This impressive work is the final miniature from our Pat Sweet series, and it's worth the wait!
This kit comes with everything a very small vampire hunter would ever desire for the slaying of equally tiny vampires!
It includes four books (all handstitched, with readable text) on the Uncanny, including Compte d'Erlette's Culte des Goules and a journal, that ends in a crimson splash, and the warning to the next owner “DO NOT LET HIM LIVE”.
"Stained walnut box partially covered with draped brown kid leather with brass fixtures, filigree protective corners, clasp, and bat-shaped handles. Maker's label on interior of box: Jos. Nightengale & Sons, Supernatural and Metaphysical Supplies, Mordwyth, Yorkshire." --Catalog
The one thing I really want for the next Dragon Age game is to have a minimap that you can toggle on and off, just like the one in Dragon Age Origins.
And I know its basically against the law on Tumblr to criticize anything about Dragon Age 2 but the mini map sucked. It was too big. And it could not be toggled off which ruined screenshots.
I'm sorry if this offends anybody but it sucked!!!! And while I grateful the minimap in Dragon Age Inquisition was less obtrusive you still could not toggle it off.
How much resources does it take to create a minimap that can be toggled of and off? It really should not be that difficult.
This impressive work is the final Halloween miniature for this season, and its worth the wait!
This kit comes with everything a very small vampire hunter would ever desire for the slaying of equally tiny vampires!
It includes four books (all handstitched, with readable text) on the Uncannny, including Compte d'Erlette's Culte des Goules and a journal, that ends in a crimson splash, and the warning to the next owner “DO NOT LET HIM LIVE”.
It also provides some practical tools, such as a bottle of holy water, a silver cross, a compass, and a pistol in a hostler. There is a removable tool rack with hooks holding a mallet, a crowbar, and a mirror, and a bunch of sharpened stakes, a head of garlic, among other things!
This treasure trove was created by Pat Sweet, Printer & Binder, Riverside, California. Read more about it here.
Check out UI Special Collection’s seasonal Youtube Series Freaky Fridays and watch the adventure undertaken by the Hawkeye Ghost and some famous folks here in Special Collections to find this mini item in time for the Halloween pop-up exhibit, where you can see it for yourself Thursday at the Main Library from 11AM to 1PM.
Alright, this is going to be the first in a series of... articles? I don't know if I'd go that far but the point is a bunch of words I write about stuff in video games in terms of how they can be done right, wrong (and examples) or otherwise. I'll be aiming for one every Sunday or so if I can, and maybe someday I'll come up with a name for this.
Since this is the first one I'll start off small and what better way to do that, by which I mean what better way to include a pun immediately, than with the subject of minimaps?
Minimaps are something that have become an increasingly common addition to the HUD, especially as game worlds have become increasingly large and therefore increasingly in need of things that can stop the player becoming too lost. At least that's one reason why they're used.
Before we get too much into that though, I'd like to look at a different context minimaps are used in - multiplayer (competitive) games. Here, getting lost is obviously not really a significant issue unless it's someone's first time on a particular map or something, and even then it really depends on what sort of game it is, as for example in an RTS like Starcraft 2 the perspective makes getting lost only doable if the most complexity you can handle is a calculator.
Instead, the main purpose of the minimap in these games is for the other kind of information it supplies, such as where your team mates are in a MOBA. Here's an example of it in Awesomenauts (which by the way is an awesome game):
If you look to the minimap in the bottom right corner, you'll find a perfect example of one done right. It doesn't provide a super detailed one, just a simple map layout because that's all that's necessary. It shows your team's turrets, which alter a bit to signify that they have taken a significant amount of damage (though you can't see it here) as well as a warning sign that appears when they are attacked. It shows where your team mates are with coloured blobs - again, that's all that's necessary because you only have two team mates and most of the time you can deduce who's who - as well as enemy blobs if they're in sufficient range.
A quick glance at this minimap will instantly tell you a great deal, especially for those who enter a match later on as they can more or less instantly tell who's winning and so on, and not in a way that means the player's eyes are glued to it. As a result, one of the most frequently told piece of advice to newer players is to look at the minimap: in other words, a clear example of one being done right.
But anyway, the area that all this mainly pertains to is in the big, open world games, typically RPGs and MMOs. Like I said earlier, it isn't hard to see why they're necessary; if the player is lost then they aren't very likely to be enjoying themselves, and will stop playing the game because of it.
...Or at least, that's the logic some developers seem to have. The thing is, that's not really true: exploring and getting lost is a huge part of the fun for many, if not most, people. That's why you hear phrases like "It's not the destination that counts, it's how you get there", and why games like Skyrim are so popular. This element of exploration is lost when a player's eyes are glued to the minimap, following the path drawn out for them.
It's a problem that I particularly notice in MMOs due to the abundance in quests that lead you to a certain location on the map, and this can be even worse in games like WoW where flying mounts mean you can literally just fly in a straight line over all possible threats and altering course while necessary. Which is boooooring.
Guild Wars 2 I feel does this a little better for a few reasons, even aside from the fact that mounts aren't a thing in it. For one thing, it does questing a bit differently in that they are usually less specific and involve doing things in a general area. Not that it's perfect or anything; you'll still find yourself looking at the map a lot but generally the 'main' map so that you can look for relevant locations and the various warp points used for quick travel. As a result, the game feels like it's designed a lot more around exploration, and you tend to be looking at the actual game more than a bit of the HUD.
Minimaps undoubtedly can be very useful. Being able to see where your party members are for example is one way they can, and whilst I did mention that getting lost and exploring can be fun, it's a lot less fun if you're simply having trouble finding the skill trainer in a huge city that you've already explored but forgot where it is and have to resort to a Google search.
(If you find this immersive you should probably seek help.)
The key to a good minimap is this: it should serve the player, and not the other way around.
