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[zagato blackfist]

Call today's update "From Zero (Wing) To H.E.R.O."...
Or, "Lots Of Periods"...

zagato blackfist has taken on four of my requests: E.T. and H.E.R.O. for the Atari 2600, Mario Bros. (Classic Serie) (E) for the NES, and Zero Wing (E) for the Genesis (technically, Mega Drive).  What a haul!  (Sorry that I didn't get these up yesterday...)

E.T. is infamous for being one of the worst games ever, often cited as THE example of the low-quality games that led to the video game crash of the early '80s. So I figure its infamy means that we should have maps of it! 

H.E.R.O., also just capital letters and periods, is one of the better games on the Atari 2600, nice to have it here at the same time, to balance it out, ha!

Mario Bros. (Classic Serie) is a European (perhaps even just German) rerelease, with graphics that resemble the arcade version better.  Makes you wonder why they just didn't do that in the first place... anyway, there's more confidence that we've got all of Mario on the NES now... right? About time... (but to be fair, despite Mario's name, this is a little obscure.)

Zero Wing (E) is infamous for being the impetus of the "All Your Base Are Belong To Us" meme, so it's super surprising (to me) that we haven't gotten it mapped yet.  When I requested it, I insisted that the intro cutscene be included, which zagato obliged, by splitting it up over the eight stage maps.

Thanks, zagato!
Nice of you to have quickly knocked out one of the 24 requests that I mentioned the day after VGMaps.com's 24th birthday!

Well, that's quite a surprise.

One of Atari's infamous games that helped spearhead the Game Crash of 1983, and zagato is the one that really maps it! I'm amazed it was already done. Maybe it'll be much easier for E.T. to go home in that game now.

Heh... Aside from throwing one in, I also see Zero Wing has been mapped. It is rather a bit funny that game churned those humorously improper grammar and apostrophe placements via bad translations, including that line, "All Your Base Are Belong To Us".

Little info about Zero Wing quoting; in Spider-Man 2, the 2004 game, one of my best favorites, the super-villain, Mysterio, quoted a line from Zero Wing, "You have no chance to survive! Make your time!" after all endangered citizens, including the few hanging in time, and destroying his alien robots in the auditorium.

A bit inline with said quoting, and from TV, even an animated show, but, from a Ben 10 2016 Reboot episode(yeah, not many of you have seen nor heard it, but thought you should know), "Buktu the Future", Phil Jr., a one-time villain that is a sentient program system gone haywire, thanks to Tim Buktu, a fame-seeking louse, finding and misusing an experimental top-secret government project hidden in Area 55, a suit that commences time-travel by a very short amount of a second, and being integrated with it, quoted lines from Zero Wing, from when it was using Tim to fight Ben Tennyson, and spoke more improper sentencing as it was being internally diminished by Phil Billings(the 2016 Reboot self), its creator, using its secret backdoor terminal to cut off the defense protocols, remove the suit from Tim, and send it to his backup drive to stop it from commencing its self-driven plans to decimate humanity at any capacity.

Guess that game's infamous, yet humorous, improper grammar isn't limited to games alone.

Other than that, I'm hopeful the other games form your group will be covered before VGMaps becomes 25 years young.

[NOT]

OK, I guess I may as well provide context about using the Hatch Game Engine, to those wanting to grasp its capabilities, be it anyone new or haven't been using it in a while.

First, the build system is needed after downloading the source code, and it is major. You need to use CMake or Visual Studio, preferably VS Code, with knowledge of C++ needed for use. You can download CMake for Windows to start for those who have it.

Once done, know the importance of dependency management, which needs vcpkg for CMake to find such dependencies.

After that, open your project in Visual Studio using the CmakeLists.txt file, but NOT the VisualC/HatchGameEngine.sln file. It won't work at all if you do the latter.

Once Visual Studio loads, it should "Configure" the project, but the dependencies aren't there; they need to be created and/or implemented into it.

Then, you can download SDL2, the dependency necessary for it. First, open up Powershell Terminal or Command Prompt in Visual Studio, and to into the terminal and type vcpkg install sdl2 to install SDL2 so CMake can detect the dependencies.

