Hi, I've been trying to play CF for many years. I'm in love with it, addicted to the RP and skill sets, but absolutely horrendous at the game.

I have severe DTD and can't even find my own house or school from just a few blocks away. I can get hopelessly lost in my own neighborhood. Does anyone else have a poor sense of direction? If so, do you find that it applies to CF or other muds? I feel like it shouldn't, because my problem in RL is that I get "turned around", which is impossible in CF because you can never lose track of "north" (except in the maze areas). But no matter what I try, whether it's jotting down maps of areas that aren't on the Diku maps, trying to memorize strings of directions like "From the pit, NORTH NORTH WEST NORTH EAST SOUTH" or anything else, I always end up in an area I never intended to get to, and then can't seem to get out of. I just can't see the aerial view from my head.

I'm tired of RPing characters with no sense of direction, or making stupid IC excuses as to why I'd rather meet in Galadon and then have my group take me with them to the Strange Island. Everyone knows it's just a lack of OOC knowledge, and then they start trying to give me newbie information, which is nice of them, but tiresome when all I need is a sense of direction.

I've deleted so many characters because I could no longer justify their ignorance and because it got so tedious. I just deleted another one today. I'm just looking for anyone who's overcome this problem in the past, because I'm fresh out of ideas. Anybody out there?

Kaelyn

Huh.

Does the opposite exist? When I was younger (it has gone away) I had an almost physical sensation of "north" at all times, even with my eyes closed. I know that sounds idiotic, but it is the only way I can describe it. Lamest super power ever, and went away at the end of adolescence, but there it is.

You can flyto most people for grouping. When you get lost on the ground, in most cases you can fly up and then land to start again. Getting about Thera is much easier.

-----Abernyte

Let me see if I understand you correctly. When you play CF you visualize the game in a (sort of) first person view, where paths go forward, back, left and right instead of west, east, north and south?

Ive never bothered with memorizing exact paths, I rather do the whole 3-4 steps ahead in time then adjust as I get to corners. I see the world in a top down fashion, like the DIKU wiki maps. I know general locations and general layouts of roads and areas, thus I can sort of predict what ways to walk.

I know the world well enaugh though, to predict escape patterns then take a shortcut so I can catch them on the run. Ive learned this because I play from europe, and my ping lingers between 150-180 which means running people down is near to impossible.

Essentially, I recommend you stop trying to learn exact paths, and rather focus on location in relation to eachother.

I think my wife has this, though she wasn't to receptive when I told her so.

Perhaps try a very thorough use of maps? Zmud has a built-in map making function, though I've never used it. Try creating your own rather than getting the pre-made ones that someone else put together.

Anyway, if you make maps of the areas you're commonly in and print them out, perhaps it would help if you keep them in front of you while you play. It would slow you down some, but looking at the map-seeing you need to go east-then putting in east, could be a systematic solution. Might help you keep track of where you are if you have the visual representation right in front of you, rather than trying to re-create it in your head.

Obviously doing this for every area would be more work than it's worth. But perhaps doing it for a handful of major areas will at least mitigate the problem somewhat?

Good luck!

Aarn

What sort of thinking are you good at? If you can't think spatially well, can you think mathematically, or linguistically? Off the top of my head I can't give any specifics, but it seems like it should be possible to construct an alternative scheme for learning how things connect.

For example, you could do it musically. Starting with The Beatles as galadon, you know it leads to the Rolling Stones (mainstream music, eastern road) and to The Backstreet boys (boy band, north road). Then from there the Rolling Stones leads to lead Zeppellin (hamsah mutazz) and the Backstret boys leads to N'Sync (Udgaard). Now I'm a musical ignoramous, so probably none of this makes any sense, but if you have a good knowledge of music, literature or art, or anything like that, maybe you can adapt that kind of knowledge to this purpose? Basically you'd be inverting the kind of learning aid people use that involves visually displaying related artists on a map.

What about free association? Could you group them by related words? That is, mother leads to baby (eastern road), father (silverwood), etc?

The problem with any of these ideas is getting them detailed enough to let you navigate within an area, and not just the overall map. But maybe you can start with sub-zones within an area, like say high road in galadon is a certain kind of idea (like "a piano") and the trade road is a different one (like "a violin"), so then you can see that they're sort of related (have strings) but go in different directions (percussed vs bowed).

That's an awesome idea! It's kind of funny that you put emphasis on music because I'm a musician myself. Sometimes I think my severe disabilities in spacial and mathematical thinking are due to music overcrowding my poor little brain ;)

But seriously, for navigating large arias, that's an interesting tool. I suppose I don't necessarily have to think of the areas in CF as "areas". Maybe it's more of a psychological thing--because I think of them as "places", I automatically undermine myself. As for navigating within these larger areas, I'll probably have to memorize those paths by rote.

Thanks for the tips!

Based on what you say here and your level of experience, you may want to try a Healer and use Gate extensively.

Another option could be an Air shifter and using the maps you have (especially http://diku.qhcf.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?InTheAir), tell people you will meet them as close as you think you can get. For example, if they want to go to Strange Island, tell them you'll meet them on Hamsah Docks, or if you can make it to the Aryth, you can use flyto and get to the same room as them.

Unfortunately I'm unfamiliar with this condition so I'm unable to give help directly about the problem. Hope this is at least a little helpful.

Hutto, the Sleepy Nitpicker


'Sorry, I'm not 72323slhlst. Or however you say Elite'
-Vynmylak

Personally, when I started CF I was afraid that I'd get hopelessly lost in the text and room-based enviroment. However, I managed to find my way around, with the help of the DIKU-Wiki map. Here's some thoughts on how to find your way around

Read the room descriptions and look at the directions if you feel lost. Helps you to keep on the road if nothing else. Finding your way to e.g. from Galadon to Udgaard is quite simple if you read the descriptions of the road rooms and see to what direction it continues.

Other than that, try to memorize the general directions of the exits (e.g. West Aryth is entered from the southwest corner of Aryth Ocean) and use landmarks (e.g. Large Crossroads is directly south from Auction Block) in your advantage. Also, rules of thumb for a correct route based on the map are also useful(The easternmost path to south available in Coastal Plains leads to Seantryn. Jade Mountains rooms you enter by going too much east can be easily recognized from the room descriptions).

Doubt much can be done about it.
If you dont want to RP someone with no sense for directions and dont want to come across as a new player its gonna be tough...

I would stick with playing Goodies and stop trying to justify it. If you Char is likable and fun to be around with I doubt any good Character would give you trouble for that.

You're probably right. I'm tired of having this handicap, but I suppose there's not a whole lot that can be done. I guess the Fields aren't for everyone. I was just hoping there was some kind of trick that someone with a poor sense of direction has come up with, but I can't think of any possibilities, really. Thanks for your response.

That could at least get you from point A to B relatively easy. There's a world map on the DIKU at www.qhcf.net that is fairly accurate from a top view down. That might help you as well. Plus there are world maps available in the game you can keep on your person. Dunno if that'll be helpful.

Here's the link to that map.
http://diku.qhcf.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WorldMap

As an aside though, one of my best friends was like that anytime he wasn't on a motorcycle. He could ride the country just fine on a bike, but walking to class was hilarious. At least he made a lot of friends that way. I dunno what changed, but one day he just kinda grew out of it. He only gets lost in malls and really unfamiliar places now.