Mapping the Inactive Lava Zone!

Skope

Rejoice, fellow Subnautica players! For @Casual_Player and I are taking the plunge into the dreaded ILZ to map it once and for all! This has previously never been done before, but with the help of @Casual_Player, we will screenshot the entire ILZ, and with the help of (hopefully) @subnauticambrian's amazing picture editing skills, we will create an accurate map of the ILZ!

No longer are the days blindly exploring the the ILZ and enduring its harsh fauna! Once we are complete with the map, all will be able to use it! (unless it becomes outdated, in the which, dang)

Any and all help is appreciated with this endeavor. We need someone willing to screenshot the ILZ, directly straight from the Aurora opening entrance. Take your chance to enroll in this once in a lifetime opportunity to become a hero to future Subnautica players!

Screenshots will be posted as soon as we are complete.

Yes, I'm trying to sell this hard, we desperately need help. The ILZ is huge, not going to lie.

phantomfinch

Google maps: subnautica edition


we at google strive for innovation, and that is why we are employing hundreds of fish to drive around the map and take pictures in every direction at once to form a 360 degree image. After this we will replace those workers with robots becase "innovation"

Google

All hail to your new robot overlords

Skope

phantomfinch wrote: »

Google maps: subnautica edition


we at google strive for innovation, and that is why we are employing hundreds of fish to drive around the map and take pictures in every direction at once to form a 360 degree image. After this we will replace those workers with robots becase "innovation"

Google

All hail to your new robot overlords

Awesome idea, but we don't have the technology for a 3d map.

At best, we can give something like this.



But in ILZ colors! Oooooh!

Skope

All right, the first set of pictures are ready. Just as a note, this starts from the Aurora entrance, and turns right, following the wall.

@subnauticambrian, if you need any more detail in the ILZ, just say.

Casual_Player

I'm going to send mine, as soon as I manage to get this thing running without crashing so much. It may take a while

Spectone

I have done some preliminary mapping of the Inactive Lava Zone

There appear to be three entrances

1. From The Aurora
2. From The Lost River
3. From The Deep Grand Reef

I have a base where the Lost River joins the Inactive Lava Zone

I went around the zone and dropped beacons near major landmarks


At the centre of the zone is a large mountain I call Mount Doom, guess what lives there


I call these the cracks they are near the entrance to the Deep Grand Reef



This is looking into the zone from the Lost River entrance


I call this the Under Pass, this is looking towards Mount Doom


I call this the boil, it is a large round hole with half a sphere sticking out. From this hole you can enter the active lava zone


This area behind the Cracks I call the Stairway it leads to the Deep Grand Reef


I call this the Lava Falls, this is looking towards the entrance from the Aurora


This is the Aurora entrance, looking towards the Aurora

999Antonio3849

i need maps in-gameor just 9,999,999 +1 scanner rooms with ONLY range upgrade

Casual_Player

Finally. Sorry for the delays. Here it is. This videos shows the Inactive Lava Zone, from the entrance until the Lava Castle. I did it on this "low light" so I could get the shape of the rooms better, thus making it easier to join it on the map. On the second video, where I swin around the Lava Castle, I'm sorry but those areas didn't load properly - that's why there are white spaces there. And there are two videos instead of one because the console command I used (invisible) ended the recording, only restarting when I pressed a key again. Well, I hope you like it. Tell me if you guys need another version.





This is the programs I used, for recording and compression

OBS Studio: https://obsproject.com/
HandBrake: https://handbrake.fr/

Both are free. I think OBS is open source. Well, have fun

Spectone

I took my PRAWN suit back down into the Inactive Lava Zone and went to explore the Active Lava Zone. I discovered there are two entrances to the ALZ from the ILZ one in the area I call the Boil and the other in the Lava Falls. Got to be careful down there as some of the ground can hurt the PRAWN suit despite looking safe and the temperature exceeds 70C.

Casual_Player

Inactive Lava Zone From Aurora - Colored



Inactive Lava Zone - Lost River + Deep Grand Reef

Casual_Player

I had a hunch about top down view. Here is what I made. This is fron the Aurora Entrance. It's not all, but I would like feedback before continuing this entrance and making the others.

Frustrated

I don't mean to sound discouraging but brown walls don't mean anything to me. The videos, whilst I admire your perseverance are laggy and slow, and uncomfortable to watch. I know you can't help the lag and the terrain drawing, but have you thought about trying it with the seaglide?

There is a vid somewhere where a guy does all this with a seaglide in survival mode. He has bases where he stops to eat melons and replace some of the batteries he carries, before moving on to the next area. I will try and find it. I imagine it's a little out of date.

What I would really like to see is the surface map like first posted, and then overlaid on top of that the Deep Grand Reef/Lost River/Blood Kelp (seamoth depths) and then overlaid on top of that the Lava Zones. Like tracing paper in layers, with the points where they connect marked. That would be very interesting.

pie1055

I am also confused as to the type of map we are attempting to make after following this thread since it was created. Is not like the biome maps which are top down? I don't see how else you would make a map of the lava zone short of three-dimensional mapping of some description.

