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[kj1225]

I like chunky salsa in terms of my burrito fillings/corn chip dips.

What the fuck are you doing to your burritos

[piecewise]

I've been rather obsessively reading about certain things recently. Certain practices. I'm realizing that it's quite hard to talk about what I'm doing when I want to keep it secret too. I've got a couple pages of history and a diagram of a site written down so far. A lot of my time is spent just reading about things related to this. Gonna work on it more today. Try to get to the next stage, get this core done and work on the reasons for movement.

[piecewise]

I still need to figure out how to do mapping...I was thinking something like this:

[NJW2000]

Nice and sprawling, but would it being too structured be a problem?

[Radio Controlled]

I still need to figure out how to do mapping...I was thinking something like this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I'd propose an alternative:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[piecewise]

Nice and sprawling, but would it being too structured be a problem?

Not sure what you mean?

I still need to figure out how to do mapping...I was thinking something like this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I'd propose an alternative:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I prefer  "Shit be fucked, yo" instead.

[NJW2000]

Makes it a bit hard to show, say, paths that go over and under each other, long diagonal paths between rows of locations, paths that go in one place and come  (underpasses, tunnels, etc), non - Euclidean stuff, really cramped ares, massively overlapping areas, etc.

But there's no perfect system, obviously.

[crazyabe]

PTW

[spazyak]

why not do a layer map system with a symbol representing something that leads up or down and a number that matches between each  pair of up/down paths to help prevent confusion

[AoshimaMichio]

why not do a layer map system with a symbol representing something that leads up or down and a number that matches between each  pair of up/down paths to help prevent confusion

That get's confusing too if people have to compare multiple images in order to know where they are and where they should go.

[Parisbre56]

Hmmm... Many people use graphs to organize data, make it easier to process. And some of those graph-creation programs offer ways to automatically organize nodes to make them look better and/or fit as many of them in the screen as possible while making them easy to understand (with varying degrees of success). I wonder if there's a program where you can define a bunch of nodes and the groups they belong to and have the program try to organize them in an easy to view form, divide them into different groups and areas. Maybe something that can be exported into a series of web pages that form a map. So you can select City A, read a bit about it, then select west district, then a plaza, then an important building there, then a floor and then a particular room, to give an extreme example. Something that will do something like the preplexicon map I had made, but do it in a semi-automated way based on the into inputted by the GM. And the GM can have a public map and unhide sections as the players explore them. Maybe have some shortcuts to important nodes visible in larger group nodes... Oh, great, I've slipped into describing perfect software now.

If something like that doesn't exist, then it really needs to be created. So many people playing games that require maps, like D&D or using nodes to represent data... Someone must have had this problem before. Should search...

[Radio Controlled]

Or you could just describe places and roads and such and count on the players to make their own maps to conveniently outsource the issue.

[AoshimaMichio]

Hmmm... Many people use graphs to organize data, make it easier to process. And some of those graph-creation programs offer ways to automatically organize nodes to make them look better and/or fit as many of them in the screen as possible while making them easy to understand (with varying degrees of success). I wonder if there's a program where you can define a bunch of nodes and the groups they belong to and have the program try to organize them in an easy to view form, divide them into different groups and areas. Maybe something that can be exported into a series of web pages that form a map. So you can select City A, read a bit about it, then select west district, then a plaza, then an important building there, then a floor and then a particular room, to give an extreme example. Something that will do something like the preplexicon map I had made, but do it in a semi-automated way based on the into inputted by the GM. And the GM can have a public map and unhide sections as the players explore them. Maybe have some shortcuts to important nodes visible in larger group nodes... Oh, great, I've slipped into describing perfect software now.

If something like that doesn't exist, then it really needs to be created. So many people playing games that require maps, like D&D or using nodes to represent data... Someone must have had this problem before. Should search...

A while ago I made a program to handle such thing. With it you can create places, link them to other places, flag them found/not found, track who's where and render whole thing into JavaScript object that you can upload publicly available. Of course, since I suck at graphical representation, it is ugly as sin. If you wanna see what it outputs, then check my test game Question. Especially the later parts.

[spazyak]

why not do a layer map system with a symbol representing something that leads up or down and a number that matches between each  pair of up/down paths to help prevent confusion

That get's confusing too if people have to compare multiple images in order to know where they are and where they should go.

it works for mall maps.

[Moopli]

If you want to describe a small group of spaces connected non-euclideanly to each other, you can do something like this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Black arrow is where the poor souls enter, and every colored arrow is a direct connection (could be an airlock, a door, simply empty space connecting two zones of a cavern, etc), where you match color and direction. Yes, if you also match direction, you can even flip someone's chirality (and have fun telling them left and right reversed until the end of time; and enjoy making them get diarrhea from eating sugar, and so on). There's a portal in the example above which does this.

It can certainly be a bit confusing to create, but it's much better than the predicament the players would be in, eh ?

Or you could just describe places and roads and such and count on the players to make their own maps to conveniently outsource the issue.

The problem here is that as GM you often want to know what the world is actually like, and that requires making a canonical map so you can decide non-arbitrarily whether someone's getting lost.