That should get anyone going for building game projects on it.

And now, to the steps and programs and tools needed to create a framework within Hatch Game Engine, be it from and based on Sonic games, the first Freedom Planet game, or even Spark the Electric Jester, or even custom ones harnessing familiar mechanics, such as seamless stage to stage map seguing in the likes of Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and more.

What's necessary is the code editor, such as Visual Studio Code, for writing engine scripts.

For sprite editing and creating, Aseprite is the good way to go.

Level editing, Tiled Map Editor. Highly a great choice. Support towards its .tsx tileset and .tmx map formats are needed, too.

Audio editing, Audacity for editing WAV(frequency, 44100Hz, 16-bit) and OGG files.

Then, the Hatch Repository Tools, the Tools folder provided in the engine's source code.

To create a new framework the steps are needed to follow...

1. Setting up your own development environment. Clone the downloaded Hatch repository and set up a C++ development environment to compile the engine and your framework.

2. Analyze existing frameworks. Examine frameworks already built for Hatch, such as OpenMania(used and adjusted for Sonic Galactic), or Gateway Sonic(not yet released publicly) to understand structure.

3. Define core systems. There's a multi-step procedure to it.

  1 - Object Hierarchy. Establish how objects(such as the player, rings, crystals, enemies, bosses) are spawned and managed.
  2 - Input Management. Define inputs in the framework that corresponds to Hatch's input systems.
  3 - Graphics and Palettes. Set up how 2D sprites are indexed, animated, and rendered.
  4 - Audio Control. Differentiate between music (OGG) and sound effects (WAV)

4. Creating custom objects/scripts. Program unique gameplay elements(such as new physics, stage gimmicks, and so on) in C++. The imagination behind them is up to you.

5. Develop level loading. Configure Tiled to load maps into the Hatch Game Engine by using tools from the tools directory.

6. Test and refine. Use the engine to test the movement, collision, and object interaction, iterating on the framework until the behavior's accurate and consistent with the desired game style.

Well, that's all anyone needs to know or remember about using Hatch Game Engine. And, being open source, its very flexible for integration in its repository.

Allow me to show you a few demo YouTube videos that feature the Hatch Game Engine.

OpenMania Framework and Hatch Engine Demonstration -

Sonic CDX Test Video -

Sonic Megamix Mania Hatch Engine Test -

Hope you find it very useful.

I already know so many played and enjoyed Star Fox 64, the 3DS remake, but Star Fox Zero gave another retelling of the same story again, and what really gave me ire is this...

ANOTHER Star Fox 64 Remake.   No direct continuations of any Star Fox game; not to Assault, not to Star Fox Zero, not even Star Fox 2. No. Just Star Fox 64, remade again, and again, and again.

The newest Star Fox game from Nintendo is, what else another remake to Star Fox 64; another reliving of the same old story, Andross seeks conquest of the Lylat System, General Pepper calls Star Fox to stop Andross, defeat his forces, destroy the heart of his operations, save the Lylat System, all the same.

As an individual, and a gamer who actually enjoys sequels a lot more than remakes, I have to say this, I am completely sick and tired of Nintendo redoing that one same game from the Nintendo 64, which was a redoing of the SNES original, over and over and OVER again! I truly think in my perspective, I'm beginning to question the direction Shigeru Miyamoto and the staff at Nintendo's putting through the Star Fox series right now.

It leads me to think they've got no actual fresh ideas for any future Star Fox game, that is to say actually continuing the story without redoing the same game again; no ideas for new main villains, no new different solar systems and planets, no new original bosses, no new rivals, nothing. All they can do with their genius is this, "Remake Star Fox 64 again, get people to play Star Fox more with this! Pure genius!". I feel its already gotten too old as rotten, curdled milk, doused with aged mildew to sour the appetites and taste a lot.

They think and believe its going to make the Switch's successor sell more, but anyone with actual intelligence(in gaming, that is) that has had enough of remakes of one same game needs to see that they're trying the same old blueprint, and understand that doing it again is not going to work anymore. All that'll do is drive away the audience a lot more rather than attract more.

