Larian Studios Forums Divine Divinity (English) Help/Tips/Tricks Catacombs 1-3, the minimap, and hex editors

Well now... how is it that the minimap works? how is the game world layed out?

This is what iv done. Starting a new charicter i went down to catacombs 1, near the place the orcs are i saw red enemy dots on the minimap off the screen in the black area, unable to ucover that area with wizard sight, i explored it with my mouse and found containers and items laying about. Perplexed i walked the whole of level 1 and found no passage. Wondering what was going on, i did a search and found no mention of it, so i started messing with a hex editor, and move my charicter a little bit northwards into this vast black area that had some sort of enemy in it coverd in items.. I ended up on catacombs level 3.

Now this is quite od. Odd becaus changeing my position on a flat plain caused me to go down, and odd becaus on level 1 the minimap was reporting things that where on level 3. I tried to picture it in my head and it dosnt look like the 2 levels could even fit togeather. This is all fine and well but im just wondering..

Firstly does the game acualy keep every single area, in 3 dementions, orientated with the surface? in other words, does the orc encampmet ladder in the catacombs relation to the entrance in town, exacly match the distance on the surface? I swear it dosnt.. so this leads me to think that extra-surface maps are just considerd compleatly differant maps, and not in any way linked togeather.. but then haveing catacombs 3 reported on catacombs 1 map.. seems srtrange.. i havnt played much of the game.. are there areas like this all over? could i be in a dungeon thats considerd below something else and get red dots leaked onto the minimap?

I just dont know.. but this situation is highly upseting and now im gona restart a 3rd time as a survivor becaus my mage ran into something she couldnt figure out and suicided=P

The game has multiple areas / cellars / dungeon levels on different 'maps'. Usually it only displays what you are suppose to see at that location, but sometimes you can see monsters on the mini-map from area close to where you are. I ran into a glitch in a game once, and got this screen shot of the map (30KB) showing several dungeons and sewers south of Rivertown, which normally are blacked out when not in each area.

I imagine trying to keep everything in 3 dimensions and line up the locations would be much more complex to program, and take up more hard drive space to implement.

i see now, i always assumed that the automap showed the entire map you where on. but if a whole lot of stuf is on the same map kinda like cardboard punchouts.. and the automap blacks out various areas and sets automap bounderys to keep the illusion that its multiple maps.. then all works well. thats what i was assumeing, as i know several games that work that way.. but i havnt encounterd any that where made in the past several years so i figured they stopped doing it.