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invictius

Is it possible to figure out how large maps are in real-world measurements?

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I'd like to know what some of the well-known largest maps are in sq km, particularly to compare them to some of the larger open-world sandbox games. I'm sure there are single maps larger than Gta V (~90 square miles) but probably not much bigger.

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invictius said:

I'm sure there are single maps larger than Gta V (~90 square miles) but probably not much bigger.

I'm sure there are not.

If a map used the entire potential area of 65536x65536 units (discounting blockmap issues), and you used the pretty standard conversion of 16 units per foot, that would be 4096x4096 feet or 0.6 square miles.

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Linguica said:

I'm sure there are not.

If a map used the entire potential area of 65536x65536 units (discounting blockmap issues), and you used the pretty standard conversion of 16 units per foot, that would be 4096x4096 feet or 0.6 square miles.


Are there any maps that do use that maximum area?

I was surprised to find out that the average KDitD level is equal to 90 square metres... and that maps are really this small if doomguy moves at 60 mph. :P

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Maps that have large vertical space have a tendency to feel bigger than they actually are. Curious if there could be some mathematical utility to find the area of each geometric sector in a map and return a value that is the area of the map in map units, then convert it to square feet/meters/miles/kilometers etc.

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To a first approximation, you could traverse the NODES structure and add up the area of the bounding box for every subsector.

For a perfect(?) number, you would have to traverse every subsector, collect the associated segs, and determine its enclosed area, which would certainly be doable, but somewhat more work.

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I wonder if it would be possible to make maps appear bigger by simply scaling the player and all objects down to an extreme amount. I imagine that would create some problems but hey.

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MetroidJunkie said:

I wonder if it would be possible to make maps appear bigger by simply scaling the player and all objects down to an extreme amount. I imagine that would create some problems but hey.


Seems that that is how most open-world games are handled. Gta V apparently uses motion blur effects and shaking to make it look like you're travelling faster than you really are.

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invictius said:

Seems that that is how most open-world games are handled. Gta V apparently uses motion blur effects and shaking to make it look like you're travelling faster than you really are.



I meant just scaling all objects way down in DECORATE so that the existing map size appears that much bigger in comparison. It's 0.6 square miles normally but half everything and it appears to be 1.2 square miles or 2.4 square miles if you cut everything to 1/4 size. Of course, you'd also have to use higher res textures unless you don't mind them being very pixellated/blurry.

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To answer OP, no, at least not stock maps and/or maps using stock resources. Why? Because the textures/flats are simply inconsistent in that respect, never mind the weird circus freak proportions of Doomguy himself and his viewheight.

No, Sodaholic. Don't even think that aspect ratio is the fucking answer here, because it's not.

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One thing that needs to be taken into consideration is that Doom's graphics don't use a square aspect ratio: each pixel is 20% taller than it is wide. Thus, if 1 horizontal unit is 1 inch, than 1 vertical unit is 1.2 inches - which puts the humanoid characters (56 units) at just over 5'7", which is about right. So 1 foot is 12 horizontal units or 10 vertical units.

Linguica said:

For a perfect(?) number, you would have to traverse every subsector, collect the associated segs, and determine its enclosed area, which would certainly be doable, but somewhat more work.

A lot of the work is already done for you. For a correct BSP, each subsector must be a convex polygon, which can be trivially broken down into a triangle fan (ports with hardware renderers already do this), and from there it's just a matter of calculating the area of each triangle and adding them.

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Foxpup said:

A lot of the work is already done for you. For a correct BSP, each subsector must be a convex polygon, which can be trivially broken down into a triangle fan (ports with hardware renderers already do this), and from there it's just a matter of calculating the area of each triangle and adding them.

It's trivial to compute the area of any simple polygon using Green's theorem (see "shoelace formula"). You don't even need convexity or a triangulation.

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IMO the game has a problem with dimensions. The marine seems to be so small in rooms with height of 128 map units. Also I remember reading somewhere that 32 pixels = 1 meter, meaning that the marine is around 1,75.

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BaronOfStuff said:

No, Sodaholic. Don't even think that aspect ratio is the fucking answer here, because it's not.


Noooooo why did you mention him? Now he'll give you a lowdown of how the view height and intended units-feet ratio was different in the Alphas.

Gez said:

There's a whole essay someone did here:
http://www.trilobite.org/doom/doom_metrics.html


What's more interesting (to me, at least) is HOW this essay was produced: in the early days of Doom editing, with no source code available, and by sheer patient trial and error.

The most interesting part IMO are the monsters-stairs relationships. If I recall correctly, today we know that monsters won't step down stairs that are too narrow for their movement speed or something (that's the relationship the guy was observing).

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I had an idea a long time ago for someone to download all the maps in the archive, calculate their area, and see how big a percentage of the Earth's surface we've covered already.

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You want to make a map appear bigger? Simple, slow Doomguy down. There's a reason why a "4-minute mile" is an achievement IRL. But when Doomguy can zoom around with the speed of a moped (when he's not wallrunning, in which case he exceeds the legal speed limit on US motorways!), what do you expect?

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I recall trying to figure this out myself and recollect reading somewhere that thirty two pixels in doombuilder is one foot.

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That's part of the answer. The fun part is calculating the area of every sector in a map, then deciding whether to deduct embedded null-spaces.

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