One thing I often miss in new games is the option to have a little simple map- think Castlevania Symphony of the Night or Super Metroid and the like. Since Starbound appears to use a grid/tile type environment, I figure the map could appear to show each tile as a single pixel, and wouldn't need to be any more detailed than to differentiate between solid tiles, air or emtpy areas, and maybe liquids. Of course it would only show areas that you have explored personally. I realize that it might be difficult to program such a thing, what with trying to sort out what has and hasn't yet been seen by the player, dealing with changes to terrain, plus virtually unlimited worlds to potentially cover. Mini-maps are so great for exploring though. You can always look at the map and say "Hey I haven't been over there yet at all. I'm gonna check it out!" If Starbound could have something like this, it'd really knock my socks off. The map itself could be tech-slot or a carried item, or I guess it could even be just a passive part of the game. Could be that you'd need a new device for each planet you wish to map. e: Another option would be for it to be a piece of furniture with requirements (i.e. has to be safely enclosed, have a power supply/light source) so that you could only access the map from locations that you have set up (or perhaps some "map rooms" would be generated on some planets). I really favor this last option now.
It would be only a little addition but it would be a really good one. That was what I kinda missed in Terraria: A map.
This game is 2D so the thought of adding a mini map is kinda pointless considering that you can see below your feet and beneath the ground below you from your character. So the idea of a mini-map would have to display the whole or a large chunk of the map to be of any use and that's a lot of data to handle/display for something so small. The only other use I could think of is Mob tracking but that then reducing the challenge when you know your going to walk into something very dangerous in a second
Obviously for it to be useful at all it would need a range of vision beyond your own, or at least be able to pan around to look at areas where the player currently isn't at. I certainly wouldn't want it to show mobs or provide any kind of information not previously gathered directly by the player. And it wouldn't need to update continually. It could be just an image that gets updated only when you log in or out or arrive at a planet or something. And again, the only detail I really want to see is one color for tiles you can't walk through, a different color for ones you can, and emptiness or blackness for areas you haven't yet seen. I mean, I really have no idea how feasible it truly is or isn't. I just think it'd be terrific if it can work.
I can see this working quite well. Of course you would need the technology to create such a map. If we can have ufo's to terraform our planets, couldn't we also assume that the same ufo can map out the surface and maybe a bit into the planets core? Maybe as a later upgrade the map can color code more effectively instead of just black/white.
I was considering something quite similar myself! I was thinking of suggesting a 2d layout map at the "Home Ship" That you can click on planet and see what you've explored. E.t.c. Like a large map, which is formed from discoveries on the mini map.
I would love minimaps it's something I thought was missing in Terraria that would have been extremely useful.
In my opinion, map would be better than minimap. When you arrive to new planet, it would be revealed only surface of planet and the map will reveal as you explore the planet.
This. Much better then anything else. This this this. Minimaps would subtract from the depth of the game.
Well I'd be delighted to have a superior map, obviously. I think it goes without saying that a "real feature X" would be better than an "abbreviated feature X." That said, I don't see how making it "mini" would subtract from the depth of the game. It's the same thing but with a smaller resolution, no?
I love the idea of a mini-map, but i think a lot of people could come to rely on it to find thier way around, which takes away from the adventure of getting lost. So if they added battery life to it so you could only use it when charged, or 'no-technology' planets that it doesn't work on, it could add more... strategy to it? haha I hope they include some sort of visual navigation system into the game.
One craftable automapper with minimap-display please. Preferably the portable version would only map areas you've seen, and the "advanced" version (a late-game/end-game ship addon) would be able to send out drones to slowly map an entire planet. The regular drones would map the surface of the planet, and would also explore a little way into caves. This way they would help with finding most materials, but the really rare materials would require manually checking the deep caves, or building more expensive (and slower moving) drones.
Getting lost is really fun. I don't know if you've ever played an old NES game called Legacy of the Wizard, but the world was huge and there was no map. You'd get lost and think "well I have to hit a dead-end soon, I've been going this direction for so long," but then it'd just keep going into some even crazier area. After a while though, you could find your way around simply because of how memorable and unique each area of the world looked. If that were possible, it would be my number 1, A+, 5 stars choice, but since Starbound is going to be procedurally generated, I kinda doubt that the terrain will be chock full of memorable landmarks. This is partly why I favor a really limited mini-map, too. Since it only maps areas you've been in, and only provides the barest information, you still get the thrill of exploration. I suppose there could be a limit on how far you can zoom out, so you'd have the potential to be sort of lost. Of course, if you really love getting lost, you could just refrain from acquiring this technology or taking it with you to new planets. Another interesting option would be if these maps were buildings or furniture instead of something easily portable. Like you could set up little outposts where you could get a glimpse of where you were, but it would take a pretty real investment, and you couldn't just track your progress freely as you go along. Dang, I like that idea.
Maybe they could incorporate a sort of named grid system like in chess. So, you could have a block called B5, another G7, and so on and so forth. This way, you could actually coordinate things like attacks and what not.
i like the idea of a map, but i would like it to be 2 maps, it could me like a paper map that you would have to walk everwere and write it down and a gps that does it automaticly
Everyone should keep in mind that it was confirmed that there will be no "fog of war" meaning no hidden or blacked out fog that cover areas that you haven't discovered. So in the case of maps, it would automatically give you the layout of the entire area without censoring anything. I think there should be a map item that only lets you see a zoomed out area of the planet you're on when you equip and use it instead of having a mini map always visible. I can see players (including myself) constantly staring at it and that would take me out of the game. It probably wouldn't really be that hard to pull off. All you would have to do is either: A) Just make the game determine what the most dominant color is in said block or Make what color a block would be if all the pixels in it were mixed into a single colored pixel and C) Take the result from A or B and place that pixel on the map to represent that block. Either way should be recognizable on the map without having weird results.
His idea is more that you'd still uncover the sections on your mini-map as you explored. No fog of war still doesn't mean that you'd have to instantly know everything that was on the planet I really like the idea of a map room, and some kind of console that you can access to look at the current planets map. I always start forget everywhere I've been in these games after a while so it would be great to have a record of which areas I'd already explored and which I hadn't. It might be slightly complex to track which areas the player had already uncovered though, but even if we only got a map of the whole planet straight away, it would still be pretty useful. Any map would be better than no map! And rendering the actual map itself would be pretty simple.
Yeah, I don't think it'd be unreasonable for there to be "fog of war" on a minimap even if they've said there would be none in the game-world itself. And double yeah, I love the idea of map-rooms that you build yourself. That way you don't have to constantly carry an item or use up an accessory slot or whatever, AND you don't end up just staring at your map all the time.
