Compass/Map + Upgrades

[Dasachi]

This sort of belongs in exploration as well as crafting.

My idea is to be able to craft a compass and map together. Doing so will give your character a minimap that will show him north, south, east, and west.

Areas not explored would show up gray, like a fog. Areas already discovered, but currently visible to the character(i.e. a certain distance away) would appear, but would be darker.
Areas explored and currently visible would show up brighter.

I also think this item should be upgrade-able to some extent. SUch as, being able to add a sort of “depthfinder” to show you cave systems nearby, or someting like that. Keep it balanced, but allow players like myself, you like to mine by going into cave systems, rather than mucking up the terrain and creating my own.

[Daniel]

I also think this is a very important aspect of this sort of game. Depth is a very puzzling issue that needs to be addressed with some sort of map feature as Darren suggested. Perhaps you could switch from a 2D map to a 3D map. Idk, maybe that’s too much effort to put into a map or compass item, but exploration is gonna be a very prevalent feature of the game as I understand it, exploring other people’s worlds through teleporters and what not.

Perhaps you could make two different craftable items for depth and map/navigation, like a depth indicator sort of tool and a regular map/compass. But a 3D map that could rotate and pan to see where you have been would be my choice. It doesnt have to be super-fancy, just detailed enough to distinguish between open space on the surface and underground and blocks of terrain or stone in caves/mine shafts.

[Rob]

Hi guys, Love to hear more on your ideas for navigation. We’ve worked on some of the basic design for this but really want to hear what you want.

With these kinds of items it’s a toss up between usability and in-game ‘grounding’. With as much as possible in the game we want you to feel like everything is grounded in the game. So, if you want to be able to navigate better, we want to make that something that you can find the materials for and craft. However, we also want to make sure that once it’s crafted that it’s actually easy to use and navigate around the world with.

Keep thinking. It’s really helpful seeing all of these ideas.

Rob – Wonderstruck Designer

[Master_Chill]

I personally like this idea very much and think the guys from Minecraft didn’t utilise this feature well enough. For the people who didn’t play the game (those people exist?), you had a map that showed you where you would’ve gone. If you passed the borders of the map you had to make a new one. Sometimes they overlapped and brought a lot of confusion to the gameplay in my experience. It also didn’t show the cave systems you went in, like addressed here earlier.

It created the following idea in my mind. What if you could create your map one page of a book at a time? For example;

– You create a map of the area you’re in & it updates itself should it change upon your next visit.

– Once you go to the border of the map and enter the next area, you can create a new map and add it next to it. Like glue or stitch it on there. You see a great example of what the main character does in the new ‘How to train your dragon’ movie.

– Once you enter a cave or a mountain or whatnot, you’ll have to create a new map again, and add it underneath your existing map, so that it’ll overlay. This process can be repeated multiple times, the deeper you go. This way, you’ll create a small (note)book of sorts.

– To keep ‘m all together, you can bind ‘m and create a small book which you can leaf through and open the pages like some sort of pop-up book.

– Should it be desired, players can make notes in them, copy them, sell and/or trade them and make a good buck out of it should it contain certain well desired area’s with awesome loot in it.

To go a step further, people could make their job out of it, and become known as mappers, explorers or whatnot. You can even make achievements out of it, like Guild Wars 1 & 2 did. It all adds up to the playstyle people adapt and the gameplay endurance of people.

• This reply was modified 9 years, 9 months ago by Master_Chill.

[Karko]

I think there should be two maps. One that shows you the current world you have explored. A second one that, makes a map of the worlds you have discovered. Think about the way that the map that Fez used to show you the connections between worlds. A nice 2D map that shows connections between world you have explored.

[Kuma]

This could be a problem if you link worlds randomly or to many worlds to one place the map would be a mess. But a good idea nonetheless.

[Umajianu]

What if there was one map that operated like Dasachi mentioned, that indicated locations to enter subterranean structures, and could be scaled down layer chunk by layer chunk to the bedrock, and another map that is more of an Oort Stone.

The stone would be a zoomed out map of the galaxy, and hovering over a world would show the worlds it connects to. Obviously it would show only connections you have discovered.

[Author]

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