HI everyone!

I'm working on an caveman FPS/RPG/simulator.

The game doesn't have classes or levels. Instead it tracks experience in 52 different skills, and applies bonuses to appropriate situations based on relevant skill experience.

In the previous version, the mapmaking skill governed the distance at which unexplored areas of the world were revealed. but this isn't really realistic. Just cause you're good at making maps doesn't mean you can know there's a lake over the next hill without even seeing it.

So I'm trying to think of a new effect for the mapmaping skill.

The game currently does not have a separate player's version of the map, it only tracks which parts of the world map are explored and should be displayed.

A more realistic effect would be to have mapmaking affect the accuracy at which info was copied from the world to player map. But this requires a separate player's map that can record landmarks at arbitrary locations.

At the moment, most landmarks such as caves and volcanoes all appear at the same hard coded coordinates in a 5 mile by 5 mile map square. the map itself is 500x500 map squares.

I turned off the mapmaking skill effects months ago, but have yet to think of a clever new effect that doesn't require a separate player map.

realism is a selling point in the game, so any effect must make sense from that standpoint.

any ideas?

So, is there any sort of map at all? Player map, minimap, anything? From what you posted, it sounds like maybe not. If that's the case, and realism is a selling point, and you don't want to include a "map" in any traditional sense of the word, why keep the mapmaking skill?

yes there's a world map. there's also player's versions of the world and local maps, but all it does is (at the moment) is track what part of the world or local map should be revealed, sort of like a bitmap mask. the "player's world map" is simply an "explored" field in a map square record (struct) in the world map. when you draw the player map, its the same as drawing the world map, but you either draw a map square, or an "unexplored" texture, based on the "explored" flag. For local maps, it uses a separate "explored" bitmap mask type map for each map square. a simple 2d array of flags for every 100x100 foot square in a 5x5 mile map square, indicating whether its explored. when the local player's map is drawn, it draws everything in the map square then draws over the unexplored parts with an "unexplored" texture.

You could reasonably display the entirety of certain "landmarks" even if only a portion of them are visible. While this would be an abstraction of sorts, you could reasonably argue that a skilled mapmaker could look at some portion of a river, for example, and based of the speed of the water, the breadth of the river and so on, formulate a reasonable idea of how far the river might go and where it might come from. By the same token someone could see one face of a mountain and be able to draw reasonable conclusions about the opposite face even though they can't see it directly.

In game terms, if someone skilled in mapmaking comes across a river, they could instantly see the entirety of that river, whereas someone unskilled in mapmaking would just see the bit in front of them.

From the sounds of things, I would go with taking the world map and use mapmaking to remember areas you have been. Most fog of war type games have regions you have never been to, which show up black, darkened regions you have been to but cannot currently view (as the case with several units and their lines of sight, you can't see a whole map unless you have units across the map), and regions you can see, which are where your unit(s) are and can see. Why not use this for mapmaking? Areas you have explored, the darkened ones slowly fade back to black, and depending on how your mapmaking skill is depends on how long, or how far out your darkened areas remain visible, particularly terrain wise, such as knowing that there is a lake over the hill since you have been there and it is still within "character knowledge" through the mapmaking.

right now it does automap and fog or war type stuff like that. But this is an RPG, not a FPS, so the world map view does not show units. Its more like the world map in oblivion, complete with fasttravel etc. So having persistent terrain features fade over time doesn't make sense, as its still within "character knowledge" as you say. In the old version mapmaking controlled the range at which things get automapped, but this isn't really realistic either. the game is a caveman simulator, paleolithic technology only. So no technologies to help determine whats beyond visual range. therefore, you should only be able to automap what you can see in 1st or 3rd person view, and no amount of mapmaking skills would improve this in the real world. So far i've only come up with 2 options: add a player map that can be inaccurate, or lose the mapmaking skill. I'm hoping for a door #3, but i suspect there may be none.

You could reasonably display the entirety of certain "landmarks" even if only a portion of them are visible. While this would be an abstraction of sorts, you could reasonably argue that a skilled mapmaker could look at some portion of a river, for example, and based of the speed of the water, the breadth of the river and so on, formulate a reasonable idea of how far the river might go and where it might come from. By the same token someone could see one face of a mountain and be able to draw reasonable conclusions about the opposite face even though they can't see it directly.

In game terms, if someone skilled in mapmaking comes across a river, they could instantly see the entirety of that river, whereas someone unskilled in mapmaking would just see the bit in front of them.

OK, now this has possibilities, sort of a hybrid approach. Mapmaking affects automap range, but only for terrain where it makes sense. hmm...

map granularity may be an issue though. but maybe not. if you spot a mountain range, its probably not unreasonable to be able to map its position out to a distance of say 15 to 30 miles (3-6 map squares) or so. rivers perhaps to 5 miles (1 map square). but the entire range of mapmaking skill levels (zero to hero) would have to translate to a small automap range (zero to 6 map squares for impassable mountains, zero to 1 or 2 map squares for a river, etc). say you have a 1st level mapmaker, they can automap to a range of zero. IE they have to enter the map square for it to get marked as explored. and a level 100 mapmaker (a high level character), can automap impassable mountains to a range of 6, mountains to a range of 4, hills to a range of 2, and flowing water to range of 1. that would mean that all of a sudden at level 50 (or 100) you can automap flowing water twice as far, but no effect until that level. hence the granularity issue. might be ok though. from a RTS point of view, its perfectly acceptable. if this were an f-22 flight sim? it would probably be "OK", but just OK. A separate player map that can be inaccurate would be better. Of course in a F-22 sim, you'd have onboard maps already downloaded from satellite, with no inaccuracies, and no mapmaking required.

So far this looks like the best suggestion, short of biting the bullet and adding a separate player map that can be inaccurate.

I played an rpg years ago where the cartography skill determined the detail shown on the minimap. At level 1 you could only see the different types of tiles. Level 2 showed walls. Each level gave more and more detail. Higher levels showed doors, stairs, points of interest, enemies, etc..

Why not include something like that? The greater your level the more detail is on your map. You might only be able to record locations of rivers and mountains. But as you get better you could mark down caves, hunting grounds, place to gather herbs, and other important features.

Don't know if this would be possible with your game, but what about the map making skill affecting the *resolution* of the visible map? Ranging from, for example, 1 for 1 pixel granularity down to a really high value where the player is only seeing blobs.

Kind've like this...

?

Just a thought, and good luck.