Regions

In some cRPGs, levels don’t always represent the vertically stacked floors of a dungeon complex, but rectangular areas (regions) of a large contiguous world map. In such games, all regions have the same dimensions.

For example, in New World Computing’s 1986 classic, Might and Magic Book One: The Secret of the Inner Sanctum, the world map is one large 80×64 grid subdivided into 20 regions, each with a grid size of 16×16. The full world map is included in the Example Maps folder under the name Might and Magic I.

Might and Magic I — Map of VARN (excerpt)

Another good example is the Pool of Radiance map, which contains a partial map of the City of Phlan from the SSI Gold Box game Pool of Radiance.

Pool of Radiance — Phlan (excerpt)

As you can see in the above examples, region boundaries are indicated with distinctly coloured thick lines.

It is very easy to create such a region-based map in Gridmonger: just create a level big enough to hold all the regions, and tick the Enable regions checkbox in the level creation dialog. You will then need to specify the region dimensions (Region columns and Region rows), and whether you want the coordinates to restart in every region or not (Per-region coordinates checkbox). Naturally, with per-region coordinates enabled, the individual regions will obey the coordinate settings of the level.

For region-enabled levels, a second drop-down is shown below the level name drop-down at the top that indicates the current region the cursor is in. If you select a different region in this drop-down, the cursor will jump to middle of the selected region.

By default, regions are named Untitled Region N, where N is a running number. You can change a region’s name in the Edit Region Properties dialog by pressing Ctrl+Alt+R, where you can optionally also enter some notes about the region.

Of course, you can turn regions on or off for any existing level in the level properties dialog, or adjust the regions’ dimensions.

Note

Normally, the dimensions of your region-enabled level are meant to be integer multiples of the region dimensions. This is, however, not enforced by the program; “partial” regions at the edges of the level are allowed and they’re handled just fine. In such cases, the Origin property of the level determines the corner the region subdivision starts from.

Although partial regions are handled correctly (in a mathematical sense), their usage is generally discouraged as one can get quite unintuitive results when performing certain actions on them (e.g., when changing the origin, or resizing the level, the region borders could “shift around” in unexpected (but always deterministic) ways).

Being relaxed about such restrictions makes the program a lot simpler, and some more complicated level manipulations would not be possible with stricter enforcements in place (you’ll recognise them when you need them). In short, using partial regions temporarily is fine in some situations, but when you’re done with your level manipulations, just get rid of them and you’ll be fine. Don’t tempt the devil!