Realistic maps

Game Talk The Drawing Board
21

AH! So it’s assumed we start near our community? I always assumed we’d been bused off to a evac centre in the middle of nowhere.

[quote=“mlangsdorf, post:18, topic:13416”]There are several different types of maps already in the game, from survivor maps that list grocery stores and gun shops to tourist maps that have museums and restaurants.

It’s a couple of minutes work to add items to the starting profession.

So I guess my question for ribblle is would starting with a tourist map in your inventory as the default survivor be a sufficient solution for you? Or having one spawn in every evacuation center which is more complicated but not impossible.[/quote]

I think the road map is the biggy. Say what you will about the town, but everyone knows what their nearest city is and how to get there.

Once we get a few more starting scenarios, then it might be time to add specific maps for each profession.

22

[quote=“ribblle, post:21, topic:13416”]I think the road map is the biggy. Say what you will about the town, but everyone knows what their nearest city is and how to get there.

Once we get a few more starting scenarios, then it might be time to add specific maps for each profession.[/quote]

The problem is that people don’t generally know all (or even a large portion of) the roads - they know the “major” roads. Which roads are those?

If you’re not a delivery driver (pizza, UPS, etc), the odds that you have map-like knowledge of the residential areas (as only one example) of your city approximate zero quite well.

23

We’re talking about an actual, physical road map in your inventory.

24

Well, a few people would have one of those… and most people wouldn’t. Especially today, VERY few people are going to have a paper map - they’re going to have an app on their phone, and when the internet connection is gone (or their phone charge is gone, if they have an offline app), well…

If you think everyone should magically have one, feel free to debug one for yourself at the beginning of every game.

25

No, you’re not.

This has been the problem with this whole thread, you keep insisting that this is an easy problem to deal with, and it isn’t. Debug yourself some maps or add them to your favored professions, but we aren’t issuing maps to every survivor.

If someone comes up with a good system for handling player geographical knowledge from before the cataclysm, we can add it, but nothing in this thread has even made a start at outlining how that would work.

26

I can’t suggest anything code-wise but, how does removing the initial block of revealed area and replacing it with roads(like a road map) and some randomly assigned “known” buildings along those roads sound? So kind of like having a character read a roadmap and a Point of Interest map at the same time, but what’s “revealed” is randomly selected buildings instead of pre-determined restaurants/hospitals/etc.

I’m not suggesting giving players maps at the beginning of the game, just changing the initial known area to reflect a character’s usual route or routine(which is really just picking random coordinates for buildings).

27

[quote=“Grandpuh Ty, post:26, topic:13416”]I can’t suggest anything code-wise but, how does removing the initial block of revealed area and replacing it with roads(like a road map) and some randomly assigned “known” buildings along those roads sound? So kind of like having a character read a roadmap and a Point of Interest map at the same time, but what’s “revealed” is randomly selected buildings instead of pre-determined restaurants/hospitals/etc.

I’m not suggesting giving players maps at the beginning of the game, just changing the initial known area to reflect a character’s usual route or routine(which is really just picking random coordinates for buildings).[/quote]

And everything directly adjacent to those squares, but yeah, something like that would at least be a start - it’s the most (only?!?) concrete suggestion given so far.

28

Yeah Grandpuh, that works for survivors in their own town.

This has been the problem with this whole thread, you keep insisting that this is an easy problem to deal with, and it isn’t. Debug yourself some maps or add them to your favored professions, but we aren’t issuing maps to every survivor.

If someone comes up with a good system for handling player geographical knowledge from before the cataclysm, we can add it, but nothing in this thread has even made a start at outlining how that would work.[/quote]

Kevin, I’m not talking about the future, where we will presumably have a myriad set of starting scenarios and all kinds of map knowlege permutations for each profession. Right now, the default start, as i understand it, is at a evac center in your local town. As far as i’m concerned we should flesh that out (which is a easy fix) before we get to the chewy stuff like making it flexible for a variety of starts.

