Overland mapping?

[Lenaric]

I looked around and saw a few threads on this already but didn't see much of an answer.

Then I read about Batmud's overland mapping system then went and checked it out for myself. Utterly amazing.

So sense I'm going for the survival horror theme I really wanted a large persistent world. I started mapping this by hand and you all know how that ended. With a case of writers block and a month off from work on my project.

So I figured I'd peruse a new solution. Overland mapping. Could anyone advise on this topic? I really don't know where to start.

[cratylus]

"overland mapping" means different things to different people. Can you post some screenshots of exactly
what you mean by it?

-Crat

[detah]

I always think of Zelda (NES, 1986) when I think of overworld maps. The 'top' world map allows travel between major points of interest, but those major points of interest, like dungeons or shops, are entered into in one 'square' of the overworld, but that dungeon/shop is a larger area on its own. In muds this is nothing more than non-euclidean space, eg. start in Room #1, w to Room #2 (which is the entrance to some dungeon), e to Room #3 (goes to first room of the dungeon).

[quixadhal]

Unless they've changed it, BatMUD uses a map system that draws a map of the terrain around you as you are wandering outdoors.  It also has descriptions and feels more like a text MUD with a map, rather than a map you're moving around in text.

It's an interesting hybrid, in that while the text remains there as a focus, and every "room" has a proper text description, it really removes the "feel" of it being broken up by rooms.  Wandering the city feels more like playing a roguelike if you pay attention to the map at all.

Note that this is in sharp contrast to several DikuMUD games where an "overland" map means the whole screen is one big map and there are no text descriptions.

Here's a couple screenshots.







I laughed when my poor guest character died from being too exhausted.  Take that you wussy MUDs out there!  You know who you are.

I remember they have a full day/night system with lighting too, so as it gets dark, the colors start to fade from the map and it ends up being mostly dark greys except around light sources (such as the city lamps).  I watched a lamplighter actually go around and light the lamps, which then made a radius around them look normal.

Very impressive.

[Lenaric]

That is exactly what I would hope to have. I really like how they generate descriptions and the day night contrasts of the map are brilliant. Are there any suggestions on getting an example and being able to create something of my own? Or is there actual working generators from .jpg like you suggested earlier?

[Nilrin]

In Rebirth I use large text maps to lay out virtual rooms,  usually in 200 by 200 room sections. Every room is persistent. I'm thinking it would be fairly trivial to write code that basically displayed part of the map to the player as they moved from room to room. From those pictures, it doesn't look like BatMUD has any line-of-sight in those maps, which keeps things simple for the coder.

Either way, if you use virtual rooms or not, you could have your text maps made ahead of time, then use the coordinate system in DS to work with your maps.

You could do it the other way around, and have code that generates a map based on the rooms around you. DS does that as well, at least to some extent. Gotta be careful with that though because you can run into problems with those too-long-evaluation errors.