But then that would make this an all-encompassing Discworld encyclopedia, rather than the more-focused Ankh-Morpork guide that Transworld and Agant were making. It'd also be great to have a bit more on individual characters within the app, tracing their appearances in the novels. I'd love a way to navigate the maps by book in a more-organised way than looking up locations and roads manually – a page-by-page references list for each novel, to keep to hand when reading.
A fun touch is Game Center achievements tracking your exploration.īy focusing on map views, the app also leaves the insides of buildings to your imagination, which feels like a sensible and sensitive design decision.įans will always want more, of course. The maps structure works well for this kind of content: good for browsing at your leisure or looking up a specific location, and very well suited to a multi-touch tablet. Here's a video showing how it works (and there's also an official trailer): There's a separate top-down street-map with its own index, which is ideal for looking up roads mentioned in a particular book, and n mock-tourist style, there are also "walking tours" taking you on themed jaunts around the living map, narrated by actress and comedian Helen Atkinson-Wood. Major locations like the Unseen University have text, quotes and artwork to provide more info, taken from print book The Compleat Ankh-Morpork. You pinch to zoom in and out of the map, tapping on little icons that appear on individual buildings to find out more about them. It attempts to create a "living breathing map" of Pratchett's famous city, complete with strolling characters, chuffing chimneys and a soundtrack that ebbs and flows as you explore. The app costs £9.99 on Apple's App Store, and is iPad-only for now, requiring iOS 6.0 or later. Fail to match up, and everyone will know about it.
Why? Discworld has millions of fans of all ages, so there's bound to be lots of interest – but also high expectations based on each and every fan's mental picture of Ankh-Morpork. Discworld: The Ankh-Morpork Map is the work of publisher Transworld and app developer Agant, and it faces quite a challenge. Now in 2013 there's an iPad app trying to map it out. The city felt real and living to me in a way that Tolkien's Middle-earth never did. The more books I read, the clearer a picture I had in my head about what Ankh-Morpork was like through Pratchett's descriptions and the cover artwork by Josh Kirby.
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