Games with notable maps

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R-Tape
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Games with notable maps

Post by R-Tape »

Which games stand out for their map layout? Can be in a good or bad way. What makes for a well designed map?

Fantastic Voyage is a good example of an intuitive map, even the most witless gamer will know that when they're at the bottom of the left leg, you need to go up.

I'm way overdue a visit there but I wonder if residents of London would recognise any of the map in The Great Fire of London (and I didn't say 'the big smoke).

Psytraxx must be a contender for the largest map with the smallest number of distinguishing features per screen. Having said that the map for [url=
https://maps.speccy.cz/map.php?id=SQIJ2018]SQIJ 2018[/url] is hard to navigate, but it's small enough to enjoy mapping it.
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Re: Games with notable maps

Post by bob_fossil »

Tantalus and it's follow up, Terminus had very large colourful maps.

https://maps.speccy.cz/map.php?id=Tantalus
https://maps.speccy.cz/map.php?id=Terminus

I played Terminus and the scale of the map made it very hard to get a handle on the game - alongside with that weird bouncing character that was near impossible to control.

And GTA's great, great Grandfather Give My Regards to Broad Street had a seemingly accurate street map of London built into it. You were supposed to stake out underground stations to recover tracks from a master tape that had been stolen from Macca but it was more fun to just try and drive around London and do some vicarious sight seeing.
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Re: Games with notable maps

Post by Rorthron »

I'm a fan of maps that open up in stages, preferably from a central hub, though that's a more modern style that was rarely, if ever, seen on the Spectrum. The Spectrum usually went for traipsing across endless identical screens, eg Sabre Wulf or Robin of the Wood. There was an obsession with having as many screens as possible. Some titles, eg Firelord, managed to combine huge maps with some nice variation. But generally games with smaller maps, eg Atic Atac, worked better in my view.
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Re: Games with notable maps

Post by Pobulous »

Nonterraqueous had a huge map with very few differences between rooms https://maps.speccy.cz/map.php?id=Nonterraqueous1

Tantalus and Terminus were fantastically detailed for such large maps.
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Re: Games with notable maps

Post by Wall_Axe »

Platoon needed a map to get off level one, for some reason I didnt think to make my own.
When I saw one in a magazine it made the game playable.

WEll, it was memorable to me!
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Re: Games with notable maps

Post by Juan F. Ramirez »

I've always loved the map of Cauldron 2. Wonderfully designed. One of my faves. Not just a collection of screens to play.

http://maps.speccy.cz/map.php?id=Cauldron2
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Re: Games with notable maps

Post by Sokurah »

R-Tape wrote: Sun Jan 28, 2018 7:35 pm Having said that the map for [url=
https://maps.speccy.cz/map.php?id=SQIJ2018]SQIJ 2018[/url] is hard to navigate, but it's small enough to enjoy mapping it.
Neat. I hadn't seen it had been mapped.
One of the deciding things that made me remake the game is that I realized there was only 64 screens. It seemed very doable :D

Today I'm sending off Sqij v1.1 to Psytronik Software. It has 16 more screen (all the blank spaces - except for the one in the middle of the map - has been filled out). There's also multiple sets of positions for items so it's not always the same now. And finally a few bug fixes. #ComingSoonOnTape :)
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Re: Games with notable maps

Post by PeteProdge »

Quite impressed that Give My Regards To Broad Street has a fair bit of the London Underground in it. Werewolves Of London should have been along the same lines really, but the stations were never titled, just anonymous and much of its depiction of London seemed to be repeated on a loop.

As someone who bought lots of budget games, I'm very fond of Feud, I know that map in my head. I'm so familiar with that village that completing a Spectrum game of Feud is a cinch for me. I recently stumbled on the Amstrad version, where the map has the areas we'd know from the Spectrum/MSX version, but slightly 'remixed'. For me, this makes it like a new experience. It's tougher and I've yet to complete it.

Oh and Curse Of Sherwood is a really nice touch. Nowhere near as huge as some of the behemoths mentioned earlier in the thread, but hey, it's a nice little Mastertronic title.
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Re: Games with notable maps

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Post by Einar Saukas »

I always liked the layouts of Saboteur and Saboteur 2. They make perfect sense, as if you were exploring real buildings!

Bride of Frankenstein also has an interesting layout. It's basically a castle with 2 towers at the top, a cemetery outside and catacombs underneath. Unfortunately it's too hard to notice this layout while playing the game due to some poor game design choices. I cannot avoid thinking a much better game could have been made using the same material... I may give it a try myself to redesign it someday :)
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Re: Games with notable maps

Post by Juan F. Ramirez »

Another cool maps of castles are the ones from Sir Fred and Phantomas 2 (Vampyre). Very well designed.
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Re: Games with notable maps

Post by PeteProdge »

Einar Saukas wrote: Mon Jan 29, 2018 10:27 pm I always liked the layouts of Saboteur and Saboteur 2. They make perfect sense, as if you were exploring real buildings!
Ah yes, getting to the underground trams was a really nice touch. As are all those murky tunnels with convenient spaces.
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Re: Games with notable maps

Post by Juan F. Ramirez »

