Whoa! Calibrator, you are obviously a person of great profundity. Short on time this morning, but I'll try to make a quick response to the first part.
Calibrator wrote:
Before all of the answers only revolve around automapping one should consider the original reason Matt made his post: The importance of maps for games.
I thought about this extensively before (not necessarily thinking I'm right about it ;-) and I assume that Matt mostly meant that maps are inherent in the design of many games - and especially: Game genres.
The player moving on a map - whether 2D (Ultima), pseudo-3D (Dungeon Master, Ultima Underworld) or fully 3D (recent RPGs) - and how this map (= this world) is structured is a more important aspect than the kind of mapping the game supplies the player with (automap, fixed picture or nothing at all).
Agreed. I grabbed a definition of "map" from Merriam-Webster and came up with this: "a representation usually on a flat surface of the whole or a part of an area." *Very* intriguing, if you think about it--so, since all games are on a flat surface and show a whole or part of an area, does it follow that all game worlds are maps? Or is the "map" simply what you see on the screen at any given point in the game? So what does that make a map screen? Perhaps something similar to the legend, key, or scale on a conventional map?
Also, according to the same dictionary, the etymology goes back to "napkin" or "towel." Doug Adams' "Remember where your towel is" has a new meaning now!
Whoa! Calibrator, you are obviously a person of great profundity. Short on time this morning, but I'll try to make a quick response to the first part.
Before all of the answers only revolve around automapping one should consider the original reason Matt made his post: The importance of maps for games.
I thought about this extensively before (not necessarily thinking I'm right about it ;-) and I assume that Matt mostly meant that maps are inherent in the design of many games - and especially: Game genres.
The player moving on a map - whether 2D (Ultima), pseudo-3D (Dungeon Master, Ultima Underworld) or fully 3D (recent RPGs) - and how this map (= this world) is structured is a more important aspect than the kind of mapping the game supplies the player with (automap, fixed picture or nothing at all).
Agreed. I grabbed a definition of "map" from Merriam-Webster and came up with this: "a representation usually on a flat surface of the whole or a part of an area." *Very* intriguing, if you think about it--so, since all games are on a flat surface and show a whole or part of an area, does it follow that all game worlds are maps? Or is the "map" simply what you see on the screen at any given point in the game? So what does that make a map screen? Perhaps something similar to the legend, key, or scale on a conventional map?
Also, according to the same dictionary, the etymology goes back to "napkin" or "towel." Doug Adams' "Remember where your towel is" has a new meaning now!
Matt Barton, Managing Editor
Location: St. Cloud, Minnesota, USA
Email: matt@armchairarcade.com