intfiction.org

How does everyone feel about the idea of having an ASCII map of each room like roguelikes and some MUDs do? If you were playing an adventure game do you think it would add to or detract from the enjoyment of the game? What if you were playing an IF game centered more around people?

If you're in favor, would you rather have the map before or after the description of the room, and would you want it to reappear each time you type "look" or just each time you walk into the room, or would you rather have two commands, one to get the text description and one to see the layout of the room?

Just curious how people feel about this kind of thing.

If you can do it well, go for it. The Glulx version of ToaSK has two different ASCII maps summoned by player command, which is my player preference (the maps don't appear automatically at all, the player has to call them up) ... the ToaSK ones are, sadly, simplistic and non-dynamic. If I had more chops and more time I'd love to make them fancier, and I'm very happy about the idea of more games having more ASCII fun (maps or otherwise).

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Games, Fonts, and Font-Toys For Gamers - http://www.cumberlandgames.com

It's pretty darn easy to create a .png file with the Draw program in OpenOffice, and I'm sure most IF development systems can embed .png files. This would be more elegant than ASCII.

I think that depends on one's personal aesthetics of elegance.

Preach it

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Games, Fonts, and Font-Toys For Gamers - http://www.cumberlandgames.com

It Depends.

• Are the maps mechanically important (that is, do they deliver important information or enable interaction that isn't given in the text) or are they just flavour?
• Are you doing ASCII maps because you think they're the best aesthetic fit for your game, or because it's easier than doing them another way?

It seems that you've got a fairly specific vision in mind, but I'm not quite clear what that is: why would it be make a difference if the game was centred more around people? Does the exact position of a person in a room matter for your purposes, and how?

If you were making a game about being a person in a roguelike, maps like that would be incredibly appropriate. They would be awesome. Go do that.

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we gotta move these refrigerators

Nothwithstanding my general predilection for keeping things "old school" in the IF world, I tend to agree with Jim that if you're going to include some sort of map, there are better ways to do it than simulating a graphic with ASCII characters. The fact that ASCII was basically the only thing available thirty years ago is not, to my mind, itself a reason to use an approach which is, to my mind, pretty cumbersome all around.

The more important issue, however, is the use of maps in the first place. I can certainly see that there might be specific situations where such a thing actually does add to the overall player experience (although I might suggest that even in those situations, a "feelie" map might be an alternative to consider). However, having a map for each room as a matter of standard operating procedure (i.e., without a specific reason) almost seems to be moving away from the whole point of what we used to call "text adventures" -- namely, the fact that a lot of the fun comes from reading words on a page and using your own imagination to translate those words into a mental picture of the world in which you find yourself.


Robert Rothman

I'm all for maps. Whatever sort of maps. There's a beautiful Automap extension for I7 that I dearly wish was more used.

+Googol

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Games, Fonts, and Font-Toys For Gamers - http://www.cumberlandgames.com