Mapper
The mapper draws a map as you play. Each room you visit becomes a square, each way you travel between rooms becomes a line, and a marker shows where you are.
By default you start in Fog-of-War mode. Merlin comes with starter maps and this mode will slowly reveal them as you explore. If you want to edit the maps, or you run into problems, you may have to turn this feature off. Read more on this below.
Note: In Dragon's Gate, the world is under active development, so you may run into issues with using Fog-of-War which requires you to turn it off to fix issues in Edit mode.
The two maps
| Map | Where to find it |
|---|---|
| Mini-map | A panel that is on by default. If closed, open it from Maps > Auto-Mapper. |
| Large map | Its own window, with a legend and the atlas and zone controls. Open it from Maps > Large Map, or the map button on the mini-map. |
The ⓘ button in the large map's title bar opens this guide.
Walk by clicking
Click a square, and the mapper will walk you there.
- To stop, click the square you're standing in, or move yourself.
- To explore, click an arrow beside a square. The mapper walks you to that room, then through the exit nobody has walked yet.
- Scripts can walk the same way with
walkto. See walkto.
Map controls
- Drag to pan.
- Pinch, or use the zoom buttons, to zoom.
- Click Recenter to bring your player marker back to where you are.
Read the map
| You see | It means |
|---|---|
| Square | A room. The mapper can reliably understand where these are and how they connect to other rooms. |
| Hollow square | A room the game doesn't number. Merlin gives these its own MC#. They are found in mazes. The mapper tries to figure out how they fit together as you walk with pattern matching logic. We're still working on this so your mileage may vary. |
| Solid line | A compass move, like north or east. |
| Dotted line with a picture | A way that isn't a direction: a door, gate, arch, or stairs. The icon says which. |
| Arrowhead | A one-way compass direction. |
| Arrow beside a square | A direction you haven't walked yet. |
| Greyed icon beside a square | A hint of a place to go that isn't a compass direction. |
| Picture on a square | A point of interest: a shop, bank, healer, trainer, temple, etc. |
Fog of war
Merlin starts you with a map of the world, hidden under fog. You see only the rooms you've stood in, and each new room appears as you arrive.
Your progress is kept in fog-of-war.txt, beside your atlas files. Keep it if you start your atlas fresh, and everywhere you've been will stay uncovered. The fog-of-war file works with any Merlin map another player shares with you, except for hollow maze squares, which each map numbers its own way.
Atlases and zones
Your map is kept in an atlas, a single file. Your first one is My Atlas. An atlas is divided into zones, like Spur or Tarath Bends. Splitting areas up into zones helps with ease of use, and performance. Too many rooms in a zone and you may see performance drops.
All maps are stored in a single atlas so that there can never be a conflict where two rooms with the same number are in the same Atlas.
The large map's title bar has an Atlas picker and a Zone picker, each with a three-dot menu after it.
| Atlas menu | Zone menu |
|---|---|
| Rename the atlas | Rename the zone |
| Start a new, empty atlas | Copy the zone into another atlas |
| Import an atlas from another player | Delete the zone |
| Add the default atlas Merlin starts you with | |
| Show the atlas files |
To share your map, send its .atlas.json file. To delete an atlas, delete its file in Finder or File Explorer.
The map saves itself as you walk and will automatically try to update itself with any changes it runs in to as the world is developed.
Map Editing
Mapping the world can be fun, and is highly open to interpretation. We may know a compass direction, but the game never says exactly how far any direction goes. Routes like doors and portals have no direction. It's up to the person mapping to decide where those are placed. The map editor allows you to drag things around and make your own version of how rooms are placed in the world.
To edit the maps, you first have to turn off the Fog of War via the menu button on the top right corner of the Large Map. You can turn it back on later.
Once the Fog of War is off, click the pencil in its title bar to start editing. Click the check mark, or press Escape to finish editing.
In edit mode a toolbar will appear at the bottom of the map with editing tools. You can also use keyboard commands to swap tools quickly.
| Tool | Key | Use it to |
|---|---|---|
| Cluster | C | Move or select a group of rooms that are linked by compass directions. |
| Room | R | Move a single room. |
| Pan | H | Move the view without selecting anything. |
| Text | T | Add a label. Click, then type. Change the size, alignment, and style of text using the feature on the toolbar when text is selected. |
| Set Zone Center | Choose where the center of a zone is, so it opens to the right place when you swap to it. |
- Drag a room or group to move it. Dropping pins it, so it stays where you put it.
- Shift-click, or drag a selection area, to select more than one thing at a time.
- Right-click a selection to send it to another zone, copy it to another atlas, straighten it with Clean Up…, or delete it so you can walk it again.
- If some of the rooms already exist in the other atlas, they turn red. You can cancel, or copy only the new rooms and leave the existing ones as they are.
- Undo and Redo are at the left of the edit bar, or press ⌘Z and ⇧⌘Z (Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Shift+Z on Windows and Linux).
- Labels are revealed for players using fog of war once they walk near them.