In-Game Map?

[[OTS]EchoZenLogos]

Hey everyone. I've played about 9 hours of this game so far, and in that time I've made one run to the second floor (to get immediately stomped, so I started a new game), and one run past the second floor and past skeletons and honestly I have no idea where I am now but that's okay.

While I know having good pathfinding skills is an important part of this game, and I've found a lot of fun in learning the layout of things so far, the levels so far seem so extensive that to memorize them is honestly going to take far more hours than it takes to reasonably go through them.

Which means I spend too much time backtracking.

Right now I sometimes will drag items in front of doors that lead to "dead-end" sections I've already explored, but this is far from an elegant solution.

My suggestion is as follows:

Implement either a map, or other pathfinding tools within the game. I am aware a compass exists (found two of them so far)

I'm not saying you should let us have a map that is already filled out, but perhaps implementing an in-game drawable map would be a great idea. Perhaps have "parchment" stuck around levels that allows us to draw on a single "sheet," which would let us do a bit of mapmaking as we go.

Sure, I could look up maps somewhere or alt-tab every five seconds to make marks in another program (or even just get a sheet of paper out to do so), but when this game does so well with immersion, I feel like having an in-game fillable map would be great.

In fact, you could make this even better by having some hidden maps that are hard to find which might point out the location of certain secretly hidden items. Such as by having clues in the picture that we can use to judge which "area" it might be in, and this would be even better if the clues and the destination of the "treasure" were somewhat dynamic. Though that' soptional.

If not a map, then I humbly suggest you at least allow for some item that lets us easily mark doorways and entrances we've passed, such as letting us drop some small bright stones or mark the door with chalk or something. Right now I have to manually drag items, sometimes from far away and for quite a while, to be able to "mark" where I have been, and that's a bit annoying.

I really like this game, but having some realistic ways to mark paths that I would definitely be doing if I were the person actually stuck exploring in this game would be great.

[crossed]

Originally posted by Echonian:

I really like this game, but having some realistic ways to mark paths that I would definitely be doing if I were the person actually stuck exploring in this game would be great.

You weren't prepared to get lost in a dungeon, using random junk in this scenario IS the realistic way to do it :P
You can use jars and smaller objects as long as they're visible, no need to drag furniture around. I'd like shiny stones like in Dark souls, but I don't think we're going to get anything like that.

That's said, they're working on findable ingame maps, but there isn't too much info about them yet.

[zaratan4o]

Pro tip; Pay closer attention to the environment. The layouts tend to be pretty distinctive.

From playing too much 'stare at minimap games' with every location marked we've lost a lot of coordination and actually looking at the environment. Can be difficult to shake that.

But yes, some sort of maps are planned. Probably upcoming update even will have some. Ones you can find and loot which have parts of the area.

There were some plans for a more complex system that involves characters skill and requires materials that is supposed to still allow one to get lost etc. but dunno when that will come.

[[OTS]EchoZenLogos]

Originally posted by crossed:

Originally posted by Echonian:

I really like this game, but having some realistic ways to mark paths that I would definitely be doing if I were the person actually stuck exploring in this game would be great.

You weren't prepared to get lost in a dungeon, using random junk in this scenario IS the realistic way to do it :P
You can use jars and smaller objects as long as they're visible, no need to drag furniture around. I'd like shiny stones like in Dark souls, but I don't think we're going to get anything like that.

That's said, they're working on findable ingame maps, but there isn't too much info about them yet.

Using random junk might be realistic, but with the fact you can't actually "carry" large objects and can instead just place them on the ground nearby repeatedly, this means you have to often run quite far to get an object to where it would be needed to properly mark a path.

So it's wrestling with the controls in large part that causes the problem for me. I would be fine with marking off paths in this way if it was simpler to do.

Alternatively I could just start picking up large numbers of random items that "will" fit in my inventory and putting them in doorways instead, but that seems honestly very unintuitive compared to having a better way of marking.

Originally posted by zaratan4o:

Pro tip; Pay closer attention to the environment. The layouts tend to be pretty distinctive.

From playing too much 'stare at minimap games' with every location marked we've lost a lot of coordination and actually looking at the environment. Can be difficult to shake that.

But yes, some sort of maps are planned. Probably upcoming update even will have some. Ones you can find and loot which have parts of the area.

There were some plans for a more complex system that involves characters skill and requires materials that is supposed to still allow one to get lost etc. but dunno when that will come.

I do pay close attention to the environment, and I know that most games do tend to overdo the whole minimap staring thing. Yet I'm better than most when it comes to memorizing map layouts to begin with, and even I'm getting fairly easily lost in this game.

Of course I'm sure I'll get better at it eventually, but I do find that it's a bit much right now.

Dungeons are naturally harder to navigate than a large open-world area or such would be as well, since you cannot spot "landmarks" from the distance, and to know where you are relative to other rooms requires you to essentially count your steps and form a two-dimensional grid in your head based on past room layouts. I can do this to some extent, but there are far too many rooms for me to memorize unless I progress extremely slowly.

I'll pay more attention moving forward and also use the compass more often.

[Ezkia]

Originally posted by crossed:

Originally posted by Echonian:

I really like this game, but having some realistic ways to mark paths that I would definitely be doing if I were the person actually stuck exploring in this game would be great.

You weren't prepared to get lost in a dungeon, using random junk in this scenario IS the realistic way to do it :P
You can use jars and smaller objects as long as they're visible, no need to drag furniture around. I'd like shiny stones like in Dark souls, but I don't think we're going to get anything like that.

That's said, they're working on findable ingame maps, but there isn't too much info about them yet.

You can always use your healing bottles without drinking them, you will see them really easily. :P

[[OTS]EchoZenLogos]

Originally posted by Teje:

Originally posted by crossed:

You weren't prepared to get lost in a dungeon, using random junk in this scenario IS the realistic way to do it :P
You can use jars and smaller objects as long as they're visible, no need to drag furniture around. I'd like shiny stones like in Dark souls, but I don't think we're going to get anything like that.

That's said, they're working on findable ingame maps, but there isn't too much info about them yet.

You can always use your healing bottles without drinking them, you will see them really easily. :P

I only know where one of those is though consistently, the second one I found entirely by chance after getting lost. I went to the second floor, then somewhere found stairs down, fought a skeleton, went to another floor, went to another floor I think, went back up, went up another way, went back down, eventually found a portal, and I'm there now. I think it was on a third floor that I found the second heal but I'm not entirely sure.

I know you're joking, but I would definitely love to have a glowing marker that I can use more consistently.