Here's a page from my Legend of Grimrock playthrough.

I have always been a terrible guy for making maps. God bless the automapping feature. On the other hand, I agree that making maps hand-made it's a form of "lost" art.

One of the main challenges while making a map, is that you will never know in which direction the path will proceed and for how long. Frequently, many rough sketches may be required and the final map has to be reconstructed for legibility.

If beginning from the centre of the paper, the squares may shoot above the upper border while the bottom part may be empty, and so on. And this is true for placing the beginning square in any area. Sometimes we begin from the bottom, thinking that the path leads north, but soon it takes a full turn and goes beyond the south border of the paper.

A large paper or a paper with smaller squares may help to chart the map more efficiently without using multiple papers.

Another common problem is that misjudging or mistakenly shortening or lengthening each square, especially if the template square is very small. Sometimes, moving around, the supposedly meeting pathway won't meet because of this. Sometimes pathways will meet or cross another path, and mistakes in the lines of squares will make the paths meet at wrong points, or sometimes will miss meeting that path completely.

All these may seem very confusing unless one has experienced making the maps.

And finally, these maps are only feasible to make with step-based games like the Eye of the Beholder game.

Fortunately, smooth scrolling games like Ultima Underworld series have the auto-mapping feature.

It's more difficult in top-down scrolling games like Ultima VI. And making the maps of the underground mazes and caves in this type of game is more difficult because of the scrolling, which makes it harder to chart on the paper. The same problem holds true for the outdoor worlds too, and a close view map is sorely needed here, especially with the limited main window. There are Ultima maps available online, but that will be like reading a gamefaq, which will spoil the fun.

Most of us, on the other hand, have learnt to memorize the approximate locations in these type of games anyway.

The included maps which come with these games have views that are too far above, and is more like a country/continent atlas, that is practically useless for local navigation.

heh, back in the day I made EOB2 maps too... sadly they did not survive the test of time 🤣 , thanks for sharing these pics!

For anyone not feeling old-school enough there is "THE ALL-SEEING EYE" , an EOB1/2 automapper that works next to dosbox: http://personal.inet.fi/koti/jhirvonen/ase/

I always thought computer games were neat, but it wasn't until I played the original Adventure and made maps for it that one enthralled me. Making the maps was the best part. After a day or two of playing, I had a rolled-up set of maps that looked like ancient scrolls for a treasure map. It was the best and I wish I still had them.

I do still map stuff by hand on occasion, though not often. The last time was when playing Neutopia for the TG-16 on my Wii. Other maps I've drawn up by hand while playing include the original Metroid, The Legend of Zelda, and the last level in Skate or Die 2, since it's a freakin' 3-dimensional maze that takes longer to get through than all the previous levels COMBINED. x_x;

Personally though, I much prefer automaps because I like games to be completely self-contained. If I need to do something outside of the game in order to succeed at it, I find that breaks the immersion for me.

certain games has already been mapped , and the maps can be found on game faqs, but I must admit. I used to map some games too, while I played them. One of those games was Lagoon (The SNES version). So I do know the art 😀