Mapping Hacks

Model Interactive Spaces #95

Chapter 9, Mapping with Other People

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HACK

HACK

#95

Model Interactive Spaces Hack #95

Make a Multi User Dungeon out of the real world.

Once upon a time, there was a globe in a “room” in a MUD, now lost in the

misty dawn of the Internet. This globe contained a gazetteer, and as you

spun the globe and peered into it, you could examine the detail of the real

world. MUDs, Multi User Dimensions (or Dungeons), are built out of com-

plexes of linked rooms and spaces, described with text and navigable by

compass directions. In some MUDs, players can build their own quarters,

extend the common world, and script objects within the game world, which

have interesting behaviors.

The map is the key to the MUD, and popular ones have satellite web sites

featuring maps created by players. MUD maps are more cartogrammatic

than cartographic, conveying some features of space diagramatically, that is,

approximately but not “spatially accurate” in a literal sense.

Figure 9-5 shows a classic MUD map, from an online world based on the

Discworld novel series. A beautiful collection of these MUD maps has been

compiled at http://maps.discworld.nu/.

In a MUD, each room or open space is a node, linked by lines that represent

the connections between nodes. We can give each node in this space meta-

data properties that affect how it can be used in the online world: who cre-

ated the room, who is allowed ...