Thanks for the help everyone! My ship is up and running.
For those of you still mapping - may I suggest that you don't use arrows - it gets very messy. Here's how I did it:
1) Start wherever you are on the map. If it's the boat, that's cool - otherwise if you're lost in the woods just go from where you are, don't try and get back to the boat.
2) Each screen has 5 items on it, either a tree or a path. The path can be: straight: |
open-bracket-shaped: (
closed-bracket-shaped: )
s-shaped: S
z-shaped: Z (but more curvy, like a backwards S)
3) So, write down what you see on the screen (I wrote down the trees in a different colour to the paths to make searching easier later). And write the number 1 next to the marks. For example, I did:
1. | T T ) )
4) Now you need to label your paths. I did it including trees. So for the above example the paths would be:
1.1, 1.4 and 1.5 (with the trees being 1.2 and 1.3).
5) Now it's time to investigate. I always started going from left to right, no matter where it took me. In my example the first path available is 1.1 so I click on it.
6) Now you've been taken to another screen. For me it was:
( T | | )
So write this combination down and the number 2 next to this set.
Then, write the following: path you clicked on -> set you got to.
So for this example I would write 1.1 (the first path on the first screen) -> 2 (the second screen that I haven't seen before).
Now make a mark next to the path you clicked on (in this case 1.1) so that you know you've travelled that path. You could use the 1.1 - > 2 but it's easier to see if you visually mark the path. I used a green dot.
7) Eventually you'll get to some paths that will take you back to where you came from. This is where it's invaluable to have marked what your screen looked like, because you go back to your sets and look to see if your current screen matches one of them, or if it's new.
I found it useful to make an Excel document and list all the paths I found and where they led to. That way I could go back to a screen and try new paths if I hadn't done them already.
Hopefully this makes sense - if it doesn't, let me know and I'll try and be clearer.