How do you like to find your way?

[AllenWL 186]

Well, I was browsing the suggestions, and I read a bit of something that interested me.

Namely, these three comments.

We obviously play very differently. I frequently need to make early game note of locations of resources well before I have cows, flux, and or even copper tools.

I would say that you are definitely part of the minority of players who uses this play style. In my experience, the average person who plays TFC uses some sort of minimap mod with waypoints to note locations of resources.

pah! minimaps are cheating! XD So, really, is f3. And much as I like this idea, some more things I'd rather have implemented than tablets or advanced books: sextants, for determining latitude (instead of "cheating" and reading z position from f3); a compass that actually points north, not towards spawn, for orienting during stormy weather or underground when the sun and moon can't be seen (again, instead of f3); a thermometer, for measuring the ambient temperature (the pattern should be clear now).But yeah, Kittychanley is right. Sorry, Zaecus, but we're a pretty small minority on this sort of thing.

 

Personally, I don't like F3 or minimap mods because they feel really off to me, and having floating maps and coords and magic glowing waypoints feels so wrong in a mod meant to be about survival and beliveability.

 

Right now, I make do with marking my way with torches, tilled dirt, and memorizing where everything was.

 

But personally, I would like  a north-pointing compass, a way to tell the coords in-game, and a way write them down, and possibly maps that show the surrounding area(and possibly the coords and where north is as well, but not your location)

Because travelling long distances relying or memory and sparsely-placed markings is not really a good idea.

 

So, the point of this much-much-longer-than-needed-post is....

 

Would you guys like a way to tell your position and write down where everything is in the mod, or do you guys prefer to use things like F3 and minimap mods?

[landryx 36]

Well for my part, I usually just try to memorize the environnement. It's really lazy haha but with a 5x5 rooftop in thatch with support beams above the 2x2 mineshaft for we see, it's cool.

[GopherAtl 22]

A sextant could let you do the equivalent of get your Z coordinate, but X coordinates are a bit harder to justify, believably, in-game. This was a problem not solved in reality until well into the renaissance, and that solution depended on accurate time-keeping and the change of time zones as you travel east and west, so this isn't even possible in the flat, constant-time world of tfc. Still, just a way to check your position on one axis reduces the problem tremendously.

 

I always quite liked vanilla maps, though they would feel a bit magicy in TFC unless they were tweaked a bit, and made a bit more expensive. I would love something that worked basically like the vanilla minimaps, but instead of giving a perfect map of every block, auto-generated something more abstract - showing lakes and rivers, perhaps mountain peaks, forests, and artificial structures, and perhaps allowing the player to manually mark locations of interest on those maps with labels and some set of pre-defined symbols. That's a huge ask, though, and I wouldn't want to try to program it myself, so I won't be holding my breath or asking for such a feature, cool as it might be to have.

[SmurfyDoess 1]

if I get you right, then you might want to play with something like this mod, the antique atlas. It's pretty cool, I must say

http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/mapping-and-modding/minecraft-mods/1292324-1-7-2-1-6-4-1-5-2-forge-antique-atlas%C2'>

[Terex 108]

I make heavy use of mapwriter, not for believability but for playability. I'm not a patient player and having no map is just frustrating.

[AllenWL 186]

if I get you right, then you might want to play with something like this mod, the antique atlas. It's pretty cool, I must say

 

no thanks.

While it looks neat, and is an item, it still shows your position on the map, which I don't like.

I mean, it's pretty much just a fancy-looking hardcore minimap mod, you know?

 

What I'd like to do something among the lines of

check my coords/area, find the coords/area on the map, check where I want to go, find the direction using a compass/the clouds/sun/whatever, then go.

But I'm not sure if other people would like that, which is why I'm asking

 

I always quite liked vanilla maps, though they would feel a bit magicy in TFC unless they were tweaked a bit, and made a bit more expensive. I would love something that worked basically like the vanilla minimaps, but instead of giving a perfect map of every block, auto-generated something more abstract - showing lakes and rivers, perhaps mountain peaks, forests, and artificial structures, and perhaps allowing the player to manually mark locations of interest on those maps with labels and some set of pre-defined symbols. That's a huge task, though, and I wouldn't want to try to program it myself, so I won't be holding my breath or asking for such a feature, cool as it might be to have.

I quite liked vanilla maps as well, except for those magic pointers that tell you where you are.

