I have plans to improve the pins. Your ideas, which I think all sound great, just adds to my own thoughts!
Pin color
The only thing in your ideas that conflicts with my own thoughts are the coloring:
My thought was to color code pins based on population, so you could get a quick but rough overview where there are people. Maybe something like:
- Grey : empty
- Orange: 1 - 5
- Yellow: 6 - 10
- White: 10+
That would run into the same visibility issue, though. But this might perhaps be countered by a mode distinct outer shadow around the pin? Even if the pin color matches the background, the border would not.
Pin icon
What would you have in mind? Like a house icon for a building, or a fork/knife icon for a kitchen sort of thing?
As some point, I considered monochrome images as well, which could be used to draw the silhouette of the room you were in. But I found it too complicated for starters.
Pin size (scale)
You mean larger pin markers for larger areas, sort of thing?
Connect pins with lines
I have also considered adding lines between pins based on exists, to make it more clear how to walk to certain room on the map. However, due to how exits behave (being one directional, tied to rooms, destination not shared, etc.), I haven’t found a simple enough solution for it.