A brief history of the development of game maps

In the Port of Piraeus in Athens, Greece, "tour guide" Kassandra walked from a trireme to the dock. There is a bronze ram on the bow, operated by 170 oarsmen, which has served Athens since ancient times and was common from the 4th to 7th centuries BC.

Kassandra was a mercenary in the 5th century BC. She walked along the straight cobblestone streets. Along the way, she saw many wooden carts filled with bags and a man touching an anvil. blacksmiths and women making ropes, while waves crashing on the shore, buoys crashing and the calls of seagulls can be heard in the distance. When she arrived in the city's Marble District, craftsmen were casting famous warrior statues from white stone. "They are very skilled at their craft," Cassandra said.

“We created Piraeus using a Hippodamian urban design style, a grid layout that is very common in modern North America,” Hall said. “We strived to be accurate. To achieve this goal, Hall and his team created base maps for different regions. Then put them into the virtual world.

"Assassin's Creed: Odyssey" has reshaped the Aegean Sea region. The right side of the picture is the map in the game, and the left side of the picture is the real map of the Aegean Sea. The cities in the game (the part marked in pink) are larger than the actual one. Much bigger

Maps have always played a key role in video games, sometimes as the primary user interface and sometimes more as a reference tool for players. While maps are becoming more and more important to many games, they are still a relatively niche topic and not many people know how to draw maps for games.

In March 2016, Spanish architects Enrique Parra and Manuel Saga published an article titled "The Cartography of Virtual Space: "The Power of Maps in Video Games" blog post, they wrote: "Sometimes maps represent real locations, sometimes they are simply fictional places, but they all contain a graphical language specifically designed to fit the overall tone of the game. ”

“Players know how the place they live is represented in the game, which also makes the cartography and architectural language closer to the general public”

Whether it is a traditional two-dimensional environment. Or the modern 3D world. In most video games, the player's perception of space is very important. As the gaming industry has grown rapidly since the 1970s, players have also needed to keep up with the times and be able to understand the environments they simulate.

In the early days of the development of the industry, many people would draw their own maps to facilitate finding their way in the game. Although designers are starting to include base maps, players still do it. For example, VGMaps.com's "The Video Game Atlas" contains approximately 40,000 maps created by players for more than 2,000 games.

The map that comes with "Super Metroid" (left in the picture) and the map made by players (right in the picture)

Jonathan Leung, founder of the VGMaps.com website, lives in Edmonton, 39-year-old points out that the maps players have created for games such as Super Metroid and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night are great and even more useful than in-game maps, fully demonstrating the two-dimensional Details of different places under the space.

Most experts believe that the maps in the above-mentioned games were milestones in the early stages of industry development. In addition, the birth of new categories will also push developers to change the way they create maps, such as the early role-playing games of the 1990s.

“The original Pirates! (by Sid Meier) was very interesting because it came with a physical map that you had to use to measure in the game to figure out where you were. location,” said 40-year-old Konstantinos Dimopoulos. Dimo Paulos claims to be a game city planner and designer. He recently completed the book "Virtual Cities: An Atlas & Exploration of Video Game Cities" (Virtual Cities: An Atlas & Exploration of Video Game Cities) manuscript.

Demopoulos lives in Athens, Greece, and has a PhD in urban planning and geography, as well as a master's degree in urban and regional planning, so he has many unique insights into map design in video games. In Dimo ??Paulos' view, many classic game works have had a revolutionary impact in the field of map design.

For example, the RPG "Final Fantasy" released in 1987 was the first game to use a map similar to the real world; games such as "Deus Ex" (Deus Ex, 2000) added real-world geography Locations, the latest entry in the series produced by Eidos Montreal studio, features detailed flat maps for each level. In sandbox games like the "GTA" series, players can move freely in a huge 3D world and use navigation similar to GPS to determine location and plan routes.

Comparison of the maps of "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild" and the first generation of the series

In addition, he also pointed out that in the "Civilization" series of strategy games created by Meier, Players can develop their own civilization while making their own map of the earth.

Demo Paulus is particularly fond of Nintendo's "The Legend of Zelda." Since the first game was released in 1986, this series has attracted many enthusiastic players. "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is fun because it uses a map to guide you." Players can use the map for traditional navigation, including adding custom markers, or to explore terrain that interests them. "Nintendo used some of Kevin Lynch's ideas for urban map creation in non-urban settings. That's great."

Demo Paulus also Very impressed with the "Assassin's Creed" series. "To the extent that they succeeded in rebuilding cities like London, Ancient Athens, Florence, etc. They were really good at it."

"For the glory of Athens, we must unite!" Ancient The Greek statesman Perikles pleads to a dozen men in loose burqas as Kassandra looks on.

"For your glory!" a bystander threw a tomato onto the stage, with the glorious monument of the Acropolis looming in the distance.

"The Parthenon is glorious, Berix, but at what cost? How many triremes could we build with that money?" A priest named Kleon Ricks' general retorted.