Though, for the 'more abstract' bit, what if it still did blocks, but slightly differently?

I'm thinking something like, instead of the color of the blocks on the maps depending on the colour of the blocks, it depends on the 'type' of block.

 

Like, all 'man-made blocks(planks, fences, cobble, smooth stone, etc)' show as gray, leaves and logs show as dark green, grass/dirt light green, etc.

The color could also depend on the altitude, like the higher the blocks are, the darker the color or something

[AwesoMan3000 4]

I usually pick flowers and arrange them in a pattern pointing the way home.

[landryx 36]

nice ideas with the flowers!

[TonyLiberatto 364]

When I first started playing minecraft, long before there was minimaps, I try everything. I would mark the way with cobble. I would build tall columns. None of those are really helpful for the long  travels we have to do in TFC.

In real life you can have a Mountain Pick very far in the distance and that helps you to orient yourself. We just don't have unique natural formations in TFC that would work for orientation. After getting lost too many times and building 10 different bases just because I could not find the previous I just decided to use a minimap and play the game.

I am against features like teleporting and flying. Also a mark on the map is one thing but something that shows on the world as a beacon is just cheating.

I wish the world gen was more flatter. with a lot less ups and downs..Yes we should have river canyons and  beaches should be 5 blocks lower than the terrain. Then you go walking and there is mountains in the distance.

The problem is because of the way minecraft works you cannot really see that far.

I have optifine set to extreme view.

[GopherAtl 22]

if I get you right, then you might want to play with something like this mod, the antique atlas. It's pretty cool, I must say

hmm. That's pretty awesome. Not exactly what I was picturing, but might be about as close as is practically achievable, at least in terms of the map's appearance and detail level. I'll have to try it out some time, thanks!  

While it looks neat, and is an item, it still shows your position on the map, which I don't like.I mean, it's pretty much just a fancy-looking hardcore minimap mod, you know?

I partially agree; for a survival-oriented scenario like tfc, it seems a bit OP that you make one and it will just constantly auto-map the whole world as you explore. As for showing your position, I probably wouldn't object if you had to use some tool, like a transit, to determine your position relative to landmarks on the map first.

What I'd like to do something among the lines ofcheck my coords/area, find the coords/area on the map, check where I want to go, find the direction using a compass/the clouds/sun/whatever, then go.But I'm not sure if other people would like that, which is why I'm asking

Hmm. I'd be ok with having to either keep track of your position by keeping an eye on the map, or having to carry and use some additional tool(s) to determine your position to locate it absolutely on a map. Not at all sure this would go over well with the average map-desiring player, though!

I quite liked vanilla maps as well, except for those magic pointers that tell you where you are.Though, for the 'more abstract' bit, what if it still did blocks, but slightly differently?I'm thinking something like, instead of the color of the blocks on the maps depending on the colour of the blocks, it depends on the 'type' of block. Like, all 'man-made blocks(planks, fences, cobble, smooth stone, etc)' show as gray, leaves and logs show as dark green, grass/dirt light green, etc.The color could also depend on the altitude, like the higher the blocks are, the darker the color or something

eh, I dunno. To my mind, block-scale maps with perfect, even if limited, detail don't really even make sense, except as a kind of magic. Ideally I'd like to be able to make maps of a few scales, but the very smallest, or highest-zoom, maps would still cover an area much larger than you could see standing in one place. They would give you rough shapes of things like coastlines and mountain ranges, not precise block-level contours. you would be able to try to match a cove or river or mountain range to one on the map, but not able to positively identify block-level features/positions.I'd actually be ok with mapping not being fully automatic. Ex, you might have to place a transit, use it to get hard angles to at least two prominent landmarks, then go to one of those landmarks and repeat this, to effectively "seed" a map, and from there, you have to keep doing this to expand the mapped area, connecting new landmarks to existing mapped landmarks. The map could populate only within and around the areas inside these triangles of landmarks. This would make map-making, not something that magically happens while you otherwise explore, but something you had to actually set out specifically to do. And if these maps can be copied and shared, then this becomes another valuable skill to add to the list of things a robust TFC community needs. A sensible and responsible mapper would likely place signs at the points they used as landmarks in their map generation, naming landmarks on the sign and on the map, giving people who are completely lost a way to figure out where they are, if they have a map on them.Of course, this is all still pipe dreams; even if 50% of players loved this idea, the other 50% would carry on using their minimap plugins and undermine the mapmaking trade. :/