In-game Mapping/Automapping?

[spelk]

What do the admins and players of 4D think about MUD's that visually represent the world in map format on a constant basis? I often get quite lost, in even the most simplest area/room designs, and I'm all for MUD's that have at least a basic visual display of the area around the player. Thats not to say it replaces the vivid descriptions of the rooms themselves, but it just aids the player in remembering key features of the area and navigation to those features.

I've tried to combat my mental block when it comes to visualising areas, by using pen and paper, or even tools like zMapper, but they always fall short, and often are more trouble than their worth. Scribbling it all out to pen and paper seems to slow the whole experience down to a crawl, and its infuriating when you scrawl out an area, and then find that another adjoining feature throws your layout into chaos. I know 4D has a basic visual map (sort of like a compass representation), I wondered if 4D has considered anything more detailed or elaborate?

[Kvetch]

Personally as a mort I mapped out a LOT of areas (mostly medieval) and I'd considered at one time downloading them for people to see, but I felt that it would be against the 4D standards of letting people find their own way around and also do their own search/feel/look in each direction/etc etc that you may skip if you have a basic map to go by.  Of course any map that was done would have to be approved to not have any of the secret stuff - which again makes mapping an area that can be shown difficult.  Just anything behind a secret door/anything that has a password/ anything that you find via a mob/ anything that has to do with quests - wouldn't be able to be shown and with 4D being a quest orientated mud there's a lot of that going on.

Kvetch

[spelk]

I think the extra levels of mapping, that are revealed with deeper probing of the texts wouldn't be shown directly with the automap, but just the actual layout as you explore it would be useful to keep your direction and not get lost. I guess it depends on your sense of spatial awareness and ability to visualise the landscape you're slowly uncovering, but if you can explore around and lay down a structure you can see mapped out, you have a better chance of getting to the places you have to pay special attention to. I'm not really sure how you would then map out special cases as such, but I'm not sure the map itself would be the best place to show these specialities. If descending into a well, or climbing a set of ladders that were hidden, takes you to a totally new map to uncover using standard movement (n,s,e,w) then so be it. Its not really to map out every thing available, just more of a guide, that you uncover and explore yourself, and just saves you getting tied up in mental spatial reasoning knots, when you're constantly circling around areas without much of a clue of the overall lay of the land.

If I get totally mixed up, I have to draw it down, so I can start to tackle the more cerebral problems of working out the puzzles and problems contained within the descriptions and items around. Its the drawing of the layout, that you've navigated with movement commands already, that seems to take some of the fun out of it for me, if that could be presented "as you explore it", and make a record of it, then you can focus on the more interesting aspects to the storyline/quests and puzzles. Rather than re-doing something the builder has already done.

I can see both sides to the argument, because you don't want to totally out all the secret locations, or place legends with information and what not on screen, but also I see and experience the sometimes bewildering mental visualisations you have to try and make just to get to a particular location you've already found, and you now can't physically remember how to get back to, because you have no visusal representation other than the one you're conjuring in your mind. I'd prefer to use my imagination to make the textual descriptions bring the world to life, than to spend valuable brain power, piecing together and remembering a room layout.

[Kvetch]

Here's my solution to mapping:

room 1: drop 1 coin
room 2: drop 1 coin; drop 1 coin
room 3: drop 1 coin; drop 1 coin; drop 1 coin

It takes a while, and a bit of money, but if you map as you go, you find out how it's laid out, and you also find out where the nasty builders linked it up wrong - whether on purpose or not, who knows.  On purpose would be like the deserts that are supposed to continue in every direction (which you do by connecting up one room with another room that already has an exit in that location so it just seems like an endless terrain of desert).  Not on purpose would be like some of the things I found in a few towns where you'd go south, west, north and be compeletely on the other side of town or where they outside dimensions of the town didn't hook up with the inside dimensions.  I don't mind my rooms being off in caverns or what not, but give me a town and unless there's very good reason, I expect to be able to map it.  Doing the above trick, I did also map out the lostlands (which, btw: is a pain because of the hookups - but all of them are with reason so I can't complain) and the endless (*cough*) desert of Wawat.

I tend to map out the area (the areas you can easily get to) and then go back and start doing the extra stuff to try to find the secret doors/exits/whatnot that the builder has shoved in there.  Then again, I've not played my mort for a while now.  I'm probably a bit rusty.

[Tocharaeh]

I'm a big fan of graph paper, and zmud/cmud mapper. I've never really ever had a problem with mapping. It just comes down to getting used to the way a particular mud is set up, and then go from there. I've used special mapper scripts in the past, but after upgrading to win7 I forgot to backup those, so I don't have my old tricks anymore. However, even without them, it's a great mapper. I use cmud for building all of the time, and it's a great way to keep track of where I am in the zone and be able to gauge distance and so on.

I only ever drop coins in mazes. Coins and food. I've also got some other great secret tricks to maze solving. Just gotta develope technique.

Oh and as a final note: Nothing pisses me off more than a zone with crappy layouts. Everything in good practice should line up perfectly. If you want to simulate a spiral, use up and down exists. The MUD God created them, use them. If I find rooms overlapping, you have officially screwed up the alignment of a perfectly nice map. Builders should ALWAYS take the PLAYERS into consideration. Don't be afraid to use the basic functions OLC has.

PS: I want nw,sw,ne,se exists damnit

[Kvetch]

nono.. no nw,ne,etc etc.  I don't need to describe even more exits.  As for rooms overlapping, I do actually have that in one of my zones, but as the descriptor says, the rooms end in a sharp point (or something like that).  Basically, each room takes up like 1/2 of your graph paper square with a rock wall between them. 

I do actually try my best on making things mapable - but the never ending deserts (or what not) would take up a lot more rooms than they already do if you didn't do the connection trick and who wants another 300+ rooms of nothing but sand when they could be used for 3 more different zones instead. 

I'm a graph paper fan, but I always had trouble using zmud mapper - even when I had it, I ended up going back to graph paper because the mapper would mess up.

You want to take the players into consideration?  Consider this, a lot of your building work goes unnoticed or will only be seen once by any individual player.  Sometimes I have to fight that knowledge when making a zone.  Do I want people to see my work, or do I mind that once in a blue moon someone might go "oh... I just noticed that."

[Tocharaeh]

Meh. I figure nw,sw,ne,se exits are perfectly good for those "sharp turns"  Having rooms overlap just makes messy maps.

[Molly]

I am a dyslectic, which also makes me mix up east and west all the time, so in the old days I managed to get lost all the time, even in the easiest zones. Probably as a consequence of this handicap, I am great fan of graph paper myself, because that helps me to visualise the terrain. Actually all my zones are mappable on a grid - even the mazes, although in them I sometimes use the old trick of linking the rooms in circles to add to the confusion.

As a response to Spelk's original question, we do have a more advanced mapping system in 4D, although it's not used in all the zones. It's called 'the Wilderness grid', and I think all our zones that have the general layout of a grid instead of linear linking use that code. If you use the command MAP in a Wilderness zone, it brings out an 11x11 room map, with your own position in the middle of the grid. There are different symbols for different types of terrain, like water, field, forest, mountain etc. You can for instance see how it works in the Greek Mainland, and the Aegean Sea, and of course in Outer Space, where the maps make navigating a lot easier.

In 'ordinary' zones that don't use the Wilderness code, the same MAP command just brings out the 2 closest rooms in all the directions you can walk in. The maps look a bit different from the ones that use the Wilderness code, but the symbols are the same.

Of course all the maps only work in the horisontal plane, you can't get a visualisation of up and down exits. In the grids, for instance in outer space, the actual zones (planets) are in a different scale than the space grid. If one room is 10 square meters in a planet area, it would be like 10000000 square m in the space grid. This discepancy is handled in the way that you go up or down from the space grid to reach a planet, which in the grid is marked with the symbol 'entrance'.

[kitolani]

It's against the 4d standards to share maps? Cruel! That's like Lewes and Clark saying, dude...find your own way. This map is ours. It would have hindered development and appreciation of the lands they had discovered. Maps through mazes? Psh, no. Figure it out yourself. General directions to specific points in the game where you can discover wonderful new shiny things? I think it'd be a great idea considering how extensive the realms are, and how interest in muds is waning.