A mapping system
Nansen
Join Date: 2017-06-02 Member: 230896Members
Join Date: 2017-06-02 Member: 230896Members
There is maybe one thing that I think Subnautica is needing the most. A mapping system. Yes you can open the debug panel from f1 and get x, y ,z courdiantes, and you can search on google for locations etc. The problem with this is that it breaks the immersion of the game. Having the temptation of lookong up locations online is also taking away something from the exploration of the game. A mapping system would not fix this problems completely, but It may mitigate and reduce them.
Taking the scanner room as an example, it is the closest to a map function in Subnautica, and to be honest it does a good job. It shortcomings makes it in my oppinion redundant. The information it gather is limited to your base (or bases) only. Yes it is possible to study the topography of your suroundings, and the memorize how to get the desired location, but the other alterantive to just travel at random is more effective (if the desier location is a resource, and the whole area is not completely scavanged). This kinda makes the scanner room useless.
The solution:
Having a mapping section in your PDA could be a solution to both problems above. This i think should not work as in The elder scolls games where the whole map is preloaded on starting a new game, but an empty grid system, with N, S, W; E directions and a coordinate grid. In my oppinion it should not update the area around the player when you are traveling, but needed to be synched with a Scanner room to get the topography, and information in the area. It would be cool to make beacons visible to the map, but have the option to make them only visible on the map.
This would also make it so that the player is challanged to build bases other places than the safe starting area, this area it at the center of the map so having bases other places is less practical. Many will do it since it is cool looking, fun etc, but you do not have a real benifit of doing so. With the ability to update the map by having a scanner room, you would make players build bases various places to synch with the map, building on the exploration aspect of Subnautica.
Another thing that would be cool is to be able to place scanned spieces to areas to manualy map Subnautica fauna to different biomes.
I a mapping system would tie a lot of gameplay mechanics together in a nice why. Happy exploring
Taking the scanner room as an example, it is the closest to a map function in Subnautica, and to be honest it does a good job. It shortcomings makes it in my oppinion redundant. The information it gather is limited to your base (or bases) only. Yes it is possible to study the topography of your suroundings, and the memorize how to get the desired location, but the other alterantive to just travel at random is more effective (if the desier location is a resource, and the whole area is not completely scavanged). This kinda makes the scanner room useless.
The solution:
Having a mapping section in your PDA could be a solution to both problems above. This i think should not work as in The elder scolls games where the whole map is preloaded on starting a new game, but an empty grid system, with N, S, W; E directions and a coordinate grid. In my oppinion it should not update the area around the player when you are traveling, but needed to be synched with a Scanner room to get the topography, and information in the area. It would be cool to make beacons visible to the map, but have the option to make them only visible on the map.
This would also make it so that the player is challanged to build bases other places than the safe starting area, this area it at the center of the map so having bases other places is less practical. Many will do it since it is cool looking, fun etc, but you do not have a real benifit of doing so. With the ability to update the map by having a scanner room, you would make players build bases various places to synch with the map, building on the exploration aspect of Subnautica.
Another thing that would be cool is to be able to place scanned spieces to areas to manualy map Subnautica fauna to different biomes.
I a mapping system would tie a lot of gameplay mechanics together in a nice why. Happy exploring
Comments
IMHO, omitting a map in an open-world game mostly makes it annoying and time consuming to find points of interest again if you forgot to bring beacon and makes exploration more difficult since you can't see which parts of the map you might have unintentionally missed.
But I digress, this is a great suggestion and I really hope that the devs reconsider this decision and implement a proper mapping system at some point. There is some hope in that there's a Trello ticket for potentially implementing some sort of map after 1.0.
I've had some fun with mapping things out with beacons as well, but I still miss having a world map to actually see the layout of the world. I enjoy reading maps in real life, and it's disappointing to not be able to the same in Subnautica. Maybe beacons could be part of a system to reveal the map to preserve their use, I wouldn't be opposed to the player putting some effort into building a good map.
Also, beacons still don't really address the problem of indicating which areas of the map you might have unintentionally missed (unless you're putting them absolutely everywhere). I know that for myself I tend to take the same routes repeatedly to make use of landmarks, and there's sizeable portions of the map that I'm unintentionally skipping as a result.
Wrecks and precursors stuff would only appear on the map if a beacon is close enough (50m maybe), having upgrade to the room like "Biomes analysis" could visualy show the biomes on the map (colours ?)
OR
Have some kind of beacon that is anchored to the seabed.
I honestly think that the map should not work within the lost river and lava zone, for many reasons that I'm sure you can think of. I also think that beacons above the lost river shouldn't work unless you are within a certain range from them.
If that would be too easy (which I don't think it is), maybe extend your map via Sonar use? Ping around with your Seamoth or Cyclops Sonar and the area "pinged" is mapped/displayed on your map. That would explain where you got the terrain data from and would restrict your range. Maybe add a handheld sonar device for cave mapping with shorter range? You could give each sonar type a different range. Handheld having the smalest range, Seamoth Sonar beeing the middleground and Cyclops Sonar having the biggest range.
especially if your in the lava zone and the scanner room is also picking up the ceiling it really could use a way to manipulate the map/ make some parts more solid then others atm it is impossible to see anything like caves let alone the lava castle
the seaglide having its own map of sorts could link with the pda to record terrain creating a map piece by piece
The PDA should be able to create a map by having the topograpic infos.
We could gather the infos from the seaglide sonar, the Seamoth sonar and the Cyclops sonar.
We could expand this by adding a handled tool, or even better (and coslty) a HUD upgrade :
- Crafted at the scanner room specialized fabricator
- Wherever you are / look, the map syncronize in real-time
Since you have to find the fragment for the scanner room, the build cost for the room and the chip; The others sonars can still be used : I think it is balanced toward the (early solution) tool.
Maybe building a scanner room would include its own beacon, so we don't need one for our base ?
And a such, we should see the beacons in the PDA map.
Thought ?
Ha...totally ignored that we already have a "handheld" tool to map things where the Seamoth can't go. The Seaglide has it's own always actice sonar going on. Thx for reminding me.
I ended up looking for a map of the lost river and ILZ, and no I'm not sorry. I have a terrible sense of direction that not even beacons can help.
The deeper biomes being so dark make me feel lost (and an easy prey).
Signals need to be added directly to the PDA as a toggle-able waypoints.
Areas that have previously been 'scanned' by sonar (Seaglide, Seamoth, Cyclops, Scanner room/drones) should provide a toggle-able 'wireframe' view (just as sonar itself provides) to assist in caving/navigation.
I also wouldn't be entirely opposed to doing away with beacons altogether and just allowing custom signals/waypoints, but that's another matter entirely.
even if a map is implmented you could not use it, or maybe there could be an option to disable mapping during map setup (toggleable for later on and saves form older builds)
They may add it