Erik Phantom of the Opera show an interesting map of the Paris Opera with the stage, backstage, stalls, box seats, stalls, ... graphically is not a good game but the whole map is very well designed.
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Re: Games with notable maps

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Juan F. Ramirez wrote: Tue Jan 30, 2018 7:00 am Another cool maps of castles are the ones from Sir Fred
Juan F. Ramirez wrote: Mon Jan 29, 2018 7:08 am I've always loved the map of Cauldron 2. Wonderfully designed. One of my faves. Not just a collection of screens to play.

http://maps.speccy.cz/map.php?id=Cauldron2
Definitely agree with both of those..! Games that really had you playing, wanting to explore and see the other screens.
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Re: Games with notable maps

Post by Nomad »

From a technical standpoint I was always amazed how they packed in so much data into 'the forest' Given that its a mix of basic and assembly. I figure a similar technique could be used to make a 'crapper no-mans sky'.

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.p ... 96&id=1843

Granted its probably about as interesting as watching paint dry being a orienteering simulator for a 8 bit machine but back in the day I spent hours playing this :lol: Its one of the reasons I went into programming as an adult.

Saboteur like others said - whoever designed that map really thought it through. It was a great example of a logical map. That is one of my fav games. (and the sequel)

Maps I thought sucked.. while I like the game for nostalgic reason Mailstrom had a really repetitive map, it was so brutal if you made one mistake you screwed up the game. I can remember getting to day 6 and making a single mail drop mistake and having to go back to the very start. Saying that the graphics were very nice. I think with some more development time this could have been really good.

N.O.M.A.D had some good map design, but some of the physics used on the screens was a bit on the unfair side. But overall the game was solid. I always wanted to ask the creator how he wrote the game but I later found out he had passed away in the 90s.

Gift of the Gods had a nonsensical map, I could never figure out what was going on. But the graphics were good, Later I found out this was the tech that was going to be used in Bandersnatch and it makes you wonder if it would have had similar problems.
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Re: Games with notable maps

Post by Morkin »

Nomad wrote: Mon Feb 05, 2018 11:04 pm Gift of the Gods had a nonsensical map, I could never figure out what was going on. But the graphics were good, Later I found out this was the tech that was going to be used in Bandersnatch and it makes you wonder if it would have had similar problems.
Gift from the Gods and Robin of the Wood both had the triple-whammy of illogical/wrap-around maps (GFTG including the added confusion of being able to walk into the screen through doorways), very similar screens and random teleportation. Enough to drive you mad... :evil:
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Re: Games with notable maps

Post by Nomad »

Morkin wrote: Tue Feb 06, 2018 10:47 pm Gift from the Gods and Robin of the Wood both had the triple-whammy of illogical/wrap-around maps (GFTG including the added confusion of being able to walk into the screen through doorways), very similar screens and random teleportation. Enough to drive you mad... :evil:
Yes you are right I had forgotten about Robin of the wood. :lol: ah memories. I don't think its controversial to say Robin of the wood was a better game :D

When I first started playing Tir Na Nog and later Dun Darach I found finding my way round a bit confusing but that was a time when a fella would think nothing of mapping out stuff with paper and pencil lol one rainy Friday afternoon later I had a workable map. 8-) I think that is one of the issues that will come up more and more as people find these games for the first time. The mindset is different, nobody has time any-more or the patients to sit down and do stuff like that. The games were written under the assumption that the player would invest that kinda time into them.

We had a family friend who had compiled what was an unofficial walk through for castle master lol she had laid out the whole game, monsters, puzzles all on graph paper and the solutions in a little note book. It took her weeks. I can remember at the time thinking 'wow she really was into the game' but now I would probably consider the person a mental case. :lol:
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Re: Games with notable maps

Post by Morkin »

Nomad wrote: Wed Feb 07, 2018 12:06 am

When I first started playing Tir Na Nog and later Dun Darach I found finding my way round a bit confusing but that was a time when a fella would think nothing of mapping out stuff with paper and pencil lol one rainy Friday afternoon later I had a workable map. 8-) I think that is one of the issues that will come up more and more as people find these games for the first time. The mindset is different, nobody has time any-more or the patients to sit down and do stuff like that. The games were written under the assumption that the player would invest that kinda time into them.

We had a family friend who had compiled what was an unofficial walk through for castle master lol she had laid out the whole game, monsters, puzzles all on graph paper and the solutions in a little note book. It took her weeks. I can remember at the time thinking 'wow she really was into the game' but now I would probably consider the person a mental case. :lol:
...At least with GFTG you had the tears you could drop to track your route back, but I think even them they could get (re)moved by Clytemnestra...

Yeah, there are a few games that I reckon I could potentially complete without POKEs/snapshots if I had a decent map - the trouble is, I've got a thing where I don't really like using maps I haven't made myself, feel like I'm cheating somehow (but that's just me). It's not cheating, just that I don't get the same satisfaction from finishing something.

I remember painstakingly mapping Bard's Tale on the Amiga - it was fiddly (especially when you got teleported/spun round) but ultimately quite satisfying, especially the bit where (minor spoiler) you have to look at a bit of your map to find a clue how to proceed to the next section.

I've been meaning to spend some time trying this again, maybe picking a game and mapping it through to completeness. But I guess nowadays you're right, it's about having time to do it...
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