Automap spoils secrets :(

[Kirinyale]

Well, I think it's the 4th or 5th time in my playthrough when this happens. First, it was just drawing a few floor panels which I haven't seen (one of which was actually 1 level below and obscured by some very good distractions). Then it showed a chest where there was none, which made me raise my head and see it... above. Now the map "kindly" suggested that an "unreachable" tile 1 level above me is passable (it actually contained some destroyable bushes and a floor panel few tiles behind them, again obscured with some other things). I've also seen it show an outline of a continued underwater path behind a false wall (but at least I figured that one myself before looking at the map).

My question is: WHY THE HELL does it automap tiles I never visited, especially with different height from where I am standing?! I am playing with automap enabled to avoid drawing it myself, not to have it spoil half of the secrets!

Almost Human, please, patch this ASAP... Automap in such a game must be just a time-saving tool, not a hint system...

[Jirodyne]

My question is: WHY THE HELL does it automap tiles I never visited, especially with different height from where I am standing?! I am playing with automap enabled to avoid drawing it myself, not to have it spoil half of the secrets!

Well the seeing parts of the upper levels, I can understand being bad. That shouldn't happen. seeing left and right, and downward you can see a lot, but looking up, you wouldn't be able to see much other than the wall and very edge of it.

As for why it auto fills, I am betting it's because people want to explore EVERY SINGLE SQUARE in the entire game. And in the first game, it would only register the floor you stood on, so to map a room you had to go and step on every single tile. and it wouldn't mark Caveins, and to mark Crystals you had to bump into them to mark the tile, then open the map and put a marker on it and labeling it as a Crystal. So yeah, being much more bigger open areas and multifloored, and with everyone probably complaining about it from the first game, that's probably why they added in the Auto-Map filling from sight instead of just walking ontop of the tile.

Just picture that. To make sure you been everywhere, seen everything, you would have to walk on EVERY SINGLE TILE in the game. That include over spike traps, like in the House of Needles and everywhere down underwater to map everything.

[Kirinyale]

...and to mark Crystals you had to bump into them to mark the tile, then open the map and put a marker on it and labeling it as a Crystal...

The funny thing is, I ended up doing just that on 2nd underground floor under the cemetery. There's a crystal on an elevation, with a ladder going up directly to the crystal, so there's no way to actually stand near it on the same height level (except on the ladder). And the game does NOT mark this crystal on the map. At the same time, it does mark a chest resting on a 2nd floor tile directly above my head. I am guessing it should have something to do with the map being 2D and the game choosing the topmost of all possible tiles to draw... but anyway, I think this should be fixed somehow.

As for seeing downwards, looks like I have to describe the place in more detail to make it obvious why it's a problem.

SpoilerShow

I am standing near a grate, there are force fields constantly jumping in the air behind it, and under all of this mayhem, there's a floor button on one of the tiles, which opens a door in one of the grate sections. It was obviously designed to NOT be easily noticeable, so just seeing this button on automap really spoils half of the fun.

Just picture that. To make sure you been everywhere, seen everything, you would have to walk on EVERY SINGLE TILE in the game. That include over spike traps, like in the House of Needles and everywhere down underwater to map everything.

Well, I did play the first game, and I don't have any problem with this, because that's what I am doing anyway. And that's pretty much what anyone should do in Grimrock if they want to find all the secret wall buttons etc. Especially with the devs LOVING to place them in every extremely dangerous or time-critical place. So yeah, that picture would be better than a map crying out "hey, there's a secret!" every now and then.

[Kirinyale]

Also, the problem with underwater passages is with some kind of smoothing/fading happening on the tile borders. The "secret" tile itself is not mapped, but you can tell it's there by looking at the edge between it and another (mapped) tile, clearly showing that there's more water behind the wall. The same often happens with dungeon walls - you can sometimes see "turns" in directions clearly beyond your sight range. Not to mention lots of distracting "phantom borders" on automaps of outdoor locations like forests, regularly appearing even farther than 1 tile from visited ones.

[sapientCrow]

If you want no spoiler why use a map?
It is just a matter of time finding the secrets without an automap.

I suppose perhaps there can be a change so no items would show up unless you turn it on.
Still I think it is pretty minor and with the open world and many more landmarks it is way easier to remember the layouts compared to the same walls in a dungeon over and over.

[Kirinyale]

If you want no spoiler why use a map?

I' believe Ive already answered this question in my first post of this topic.

It is just a matter of time finding the secrets without an automap.

Exactly! A matter of time spent drawing everything yourself. And how much time is that? I don't know, but I do know that I'm playing as non-stop as possible since just a few days after the release, and I've already spent considerably more time (and very fun time indeed!) playing Grimrock 2 than I've spent to finish Grimrock 1, and I'm still not quite at the end (although I've already found 71 out of 77 secrets and 9 of 11 treasures). So thank you very much, but I would prefer not to add even more not-so-fun time to draw something that I can get out of the box.

And I already know that this game has quite a few secrets which practically require having a good map to solve them (the most noteable is

SpoilerShow

the meteor

, not to mention all of the occasions of calculating the right pit to jump into). So I see the automap as a very handy tool to help me, after I've used my brain to understand what to look for. I hope you understand what I feel when this tool suddenly starts solving problems automatically without even giving me a chance.

I suppose perhaps there can be a change so no items would show up unless you turn it on.

I think that a much better solution would be:
- don't auto-map adjacent tiles until they are at the same height level as the party;
- when there are several tiles at the same (x,y) but with different z within the same level, draw topmost of the already visited ones, not just topmost of them all;
- carefully review tile borders / shading on the map to prevent it from seeing through the walls;
- perhaps also don't draw pits as pits until they are open.

First 2 points would solve both cases when I've had a REAL spoiler from the map (like a secret which I wouldn't spot otherwise), and I don't see how they would possibly break anything or harm anyone's experience. After all, if you want to map everything, it's only logical to visit all floors at least once, not just look at them from above/below.

Third point would solve the (rare) issue with underwater secrets.

Fourth is minor of course, but would still be good for a few places.

Also, there is an opposite problem when the map fails to draw an unpassable cell as such (usually happens when it contains a rock or other unpassable object). This is really minor, though, and I'm not sure if it even should be fixed, 'cause it actually makes some of the treasure riddles harder, which is a good thing.

Still I think it is pretty minor and with the open world and many more landmarks it is way easier to remember the layouts compared to the same walls in a dungeon over and over.

Playing with a goal to find all secrets isn't really about remembering layouts. And that was a goal I've set for myself when starting Grimrock 2. Don't get me wrong - this is a brilliant game which exceeded my expectations multiple times already, and I've pretty much ignored all those "minor issues" for a long time (there weren't much anyway). It's just that the last thing it spoiled for me was a bit too much, because for me, that was probably the hardest to spot secret in the whole game.