Cartography Tips?

[Joe]

I think I'll be drawing my own map as I go along.

Any tips for someone new to the grid based dungeon crawling genre?

[Karkarov]

Yeah a few.

1: KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid, when you need to put stairs going down just draw an arrow pointing down. If it is a hidden door just draw it with a hashed line. Yada yada. If you want to do something pretty and artistic do it when you aren't actually playing the game.

2: Try to start your map somewhat near the middle of your graph paper and be ready to use extra sheets for a given floor if you need to. You never know what part of the map you will start in after all, you may be
in the extreme north east corner or somewhere slightly south of the middle. Dungeon's are not always straight up and down.

3: Use the graph paper and bring lots. Draw in pencil. Do not hesitate to erase as needed.

4: Again remember if you want to make your maps look cool and professional so on so forth you can re draw them after you have turned the game off. In fact I promise you this is exactly what you will have to do if you want to go the really good looking all on one page route.

[telgor]

2: Try to start your map somewhat near the middle of your graph paper and be ready to use extra sheets for a given floor if you need to. You never know what part of the map you will start in after all, you may be
in the extreme north east corner or somewhere slightly south of the middle. Dungeon's are not always straight up and down.

I may be wrong, but I'm sure I remember a dev mention in another post that the first level starts in the top left area of the map. Although I do have the memory of a goldfish. Can someone confirm this?

I plan to do a very rough map on the first play through, then refine it afterwards. Flap jack was kind enough to make a black and white version of the graph paper which can be found here - viewtopic.php?f=11&t=222 I'm going to use that for a rough version of each level, then use the coloured graph paper for my final versions

[Darklord]

I may be wrong, but I'm sure I remember a dev mention in another post that the first level starts in the top left area of the map. Although I do have the memory of a goldfish. Can someone confirm this?

That's right.

Daniel.

[Karkarov]

I may be wrong, but I'm sure I remember a dev mention in another post that the first level starts in the top left area of the map. Although I do have the memory of a goldfish. Can someone confirm this?

That's right.

Fair enough, however that is only the first floor of what.... a 13 floor dungeon? Personally I plan to print out some plain old regular graph paper and when it is time for "touch ups" I am going to redraw it all on a new sheet, scan or photograph it, then do some touch ups in an image editor maybe even adding some pics to it. That way I will have a nice little pic to show at the end of each floor when I do the Let's Play on the tube.

[jfunk]

It was also confirmed that the X,Y coordinates of each level are the same. So if you go down stairs at Level 1 X,Y you can safely start your Level 2 map at X,Y

That being said, I do have a more specific question about stairs. Do stairs themselves exist in a tile all their own, or do they behave as an object that drops you straight down from the tile you are standing on while looking at the stairs?

[Joe]

It was also confirmed that the X,Y coordinates of each level are the same.

Thanks for that. That's a useful tip

[Jack Dandy]

Here's a tip- When I go over the borders of the page, I'll simply dot down a number and continue the dungeon on the opposite side of the page, while drawing that number there as well.

Then, I'll know more or less where I should be going even if I go over the borders!

[Jesugandalf]

I have another tip, that may be useful only for me but that helped me a lot years back when real videogames were made and automap was a concept not even imagined: try to get yourself something to eat and something to drink while mapping, it's likely a long task and having to go to look for food or drink can be really annoying and distract yourself

[Karkarov]

That being said, I do have a more specific question about stairs. Do stairs themselves exist in a tile all their own, or do they behave as an object that drops you straight down from the tile you are standing on while looking at the stairs?

Even if they are an object instead of a tile it is all the same for mapping purposes, that is the tile with the stairs on it. This is mostly a design thing anyway. I think in this case the stairs are a physical object, this is just based on what I have seen in video's. Meaning they will always be against a wall, or at the very least never in an intersection where you "have" to step on them. Hopefully ;p.