Topic: VGMaps.com Atlas Project: Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night (PSX)

[TerraEsperZ]

You can leave my name out, since I ended up doing next to nothing. This is almost exclusively your work, and you deserve the recognition.

[JonLeung]

Of course I'm well aware the upside-down castle isn't just a flipped or rotated version of the original...I've played the game, certainly one of the best PlayStation experiences of my mostly-Nintendo-centric video gaming life.

And I know making the first castle wasn't easy.  And it certainly took a while as it is.  So it is going to be incredible, I'm sure.

Maybe I'll sound like the guy who calls a half-full cup "half-empty", but though I will be heaping tons of praise on the "original" castle, I'll always feel the game to be incompletely mapped.  Sorry if that makes me sound like a "Negative Nelson" or whatever.

Like I said, I've honoured incomplete games as MotM before, but that was relatively early on and something I don't really want to return to doing.  But if you really don't think the second castle is feasible anytime soon, it might seem unfair.  Not quite a "damned if I do, damned if I don't" situation, but it'd be a no-brainer if it was 100% done.

I did say I already had another game in mind for this year's October MotM since it was long overdue, but keep in mind Castlevania games don't have to be limited to October to be honoured (I did Circle Of The Moon one June, after all).

And on the other hand, the MotM concept I find to be a little lacking.  I wasn't going to bring this up now, but it had crossed my mind about retiring the concept...there could be other ways to promote maps.  But that's a discussion for another day, in another thread...

[Revned]

MotM really isn't that important to me. If you have another chosen already, go for it. Yes, I realize the game is only 50% mapped, but it's been 3 years since I started the first half. 3 years. It feels done to me.

[JonLeung]

If you don't mind 4chan:
http://orz.4chan.org/hr/res/733005.html

While searching for "VGMaps" on Google (hey, I'm allowed to do that sometimes), one of the recent results is that topic.  There's more than one mention of Symphony Of The Night in that 4chan thread where people are talking about video game maps.  

And Revned, considering that you spent 3 years on this castle, I'll give it some recognition of some sort when you're done.  If not the Maps Of The Month, or not THAT month, it will at least get a mention on the news or maybe I'll make a front-page feature image since I think it will be a big deal.  Hope no one else gets jealous that I don't spend the effort on many games like that...actually, the last time was probably when we worked as a team on Super Mario Bros. 3 on the NES.  That was fun.  I guess this one started as a project too, but it's mostly Revned's baby now.

[JonLeung]

Revned sent it in to me very late last night.  As I type, it's currently uploading.  As expected, it is HUGE.  

EDIT: It's up!

AWESOME JOB, REVNED!  

[marioman]

And with that I believe this map has set an absolutely untouchable record for the largest map dimensions and file size.  (Unless, of course, someone rips the upside-down version of the castle.)  While I am not a Castlevania fan, I am awestruck by this map's size and the effort that went into its creation.  Congratulations to all who were involved.

[Will]

I am very impressed  . That is the largest, highest detailed map I have ever seen. It's so colourful and vast in its layout you could spend hours gazing at it from top to bottom. I only wish the Ghosts n' Goblins franchise and Gargoyle's Quest trilogy could have reached that level. This map can certainly be the next halloween map of the month, otherwise wait for next new year's day and it becomes the elite map of the next decade. Consider yourselves honoured Revned and others.

[alucard]

This map is amazing, great job to everyone who contributed

[snesmaster]

I went to check out the newly uploaded map and I got this message:
The image "https://www.vgmaps.com/Atlas/PSX/Castlevania-SymphonyOfTheNight-Dracula%27sCastle.png" cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

I'm using Firefox version 3.5.3 with windows XP.  Does anyone else get this message or does it appear just fine in the browser?

I did download it and was able to view it in my image viewer and it is an awesome map.  Definitely my favorite Castlevania game ever.  My screen size is set to 1920 x 1200.  Even with that you need a bigger screen to have a good view of this map.  Great job, it was well worth the time spent on it.

When will the upside down castle be done?

[snesmaster]

I just tried Internet Explorer, and that just shows a box with a red "X" instead of the image.  It looks like bowers are just not made to display an image so large and awesome.

[JonLeung]

And with that I believe this map has set an absolutely untouchable record for the largest map dimensions and file size.  (Unless, of course, someone rips the upside-down version of the castle.)

I certainly don't want to rain on anyone's parade, but it's not the largest.

Image area-wise, it's 15648 x 12000 pixels.  But EarthBound Zero/Mother's World map is 16000 x 15000 pixels, which beats it on both height and width.  Also, if either of The 7th Saga's Ticondera maps were fully assembled instead of being in quadrants, they would be 17408 x 13376 pixels.

Filesize-wise, it's 21,444,891 bytes (20.4 MB) as a .PNG.  Four PC maps are larger (hint: they're from RTS games), and Paper Mario's Dry Dry Desert is also larger, but that is expected considering N64 maps probably can't compress too well.

[marioman]

I just tried Internet Explorer, and that just shows a box with a red "X" instead of the image.  It looks like bowers are just not made to display an image so large and awesome.

You will need to actually download the map and use a rather robust image viewer to view it.  I tested the map in Irfanview and it worked fine.

I certainly don't want to rain on anyone's parade, but it's not the largest.

Image area-wise, it's 15648 x 12000 pixels.  But EarthBound Zero/Mother's World map is 16000 x 15000 pixels, which beats it on both height and width.  Also, if either of The 7th Saga's Ticondera maps were fully assembled instead of being in quadrants, they would be 17408 x 13376 pixels.

Filesize-wise, it's 21,444,891 bytes (20.4 MB) as a .PNG.  Four PC maps are larger (hint: they're from RTS games), and Paper Mario's Dry Dry Desert is also larger, but that is expected considering N64 maps probably can't compress too well.

Yeah, I guess I should've done a little more fact checking on that.  I was thinking that the largest map would probably be a GBA or SNES game, but after thinking about it for a while I remembered about the RTS maps.

Impressive achievement nonetheless.

[snesmaster]

The tallest map I ever made was for Spy Hunter on the NES.  Area 7 is 145 KB and 256 x 30000.  Certainly not the largest in total area, but I believe the largest in height.  My version of Photoshop would not allow me to save out a .png any larger then 30,000 pixels in either direction.  I don't have the most recent version, so I don't know if a .png file can be larger then that now, but as far as I know a .png can't be larger then 30,000 in either direction.  Let me know if anyone knows if a .png file can be larger then that.

[Revned]

Glad everyone likes it  For viewing on Mac OS X, I highly recommend Xee. It uses your graphics card and is very fast.

It would have been considerably wider if I included the opening portion where Alucard runs through the forest, but I decided it wasn't worth it.

Snesmaster, the PNG format allows dimensions up to about 2,000,000,000.

If anyone finds any mistakes, big or small, please let me know. I found 3 minor ones after uploading it last night 

[FlyingArmor]

I opened it up in Photoshop, and even then I had to wait at least five minutes for it to load, hahah. But of course every second of waiting was worth seeing the end result. It's just amazing to see the castle in its entirety like this.

Absolutely awesome work, Revned et al! \(^o^)/

And speaking of mapping the inverted castle, I think I would be interested in taking on that particular challenge. I'll have to see about it.