3.2. Map

| Chapter 3: Place |

| 3.2. Map

A work of IF contains many spectacles and activities, and these must not all present themselves at once, or the player will be overwhelmed. One way to spread them out is in time, by having them available only as a plot develops, but another is to spread them out literally in space. The player has to walk between the Library and the Swimming Pool, and thus bookish and athletic tasks are not both presenting themselves at once. There have been valiant "one-room" IFs, and it forms a respectable sub-genre of the art, but most works of any size need a map.

Inform, following IF conventions, divides the world up into locations called "rooms", connected together by so-called "map connections" along compass bearings. Thus:

> The Library is east of the Swimming Pool.

The example Port Royal 1 develops a medium-sized map from such sentences. This develops in Port Royal 2 to include connections which bend around, allowing the rooms not to lie on an imaginary square grid.

Because it is useful to group rooms together under names describing whole areas, Inform also allows rooms to be placed in "regions". Thus:

> The Campus Area is a region. The Library and the Swimming Pool are in the Campus Area.

Port Royal 3 demonstrates this further. A&E shows how regions can be used to write simple rules which regulate access to and from whole areas of the map.

Many old-school IF puzzles involve journeys through the map which are confused, randomised or otherwise frustrated: see Bee Chambers for a typical maze, Zork II for a randomised connection, Prisoner's Dilemma for a change in the map occurring during play. A completely random map takes us away from traditional IF and more towards a different sort of old-school game, the computerised role-playing game with its endless quests through dungeons with randomly generated treasures and monsters. This style of map - building itself one step at a time, as the player explores - can sometimes be useful to provide an illusion of infinite expanse: see All Roads Lead To Mars.

While the standard compass directions are conventional in IF, there are times when we may want to replace them without other forms of directional relationship. Indirection renames the compass directions to correspond to primary colors, as in Mayan thinking. The World of Charles S. Roberts substitutes new ones, instead, introducing a hex-grid map in place of the usual one.

See Going, Pushing Things in Directions for ways to add more relative directions, such as context-sensitive understanding of OUT and IN

See Room Descriptions for ways to modify the room description printed

See Ships, Trains and Elevators for rooms which move around in the map and for directions aboard a ship

4
| Example Port Royal 1 A partial implementation of Port Royal, Jamaica, set before the earthquake of 1692 demolished large portions of the city. |
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| Example Port Royal 2 Another part of Port Royal, with less typical map connections. |
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| Example Port Royal 3 Division of Port Royal into regions. |
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"1691" We should go ahead and do all our room definitions first... Fort James is a room. "The enclosure of Fort James is a large, roughly hexagonal court walled with heavy stone. The walls face the entrance to Port Royal Harbour, and the battery of guns is prepared to destroy any enemy ship arriving." Thames Street End is south of Fort James. "The ill-named Thames Street runs from here -- at the point of the peninsula -- all the way east among houses and shops, through the Fish Market, edging by the round front of Fort Carlisle, to the point where the town stops and there is only sandy spit beyond. Most of that stretch is full of people at all hours. Imported goods are moved off of ships and taken to distributors; exported goods are brought to be loaded; and there is one public house and brothel for every ten inhabitants. Lime Street, wider and healthier but not as rich, runs directly south, and to the north the road opens up into the courtyard of Fort James." Lime Street is south of Thames Street End. West of Thames Street End is north of Fisher's Row. The description of Fisher's Row is "A waterfront street that runs south towards Chocolata Hole, where the small craft are harboured. It also continues north around the tip of the peninsula from here, turning into the east-west Thames Street." Thames Street End is down from Fort James. Up from Thames Street End is nowhere. Water Lane is east of Thames Street End. "Here Thames Street -- never very straight -- goes steeply southeast for a portion before continuing more directly to the east. Water Lane runs south toward Queen Street, and facing onto it is the New Prison -- which, in the way of these things, is neither. It did serve in that capacity for a time, and in a measure of the villainy which has been usual in Port Royal from its earliest days, it is nearly the largest building in the town." East of Water Lane is a room called Thames Street at the Wherry Bridge. Thames Street at the Wherry Bridge has the description "To the southwest is the fishmarket; directly across the street is the entrance to a private alley through a brick archway." The Fishmarket is southwest of Thames Street at the Wherry Bridge. The Private Alley is south of Thames Street at the Wherry Bridge. "You're just outside the tavern the Feathers. To the north, under a pretty little archway, is the active mayhem of Thames Street, but the alley narrows down to a dead end a little distance to the south." The Feathers is inside from the Private Alley. "Newly built with brick, replacing the older Feathers tavern that used to stand here. It sells wines in quantity, as well as serving them directly, and the goods are always of the best quality. There's a room upstairs for those wanting to stay the night." The Feathers Bedroom is above the Feathers. Thames Street by the King's House is east of Thames Street at the Wherry Bridge. "The King's House is reserved for the use of the Governor, but he does not live in it, and it is frequently being rented out to some merchant so that the government will at least derive some value from it. It is nearly the least interesting establishment on Thames Street, and the crowd -- which, to the west, is extremely dense -- here thins out a bit." Thames Street before Fort Carlisle is east of Thames Street by the King's House. "Here Thames Street, formerly a respectable width, narrows to a footpath in order to edge around the front of Fort Carlisle, underneath the mouths of the cannon. There are no buildings on the harbour side of Thames Street at this point, which means that you have an unusually good view of the ships at dock, water beyond, and the Blue Mountains rising on the other side of the harbour." South of Thames Street before Fort Carlisle is a room called Fort Carlisle. The description of Fort Carlisle is "Handsomely arrayed with cannons which you could fire at any moment -- though of course there are ships at dock which might be in the way." Queen Street End is south of Lime Street. Queen Street Middle is east of Queen Street End. Queen Street East is east of Queen Street Middle and south of Private Alley. Queen Street at the Prison is east of Queen Street East. Now, if we like, we can create regions to distinguish the coast from the portions of town that aren't on the water: Inland is a region. Queen Street End, Queen Street Middle, Queen Street East, Private Alley, Lime Street, and Queen Street at the Prison are in Inland. Waterfront is a region. Thames Street before Fort Carlisle, Thames Street by the King's House, Thames Street at the Wherry Bridge, Water Lane, Fishmarket, Fisher's Row, and Thames Street End are in Waterfront. There's no rule that regions must be contiguous, so we could if we like make a region consisting just of the two forts: Military Holdings is a region. Fort Carlisle and Fort James are in Military Holdings. And we might make the Feathers Tavern part of the Inland area, but within its own subcategory: Tavern is a region. It is in Inland. Feathers and Feathers Bedroom are in Tavern. Now the index map will be colored to reflect our regions, and later in the game development we would be able to make rules that affect just one region at a time.

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| Example A&E Using regions to block access to an entire area when the player does not carry a pass, regardless of which entrance he uses. |
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125
| Example Bee Chambers A maze with directions between rooms randomized at the start of play. |
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| Example Zork II A "Carousel Room", as in Zork II, where moving in any direction from the room leads (at random) to one of the eight rooms nearby. |
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| Example Prisoner's Dilemma A button that causes a previously non-existent exit to come into being. |
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| Example All Roads Lead to Mars Layout where the player is allowed to wander any direction he likes, and the map will arrange itself in order so that he finds the correct "next" location. |
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276
| Example Indirection Renaming the directions of the compass so that "white" corresponds to north, "red" to east, "yellow" to south, and "black" to west. |
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| Example The World of Charles S. Roberts Replacing the ordinary compass bearings with a set of six directions to impose a hexagonal rather than square grid on the landscape. |
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