How important is the mini-map?

[Johannes]

For the Android Lemmings remake I'm working on, I'm considering whether to include a mini-map or not. Personally I don't recall ever having used it, but I want to ask the "pro" players whether they deem it important.

Seeing as Lemmings 2 did away with it, I guess even the makers didn't consider it all that useful? What are your thoughts?

p.s. Scrolling will support fling-gestures, so the mini-map shouldn't be necessary to scroll to a different screen location.

[Simon]

Nice to have, but if you have something more useful for the scarce handheld screen space , go ahead rationalize it away.

Other games:

• Clones (PC) has a minimap, but is not visible by default. If the user holds some button, it overlays the whole screen.
  
• Lix (PC) doesn't have a minimap, but it has fast and accurate scrolling by linear transistion of mouse movement.
  
• Lemmings DS (Nintendo DS) doesn't have a minimap on the main screen, but maybe on the secondary one; I don't know.
  
• Ardiri's Palm port (Palm) doesn't have a minimap on the single screen of the handheld.
  

-- Simon

[Clam]

On PC Lemmings with pinpoint mouse control and a large screen area, the minimap is definitely useful for scrolling. But, as Simon mentions, it depends whether you can squeeze a usable mini-map into the small area available. I'd guess that trying to scroll via a minimap in the corner of the screen would be too imprecise, and bringing up a fullscreen map would break the flow of the level too much, so you're left with a corner minimap that just shows where you are in the level. The best thing though, IMO, would be to avoid making large levels in the first place, so you can do without it entirely

[ccexplore]

Like what most people have said already, the main use I've found for the mini-map is to quickly jump to particular area of a level via a single click.  It may also be of some use in monitoring off-screen areas when playing levels (very few in the official games though) involving multitasking or dealing with multiple groups of lemmings in very separated areas.

So yeah, sometimes useful, but probably can be lived without.  So if you're crunched for screen real estate then definitely feel free to get rid of it.  As others noted, with the smaller screen size the mini-map may well become too mini anyway to even properly serve the purposes I noted above.  The minimap is also not an uncommon feature to be dropped in ports of Lemmings; IIRC it was dropped in the NES and Gameboy versions for example.

[ccexplore]

Seeing as Lemmings 2 did away with it, I guess even the makers didn't consider it all that useful?

That is probably one major reason, but it's also important to keep in mind that starting with Lemmings 2, you can scroll vertically in some (many?) levels as well as horizontally.  Just think about allocating a fixed area on the screen that could work just as well for a horizontal-level minimap as for a vertical-level minimap, and you can kinda see why it's bound to be a lost cause.   Pretty much the only good system of minimap for that sort of generalized level sizes is something like what Clones has (you press a key and it momentarily displays minimap as an overlay over most of the screen).

[geoo]

That is probably one major reason, but it's also important to keep in mind that starting with Lemmings 2, you can scroll vertically in some (many?) levels as well as horizontally.  Just think about allocating a fixed area on the screen that could work just as well for a horizontal-level minimap as for a vertical-level minimap, and you can kinda see why it's bound to be a lost cause.   Pretty much the only good system of minimap for that sort of generalized level sizes is something like what Clones has (you press a key and it momentarily displays minimap as an overlay over most of the screen).

Well, Cheapo has variable level size support, and 'solves' this issue by displaying only part of the level in the minimap, however more than is visible on the main screen. But it doesn't support scrolling with the minimap, which is pretty much the only use of the minimap in DOS lemmings for me, where border scrolling is slow for large distances. (Ok, sometimes, but very rarely, to see where a lemming is currently positioned in an overly long level. Yeah, just sticking to small level like ClamSpammer suggested is also a sensible solution )
That said, Lix doesn't have the minimap, and I can do perfectly fine with that because, as Simon already wrote, it has support for an alternative way of scrolling: Right-Click the map and move the mouse, while the cursor will stay in place, the map will scroll into the direction you moved the mouse at a rate linear with the mouse movement, where the scroll coefficient can be customized (I emphasize this because the value I use is 8 times the default value).

[finlay]

The B&W mac version has a smaller resolution and squeezes it into a corner. You have to click through to either see the minimap or the other level stats such as number of lemmings and time left; can't see both at once. That's always another option: have it open optionally.

[Luis]

The mlni map was helpful in the original Lemmings engine, because the scrolling speed is slow, but the map can take you anywhere quick. You can be looking at the those terrains that are far away, and go back to the Lemmings in a instant. The PSP Lemmings has no map, but you can make the scrolling move fast.

[mobius]

I kinda liked the mini-map not only for scrolling but you could see (though not clearly, still helpful) what lemmings were doing off screen. Even if the scrolling is fast, I like to be able to go to another part of the level instantly, especially if the level is large. I kinda miss it in Lix. Although not many people have made large levels there yet (so far as I've seen), but if they do I'd like having a mini-map.

[Simon]

Do you edge-scroll or right-click-scroll in Lix? Most users of the latter assert it's even faster than minimap scrolling. Speed is adjustable, geoo uses a very high setting to compensate his regular slow mouse speed.

-- Simon

[mobius]

I've started using the right button to scroll. You're right it's better. I think it's more of a psychological thing cause I was so used to it.