Not to mention that there's already been too much re-quoting of Star Fox 64's lines, "Do a Barrel Roll!" - Peppy Hare, "I've been waiting for you, Star Fox." - Andross, and, of course, "You've become so strong, Fox." - James McCloud, and more'll keep on repeating said quotes when people act and imitate said quotes even more with that remake they want to play. I feel I've had enough of it already. We really need to, and have to, move forward, and so does Nintendo.

I'm not saying this to deprive anyone from playing the games, even though there's very little, but to actually garner some common sense to see through the old bait and tackle blueprint from Nintendo. I've kept having thoughts on NEW Star Fox games for long, not more remakes of Star Fox 64.

What do you think of what Nintendo's doing with the franchise itself? I think, unless something changes with their plans by actual initiative to move on and forward, never to go back and repeat over and over again, it'll head downward towards less interest in the series for people, and place it into a bleak, directionless future.

And, what will you endure when you actually play the remake on the Switch's successor system? I say to those willing to play, good luck enduring more of the same again. You'll need it.

Don't worry about me, though; just had some frustration I needed to vent out. I know you really love Star Fox, but we need to think and consider about its well-being more.

I have but one query that didn't get answered yet, even though we have 50,000 maps in VGMaps thus far...

Which map from what game got labelled as the 25,000th map in VGMaps history?

With all the excitement, I almost let that one slip from my mind.

It does look really nice for that SNES emulator to have an overhaul, and widescreen support does help with plenty, too.

I'm not well-versed in SNES games, because I was close to Sega Genesis a lot, but not moreso than Saturn and others then, but that's still good for those that have been with SNES quite more.

Of course, we do also have Genesis Plus GX that does widescreen, and it broadened the vision of regular, past games in wider sizes, helps people with a lot of situations, too, but that's not the point.

Those upgrades will surely ease up SNES mapping and ramp up game mapping more! I wonder how these kind of games may do on 480x272 resolution size alongside 424x240?

Maybe GBA emulators, or others, should have the same kind of upgrades, too. Sure, they're really neat, but there's still so much in need of improving, but that's for a later time.

I would like to let you know that SNK's Metal Slug series is celebrating its 30th anniversary right now!

From the first game where it started, we've witnessed great run and gunning action and loads of bullets fly against numerous warmongering enemies and threats through the always beautifully pixel made games the series has provided!

Though it started from the Neo Geo brand arcade and consoles, the series went to other systems, too, and even though it retains the look and feel from past games, they're no longer bound to tech constraints of said past systems.

My real hopes for the series is to retain the same gameplay for Metal Slug 8, which a lot of people really wanted time and again, but go straight into putting health systems for players instead of one-hit only(but can become an unlockable for those wanting the original challenge's fidelity), become hi-bit to retain the beloved pixel art style, go for the actual widescreen resolution of 424x240, and perhaps 480x270/2, and have actual health indicators for ALL bosses, as well as plenty of additional side content to have and some good unlockables, including bestiaries, art galleries, sound tests, and more!

This retrospective video SNK just made commemorates the series and its amazing installments so far! Give it a watch!

SNK's come that far, let's keep that series going!

For those of you who played the games, what are your favorite entries and bosses in the series so far?

Well, given that so far, nobody's gathered information, maybe I may partake, after finding some information, and perhaps educate those that may want to do some map ripping from these games.

I think the tools for ripping Clickteam Fusion game maps requires NebulaFD(Fusion Decompiler) to unpack the game's files and access the mfa or mfa_level files, that's where the maps are formatted to. To use it, though, NET 6.0 is required to download.

For extraction, CTF's "Clone Object" is needed to identify the object behaviors or special tools in order to extract backgrounds/backdrops and active objects. Some may use specialized Level Viewers to capture the maps' layouts in their entirety.

May take effort, but the whole process is worth it.

After finding the level's tilesets, its necessary to capture them and export them into PNGs, then capture the layout's backdrop/active object positions into CSV, JSON, however, raw data conversion to Tiled's .tmx format is a must for that.

To make a tileset for easier and more extreme flexibility, use an image editor that does the job, such as GIMP, paint.net, or whichever, to create the "Master Tileset" from the level's own extracted CTF tiles, then load into Tiled.

