Maps are quite important to worldbuilding, no doubt about that. But maps can be very big, and some times in one of your articles you want to be able to show a specific location, city or point of interest in your massive world map … well, now you can!

By using the 3 new variables X, Y and Zoom on your map embed you can now define which part of your world will be displayed.

For example, here I am using the following map with 1507 and 2376 (X,Y) in order to focus on Janet’s character pin.

[map:a127fd1c-a995-4cc2-9ec3-fb071e22d810|1507|2376]

How to get the coordinates

if you want to focus on the coordinates of a marker on your map, simply go to the edit screen of your map (ctrl+enter edit and the name of your map) and then from the markers list click on the target icon. That will copy on your clipboard the map’s embed code WITH the coordinates already filled.

After I paste the code on the sidebar of my map, the result looks like that.

I find this very handy because that way I don’t have to create a 100 maps I can just use my main map for my world or region and utilize it on different articles!

Cleaner layout for your map editing

The easiest way, by far to drop a pin on your map, is to open the presentation mode and right-click to create a new marker. This is easy, and for simple markers the preferable choice, but there are times you need to do more.

Maps on World Anvil can do many things for you ranging from separating your pins into groups, adding multiple layers, creating lines, circles, polygons and so much more and I knew for a long time this interface is hard to navigate… at best.

So today I have been working to simplify it a bit.

In the new interface, the map takes much less space and it is only displayed where it’s needed, on the markers page. Also I have done quite some work to minify the footprint of the marker form and make it clearer.

This is just a very quick update and much more will be happening down the line this year but I would really appreciate your thoughts and opinions on how  this can be done even better

Please, leave me a comment below and let me know what else you’d like to see in terms of simplifying and streamlining the maps interface!