Drawable Maps for use in wilderness survival with more detail available if you get graphite for writing

[Cooked_Artichoke]

I would love to see a system with parchment and using charcoal to draw crude maps for your player to actually have a map in wilderness survival mode without just having a minimap outright all the time. It would result in what I think is a pretty decently immersive mapping system where you need to main hand a writing implement and offhand a book or paper to draw a map as your character walks around. It wouldn't be as accurate nor have a player tracker, but it could have more detail as you get access to better writing implements like using graphite and ink.

[PineReseen]

I think this is a really cool idea! Though, this system could probably not be limited to just maps. What if the player could draw on parchment? It would probably require a lot of coding, but it would be amazing!

[InvaderPork]

Yeah I love playing in wilderness survival but not having items such as a map, compass, etc. makes exploration really difficult. Mods go a good job but I'd like maybe a more fleshed out and in-game system. Craftable Cartography does a good job. 

[Wahazar]

Would be nice to have blank map, where you can put waypoints (manually, not by propick), but there is no player "GPS" position, and coordinates are arbitraly (not related with the world).

[LoveWyrm]

Ideally there would be an internal 'landmark' based triangulation system. Cause that's what's usually done IRL.

However, this relies on a compass... which VS does not have. So...you could try making a map yourself...however, again, that relies on a compass, which VS does not have...

...or does it?

No....at least not officially... but via a quirk from the knapping system.

If things have not changed since it was true ...then all spearheads you knap start out facing westwards, I think.

[Wahazar]

Well, there is cheaty compass if you press F3, even in Wilderness Survival mode. but honestly, ingame compass, without mods, would be welcome - magnetite nugget in bowl?

[Zane Mordien]

This is the reason I won't play wilderness survival.  I'm done making manual maps. Been there done that in the years before in game maps were a thing.  Yes im old... But I would play if maps were something you could make in game and a compass. That would be 2 inventory slots you would have to decide if it was worth carrying or not.

[Thorfinn]

I'd be more than happy with just line maps. Those worked fine for land and coastal navigation for eons before the compass and later a sufficiently accurate clock was invented. The game still lacks a convenient means of reckoning distance, apart from the single voxel resolution distance.

A huge step up would be auto-shooting landmarks (put your crosshairs on some terrain feature, right click, and it puts a bearing line (and maybe a small screenshot of the terrain feature) on the map from your arbitrary selected location on the line map. A "floaty waypoints" on the HUD would be great for finding another location on your line map.

The accuracy of the map is completely up to how accurately you travel the bearing line you defined.

[StCatharines]

Craftable Cartography is an interesting and different take on the map system.

[Tommy Tucker]

I had a similar idea and stumbled upon this thread while looking to see if it existed.

Another (slightly different and likely easier/less realistic) version of this could be how Long Dark handles mapping. With charcoal and paper/map equipped, use the charcoal to uncover x amount of vicinity around your character. Rinse and repeat with the consumption of x amount of coal each time. Utilize approach from other block game like stitching smaller maps together, possibly allowing player to duplicate or update other maps with the primary equipped

Either approach would be fun

[Krougal]

8 minutes ago, Tommy Tucker said:

Utilize approach from other block game like stitching smaller maps together, possibly allowing player to duplicate or update other maps with the primary equipped

Either approach would be fun

That was the worst mapping system I ever suffered through.

Fun? Like a root canal.

[Entaris]

Atlas mod from OBG was pretty neat, though.

Only thing I used vanilla map for was a massive world-wall at base.

Everything was too same-color from the top-down for much else. 

[Thorfinn]

On 5/13/2025 at 10:21 AM, StCatharines said:

Craftable Cartography is an interesting and different take on the map system.

I forget; is that the one that you make a "map" out of parchment/paper and charcoal, and then enables the in-game map? I don't believe that was what the OP wanted. Def not what I want.

One of the professional cartographers on this site suggested something a while back, where at the most basic level of paper and marker like chalk/charcoal/cinnabar, you get a very rudimentary map of the landmarks you select, not any more accurate than standard "rules of thumb", like a pinkie at arm's length is about a degree, fist about 10 degrees, outstretched thumb to pinkie about 25 degrees, etc.  And that gives only bearings from wherever you are, not distance.. To get an estimate of distance, you need to triangulate from at least one set of landmarks you have measured the distance between. That doesn't have to be too much, either. Surveyors have been able to make pretty accurate maps  since the 1600s using a 66' chain. As you add more complex surveying instruments to your kit, you get more accurate bearing lines. I don't think he gave a means of getting to the bird's eye view of everything, but rather a system more like orienteering, where you take your heading from shooting bearings to landmarks on the map.

I don't want to draw that by hand, and I don't think that was his intent, either. Let the computer handle all the math and drawing. All you do is, say, hold some instrument and right-click on the landmarks you see to add their bearing line relative to where you are. It would also refine the distance to that landmark as you add more bearing lines from other places on the world.