Once done, anyone familiar with Tiled may know what to use; create new map, set tile size to match the originals', 16x16, 32x32, so on, then place extracted tiles into Tiled to recreate the layouts, and of course, use the Object Layer to place all the essentials; items, such as power-ups, shields, enemy spawn points, and hazard objects, and converting the CTF active object properties into Tiled custom properties.

For more complex stages, however, its important to write a custom parser(likely using Python as a requirement, for instance, or very similar, maybe C++) to read the CTF map data and export it directly to to the .tmx format, allowing to parse tile grids.

To decompile and convert them all for easier import into another game engine with greater flexibility, such as Hatch Game Engine, that's a whole different story, but saving them and refining collision shapes and data is very important, just as it is for these steps I've talked about.

That, and converting the maps into Hatch's Scene stage structure to ensure they're 100% compatible for importing, such as Stage 1, Act 1, Scene 1, then to Scene 2, Act 2, Scene 1, and so on, for games that have large, multi-map stages, like many of Freedom Planet's stage's Acts that does the exact thing, for instance.

Hope I covered a lot for this.

What Nintendo left for a lot of people, we grew up with the real true dedicated gaming handhelds that gave us great games, even the dual-screen DS and 3DS games. The smartphone mobile games have since been alienating and mentally reconforming many of their minds to think and believe their purpose and history doesn't exist to them, and that brings sadness in my heart, as well as others' out there that still crave for the exact experiences they grew up with in their childhoods. Even they are not educated on their proper history and creation beneath them.

Yes, I haven't forgotten Sony's PSP and Vita, too. They were, and still are, neat.

Not only that, but they gave developers more work to create games when they got unique SDKs for them, and that gave them joy to work on them alongside home console games and see gamers buy and play them to see their work in fruition.

I'm very worried that there's no way to really preserve these kind of games for current and new players to truly enjoy and cherish for later generations, both physically and digitally. When some people try to speak about that to others, they just scoff at them and constantly tell them to only get mobile, hybrids, and PC-made devices over and over, because they think they're all they want and need for gaming, when in truth, it's not. They really don't fit in pockets, period.

They don't fill the void at all, and it really puts the future of that kind of gaming outlet into question. They are not, nay, never, inevitably destined to be worthless junk heaps, nor their games to be delisted, unplayable, and unobtainable. They have real charm.

What a true dedicated handheld gaming system needs, even a dual-screen in the lines of 3DS, is to take improved fidelity and tech capabilities into account, even matching both screens' sizes to be wide, add a few new features to give them extra distinction, and make them future-proof, especially to stand out against mobile games that don't have the same experiences. It's never that difficult to say, ask, and do. It does take work, yes, but doing it is not impossible.

I really hope and pray(which helps in any situation, per say) for such new systems to be made to more than accomplish such goals for gamers and preservationists.

420000 screenshots is no so scary as it might seem at first glance. All images was captured, distributed to folders, imported in Photoshop automatic and compressed too, then their manual stitching took about 1 second per image

Maybe, but, that sure was a lot of screenshots to capture for a much bigger map, especially if its a Metroidvania. A great accomplishment, I say! I was astounded when I read how many screenshots you used to put that together! Its size almost reached the JPEG maximum pixel size limit in both directions!

Where The Embraced One, who did Hallownest's map mostly alone for years(which, of course, I still appreciate such efforts, to say), accomplished such a task, you actually focused on it so very well, you took almost 2 months to chart Pharloom, all the way from bottom to the very top, by comparison!

I would be that surprised if another map would reach beyond that limit for JPEG. Perhaps using JPEG XL, if VGMaps supports it(Uh... does it?), would be substantial; otherwise, PNG's a very good choice, too.

Wonder how much RAM it would take for any browser to handle decompressing it to view it up-close. Quite much, depending on the amount anyone's PC has.

Of course, the game's already got DLC plans, so I would presume more work's inbound for revising it later on.

Congratulations, by the way! My compliments!

[Egg Catcher]

This may be a little discovery, and I might've been behind on it, but the bosses in Knuckles' Chaotix all have official names, and it seems the Sonic Wiki Zone's got pages about them in serious need of updating to adopt that. They're already reported official, as written from the soundtrack's names.

