Panda Webmap

Panda Webmap

Live world map in your browser, served by the game.

What Is It?

Drop the mod in, start the world, open your browser at http://localhost:27200/. You're looking at a live top-down view of everything that's been explored. Same colours and shading as the in-game map, because the mod copies what the map itself draws and pipes it through HTTP.

On a multiplayer server every connected client contributes the chunks they walk through. The server stitches them all together into one shared map. If someone else explores an area you haven't, you'll still see it in the browser.

What you get:

• 1:1 with the in-game map - the mod hooks the map's own renderer rather than redrawing the world itself
• Multiplayer aggregation - everyone's exploration feeds the same map
• Player markers - with per-player privacy toggles
• Calendar and season - shown in the browser corner
• Auto-explorer - admin command to teleport-fill the map without anyone walking it manually
• In-game admin panel - /webmap admin opens a status window in-game

Setting It Up

Step 1: Install the mod.

Drop pandawebmap-x.y.z.zip into your Mods folder on the server, and also on every client that should contribute chunks. Clients without the mod can still view the webmap fine in their browser, they just don't add the chunks they walk through.

Step 2: Start your world.

The mod creates pandawebmap.json in your ModConfig folder on first run. Defaults are sensible. The HTTP listener binds to localhost:27200 by default, which is safe but only viewable from the same machine.

Step 3: Open the browser.

Go to http://localhost:27200/ and you'll see the Leaflet viewer. Walk around in-game and chunks will fill in as your client renders them. Anywhere you've explored before installing the mod won't show up until someone walks through it again.

To make the map LAN-visible, set HttpBindAll: true in the config. Windows may need a one-time netsh URL ACL or you can run the server as admin; the mod falls back to localhost if the wider bind fails and logs how to fix it.

The Browser View

The viewer is Leaflet with custom tiles. Scroll-wheel to zoom; positive zooms are pixel-art upscaled (up to 16x) so you can pick out individual blocks. Drag to pan. The top-right corner shows the current in-game date, season, online player count, and how many chunks have been cached.

Each online player gets a cyan marker with their name floating beside it. Click the marker for their coordinates and the climate at their position. Markers update every few seconds.

Chat Commands

Anyone can run these:

• /webmap hideme - hide your marker. You still upload chunks
• /webmap showme - force your marker visible, ignoring any server auto-hide rules
• /webmap reset - drop your override and use the server default

Admin only (controlserver privilege):

• /webmap status - server status to chat
• /webmap refresh - ask every client to re-render around themselves
• /webmap admin - open the in-game admin panel
• /webmap explore <radius> - auto-explore in a grid
• /webmap explore stop - cancel a running exploration

Auto-Explorer

If you want the map filled in without anyone walking it manually, log in an admin character in creative+fly or spectator and run /webmap explore <radius_in_blocks>. The mod teleports you in a grid around your start position, waits for chunks to load between each step, and lets your client's map render them.

Stay logged in. The bot stops if you disconnect. A 1000-block radius takes a few minutes; bigger radii can run for hours.

Privacy

Player markers are visible by default. The server config has switches for auto-hiding players in creative, in spectator, and anyone with controlserver privilege. Each player can override the server's choice with /webmap showme or /webmap hideme.

Hidden players still upload chunks. Hiding only affects the marker dot on the map, not the contribution.

Finishing Remarks

 

This is alpha and the Harmony hook into VSEssentials is the most fragile part of the mod. If it stops working after a VS update, you'll see a warning in the server log and I'll do my best to ship a fix quickly. I currently only test in singleplayer, so MP behaviour is genuine real-world feedback. THIS IS AN EXTREMELY EARLY, EXPERIMENTAL PHASE. Please report issues, thanks!

Please check out my other mod:

• Panda Hearth

 

 

An immense thank you to the Vintage Story Development Team for their beautiful game and the fantastic community who play it.