This new year has proved rich in cool things for the community to sink their fingers into. ADMINISTRONG, Creature Feature, and an as-of-yet secret mappack southpaw is organizing that I guarantee will blow yours minds. Well, I was starting to feel a bit left out, and also like I hadn't contributed anything major to the community for a while, so I concocted WitSoF, the latest in mapping innovation!
WitSoF is somewhat like The Epic (look it up on metanet.2.forumer.com) crossed with those Choose Your Own Adventure Books you might've found in your parents' attic. The idea is pretty simple: I have created a map with two exits. This map is like a small acorn, a seed that will continue to grow into something large and beautiful. You, being a talented mapmaker I'm sure, play and finish the map and then remove everything except the ninja and the exit door you finished at. Then you create a new map with at least 2 exits in which the ninja starts on the door from the last map. The first door still being there is an aesthetic thing, mind. You shouldn't be able to go through it. You should, of course, be able to go through the other doors. Then you or someone else may choose to build a map . Think of this as a labyrinth of sorts: One door leads to a new room, where there are other doors to go through, but you cannot go back through the door whence you came!*
Important Example!
*IF YOU FINISHED HERE
THEN YOU SHOULD START YOUR MAP LIKE THIS
Sound cool? Great! The beauty of this is that there are always exits available. The possibilities are endless. Now, a few questions I can see coming up:
Is this a contest?
No, no it is not. This is a cool thing I've always wanted to do, and want you to do to! Because without you it won't go anywhere. Ideally, I want people to make a map for this whenever they feel like making a map. All it requires is working around a set starting point and more than one finishing point. It's really not that hard.
There could be maps with a lot of exits. How do we distinguish them?
Excellent question. I used to have a really clunky solution to this, but once a few maps were made, I realized that all the exits could be called with a simple upper/lower/center left/right/center. So that should do.
How will we avoid an exit accidentally getting two maps made for it?
Well, the maps will go one NUMA, so whoever wants to do an exit should call dibs for it before starting. Of course, if it's been forever and they still haven't posted a map up, consider the exit back up for grabs. When the inevitable happens and two maps are made for the same exit, the map submitted later can either be delisted/changed to the traditional form (one exit), or can be marked Alternate.
While we're tangentially on the subject, I'd like to note it would smooth some thins out a fair bit if the author of a given map adds the URLs for covered exits to the description, along with a note of which exit it's for.
If this all seems a bit confusing, it's because I'm terrible at explaining it. The thing itself is as simple as can be, I assure you. I did a kind of poor job explaining WitSoF on IRC at first, but once people got it they were into it in a big way. I'm sure I haven't answered all your questions, or even all your good ones, so let me open it up to queries now. Or you can just get mapping. That would be preferable, actually.
*rewritten/illustrated by southpaw. <3
