More Map

Well the map is progressing very well indeed, and almost complete as far as manipulating the map with the Developer.

The map can be moved, rotated and zoomed as a whole.  It consists of multiple pages to separate different map areas.  Map nodes can be moved individually or within groups, and they can be resized to any rectangular shape.  Multiple selection of nodes can be carried out either by selecting/deselecting individual nodes, or by lassoing over multiple nodes.

Overlapping nodes are highlighted to assist the user in creating a clean layout.

Links between the nodes are calculated automatically.  However, if a custom link between nodes is required, anchor points can be placed along the link to create any path.

Links between nodes that require tasks to be completed first are shown as a dotted line. 

The Map ... continued

Well, the map is progressing well. So, here's what it does so far...

The map is the standard box and connector, as seen in many works of Interactive Fiction. But the ADRIFT 5 map takes this one step further, displaying different levels in a 3D display. The map can be rotated to provide almost any viewing angle. This can get a little busy, so levels other than the current level can optionally be made semi (or completely) transparent.  By optionally setting all non-selected levels to completely transparent, and rotating the map to look from directly above, the map can completely emulate simple plan view maps.

The ADRIFT 4 map recalculates the layout every time the player moves to a different location.  The map in ADRIFT 5 is pre-defined, so no longer will it suffer the problem where the layout could suddenly change when the player moves from one room to another.  Additionally, and crucially, this will allow the game designer to move each node to an arbitrary location, and create any layout they please.

More to follow later...

The Map

I've started working on the map for the next release. It's still early days, but I'm quite excited about it, and it should be a significant improvement over the v4 map.

I don't want to say too much about it at this stage as much is liable to change. More to follow later...