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Maps In Progress / Re: FlyingArmor's Map Projects Present and Future
« on: May 12, 2020, 11:32:36 pm »
Thanks Terra! I'm glad that you find the pressure plate portion easy to understand. I just noticed a mistake with room 12 where the step markers are in the wrong instances of the room, so I'll be sure that's fixed for my next update.
I totally understand your frustration with how to depict the dungeon levels, as I had had them as well. I was at first wanting to show them in the more traditional way rather than in the squares I eventually put them into, but after examining some of the levels from this dungeon as well as others, I opted for the square layout partly for saving space as you mentioned, but also so it would be easier to see where the ladders connect between levels without the need for alphabetic markers. Another consideration was for the Up and Down spells, as it would be easier to see where you will end up between levels. Also, there are levels that wrap around from all sides anyway, and if mapped out traditionally would end up with maps that go on forever in all directions, so confining those ones to squares is a necessity (the fifth level of Dungeon Wrong being one such).
But I do understand they're a bit more difficult to read. When I was going through this dungeon to verify where things were as well as the pressure plate stuff, I was looking at my map and having to double and triple check that I was going in the right direction a few times. Luckily with Ultima III, the dungeons don't wrap around on themselves, so they'd be easier to make maps for as well as read, though each level is four times as big (16 x 16 tile grid as opposed to 8 x 8 in Ultima IV).
It's not too hard to stick with something you love, so while the user interface is rather clunky and would be considered very unintuitive nowadays (reading the manual is certainly mandatory for a game like this!), I do love it for its world-building and the art style the PC version exhibits. And I suppose a hindsight reason would be because it is not nearly as brutal as a lot of CRPGs were in the 1980's, such as Wizardry or Pool of Radiance, to name only two examples. After seeing a number of videos highlighting retro RPGs from that era through Matt Barton's channel on Youtube, it gives me an extraordinarily great appreciation for not having to pool and split gold constantly, memorize then rememorize spells after they've been used via camping, or roll then reroll your stats over and over again to make sure your character has a relatively decent balance for their character class, then rinse and repeat five more times. So comparing it with those games, Ultima IV isn't that bad. Plus having a save editor really helps!
I totally understand your frustration with how to depict the dungeon levels, as I had had them as well. I was at first wanting to show them in the more traditional way rather than in the squares I eventually put them into, but after examining some of the levels from this dungeon as well as others, I opted for the square layout partly for saving space as you mentioned, but also so it would be easier to see where the ladders connect between levels without the need for alphabetic markers. Another consideration was for the Up and Down spells, as it would be easier to see where you will end up between levels. Also, there are levels that wrap around from all sides anyway, and if mapped out traditionally would end up with maps that go on forever in all directions, so confining those ones to squares is a necessity (the fifth level of Dungeon Wrong being one such).
But I do understand they're a bit more difficult to read. When I was going through this dungeon to verify where things were as well as the pressure plate stuff, I was looking at my map and having to double and triple check that I was going in the right direction a few times. Luckily with Ultima III, the dungeons don't wrap around on themselves, so they'd be easier to make maps for as well as read, though each level is four times as big (16 x 16 tile grid as opposed to 8 x 8 in Ultima IV).
It's not too hard to stick with something you love, so while the user interface is rather clunky and would be considered very unintuitive nowadays (reading the manual is certainly mandatory for a game like this!), I do love it for its world-building and the art style the PC version exhibits. And I suppose a hindsight reason would be because it is not nearly as brutal as a lot of CRPGs were in the 1980's, such as Wizardry or Pool of Radiance, to name only two examples. After seeing a number of videos highlighting retro RPGs from that era through Matt Barton's channel on Youtube, it gives me an extraordinarily great appreciation for not having to pool and split gold constantly, memorize then rememorize spells after they've been used via camping, or roll then reroll your stats over and over again to make sure your character has a relatively decent balance for their character class, then rinse and repeat five more times. So comparing it with those games, Ultima IV isn't that bad. Plus having a save editor really helps!