The bosses' names in each Zone of Knuckles' Chaotix are...

Egg Catcher - boss of Botanic Base Zone (https://sonic.fandom.com/wiki/Botanic_Base_boss)
Egg Arms - boss of Techno Tower Zone (https://sonic.fandom.com/wiki/Techno_Tower_boss)
Egg Repilca - miniboss(and the game's only miniboss, albeit recurring in it, nowhere else) of Amazing Arena Zone (https://sonic.fandom.com/wiki/Amazing_Arena_sub-boss)
Egg Projector - boss of Amazing Arena Zone (https://sonic.fandom.com/wiki/Amazing_Arena_Boss)
Egg Barrier - boss of Marina Madness Zone (https://sonic.fandom.com/wiki/Marina_Madness_boss)
Egg Merry-Go-Round - boss of Speed Slider Zone (https://sonic.fandom.com/wiki/Speed_Slider_boss)
Metal Sonic, Weaponized Selector - penultimate boss in Newtrogic High Zone (https://sonic.fandom.com/wiki/Metal_Sonic_(Knuckles%27_Chaotix))
Titan Metal Sonic/Metal Sonic Kai - final boss in Newtrogic High Zone's Central Core (https://sonic.fandom.com/wiki/Metal_Sonic_Kai)

Guess Ian Flynn may not have known that nor their names yet, but Sonic Team's people do.

Little history heads-up on its final boss' creation, as I have also learned...

Ryo Kudou, involved in the game's development, and who designed some new Badniks and most of the bosses, was tasked to design that boss for Metal Sonic Kai's first transformation. Because of complications that had him swamped, Kudou delegated that task to Takumi Miyake, the designer for the game's stages, graphics and some of Dr. Robotnik's Badniks, instead, giving him another role of boss designer.

Once he got the task, he used Strata 3D, a 3D modeling, rendering and animation program used in its past years, to translate its design into 3D polygons and then used its model to draw over it to create its sprites.

The naming for Metal Sonic's monstrous, red-painted titanic form was a bit back and forth, though. Kudou and some of his programmer friends wanted that form to be named "Devil Sonic"(a little heart frightening, yes, and for sort of obvious reasons as to why, but I won't say them here), as a shout-out to an anime series, Mobile Fighter G Gundam(yes, there's also plenty of other shout-outs to other numerous anime series with giant mechas and their countless battles in past Sonic games, but not many then-young Sonic fans understood such references at that time, not even me; I thought that was out of nowhere until now), preferably, one of its mechs, "JDG-00X, Devil Gundam", but as an attempt to compromise, Kenichi Ono, a game designer also involved in the development, insisted for it to be named "Death Metal Sonic".

With very little methods to deliver official names from the game's bosses to any form of media outside of games globally at the time, the name "Metal Sonic Kai" was what fans came up with and was referred to for many years, which was deemed official from Ian Flynn's book, "Sonic the Hedgehog Encyclo-speed-ia". Guess that book may need a printing update someday.

Thought I should let you all know this bit of the game's history, too.

I'm not putting anyone down or anything like it, but I truly do worry about Atooi's status as an indie game company and Jools, the founder, managing it and the game projects being worked on, and priorities shifted many times that kept its release being completely settled and finalized.

For one, we were supposed to be having Treasurenauts, the long-developed game still in the belt, but constant delays and priority changes to other projects and matters outside of game development has been hurting so much for the game and the people wanting to play it for so long, it shredded their patience and anticipation for the game in their hearts and minds, even stemming so much doubt in others that game could ever be released as time goes by. Even I feel doubt, too.

For proof, here's the game's logo...



The playable Treasurenauts characters, Rhode Island Smith, an explorer, and Shuri, a ninja, and a native inhabitant. The rest are still unclear(if you can take a guess, one of them in a silhouette is a guest player, Max, from Mutant Mudds)...



A few screenshots...







And a few images of the game's behind the scenes work(take note, that's Cosmigo's Pro Motion NG at work for the game's levels. I strongly feel Tiled's a more effective choice to me.)...







