Spiral Knights - Discussion about 2D game maps & their sizes

Discussion about 2D game maps & their sizes

2 replies [Last post]

Sat, 09/16/2023 - 15:34

Bernston

I've sometimes gone to look at different maps across different games to get the know-how on their layouts, routes, different paths to take in past and present games, etc., not counting those made in 3D, and have, at times, wondered which games' maps are the longest, largest, or both yet, in terms of size. I really don't know much, but I'm very intrigued in how their sizes are when those 2D games are made. I'm talking about those games that use pixel art as tilesets to make their levels, along with those ranging in different styles.

For such a time, I've looked to know what sizes they are so far, and I was, & have been, curious to know how long or large their maps have been thus far. I did come across one site that's centered on charting game maps for people that may want to look at their sizes to study their routes, figure out strategies in terms of speedrunning through the longest stages yet, or so on, and I have seen so many stages that are both the shortest and the longest many people have made so far.

That site's called VGMaps. It's been around for a long time, and I, for one, appreciate the site's efforts in chronicling each games' maps thus far, and I hope they can keep continuing those efforts!

Video game maps have come such a long way in their sizes through technology, but you never know where newer games go for the longest and largest maps yet. Keep a close eye out & to those making such maps, try to challenge yourselves in making long stages so far, platformers, racetracks, top-down, isometric, you name it, but not too much.

My small concern sometimes when it comes to levels are seeing some new games that are a bit shorter than those that have been longer, even indie games. I'm not saying this to be against some short stages. Just thought many players are feeling a bit far too comfortable with shorter stages instead of longer stages in 2D games. I can only hope for people to get re-accommodated to long stage sizes gradually. Some people really like long stages, you know.

The VGMaps' website for those who are curious about their sizes - https://www.vgmaps.com/. Stop by anytime you want. Anyone feeling like contributing to their cause, they are welcome to join in.

One thing, the maps' images have to be PNG(Portable Network Graphics), because its the best picture quality to see clear crisp images, even pixel art made maps.

Shortcut links for those curious about long stage map sizes. Fair advisory, the maps can be very long. For those that may have less strong computers, be patient.

https://www.vgmaps.com/Atlas/Genesis/index.htm#SonicTheHedgehog3

https://www.vgmaps.com/Atlas/Genesis/index.htm#SonicKnuckles

https://www.vgmaps.com/Atlas/GBA/index.htm#SonicAdvance2

https://www.vgmaps.com/Atlas/DS/index.htm#SonicRush

https://www.vgmaps.com/Atlas/DS/index.htm#SonicRushAdventure

https://www.vgmaps.com/Atlas/DS/index.htm#SonicColors

Wed, 09/20/2023 - 21:31

Bernston

For those curious or intrigued...

I feel its just curious to see and know what sizes many game maps are, short or long. For my observation, I've wondered what's the longest game map size yet.

Before, many past games had rather short maps that were formerly deemed long, likely because the tech they had couldn't make it so to make them long, which takes less than minutes to clear. However, as time went on, clever technical trickery and smart thinking in game hardware programming and game coding underneath tight tech limits brought out longer games. Those people that made them knew aces up their sleeve. Admirable.

Thanks to game tech's advancements, those past size limits have been risen rapidly, allowing for more longer stages to be made.

When Sonic 3's two halves got out, they brought out long stages that were deemed the longest yet, as I've really loved, but time to time, that has changed. Sonic Advance 2's Egg Utopia Zone had map sizes etched in the range of 30,000, horizontally, that is.

If you're thinking otherwise, yeah, its all technical stuff hard to comprehend, but don't worry. I'm laying it simply as I can.

I mean, for that time being, I couldn't think of any game map size in that size range. Well, actually, those sizes weren't brought up until now.

Shortly, though, Sonic's DS games were made, and they brought out some more longer stages than Egg Utopia's. Dead Line Zone's maps were that close. The longest map size yet was Sonic Colors DS' Act 2 of Asteroid Coaster, ranged at a whooping horizontal size of 44,256 pixels wide, thus far! I got astounded seeing a map at that size.

If anyone can claim otherwise a game map can surpass that, I'd be extremely gaping my eyes open wide in shock.

Of course, can't count out vertical sizes, but that may and can count towards longest stage sizes yet, too.

Still, I can surely keep thinking any game could have longer map sizes than that, but I'm not too worried. There's bound to be those chronicled soon.

I've kinda more or less handled long stages before, but you never know if more show up to push farther handling them.

Who else has?

Thu, 09/21/2023 - 12:29

Nitronicx

I was curious

So I've looked around the VGMaps site.

The metric you chose may be a bit tricky. Regarding the size, are you talking about the "in-game stage size" or "size of the custom made map (picture)" of a stage? If it's size of a custom made map, the size may largely depend on the mapper's decisions. For example, whether he makes the map of the entire game or individual stages or even individual parts of the stage, whether he uses 1:1 scale or decides to downscale the map, how he maps out the less straightforward (in regards to mapping) parts of the stage etc. Newer games can have advantage over older ones if they use higher resolution. It may also be in mapper's interest not to make the map too large, otherwise you'll start running into technical difficulties. Less sophisticated image viewers may straight up crash if there are too many pixels, or may not have enough space (in RAM) to decompress the whole image, not to mention the potentially giant file size itself.

As a side note, while yes, the PNG format is lossless, JPEG may be a better choice for those smoother looking games that don't use pixel art. There will be some artifacts, but you can tweak the JPEG quality so they are almost unnoticeable and still end up with a ton of saved space compared to PNG. You rarely need the pixels to have exactly the same color as in the game. But you might need it and I get the appeal.

Anyway, now about some large maps/pictures I've looked up or found during searching and found them noteworthy...

Factorio has an infinite map. But it's randomly generated, so I'd understand if it didn't count.

I remember Castlevania: Symphony of the Night having a very large map. I've found a map of both castles with the size of 20,256 x 24,064 pixels. You could say the castles should be 2 maps instead of 1. Then the size of the regular castle is about half of the original size, 15,648 x 12,032 pixels. But you could also say the individual areas of the castle should be individual maps. Those maps are there, too. https://www.vgmaps.com/Atlas/PSX/index.htm#CastlevaniaSymphonyOfTheNight

I've also found a very big map of Ultima VII: The Black Gate. 24,576 x 24,576 pixels, 89 MB. Technically not much larger than the Castlevania map, but Firefox couldn't properly zoom in on this one. An example of the technical difficulties caused by large images I mentioned above. https://www.vgmaps.com/Atlas/PC/index.htm#UltimaVIIBlackGate

Something to rival the Sonic Colors' Asteroid Cluster Act II in terms of horizontal size could be Battletoads' Turbo Tunnel. If it weren't split into 6 parts at checkpoints, it would have about 65,000 pixels. And the same could be said about the later Volkmire's Inferno stage. You travel very quickly through these stages, hence the length. https://www.vgmaps.com/Atlas/NES/index.htm#Battletoads

Finally, I've looked up Hollow Knight. On VGMaps there's only a link to the online version of the map. The full map has 72,622 x 48,128 pixels and 835.61 MB. This was the largest map I've found through my curious searching. https://www.hallownest.net/

In Terraria, a large world has 8,400 x 2,400 tiles. From a brief look at some of the tiles, they seem to have 8x8 textures. So, if you made a picture of your entire (large) world, it would have 67,200 x 19,200 pixels.

Somewhat of a honorable mention, Gradius II's Stage 6 has a 11,056 pixels long stage. It's a shmup (shoot-em-up) game and they usually don't have maps (I think). If shmup games' stages were mapped, I believe there would be numerous very long maps. I don't know how would you map stages from most of such games in a useful manner, however, because it's primarily about the patterns and the enemies, and the enemies usually fly in rather than sit somewhere in the scrolling stage. https://www.vgmaps.com/Atlas/NES/index.htm#GradiusII

Search

Discussion about 2D game maps & their sizes