I was expecting people to... I dunno... Maybe place beacons along the walls and move the camera high enough into the sky to connect the dots or take notes on coordinates before filling them out on graph paper or even use the compass in some fashion. Maybe I should take a crack at it, never done creative before though...

Skope

The thing is, none of us are too technologically inclined (as far as I know at least.) And we can't just isolate the ILZ from the rest of the world.

There are many techniques, much better techniques that could make this easier. But due to us following the rules of the game, and the limits of the engine, we can't just take a picture of the entire biome top down. We have to do this the old fashioned way, good old exploration.

pie1055

Well I managed to throw this together as an example, spoilered for large-ish size;

Used ingame coordinates at the widest parts of the tunnel, updating them at significant twists/turns and converted them into pixel coordinates. Funny thing is the biome map in the game files is scaled 1:1 with ingame coordinates, so that made it pretty easy.

The first empty circle is a pillar that divides the cave at ~540 meters deep at the widest part of the cave.

The second empty circle is a larger pillar that divides the cave at ~870 meters deep at the widest part of the cave. Not pictured is that the end of the tunnel that I mapped quickly drops down to 1100 meters before eventually opening up into the inactive lava zone proper.

I can continue on if this is what you guys are after, will probably have to do something about large changes in depth/overlapping parts(active lava zone, sea emperor facility area, etc).

subnauticambrian

pie1055 wrote: »

Well I managed to throw this together as an example, spoilered for large-ish size;

Used ingame coordinates at the widest parts of the tunnel, updating them at significant twists/turns and converted them into pixel coordinates. Funny thing is the biome map in the game files is scaled 1:1 with ingame coordinates, so that made it pretty easy.

The first empty circle is a pillar that divides the cave at ~540 meters deep at the widest part of the cave.

The second empty circle is a larger pillar that divides the cave at ~870 meters deep at the widest part of the cave. Not pictured is that the end of the tunnel that I mapped quickly drops down to 1100 meters before eventually opening up into the inactive lava zone proper.

I can continue on if this is what you guys are after, will probably have to do something about large changes in depth/overlapping parts(active lava zone, sea emperor facility area, etc).

I love this, and I would love it if you could continue making this kind of map.

pie1055

Ok, I'll give it a shot. Was always interested what the underground biomes looked like on a map anyways.

Casual_Player

pie1055 wrote: »

Well I managed to throw this together as an example, spoilered for large-ish size;

Used ingame coordinates at the widest parts of the tunnel, updating them at significant twists/turns and converted them into pixel coordinates. Funny thing is the biome map in the game files is scaled 1:1 with ingame coordinates, so that made it pretty easy.

The first empty circle is a pillar that divides the cave at ~540 meters deep at the widest part of the cave.

The second empty circle is a larger pillar that divides the cave at ~870 meters deep at the widest part of the cave. Not pictured is that the end of the tunnel that I mapped quickly drops down to 1100 meters before eventually opening up into the inactive lava zone proper.

I can continue on if this is what you guys are after, will probably have to do something about large changes in depth/overlapping parts(active lava zone, sea emperor facility area, etc).

Thank you for your input. My idea was to piece the map together with these multiple screenshots. Clearly, it isn't going as expected, but it is what I can do, for my lack of knowledge on programming is really frustrating.

About your map, could you explain better how you did it? It looks the same map of the regions of 4546B. Maybe I'm missing something obvious here.

pie1055

I put the existing biome map underneath the map I created for the entrance tunnel and dimmed it so that the tunnel would stand out a bit more. There's a lot of wasted space in the image because I didn't really map out all that much but it's necessary to show the scale and location of the tunnel.

As for the process I used, I rammed a seamoth into the widest parts of the tunnel, looked at the coordinates, and used them to plot a bunch of dots over the existing map. Connect the dots, fill the spaces, and viola!

Here's a screenshot of the process as I was working on it with some poorly written notes (my mousewriting is terrible), spoilered for large image size(you may have to open it in a new tab to see the tiny numbers);

Note; GraphicsGale is the image editor I used for this project as it shows whatever coordinates your mouse cursor is hovering over(the Handy! note) and has awesome grid support(good to make sure you're in the right neighborhood after doing math).

Frustrated

The other option would be to spawn in beacons, in the label put the co-ordinates, and do it at x distances around the edges of the caves. From above, you would see the outline and have the co-ords... Would take some time though.

Warzouz

BTW don't you feel that the ILZ entrance at the front of the Aurora is not finished ? There is nothing in those tunnels. The path seems to have been hollowed with some spherical tool brush. It's awfully dark. Textures are repetitive and basic.

In other words it seems a quick an dirty work. The whole front of the Aurora and the ILZ tunnels are a "to be done" area. right ?

Jamezorg

Okay, I'm going to try and swim through the entire biome and draw it on paper as I go. It's just the way I like doing things, and I hope it works. I feel like your stuff will be more accurate, but I just feel like doing this.

If I get it right it could be a sort of guide for you guys? I don't know, I just feel like doing this

Casual_Player

Go ahead! The result might be worth of it!

