Windrose Plus Live Map (Sea Chart) Guide

What the Sea Chart is

The Sea Chart is the second tab of the Windrose Plus dashboard. It draws your world’s terrain as map tiles and puts live player positions, creature positions and point-of-interest markers on top of it.

You reach it the same way you reach the rest of the dashboard: the "Open Dashboard" link on the Windrose Plus tab, which opens the dashboard in a new tab on its own secure address, signed in for this server with a one-time link, with no password to type. The dashboard only runs while your server is running. See Windrose Plus RCON Dashboard Guide.

The dashboard also ships an item catalog alongside the map: 840 Windrose items with their category, type, rarity and, for 468 of them, where they drop from.

The Live Map tab in your panel

Your server panel also has a Live Map entry in its sidebar. It draws the chart Windrose Plus generated for your world, inside the panel.

The chart is read from the files Windrose Plus saved on your server, not from the running dashboard, so it shows even while the server is stopped. When a new chart is generated, the panel picks it up within about five minutes without a page reload.

Live positions need the server and Windrose Plus to be running. They refresh at your Player Position Interval (see Update intervals below). While the server is stopped the chart stays on screen with a "Server offline, no live positions" notice.

Players linked to a Discord account through a verified link show their Discord name in smaller text after their character's name in the Players online list (under the layers, sorted by name; click a name to centre the map on that player, point at it to ring their dot), and in the details that appear when you hover over or tap their marker.

Controls: drag or swipe to pan; scroll, pinch or use the + and − buttons to zoom; "Fit island" frames the island; "Full screen" fills the screen where your browser supports it. The toolbar shows the world coordinates under your pointer. With the map focused, arrow keys pan, + and − zoom, 0 fits and F toggles full screen.

Use whichever map you prefer. The Sea Chart has more on it, including resource zones, fog and the item browser. The panel map has your Discord names, sits beside the rest of your server tools and still shows the chart while the server is stopped.

What the panel Live Map shows

The panel map draws a layer only when Windrose Plus actually provides its data. The layers you have are listed under Layers beside the map, each with a count and a checkbox. Your choices are remembered in your browser.

Players: one marker per online player with a reported position, while Windrose Plus is answering. A player who has only just connected is listed under "Online, position not reported" until the server samples a position.

Creatures and resource nodes: shown only when Windrose Plus includes them in its live position data. If your version of Windrose Plus does not send them, those layers do not appear, rather than showing an empty or made-up layer.

Points of interest: read from the results of the Windrose Plus POI scanner once it has written them. If the scanner is switched off or has not run yet, there is no points-of-interest layer.

Hover over or tap any marker to see its name, its type and its world coordinates.

Panel Live Map statuses

"Windrose Plus is being installed on this server": GameGrid installs Windrose Plus on every Windrose server by itself, usually within a few minutes, and the map is drawn by it. There is nothing for you to switch on; the page checks again on its own about once a minute.

"Could not check whether Windrose Plus is installed yet": the panel could not reach GameGrid to ask.

While there is no chart yet, the map says where GameGrid has got to instead: "The chart is generated automatically" (start the server; nothing to run), "The chart is drawn the first time a player joins" (see below), "Drawing the chart now that a player is on", "Generating the chart" or "Drawing the chart" (in progress, usually done within ten minutes), "The chart is drawn after the server's next start" (Windrose Plus was installed while the server was running), "Windrose Plus was set aside so your server could start" (see below), or "The chart could not be generated yet" (retried on its own, with the reason). See How the chart is generated below.

"The chart on this server could not be read": the chart description Windrose Plus saved is incomplete or damaged. GameGrid generates a new one automatically while the server is running.

"The chart could not be read right now": the game host did not answer. This does not depend on your game server running.

Every one of these retries on its own: first after 5 seconds, then less often, up to once a minute. It pauses while the tab is in the background. You can also press Try again.

If individual chart tiles fail to load, each is tried up to three times. After that the map says some tiles could not be loaded; reloading the page tries them again.

How the chart is generated

You do not build the chart yourself, and you do not switch anything on: GameGrid installs Windrose Plus on every Windrose server and generates the chart automatically:

• the first time a player joins after the server starts with Windrose Plus;
• again after a Windrose game update;
• again when the server is on a new world, for example after a world reset;
• again if the saved chart is damaged or missing.

Why it waits for a player. Windrose creates its world's terrain when the first player joins the server; until then the island terrain does not exist yet, so there is nothing to draw. As soon as a player joins, GameGrid reads the terrain (a minute or so after they arrive, once the game has generated it) and draws the chart by itself. From then on the chart is saved on your server: it stays on the map with the server empty or stopped, and is only redrawn after a game update or on a new world, which again happens the first time someone plays.

