The "Local Map" is 'useable' outdoors, but inside, in multi-story building, it is TOTALLY useless!!!!!

All you need to do is limit the Local Map to displaying ONLY the level it's on at the time - simple fix it seems to me!

Of course it would be nice to add Up/Down arrows to be able to review floors above or below you that you have already explored, but I would be a happy camper with just having the single level displayed!!

I suspect that this is not possible for modders to fix,or it would have been done by now, but maybe I'm wrong

I don't think the game (or the local map) can recognize and sort different heights in interior cells as different levels.

Povuholo is right. The game divides the Local Map by cells, not individual floors. If it was, it'd likely have to be built similiar to how Wasteland Cells are done, and that'd likely kill the game technologically speaking.

I still don't understand why (or how?) you would even have an interior map of a wrecked building. :confused:
presumably, the pip has outdated terrain maps of the U.S., but interior maps to anything but a large hotel, stadium, or public (City Hall) buildings never made any sense to me.

The Pipboy generates the map as you explore the area.

And if the above answers are right, well that just svcks!! But there still must be away to have a usable indoor map:

1) Manually generate maps for each floor of each interior location that is multi-story ( a big job, but NOT insurmountable), and 'teach' Pipboy to use the pre-generated maps

2) label interior cells as to level # it's on -[ likely would have needed to have been done in original game design, and SHOULD have been done then (poor game design!)]; this assumes that the cells them selves do NOT consist of stacked modules that would span multiple floors. Obvious exceptions would be the large factory areas that are 2 or 3 story mostly open space

SCIENCE! :laugh:

Edit- @mrmike- I don't think you understand what was explained. It has nothing to do with 'poor game design' as you put it. But rather, it has to do with limitations on the game. If they built EVERY map on the game like this, the game would more than likely have to svck up more resources to play than it does now.

If they had (during engine development) attached 1 extra variable to each cell in an interior location, and that variable represented that cells "floor level" , that variable could be read as Pipboy reads the cell layouts to generate the map display as each cell is "exposed" or uncovered from the 'fog area' . It would actually be less in-game processing required :

1) Read newly explored/exposed cells for their floor level:
2 )if not on current floor - IGNORE, do not process for inclusion in map
3) if on current floor, then process into map display

Of course, then the question of map storage comes up: how does the map remember that an area has been explored for display?
And it would have required more work up front to label cells with floor level

But then It'd have to be a entirely different cell, as in entering Door to Level 2 not just walking up stairs.

Cells like a stairway would not need nor have a floor level variable - map would continue to display existing floor level UNTIL you step into cell with a different floor level, i.e., off the stairs into the actual floor of that new level

I always thought quite the opposite - useless outside, useful indoors.

Gamebryo as far as I know, works like this by cell, not by self proclaimed 'level'.

This isn;'t going to change. the indoor maps were exactly the same in FO3. I had many difficulties too in some buildings. I would assume if they had any plans of changing the way it works they would have done it already for NV since it was this way in FO3

The last decent indoor maps I have seen were in Daggerfall of all games. They were a 3D map that you could rotate and pan around to see it at different angles. And, these were maps of randomly generated dungeons, so you needed a map of the place. However you could plan your routes and see where you were. Good thing as some of those dungeons were just huge.

Morrowind had semi decent maps, at least you could tell something was on a different level if you looked at it.

Starting with Oblivion and now with Fallouts, the interior maps are pretty frustrating.

Not only that, neither bethesda nor obsidian designed this engine.

MrMike, despite you trying to make it sound so simple, you genuinely have no idea what you're talking about. Technologically, what you're suggesting just isn't possible without something like a new ray tracing system JUST for greyscale interior maps.

With this engine, it's impossible to have multiple cells over the Z Axis. So that shoots your idea down before anyone was convinced it had wings.

There's simply just NO WAY TO DO THIS.

Yep, it's just the same as it was in Fallout 3

http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f10/anything24/IntMap.jpg!

It's a function of the Pip-Boy - It maps interiors as you move through them, it doesn't have them in there already

You're right, I have zero knowledge of game design, just some basic programming knowledge, and some common sense about what is desirable in a role playing game - which includes a usable map system! Which this game engine does not have

Do you mean that in a building, all cells contain multiple floors, up to the total number of floors in a building? If so, this would mean that the original cell design is much harder than it would have been if cells were limited to a single floor level. That seems like the wrong trade-off to have made.

Well, you've convinced me it will NOT get fixed in this game engine, mostly because of poor design choices made during engine development - like optimizing it strictly for 3D outdoor environments.

Not a happy camper
Mike

What, exactly, is a CELL??
Pipboy obviously discriminates between indoor and outdoor cells already, so there is some flag there which tells it not to calculate/display the inappropriate cells, i.e., do not display adjacent outdoor areas when indoors, and vice versa

THIS is gonna break your experience? Seriously?

It's usually not a big deal, but every once in a while, a map is needed, or else you can spend (waste) a LOT of time searching for the exit, or a way to a particular room. RPGs have generally had mapping included for years, that's usable mapping, NOT the abortion of indoor mapping in FO3/FONV

FO3 interior pipboy maps were the exact same way, this is nothing new, yes they are a bit rubbish but it's hardly a new feature of FONV and it's not 'gamebreaking' in any way, shape, or form.

Somehow, they manged to make functional 3-D maps in Elder Scrolls II:Daggerfall, which was over 10 years ago. Daggerfall had more than its share of technical problems, but the game was able to generate interior maps of 3-D that were actually useful. Maybe for Elder Scrolls V and/or Fallout 4 (hitting the shelves fall of 2013) they can return that functionality.

I've seen Commodore64 games that mapped different levels.

...

It is possible to patch it on top of the engine. Problem is: Is the engine optimized enough? Do they have the manpower to add missing features to the game? etc etc..

The alternative would have been quadruple the cell requirement for interior cells. That, or removing the possibility for multi-level buildings without loading. Granted, yes, this game is certainly optimized for outdoor environments, the trade off here for true Z axis freedom is HUGE. When working with an engine, I would never - ever - ever, give up z access freedom for quadruple interior tile requirements or constant loading so you could have better interior maps.

Probably because it was a different game engine that was not truly 3D.

Spend some time in the GECK, it's not a simple task to say "this is a floor, this is a wall, this is a ceiling". About the closest you can do is look at the NavMesh, which is fairly orderly, but may not reflect reality enough not to be confusing to the map's user. What they have now does a decent enough job about 90% of the time, at least well enough that you can figure out that you are in the SW corner of the ruined building and your marker is in the NE corner.

Unless you design your game engine in a way that the map maker has to lay down planes that are tagged as "this is a floor, include it on the map", you have to do a best-guess by doing a look-down at the map and attempting to render out what you see. But that makes it impossible to use static models as part of the scenery, or as bridges/walls unless you tag them too.

Your best hope is that they improve the algorithm for generating the maps. Don't hold your breath.