Maps?

- Z - · Post by **- Z -** » Thu Dec 18, 2003 3:36 pm

Another question...

When you play a new dungeon, do you still draw your own maps using pencil & paper as you go along?

Sometimes I keep wishing for an automapper... but it sure is an important part of the fun, at least for me.

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Thu Dec 18, 2003 4:12 pm

don't have the patience anymore...but have no mental mapping skills/sense of direction, so there is the occasion dungeon like conflux where i've drawn out small parts to make sure nothing gets missed

just out of interest, if people map, how do they map?
personally, i do it by the block, rather than do line drawings of the corridors
so i shade in a square at a time for walls as i go along, and build up the map that way - i find it tends to be faster

PicturesInTheDark · Post by **PicturesInTheDark** » Thu Dec 18, 2003 5:23 pm

Hmm. To tedious and time-consuming. The only dungeon I ever dreq a map for apart from the original DM when I had none was for Paul Stevens' 3D maze - and it was damn necessary. Otherwise I remember places I've been to, don't ask me how. Does not always work (or even at the first time) but I keep finding landmarks that help me out. For example, Conflux works pretty fine by now, even though it sure is a twisted thing not only from the maps!

Regards, PitD

Post by **Paul Stevens** » Thu Dec 18, 2003 5:38 pm

I have always drawn maps by hand. The house if full of them.
Ultima V is a whopper. And the map I drew for the NES game
named "Legacy of the Wizard" is made of 1/5th inch squares,
is about 4 feet square mounted on poster board on a frame, and
each square is filled. About 5 * 5 * 12 * 12 * 4 * 4 squares is
a total of 57.6 K squares. These little DM-style dungeons
aren't much of a challenge.

Remember the DM-II dungeon for the DM-I engine? I enjoyed
playing it for a while (did not finish) but was quite annoyed that
the large map could not be drawn on a 2-dimensional paper as the
original could. He had teleporters to make the 32x32 map large
enough but if you drew it on paper some of the pieces overlapped.

PitD.....You never did finish the 2-D puzzle. Did you try that
without drawing a map? Quite impossible. The prize has never
been awarded and is still up for grabs by the first finisher.

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Thu Dec 18, 2003 5:58 pm

lol, *bows to the god of moderation and maps*

the only thing i mapped apart from dm was ishar 3 and knightmare - i found eotb easier to navigate

Post by **Lunever** » Thu Dec 18, 2003 6:19 pm

I had drawn maps by hand for very old rpgs like The Bards Tale or the old SSI A/D&D stuff and even for DM1, but later used the very good (but not complete) DM! and CSB maps published in the German "Power Play" magazine.

Today I prefer to resort to the DM/CSB maps of the Encyclopaedia since they are nearly perfect.
But I didn't play Conflux so far, so maybe if I do I'll start drawing maps again too.

Post by **Gambit37** » Thu Dec 18, 2003 8:44 pm

I still have my original paper maps from Dungeon Master!

I loved mapping, though I haven't mapped any modern games -- most of them are too short and boring to make it worthwhile. I guess I don't have the patience anymore either.

I mapped CSB quite well but got horribly confused. It wasn't until Amiga Action printed correct versions that I realised what was going on in the dungeon! Much later, DMute helped too....

I also mapped EOB1, some of KnightMare, and I started mapping Captive but after the first few bases realised it was a pointless cause. I also played some early text/graphics adventures such as The Hobbit, The Pawn, Shadowgate, Uninvited -- and mapped all those. When I was into gamebooks, I mapped the first few I played, but it became too time consuming.

There's a very smart puzzle in Knightmare with a rotating room -- I'm strill trying to work out how to do that in RTC....

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Thu Dec 18, 2003 8:55 pm

ah, yes, i mapped lots of the FF gamebooks ...you have to with those, really!

PicturesInTheDark · Post by **PicturesInTheDark** » Fri Dec 19, 2003 3:03 pm

Paul, no I never finished the 2D one. Somehow, even directly after playing 1D and 3D the moves were very alien to me. I did not get the grasp of the proper movements and so did not reach some areas - therefore sometimes drifting too far to map. (And I don't know how to "read" the trace files to draw it afterwards). I'll try again during the christmas period, can you lend me an ear once or twice for questions? Now that you mention it, I'm eager to do so - 3DMaze was one of the most original concepts within CSBwin I ever played and I enjoyed it immensely!

Regards, PitD

sucinum · Post by **sucinum** » Fri Dec 19, 2003 5:01 pm

i have never mapped for any game, because i am simply to lazy for that. so my dungeons are also designed not to need mapping at all (at least i know of noone who has drawn any).
when desgining the dungeons, i drew a lot of maps of course, because the least time of this process i used a computer...

PicturesInTheDark · Post by **PicturesInTheDark** » Sun Dec 21, 2003 11:04 am

I think the original maps for DM I finally copied from someone after months in the dungeons with self-dran or no maps were so worn-out after dozens of games that I put them to rest out of fear that they might turn to dust if I touched them another time...

Regards, PitD