It works in two steps, both handled for you. First GameGrid asks Windrose Plus to read the world's terrain from the running server. Then GameGrid runs Windrose Plus's own tile drawer on it, which takes a few minutes. The panel Live Map shows each step while it happens.

If something fails, it is retried on its own, less often each time, and again at every server start. Nothing is ever restarted to make the chart appear. If Windrose Plus was installed while your server was running, it loads at your next start and the map tells you so.

If the game ever stops while loading Windrose Plus (this can happen for a while after a Windrose game update), GameGrid starts your server without it rather than leave it down, the map says "Windrose Plus was set aside so your server could start", and Windrose Plus is tried again automatically after the next game update or Windrose Plus release.

The Command Manager has Redraw Sea Chart (wp.mapexport) if you want the chart drawn again. It is not normally needed. GameGrid redraws after a manual request at most once an hour. wp.mapgen does not draw the chart; it is a diagnostic probe.

What is on the Sea Chart

Terrain: island outlines and coastlines, rendered as tiles from the heightmap.

Players: a marker per online player, refreshed on the player interval.

Creatures and entities: refreshed on the entity interval, which is slower by default because there are far more of them.

Points of interest: dungeons, camps, forts, shipwrecks, ruins, farms and the rest, from the POI scanner.

Metrics layers

When player statistics are switched on for your server, the map's layer list also offers Density (where players spend time), Trails (the paths they took) and Deaths / Kills (where players died, and where kills were made if the game reports kills). They start switched off; tick one to draw it under the map's markers. They read the last 7 days (Trails: the last 24 hours, for the 20 players who travelled furthest). For any range, a player picker and a replay of the trails, open Metrics and its Travel tab. These layers are shown only to you in your panel, never on a public share link. See Metrics: Your Server's History.

Update intervals

Both are on the Windrose Plus tab, in the Live Map section, and both save without a server restart.

Player Position Interval — default 5000 ms, range 1000 to 60000. How often player positions are refreshed. The panel Live Map checks for new positions at this interval too, never more often than once a second.

Entity Position Interval — default 30000 ms, range 5000 to 300000. How often creature and entity positions are refreshed.

Raising them reduces the work the mod does inside the game each cycle, which is the lever to pull if the map is costing you performance. Lowering them makes the map more immediate and costs more. The defaults suit most servers.

Enable Live Map itself is a switch in the same section, on by default. Turning it off stops the position data being written at all.

POI scanner

The POI scanner is the background pass that finds points of interest for the map. It runs every 4 hours by default — "Rescan Interval", 14400 seconds, adjustable between 3600 and 86400 — and can be switched off entirely.

If the map shows terrain and players but no POI markers, check the scanner is enabled and give it a cycle. If you do not use the overlay, turning it off saves the work.

Public map sharing — what it does and does not do today

Windrose Plus has a public-map mode: "Enable Public Map" in the Live Map section, with an optional "Public Map Token". With it on, the dashboard serves a map-only view at /public-map that exposes the map, its tiles and its overlays and nothing else — no console, no configuration, no admin API. With a token set, a visitor must add ?token=<your token>.

It cannot currently be shared with your players, and you should not promise them a link. The dashboard’s HTTP port is firewalled to the game host itself, so the public map is not reachable from the internet directly, and the only other route in is the platform’s proxy, which requires a signed-in GameGrid account with access to that server. Anyone who can already open the full dashboard can open the public map; nobody else can.

Turn the setting on if you want the restricted view for people who have panel access but should not touch the console. If what you want is a map link for your community, that is not available yet — say so rather than handing out a link that will not load.

When the map does not look right

Blank, no terrain: the chart has not been generated yet. It is drawn the first time a player joins the running server; after that give it a few minutes. The panel Live Map says which step it is on and what, if anything, it needs from you.

Terrain but no players: check the server is running, "Enable Live Map" is on, and the player interval has not been set very high. The panel map shows "Server offline, no live positions" while it cannot read positions.

No creature, resource or point-of-interest layer in the panel map: that layer appears only when Windrose Plus provides the data. For points of interest, check the POI scanner is enabled and has completed a scan.

Nothing updating at all: check the server is actually running, and look at the Windrose Plus tab: "Being installed" means it loads at the server's next start, and a warning that its files were not found means GameGrid is reinstalling it.

A public map link that will not load: see the section above. That is expected today, not a fault with your server.