I was thinking more along the lines of Ultima-style gates but with more freedom. Instead of going to a specific spot (gate) you could go anywhere you want. To prevent popping up in the middle of a tree I'm going to put some sigils on the map that have different functions: start (to start the map), view (to see the area where you want to go), go (to go to the spot), off (obvious) and maybe some others that I haven't thought of yet (cuz I don't know what else to add). I'm going to look at some abstract stuff like Egyptian and see what can be used, like maybe a flyover, pan, zoom, find a cave, find a town, find a mountain, find a lake, stuff like that.

As for animation, it's all Greek to me. If I knew the first thing about that then I would certainly go for a lil video with a hand pushing the buttons and maps popping up. The glow effects on the text would also not be there unless "pushed"...they'd be a dark brown. Maybe I should dump the effects in that case and make two maps.