Level Map

[Shobalk]

Inspired by this.

It would be cool, if technically feasible, to pull up a map in this style (FOV preserved) to view the explored area at a glance.

[Kyzrati]

Certainly valuable, yes, like a minimap rather than scrolling around. It's technically not feasible, at least not without doing one of two things:

1. Expanding the engine itself to include non-grid-based images, though this wouldn't mesh well with the game because it would be outside the whole game-side animation system.

2. Adding new glyphs that are made up purely of four quadrants that are each either solid or empty, which could at most double the view area, but be limited to a single color and be unable to show any machines or objects, just the layout.

So no ideal solution here... Also, I think it could damage the consistency of the aesthetic, though I'd still be happy to try if there were an easy way. Maybe as a post-1.0 experiment? The only option feasible for the near-term would be a command to output the entire current map to a png (actually already exists, but is just for occasional debugging purposes). Interested? Not too great for continued sessions in fullscreen mode, and I would also hope making that feature available wouldn't become some kind of crutch that ends up annoying players who feel obligated to use it, since it's not a great way to address the whole large-scale mapping issue.

Note that anyone willing to use a smaller font size than their default can increase the map view size. That's how I do map testing myself, with smaller fonts on a large monitor so I can see more, or all, of the floor's layout.

[Shobalk]

Ahh.  Interesting points.  Probably not worth it when you lay it out like that.   

On the dump command, my initial reaction was that I wouldn't use it, but it could be fun when dissecting seed runs and the like.  I personally wouldn't use it while playing.

[Kyzrati]

Yeah the original earlier discussion surrounding this feature was that it could be optionally activated to automatically go off if and when you die, to show you the explored areas of the last floor you were on.

Necro Edit: We did get map exporting this year for Beta 7. It can pretty fun to share, and useful for discussion or just reference/learning: