Compass

See every exit the room actually has, and click one to walk it — no guessing which directions the room accepts, no typing n into a wall.

What it’s for

The Obvious exits: line tells you where you can go, then scrolls away. So you guess, and the game tells you that you can’t go that way, and you guess again — which is a small tax you pay in every unfamiliar room and a real one when something is chasing you.

The compass shows the current room’s exits as a lit rose, updating the moment you arrive. Lit directions are real exits; the rest stay faint. Click a lit one and you move. It’s the fastest way to feel out an unmapped area, and it never scrolls off.

Set it up

Click Windows in the top toolbar, expand Navigation, and tick Compass. Use the row’s zone control to send it somewhere it’ll live — the Right Bar is a good home. (Typed equivalent: .addwindow compass compass 92 15 28 7.)
Right-click the compass to pick its art. The widget section has a Compass art drop-down listing Skin default, None, and any compass sets you’ve installed. None draws the built-in vector rose, which follows your theme colors.

Install more compass sets with .jinx list and .jinx install.

📷 screenshot pending

The compass window's right-click menu with the Compass art drop-down open on Skin default, None, and an installed set.

→ Expected result: a rose appears with your current room’s exits lit and the rest dimmed. Clicking a lit direction walks you that way and the rose redraws for the new room.

Common setups

A big rose in the corner of a hunting screen

Add the compass, send it to the Right Bar, then drag its corner out until it’s as large as you want. Right-click ▸ Appearance ▸ Frame and turn the border off so the art sits on your background with nothing boxing it in.

You’ll see: a large, borderless rose you can hit without aiming, with the room’s real exits lit.

A thin strip that doesn’t cost you screen

Drag the compass window’s side edge inward until it’s narrow. The rose holds its size and the window just gets tighter around it, down to a 48-point floor — narrower than any other widget is allowed to go.

You’ll see: a compass small enough to tuck beside a vitals bar while staying clickable.

Tips & gotchas

⚠️ The compass window is free-form — it is not locked to a square. The rose paints as a centered square of whichever side is shorter. Drag one edge and the window grows while the art holds its size and the extra space pads evenly around it. Drag both and the art scales up with the window.

⚠️ Compass windows have a 48-point minimum width; every other widget stops at 120. If you’re wondering why the compass shrinks past where your other windows stop, that’s why.

“Skin default” and “None” are different answers. Skin default takes whatever rose your active skin ships, so changing skins changes your compass. None pins you to the built-in vector rose, which follows your theme’s link color for lit exits and stays put across skins.

Up, down, and out are in the rose, not beside it. Skinned sets have them drawn in; the vector rose puts them at the hub. Nothing lives in a side column, which is what lets the window shrink to 48 points and stay usable.

A dim direction is not a broken compass. The rose lights what the game reports for the current room. Unlit means the game didn’t list that exit — including hidden ones you haven’t found yet.

Room Window — the same exits as text, alongside the description
Map — where those exits lead, once you’ve walked them
Travel (.go2) — walking somewhere further than one room
Skins (GUI Graphics) — where compass art comes from and how to install sets
Build a hunting layout — placing the compass in a combat screen

Config reference (TOML)

widget_type = "compass". The compass has no widget-specific data block — its colors come from the window’s own fields, and its art from the GUI Compass art picker (stored with your GUI settings, not in the layout).

Field	Type	Default	What it does
`active_color`	string	`green`	TUI — color for available exits
`inactive_color`	string	`dark gray`	TUI — color for unavailable directions
`show_border`	bool	`true`	Draw the window border
`border_style`	string	theme	Border style, for example `"rounded"`

Sizing. The terminal draws into a small character grid; the built-in template is 9×5 to leave room for a border. In the GUI, size is free-form and the minimum width is 48 points.

[[windows]]
name = "compass"
widget_type = "compass"
title = "Compass"
row = 15
col = 92
rows = 5
cols = 9
show_border = true
border_style = "rounded"

VellumFE User Guide