The story about that game is the Treasurenauts, marooned on a cluster of islands, the Voodoo Islands, have to find and collect $1,000,000 worth of treasure and bring it to the villain, Bad Pirate Pete(whom of which we still haven't seen), who is responsible for stranding them there, and must survive the dangers to gather enough riches to meet his demand, but they would soon find he's not their only concern, as it seems a rather dark entity or supernatural evil force is residing there, readying to deliver doom to any that trespass the islands. So far, only we've not seen shreds of the story in action, not even an intro cutscene; only the gameplay.

Why, even the words about the game being "ready when its ready" really comes into question about the project's well-being in development, as well as other games suffering constant delays without warning nor notice. Hatch Tales suffered too much from delays and slight hesitation about appeal to people, when its meant to be universally applicable. That, and the game's marketing might've been better off handled to someone else that is more experienced at that field, but have hopeful, positive visions in them.

For a lead having too many hats in one sitting, and with so many created IPs, Jools should've handed a few of them to others to speed things up.

Here's a trailer video for Treasurenauts, and some of its gameplay from PAX EAST a long while ago...

I guess for tools Jools has for game dev work on his belt, I believe he uses Pro Motion NG, and Photoshop to put together the games' aspects, mainly because games like Mutant Mudds and Chicken Wiggle are all hi-bit pixel art games in their own right, and other games uses Unity as their engine, but such games uses its own created proprietary in-house engine; that of which was made for Treasurenauts originally, but Mutant Mudds had ghost levels in the works that had alpha transparency in them for its final update, back when Renegade Kid was the IP holder for it, so you know, and the previous engine wasn't capable of that, even on the 3DS, so, work on moving everything to its new engine and testing had to be done first before it can be updated to the original 3DS version, to complete the whole package.

Here's a video interview from 3RM with Jools on that at PAX EAST, part 1 of it, anyway...

Adobe's Illustrator, I think, was also used for Hatch Tales' content and vector-based graphics, too. Perhaps a better, more efficient program could've made it easier to make vector graphics.

I think Jools' workflow, in my perspective, needs to be improved by using Aseprite, which does pixel art a lot better than Photoshop, Tiled Map Editor, that does a lot better for level editing, compared to Pro Motion NG's capabilities, because by using them, especially because one of its features is using and creating custom properties for all sorts to be compatible with numerous game engines, including Unity, such as mechanics, enemies and bosses, they can streamline a lot, as it does for other devs and studios, so games could be done quite quicker with very minimal delay, especially when it comes to preparing all planned content ready for coding, testing, and then launches.

For music, Troupe Gammage, the composer behind Mutant Mudds games, did Treasurenauts' soundtrack, and used Renoise, a music tracker, to deliver the SNES influenced authenticity, but more clearer and louder to hear unlike the original console. That tracker was also used for Mutant Mudds' soundtracks, too.

And, as for game programming, Matthew Gambrell does the coding(all solo, apparently), using Visual Studo Code(free to use, too!), which is a very handy game programming necessity.

When it comes to communication with backers and fans about Hatch Tales' progress, I find it unsettling for Jools to remain silent about that. Even backers who supported the game called him out on delays and tight-lipped silence, but instead of answers, Jools had the... the...  audacity to block them on his company's and his own Twitter accounts!

I had never felt that distraught over something so little, especially when it involves game development! Jools' lack of communication caused backers and fans to turn against him and lose their respect and support. Purely just petty, if you ask me.

As any indie or regular game developer, I'll say this... that is no way to treat and respect anyone, especially their fans. I can guess there's some sort of inferiority complex bred in Jools, and fear of flop for that game, or any game, for that matter, but constant delays on that game, as well as Treasurenauts, really does hurt more than just PR.

Any other game announced as the higher priority than a long-anticipated game, which I've already said its name, damages people's anticipation of it and hopes of its finalized release date. Sure, money does keep any indie company going, but priorities for game projects and finishing them needed to be sorted out first and foremost.

Communication should've also been better about progress on game projects, because without any form of transparency, how is anyone going to gain trust in these kind of developers, the players, and the games they were looking forward to playing them when they've been delayed and kept in the shadows for far too long?

