Mini-map

The computer game Freeciv uses a minimap, it is the bottom left corner. On this minimap the white rectangle represents the area of the map currently visible on the main screen. The different colors represent land and ocean and the territories of the different players. The white dots are the position of cities and the blackness is the unexplored areas, the fog of war.

A mini-map is a miniature map, often placed in a corner of the screen in computer games and video games to aid in reorientation. Mini-maps usually display traversable terrain, allies, enemies, and important locations or items.

Features

Usage of GPS

Often, the mini-map is aided by a GPS in order to dynamically update the current position of the player with respect to the surrounding environment, in which case the view would resemble that of a radar screen. Mini-maps have become almost standard-issue in RTS and MMORPG genres, as a notion of where the current screen lies within the scope of the game world is necessary. Most first person shooter games also have some version or variant of the mini map, often showing enemies in real time.

Dynamic discovery

In most games, the mini-map begins as a solid field of black, and the map is automatically drawn as the player discovers new areas of the game world.

Layers

Similar to custom layers in Google Earth, some team-oriented multi-player games, such as Age of Empires II or Empire Earth, allow players to draw temporary lines, signals or markings on the mini-map for others to see. Things in a fog of war portion of a mini-map may not be updated until they are rediscovered.

Automap

The automap feature in Meritous

In video games, an automap is a navigational aid used mainly for virtual worlds that are expansive or maze-like. An automap is typically an abstract top-down view of nearby areas of the game world, automatically updated as the player character gains knowledge of the environment. Automaps often display traversable terrain, allies, enemies, and important locations or items.

Early automaps typically found in role-playing video games were pause screens that stopped gameplay when opened. When the feature became popular with action-oriented games such as Doom and Diablo, the automap feature in these games did not pause the game and allowed the player to continue gameplay while the map was on screen. Early examples of video games to feature a real-time automap include Namco's Rally-X in 1980,^[1] Gebelli Software's Horizon V in 1982,^[2] and Arsys Software's WiBArm in 1986.^[3]

Automapping was a particularly desirable feature in dungeon crawls, which typically featured a dungeon with many levels for players to explore. Before automapping, players were expected to draw maps by hand as they played the game, so they could navigate through the dungeon levels later. For this reason, game boxes for early 1980s Wizardry games, for example, included graph paper.

See also

• Overworld

References

1. ^ Rally-X at the Killer List of Videogames
2. ^ John Romero, Horizon V at MobyGames
3. ^ "【リリース】プロジェクトEGGから3月25日に「ウィバーン」発売". 4Gamer.net. http://www.4gamer.net/games/008/G000896/20080325040/. Retrieved 2011-03-05.  (Translation)