Game Maps

[rjshae]

It's fairly certain that a game like this will have some type of pop-up map, whether a reduced scale image or an artistic illustration. I think though that the area maps don't have to exactly follow the style used in the IE games. In particular:

• The explored areas of the map don't have to be placed in the corresponding locations on the area map. Instead, the explored area can be centered in the map image.
  
• The full area doesn't need to be be constrained by a rectangle. It would be better if the boundary of the area was uneven.
  

These have the net effect of leaving the true boundaries of the area uncertain, and making it feel more open. For dungeons especially, an obvious rectangular boundary makes it look more contrived. A particular example of this was in NWN2, and it made the areas feel very contrived.

 

Any other concerns?

[Amberion]

It actually depends on how the camera is managed. I really hope they do free-form camera, which necessitates a boundary limit to the viewable area. The explorable area does not need to be rectangular(in fact it frequently is not) but the visible area should be, simply because our screen is rectangular and it is easier to display rectangles.

[Aoyagi]

My only concern is the ability to make short user notes into the map.

[AGX-17]

It actually depends on how the camera is managed. I really hope they do free-form camera, which necessitates a boundary limit to the viewable area. The explorable area does not need to be rectangular(in fact it frequently is not) but the visible area should be, simply because our screen is rectangular and it is easier to display rectangles.

 

But then it wouldn't be isometric anymore, would it? If you mean just circling the camera around while maintaining the same 3/4 perspective, you know they make games with maps that rotate, or an option to have a rotatable map, right?

 

 

My only concern is the ability to make short user notes into the map.

 

This would be useful, and interesting. Give it some of the old school feel of having to map out a game with a pencil and paper like back ye olde tymes of the 80s.

 

Maybe give the player a variety of drag & drop icons to map out the notable locations like treasure, traps and so on, rather than simply auto-filling points of note.

Edited December 3, 2012 by AGX-17

[SqueakyCat]

This would be useful, and interesting. Give it some of the old school feel of having to map out a game with a pencil and paper like back ye olde tymes of the 80s.

 

Maybe give the player a variety of drag & drop icons to map out the notable locations like treasure, traps and so on, rather than simply auto-filling points of note.

 

I like this idea. I found the flags you could annotate in BG2 to be very helpful - adding useful icons would give even more flexibility.

Edited December 3, 2012 by SqueakyCat