User blog:Obliquely/Cartostrophe

I've wanted to do a few things for town listing and navigation, but it always reminds me that I need to make a decision about the system I published. In short, do I use it, or do I trash it completely?

The game itself uses raw coordinates, and therefore so do players. Sometimes. What usually gets used is "Respawn and I'll show you."

Any other system is meaningless during gameplay because it would take more effort to explain than it was worth unless you already used it a lot. Coordinates are easier because they are available, but also irrelevant for teleportation.

There are reasons to want a system for broader areas with simpler names or codes that don't need so many digits and commas and negative values. But it only matters if you care about how things are related on the map, which is almost never. How many players know or even care where THE ZOO is on the map? Co-ordinates are good enough because you almost never use them.

8bitMMO town zipcodes seemed like a good idea at the time I published them, but they have bugged me ever since. I made some compromises to simplify the math, but since no-one will ever have a reason to bother with it, the compromise has no benefits, only downsides. If there is to be any such system, it would have very limited application, and should be as correct as possible. Either way, the current system has to go.

But realistically, people only think spatially about the world at smaller scales &mdash; streets and buildings. The big picture is more a curiosity you can enjoy when not actually playing.

So I'm pulling the plug on zipcodes. I enjoyed developing them, but they are no use to anyone, so I'll remove them.