Revealing the Map as you Explore (starts hidden by default)

[Sebster7]

I think it would be really cool and exciting for newbies if the default MMapper map started essentially blank with just the room you login to, and was revealed as you explored the terrain (think Sid Meier's Civilisation or Sid Meier's Colonization or many other games).

How this would work:

1. Rooms get a new property, 'visited' or 'revealed' or 'explored' or some similar meaning name, datetime, default [].
2. All rooms with this new property = [] (i.e. not set) are hidden on the map.
3. All rooms where this new property is true become unhidden on the map, with their exit flags, mob flags, obj flags, etc. becoming visible.
4. When you enter a room (and MMapper knows where you are), or scout a room, the new property gets set to the current real-world time (probably based on your local computer time), meaning it now evaluates to true and the room is revealed as per number 3.
5. Exit keywords/flags for unrevealed rooms would not be shown.
6. Find Rooms would only search revealed rooms.

Why?

1. Why a timestamp rather than just using True? Well, as a future possible feature, we could add the expanding map to a time-lapsed video journal that can be viewed in MMapper or exported and shared with friends. This journal could also include @mdrcode 's new adventure journal log, so it shows the expanding map and the character's progress (think Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon, and many other strategy games).
2. We shouldn't be giving newbies the keys to the kingdom before they even log in for the first time. They should have to explore for themselves, and if they don't, they are missing out on a lot of the excitement and magic of MUME. If newbies have the entire map and all their contents visible, certain quests just become too easy too (easier than the creater of the quest intended): travelling quest, and other quests that involve finding something or someone.
3. Revealing the Map as they go shows them their progress and achievement in exploring the MUME world, encouraging them to explore more.
4. But this is better than not sharing a map with them at all, because (a) creating a new map is an effort they may not want to go to, and (b) some 'helpful' person will just tell them to download F****'s map, without realising this is spoiling the newbie's enjoyment.

Optional extras:

1. a button to temporarily reveal the whole map, but only while you have the button held down with the mouse! (So it's not particularly practical to 'cheat', but you still can if you want to. This also allows someone to take screenshots of the entire map.)
2. Instead of a simple property: an array with {RevealedBy: CharacterName string; RevealedDT: timestamp datetime}, i.e. MMapper would get your character name from GMCP, and use that and update the map with both the character name and the revealed time of the room. This would allow for the adventure journal to have properly separate time-lapsed video maps per character, as well as separate progress per character. It could also be used to avoid the export map / hack property to true and re-open map exploit described below for most people - they would have to do it for each character they play.
3. A preference option to reveal the map for all characters if you have explored it with 1 character (of course this reverses the exploit protection - but it still allows the separate time-lapsed video maps by character).

Discussion: I realise that someone will probably come up with a way of exporting the map, setting the visible property to true everywhere so that it can be reimported with the whole map visible. Well, never mind, so long as we don't share that map with newbies or returning players with MMapper. MUME is getting too easy as a result of map sharing, and two of the attractions of MUME are its difficulty and its mystery - its challenge. Let's return to those in an approachable way, without the tedium of everyone having to create their own map. Without pain, there's no adrenaline. Without investment and progress (whether that's in-character or out-of-character knowledge), players don't stick around. This feature means there is more chance of pain (dying), more investment (exploring), more progress (revealing the map), and more adrenaline (fear of the unknown).

Anecdote: A couple of years ago, Elagorn went all over Arda (using MMapper) while still below hero level, probably felt he'd explored what he wanted to explore, did the Istar quest and then quit. He's not been on for over 1 year and 4 months. He didn't invest enough and it was too easy to explore for him without danger and he got bored. (That's my theory anyway.)

• Finwë