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.
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.
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