I'm already even getting too bored waiting for Treasurenauts or the next Mutant Mudds installment that's supposed to be set after Super Challenge's events. Its fun to play, but without a new game, you're left with no choice but to play it over and over again, and even re-porting it another platform many times over hurts the fondness and stunts growth to any game series, and diminished enjoyment and value.

That, and I'm already too tired of recycled available music from Jool's past games into later games. I've heard too much of it over and over again.

Something's got to get Jools and Atooi's game projects going faster sooner or later. Otherwise, I don't know what will.

Measurements in meters or square meters really don't mean enough to be listed on the atlas pages.
And technically, it could be applied to 2D games as well, but we're not going to do that.
Even now, as it is, some days I wonder if the pixel area and filesize are even necessary, so I'm definitely not going to add another column with limited value.

Calculating it isn't easy for multiple games, let alone just one.  For one thing, it's completely arbitrary what scale is in each game.  It's usually calculated by taking the known height of a character.  But what if that isn't known, or it's some abstract game?  Or if there are changes in perspective or game modes, you have to calculate them for each one?

It can be interesting in certain instances (like comparing the cities of GTA-style games, or open worlds in general), but not something you can realistically expect to be applied to maps "en masse".  If you still want to discuss the intended area of particular game maps, that should be a different topic thread.

I didn't say calculating the field distance meters would be easy nor impossible; just thought that would be a little necessity for 3D game maps. I'm not making that a big priority, too.

I mean, sure, its nice to see how long or large 2D maps can go, but when it comes to seeing and playing 3D games, my mind sometimes wonders, "how much distance meters do these 3D fields have?".

Pixel areas and file sizes are indeed necessary for maps, to me and plenty of people, anyway, because knowing is already natural as well as learning. It is already worth good effort for people to learn and have some knowledge in it as well as the experience without them feeling they're wandering off too much going blind, so to speak, or not knowing how long any game map it takes for anyone to go through and reach the goal.

Knowing is only half the challenge, but calculating is part of it, too, depending on the matter.

Yes, it does require effort, I know, and I'm not expecting too much on the matter, but I won't worry about it.

OK, I'll do a thread on that subject at a later time.

Hey! I just remembered something that's been forgotten/overlooked in the midst of our celebration!

Presently, for 3D games, VGMaps doesn't count the length of maps in distance meters, kilometers/square kilometers, miles, and so forth. The many game console atlas pages that have 3D game maps in the site, regardless of perspective, doesn't have their meter size counts alongside pixel and data file sizes, for traveling in different directions.

As I recall, from the GDC 2009 YouTube video presentation Sega made about Sonic Unleashed after its launch, the stages ranged from 5 to 20 square km, spotted at minute 43:28 in the video(I've left a video link to it in one of my posts). This led me to think, "What many other 3D games do have their meter size counts?".

I just had this thought after seeing your numerous calculations for select maps that are the longest, largest, narrowest, smallest, etc., etc., and my mind went "DING!" through a little thinking, and that's where it hit me.

Jon, if you're around, perhaps the atlas pages may need a new distance meter count section for 3D game maps added sometime soon. Think about it. I'm curious to see what they are.

[Sansara Naga 2]

Is it just me, or is everyone experiencing 2 minute wait times to load one page on the VGMaps forums? It took me something like 15 minutes just to get to point of posting this message.

In other news, Sansara Naga 2 is in the works.

It's not you, FlyingArmor. It just happened recently, I think. It's obvious maintenance work needs to be done, so the wait times can be cut down from minutes to seconds flat, as it is supposed to be all the time.

Yes, not many of us are patient, but we can still try to be moreso and not let this little situation or anything else run our nerves much.

Have faith, and peace and prayers to Jon and the forums' staff to resolve such situations.

Dang. 50,000 maps. That's... a lot of maps! Congrats, Jon! And I'm happy to have contributed to that total, small as it is. Wish I could think of more games to map out... but oh well. I'm sure I'll think of something else someday.

Anyway, here's hoping we'll one day hit 100k maps!

Oh, don't you worry. There's still loads more out there, the choices you may decide, whenever you do, can be right up your alley. The count is still going strong, and the ranges are so wide, so to speak.