This scene took place on Pnyx in the center of Athens, the Greek capital, which is regarded by many as one of the most important origins of the birth of democracy. In "Assassin's Creed: Odyssey", Mount Pnyx is just one of more than 50 real historical sites recreated by the development team.

Mount Pnyx in "Assassin's Creed: Odyssey"

As an action RPG, "Assassin's Creed: Odyssey" was produced by Ubisoft Quebec Studio in October 2018. After its release, it received many nominations for the best of the year awards. In addition to the accurate restoration of historical relics, the "Assassin's Creed" series is also well-known for its open world environment, successfully shaping an area of ??approximately 250 square kilometers near the Aegean Sea.

"The map is the most important thing," Hall said. "One of our goals is to create a game world that players can recognize from a bird's-eye perspective, such as the Peloponnese, which is shaped like a hand, Gulf of Salamis, Attica, and Macedonia ”

Like true mapmakers, Hall and his team made the necessary generalizations and simplifications to replicate reality. A balance is achieved between providing players with a playing environment. Therefore, although "Assassin's Creed: Odyssey" accurately reproduces the urban landscape of ancient Greece, the scale of the cities is larger than that of rural areas. It is essentially a mix and match between two different sizes.

"The game world is much smaller than the real world, but we still wanted to convey a sense of depth and scale. We also wanted to shorten distances so players would enjoy moving around."

To create basic terrain mapping, Hall's team used a digital elevation model based on NASA data. The team includes topographical, landscape and architectural artists who use Google Maps, Google Earth, ordnance survey maps and historical maps to polish the work. At the same time, they also worked with a historian to identify themes for each region based on historical data on wealth, trade, population, rulers and wildlife.

“We created paper maps of each area and annotated key landscapes, cities, forts, religious sites and wildlife. This data was used to create a basic topographic layout, Forming the basis of the game world"

Hall's team made several drafts of the map for "Assassin's Creed: Odyssey"

After completing the production of the paper map, the team will They were shared with the other developers on Assassin's Creed: Odyssey, and the writers designed the storyline around the map. In order to adapt to the various needs put forward by the design team, the map will go through several rounds of revisions before finalizing the final version.

"We worked very hard to create a believable world, but it's a video game. In terms of technology, art and level design, we had to make choices. It's not a reversal of history. Re-creation, but imagining it.

”

“Maps made for video games are different from real-life maps, but when you look up the map, you will most likely need to use the same techniques. "Said 33-year-old video game research professor Simon Dor.

Dor once used the history of player strategies in real-time strategy games as the subject of his doctoral thesis and wrote a thesis around "StarCraft". He believes video games can develop map-reading skills that many people underestimate.

“To understand space better, you have to know how to read a map. Some video games rely on it so much that you have to learn to read a map in order to play. These skills can also be used in real life situations. ”

Players can intuitively learn some basic mapping knowledge from video games, but more importantly, developers can also apply the methods of making game maps to other fields. Doyle pointed out that drones Manufacturers are recruiting user interface designers with game development backgrounds to create UI systems for drones.

In addition, games using real geographical locations can allow players to master richer geographical knowledge. " If you have played a game that reflects European history, you will be familiar with most of the countries in Europe because you have experienced them in the game. ”

Lynn Moorman, a professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Mount Royal University in Calgary, feels the same way. She explored this in her doctoral thesis How do people use digital maps to understand geographical concepts and find that "when people explore Google Earth, they use the same navigation strategies as playing video games"

Coincidentally, in March 2018, Google announced that it would. The map data and API are open to games, allowing developers to use its real-world geography, geometry and more than 100 million 3D buildings. This means game studios can import the data directly into Google-based game software and adjust or modify it as needed. Add elements.

Google’s announcement follows the unprecedented success of the augmented reality mobile game Pokémon Go, which launched in July 2016. Google map data and augmented reality technology have been downloaded more than 800 million times so far. In the past two years, "The Walking Dead: Our World" and "Ghostbusters: World" have been downloaded. Augmented reality mobile games using similar systems such as (Ghostbusters World) and "Jurassic World Alive" have also entered the market.

Back in Athens, Cassandra is heading towards the Athens Guard. Propylaea. She chose the Sacred Way, an ancient Greek road that connected Athens to Eleusis, one of the most important religious sites.

"As we were creating. Always as close to reality as possible. "This way, players can walk the same path that people in the 5th century B.C. once walked," Hall said. "

As Kassandra passed through the gate, a huge bronze statue of Athena Promachos appeared before her, casting the Parthenon into shadow." Once at the top, you can see the most beautiful view of the city. "Howl said as he maneuvered Cassandra to climb towards the top of the statue.

At the top of the statue, Cassandra turned south, facing the Aegean Sea. She saw an eagle on the top of the statue. Soaring in the air, slowly flying over the vast city, and then flying towards the rugged mountains in the distance. Beautiful islands dot the sea like a postcard, and the sun seems to be slowly sliding towards the horizon... The scene in front of the player is used by the Hall team. The map is as real as ever.

This article is compiled from: canadiangeographic.ca

Original title: "Inside the intricate world of video game cartography"

Original author: Aaron Kylie