Currently, the player sprite is always facing one direction in non-Duke games. So if the player has selected in options to not rotate automap, there is no way to tell what way the player is facing, except in Duke where the sprite is in top-down perspective and rotated. In other games (at least in Exhumed and Blood) the player sprite is in side perspective and only from one side: front. It is not a problem when the automap is rotated, because then the player on the automap is always facing "up".
However, on the non-rotated automap "up" is north, and the player may be facing any other direction, with no way to tell which one. I'm going to attach two screenshots to illustrate it. On the first one the map is in "overlay" mode (sorry, I don't know how it's called properly), so you can see that the player is facing west, the direction of the passage.
On the second one the map is in "textured" mode, the player is facing the same direction, but you can't tell it.
It would be nice if the player sprite could be rotated according to its angle, i.e. the direction it's facing. I'm gonna try to explain the idea by the example from GZDoom.
In GZDoom there is a PowerScanner powerup, which displays sprites of all actors on the automap, including the player. And if you enable the option to display rotated sprites on the automap, you can tell which way they all are facing, including the player. Find the illustration on the third screenshot. You can see that the player sprite is facing the same direction as the automap arrow.
If it's impossible or too much work, then it would be nice to at least have an option to display an automap arrow instead of the player sprite. I suppose, since there is an option to not rotate the automap, then I'm not the only one who likes more when the automap always has north facing "up", but in that case we need to be able to tell which way we are facing on the map.