In that specific setting, it makes perfect sense for the survivor to have a rough idea of the neighbouring towns and major cities. More to the point, it makes perfect sense for a evac center to have a couple of maps.

29

What is “rough idea of the neighbouring towns and major cities” exactly?
In the purely game terms, I mean.

30

That’d be really neat, could the debug weather map be re-purposed to do that?
Maybe a building density map too, although I guess the current map is pretty much that already. A Zombi density one for the areas you’ve run through would be neat though.

Each cell could display the average X of the 9(27?) surrounding cells, that way it’d be a slightly more non-linear progression of nothing, nothing, TREES EVERYWHERE, nothing, SWAMP.

31

[quote=“ribblle, post:28, topic:13416”]Right now, the default start, as i understand it, is at a evac center in your local town. As far as i’m concerned we should flesh that out (which is a easy fix) before we get to the chewy stuff like making it flexible for a variety of starts.

In that specific setting, it makes perfect sense for the survivor to have a rough idea of the neighbouring towns and major cities. More to the point, it makes perfect sense for a evac center to have a couple of maps.[/quote]

Adding a chance for the evac shelter to have a road map in the lockers upstairs sounds like a good idea to me.

But this: “it makes perfect sense for the survivor to have a rough idea of the neighbouring towns and major cities.”

You keep hand-waving away the actual hard part. Sure, that’s a great idea, but the hard part is not deciding that’s a good idea - the hard part is defining what “rough idea” means, what “major cities” means, what “neighboring” means.

Defining that stuff well enough to actually code it in the game is HARD. THAT is the hard part, and what we keep trying to get from you, and you keep saying vague, useless stuff like that.

Try this:

“You know, having an appliance in the home that replaces the microwave in size that just creates the food (like the Star Trek replicator) is a great idea! You guys should get on that.”

Sure, that’s a great idea! But the hard part is not the shape of the appliance, or even the concept of the appliance… it’s that we don’t know how to make a Star Trek replicator! That’s what you’re doing, and it’s really annoying.

32

Sorry for the confusion ha.

So we’ve got two categories of map; mental and physical. They can use the same map screen, but if the physical map gets destroyed that information should be removed from the map.

I think Grandpuh’s system

[quote=“Grandpuh Ty, post:26, topic:13416”]I can’t suggest anything code-wise but, how does removing the initial block of revealed area and replacing it with roads(like a road map) and some randomly assigned “known” buildings along those roads sound? So kind of like having a character read a roadmap and a Point of Interest map at the same time, but what’s “revealed” is randomly selected buildings instead of pre-determined restaurants/hospitals/etc.

I’m not suggesting giving players maps at the beginning of the game, just changing the initial known area to reflect a character’s usual route or routine(which is really just picking random coordinates for buildings).[/quote]

works for the local knowledge factor. You could also designate certain buildings as “landmarks”, such as the town hall, church, and any buildings which are 2 or 3x taller then their surroundings.

So that’s “rough idea”; what counts as neighbouring? Is it possible to code that the roads to the nearest town and the nearest city are guaranteed to be visible? I would once again use Grandpuh’s system to determine visible buildings (at a lesser rate); however, what you really need is the ability to designate all buildings along a central road as a main street, and have a much higher chance of revealing those buildings.

I think the easiest way to handle map knowledge for each profession is to have a set “chance to reveal” for each type of building within a set percentage of the map, radiating out from your town. So a pizza delivery boy might travel up to a hour away, and has a high chance of remembering local businesses and in particular houses. A trucker probably travels the whole map, and has a high chance of remembering gas stations and landmarks along the major roads.

Any of that sound reasonable to code?

33

No, mostly because the game has no concept of things like, “main roads”. The result of this would be to take what we have now and hide the forest tiles that aren’t adjacent to a road. That’s not bad per se, but it also doesn’t significantly improve things.

34

So the major hurdle is coding a system to classify buildings and roads?

35

Not coding - designing.
What is a main road? A road that connects two cities?

36

It is hard to code anything that hasn’t been designed.