THE TRUTH ABOUT AUTO-MAPPING

A group of old-time Fedders were gathered in a bar, discussing the new
front-end.

"Auto-mapping!" exclaimed Trader Oldster. "We never had auto-
mapping in my day. We had to explore each location and try out all the
different possible exits to see if there were any hidden locations."

"That's right," replied Industrialist Ancientone. "We had to draw our
own maps, using pencil and mapping paper."

"You were lucky," said Adventurer Decrepit. "We couldn't afford
mapping paper; we had to make do with whatever scraps of paper we
could find lying around."

"Paper!" added Merchant Dodderer. "We used to dream of having paper.
We had to draw maps on the back of our hands with a biro."

"Luxury!" declaimed Oldster. "There were no biros in our house, we had
to carve the maps into our flesh using a knife..."

Ok, that's quite enough bad Monty Python parodies for one week, thank
you! But I have heard some grumbling from old players that having
auto-mapping makes things too easy - for example, it makes the
Martian ruins simple to explore. Well that's not quite true, because you
still have to read the room descriptions in order to figure out which
locations you don't want to walk into - the auto-mapping displays the
exit leading to the deep pit in just the same way as any other exit.

It's also worth remembering that the Up and Down exits are not shown,
so anybody who relies solely on the visible links on the map is going to
miss any place that can only be reached by going up stairs, down a
gravshaft, or into a hole in the wall. It will still be possible to have
"hidden" exits using those non-compass directions.

Anyone who has already mapped Fed II the hard way is going to be able
to whizz around all the planets and get FedTerm to auto-map without
much effort, but that only applies if you already know your way around.
New players are still going to have to think about where they are and
whether a displayed exit leads to somewhere they want to go or not!

Having auto-mapping doesn't stop you from having to explore
everywhere, but it does take out the drudgery of having to draw a map
of where you have been, and that's a big help for new players.


Play Federation II
IBgames - We Build Worlds
http://www.ibgames.net/fed2/index.html