. Improved leaf colors and tree shading
5. Added cave spiders to nearby monster list
6. Fixed bug where other player icon positions didn’t refresh position
7. Removed player position callout, moved location info below world name
8. Player position now shows elevation
9. Removed “HeightMap” mode
10. Various performance improvements
11. Minor UI adjustments

Here’s a followup to my initial post on JourneyMap:

The experimental “height map” map mode was an attempt to show elevation (lighter = higher) that didn’t satisfy in the least.    Since the first day I started working on JM, I wanted a topographical feel to the map, but I never figured out a way to do it in real-time without severe game performance issues.   But last night I stumbled on a fast way to approximate contour lines, and I’m delighted with the result.   Check it out (click to see larger):

JourneyMap 0.9.0 Sneak Peek (Click to Enlarge)

And for a little icing on the cake, I’ve got some performance improvements in place that make the new map slightly faster to render.   So in the next release of JourneyMap (0.9.0), I’m dropping the “height map” mode all together.  That will also make a 30% reduction in disk space usage for JM’s map data, so it’s an all-around win.