MAPS

             An article from Mary Scott-Parker

I thoroughly enjoyed Bev Truter's article on map-making - yes,
Bev, I was still reading at the end.  It struck a responsive chord
and I thought I'd attempt something similar[ish].  I'm a bit of a
map freak myself and at the moment I'm playing Captive.  Now to
text adventurers this will mean nothing - but when I say that
there are six official missions, [after that the game apparently
goes random and heads off into infinity] each one with 10 bases,
you can see that we are talking about at least 60 bases.  Not
impressed? - well, each base often has several levels covering
hundreds of locations, so the real picture is hundreds of maps and
thousands of locations to draw - and that's just the first 6
missions - the game goes on for as long as you have lead in your
pencil and some dedicated adventurers have reached the Olympian
heights of Mission 8 or 9 [requiring a separate room for the
storing of the maps!].  Of course some people insist that Captive
can be played without mapping - [impossible James!] - but speaking
as someone who can get lost after turning three corners I don't
believe this for an instant - and you would have nothing to look
back on to relive the experience!

My maps, Bev, almost fit into the 'neatness freak` category, at
least they would if I had more time. As it was, yesterday, my
husband remarked that his breakfast bowl was still unwashed from
the day before....ahem!

@~Alan sometimes remarks in the evening that he 'recognises'
@~washing up from the day before! ... Sue

You were quite right when you said we need plenty of room for
map-making.  Our dining room table has the Amiga spread-eagled
over it, while the kitchen table is the cartography centre [the
trouble with my family is that they are totally non-supportive and
keep wanting to eat at various intervals throughout the day].

The problem with Captive maps is that they get soooo big!  The one
I'm currently working on is bigger than A3 and still growing. With
RPG maps graph paper is essential - I used to map on sheets of A4,
half-centimetre squared paper [the kind in maths books] but now I
need to use A3 cm squared graph paper because, for some strange
reason, they seem to be making the squares much smaller than they
used to!  With an A3 sheet, if you start at the wrong spot and
immediately go off the page you have an awful lot of wasted paper
- so ideally I try to see a bit of the level first to determine in
which direction it will extend. The problem with that is that you
tend to get absorbed in the gameplay and next thing you know
several hours have passed and you have thousands of tiny, often
unfathomable, hieroglyphics to translate and transfer on to the
`neat` map - having to replay the thing to see what you wrote in
the first place!

I don't know if you've read the excellent 'My Family and Other
Animals` by Gerald Durrell, but he was obviously on our wavelength
where maps are concerned. In the book he describes Geography
lessons with a tutor and gives a superb [much shortened here]
description of the maps they made - "Our maps were works of art.
The principal volcanoes belched out such flames and sparks that
one feared they would set the paper continents alight; the
mountain ranges of the world were so blue and white with ice and
snow that it made one chilly to look at them.  Our brown,
sun-drenched deserts were lumpy with camel humps and pyramids and
our tropical forests so tangled and luxuriant that it was only
with difficulty that the slouching jaguars, lithe snakes and
morose gorillas managed to get through them.....etc, etc. They
were maps that lived....in short, maps that meant something".

Now there's a man after my own heart!  What's so special about
mapping Captive, that you need to be so fussy, I hear you cry -
surely one corridor is like the other ten thousand - well, yes
.... and no.  To start with there are the doors ....  So what ....
isn't one door like another? In short - no.  I colour all doors in
fluorescent blue felt-tip but differentiate between door types
with various red marks: there are button doors, that you open and
close by pressing a button; shimmer doors, that open and close at
a touch and reflect anything thrown at them - ie. if you shoot at
a baddie who happens to be standing in front of one such door and
you miss for some reason [like he dies sooner than you thought]
you will receive your bullets [or cannon-balls!] back with
interest; wall block doors, which lift up and often conceal
passages going in two or more directions; doors which, once
opened, cannot be closed; iris doors, which are opened by pressing
each of the four corners in the correct order [for that particular
door] and roller-wall doors, where the whole wall-block is on
rollers and moves forward with a push - all these doors have to be
marked in a different way [by the fussy mapper] to allow them to
be identified on a map.

In addition, there are ladders going up and down to other levels,
which are coloured in green fluorescent pen and there are
elevators [sometimes with 5 levels] to be coloured in orange.
Shops are coloured in pink, and, as they all sell different
things, their wares should be noted by the conscientious [I pass
on that one]. Some rooms are totally dark and can only be
negotiated by wearing a special optic to allow limited vision,
these areas I colour with a dark green crayon and water filled
locations are coloured in blue crayon, with little blue biro

waves. Areas of fire have little red flames drawn on them, and the
flame centres I colour with fluorescent orange, for extra effect.

Cubby holes occur all through Captive and their contents need to
be noted - they range from a bag of gold to a handy weapon, from a
ball to a switch or a number-coded lock, which needs to be noted,
along with whichever obstacle the lock or switch removes - be it
locked door, flame-block, wall etc.  There are beam-locks operated
by computers dotted about and all need a code word to activate
them.  Certain grids on the floor [neatly drawn with a ruler and
black biro] close walls behind you and the release panels must be
sought and noted on the map for future reference. Spinners,
squares which spin the party round to disorientate them, are
marked with a red S, with little arrows on the two pointed ends,
and hydrants are noted with a red H.  Holes in the floor are black
circles and ceiling holes are plain circles. Power points,
necessary for powering up the droids' chests and an essential
part of the game, are marked as little red boxes on the
appropriate walls, so that they can be located quickly in an
emergency.

Unlike text adventures, monsters and baddies cannot be noted
because they are seldom in the same location twice, unless they are
locked into a small space waiting for some unwary adventurer to tap
a cubby-hole, opening up a secret wall behind ... and in that case
I write their identity in the appropriate space on the map, then I
don't need to make the same mistake twice - if they are of the
swift, vicious type I leave them entombed.  When I find the room
which houses the generators I reach joyfully for my yellow
fluorescent pen to colour in the appropriate nine squares - because
each base ends with the blowing up of the generators, before
heading off for the next base. Time to buy the explosives from the
nearest shop - detonate them in the generator room and leg it out
of the base before the explosion sets the entire base on fire ...
if you can remember the long, complicated route to the entrance
that is ... but then, of course, you mapped it, didn't you?

And don't people ask silly and annoying questions when you are
trying to transfer a complicated set of hieroglyphics, symbols and
squiggles from one page to another....
     "Mum, what's for tea?"
     "Erm......thirteen, fourteen, fifteen....turn left, through
     the button door, one, two, three.."
     "MUM, WHAT'S FOR TEA...I'M STARVING."
     "Eh, you can't be - you've just eaten."
     "Mum, that was yesterday..."

Ah, well, there must be something useful I can do instead of
boring the pants off everybody.  I could wash the breakfast
dishes I suppose...but first, there's elevator two to map and it
has five levels - hey...who's pinched my pencil!

Mary S-P 23.2.97






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