And about the Aurora entrance, I've noticed it too. It's the only one not quite detailed as the lost river and the deep shroom entrances.

pie1055

Current People:
I finished mapping the inactive lava zone as it appears in the December 2016 stable build.
While biomes divide the inactive lava zone between the chamber and corridors I divided them between the entrances and the rest of the zone in order to more accurately map some of the vertical features located between the two. Ironically enough these features seem to all occur at around 900m deep. You may notice several depth labels in the fancy maps. The white ones are for the nearby pillars- they're accurate at the labeled depth(some pillars get crazy at different depths). The only pillars drawn are the ones that fully reach from the bottom to the roof of the cave, thus blocking any way to reach those locations. The colored labels signify a connection to another part of the map- the color itself matching the color of the biome it connects to and the depth is the depth the map was drawn at.

Past People:
Note the lack of an entrance to the Dunes in these maps. I'm almost certain that the northerly dead end in the Lost River corridor is all that remains of this entrance, though I never had the chance to explore it myself. Far as I can tell the old location of the entrance was filled and has a texture resembling sand being dusted over the lava zone texture. Fun fact- You can still see a spot with a lava zone texture just to north of the old entrance and they both line up with older maps!

Future People:
Expect inaccuracies in the corridors as the game's map gets updated. Their current state are mostly not detailed and just look at those flat pointy angles in the grand reef entrance. I expect them to get detail passes eventually, at which point these maps will not be fully accurate.


Inactive lava zone entrances(base map for any fancy modifications you want to make);

Inactive lava zone entrances(fancy map for ingame reference);

Inactive lava zone depths(base map for any fancy modifications you want to make);

Inactive lava zone depths(fancy map for ingame reference);

If you modify and use these somewhere I don't ask for credit but it'd be nice of you

Edit: I guess I should mention the western biome on the maps is the Lost River, so of course you can't access it from that location in the mushroom forest =P Bonus points if you know what biome originally used that color =D

Casual_Player

pie1055 wrote: »

Current People:
I finished mapping the inactive lava zone as it appears in the December 2016 stable build.
While biomes divide the inactive lava zone between the chamber and corridors I divided them between the entrances and the rest of the zone in order to more accurately map some of the vertical features located between the two. Ironically enough these features seem to all occur at around 900m deep. You may notice several depth labels in the fancy maps. The white ones are for the nearby pillars- they're accurate at the labeled depth(some pillars get crazy at different depths). The only pillars drawn are the ones that fully reach from the bottom to the roof of the cave, thus blocking any way to reach those locations. The colored labels signify a connection to another part of the map- the color itself matching the color of the biome it connects to and the depth is the depth the map was drawn at.

Past People:
Note the lack of an entrance to the Dunes in these maps. I'm almost certain that the northerly dead end in the Lost River corridor is all that remains of this entrance, though I never had the chance to explore it myself. Far as I can tell the old location of the entrance was filled and has a texture resembling sand being dusted over the lava zone texture. Fun fact- You can still see a spot with a lava zone texture just to north of the old entrance and they both line up with older maps!

Future People:
Expect inaccuracies in the corridors as the game's map gets updated. Their current state are mostly not detailed and just look at those flat pointy angles in the grand reef entrance. I expect them to get detail passes eventually, at which point these maps will not be fully accurate.


Inactive lava zone entrances(base map for any fancy modifications you want to make);

Inactive lava zone entrances(fancy map for ingame reference);

Inactive lava zone depths(base map for any fancy modifications you want to make);

Inactive lava zone depths(fancy map for ingame reference);

If you modify and use these somewhere I don't ask for credit but it'd be nice of you

Edit: I guess I should mention the western biome on the maps is the Lost River, so of course you can't access it from that location in the mushroom forest =P Bonus points if you know what biome originally used that color =D

That's...beautiful. I believe this is something we can work with. Thank you.

pie1055

If you need me I'll be in my observatory on the floater island looking at plants and stuff, not dodging fireballs or worrying about scraping the lava larva off my submersibles as they are slowly crumpling under the crippling pressure and heat.

Edit: Only just thought of combing the two maps to give an overall but less detailed map.

Base;

Fancy;

Avimimus

Neat. I wonder if we'll see a Koosh zone entrance? It'd make exploring the koosh more rewarding!

Frustrated

pie1055 wrote: »

Edit: Only just thought of combing the two maps to give an overall but less detailed map.

You could, if you wanted, add a faint outline of important structures, eg lava castle.

Could you do the Lost River parts too?

In my dreams the layers are transparent enough to see the edges of the zones below, so that eventually you could flick forward like a book, and overlay them on top of one another...

In fact you could do that with all the caves... someone cleverer than me could make something where you tick the boxes to show which cave you want overlaid on the map

Morph_Guy

Now that we've got this map done all we need are maps for the Deep Grand Reef, Lost River, and ALZ

pie1055

Morph_Guy wrote: »

Now all we need are maps for the Deep Grand Reef, Lost River, and ALZ

God damnit I knew this would happen.

subnauticambrian

pie1055 wrote: »

Morph_Guy wrote: »

Now all we need are maps for the Deep Grand Reef, Lost River, and ALZ

God damnit I knew this would happen.

I'm sorry, I truly am...