Games and Cartography

Well it has been awhile since my last post because I've been busy with work and school. Today I want to talk about how cartography can and is used in games. There are many different games one can play that involves using cartography. More traditionally, one can observe cartography used in games such as Mario Bros. from Nintendo and even in the now popular World of Warcraft. The cartography used in these games usually is just maps detailing these fantasy worlds and showing you the next level and so on. But people can play games that get much more into the world of cartography than that. What if the game you played actually involves creating your own map and then using it to play your own game. Now that sounds like fun. Most people have never heard of the game geospatial disc golf. This game involves alot of the aspects of using cartography and gis while letting you have fun and get a good work out in as well. Who knew all these aspects could be put together into one game. Well geospatial disc golf is fun and challenging as well. It's basically playing frisbee golf for map geeks. The rules and steps to play the game are fairly simple. Using a compass and protractor, you map out the course you want to play. After that you draw a map of the course you designed. Then you retrace your course using GPS. After putting your map and GPS points into a computer, you georeference them so that the map you made and the points you took align. Now everytime you play the frisbee golf course, you can chart how your doing by taking GPS points of all you throws and reviewing them on your map. How cool is that. Combining cartography and games. There are many other ways to enjoy cartography and games that don't involve quite so much of your time having just as much fun as well. Most of these are fun games and tests online that test your knowledge of Geography. These games might tell you the name of a country and then ask you to click on that country using your mouse. This is a true test of your geographical knowledge. Being a Geography major myself, I went online and took one of these tests and only scored a 40%. Now that's sad. There is definitely a lot more countries than I know of. In conclusion, we have once again tied cartography to another aspect of our everyday life. Playing games. The best thing about this is that you not only have fun using cartography, but you learn something as well. Whether is something as simple as studying the map on the Mario Bros game or taking the geospatial disc golf challenge (fun and rewarding too), playing games are just that much more fun when cartograpy is involved.The map above is taken from the Mario Brothers 3 game. Click on the map to view in more detail.

X-treme Cartography

With extreme sports becoming more and more popular each year, the art of cartography isn’t far behind. So who knew that there could be such a thing as extreme cartography? There is no better rush than falling out of a plane and drawing a map at the same time! Well, that’s not exactly the point I’m trying to make but it could be fun. Back to the point. Maps are important. To me, extreme cartography is not mapping in extreme conditions, but mapping something extreme or using a map to do something extreme. First, we’ll start with mapping something extreme. Each person probably has a different opinion of what extreme is but we’ll go with mine for now. Mapping Mount Everest seems pretty extreme to me. Even if your sitting at home while doing it, it is the subject that you are mapping that constitutes what is extreme and what is not. What would even be more extreme is if you took that map and used it to climb Mt Everest. Now that’s extreme. So now that we have established some basic guidelines for extreme cartography, let’s talk about some other examples. The U.S military depends a lot on the use of maps for navigating. When a special forces unit parachutes into a foreign country in the middle of the night; they must depend on maps for orientation and navigation especially if the terrain and area is also foreign to them. Another example using the military is the use of range cards. Range cards are made by the gunners of heavy weapons on the battle field and possibly during battle. These range cards are actually little maps themselves. They detail the gunner’s field of view. On the range card, the gunner must draw a map of possible targets, dead space, and any civilian considerations that he sees within his sector of fire. This is extreme cartography! In conclusion, we have once again found another important aspect of cartography. Extreme cartography is important and fun, but also remember that safety comes first.