Games with huge maps?

[Lee Bee]

I was wondering what Speccy games have huge maps?

Any thoughts about what the biggest ones might be? (In terms of total pixels throughout the whole game.)

Here's a couple that are pretty big…

Terminus:



Final Matrix:

[firelord]

Sentinel had many levels/maps...

[Juan F. Ramirez]

Shadow of the Unicorn seems huge:

https://maps.speccy.cz/map.php?id=ShadowoftheUnicorn

[Morkin]

"(Explorer has entered the chat)"



I usually struggled with games had more than a hundred or so screens, as I could never be bothered trying to draw a map.

One exception is Starquake, over 500 (I think), but because of the varied brickworks and sections, you slowly get to know the map layouts. I couldn't fathom Firelord, it had a similar number of screens but they just looked too similar to me.

[Joefish]

I hadn't paid much attention to it before, but it looks like Shadow of the Unicorn does something similar to Lords of Midnight in its screens (although more simply). The view appears to be some local graphic in the foreground, with the background made up of smaller versions of the three adjacent screens above. This is clearer when there is a large object in the distance such as a castle. It seems messy and inconsistent when there is a body of water in the distance though.

[zup]

Dragontorc and The Sentinel...

[+3code]

Turrican, of course, https://maps.speccy.cz/map.php?id=Turrican1

[WhatHoSnorkers]

Chucky Egg 2 Chocky Egg?

[Timmy]

Sqij?

[toot_toot]

Spindizzy was pretty big, not sure if it was the biggest, but the walkthrough takes 2 hours 20 minutes to complete

[toot_toot]

Spindizzy was pretty big, not sure if it was the biggest, but the walkthrough takes 2 hours 20 minutes to complete



Soul of a Robot had (IIRC) 256 (16x16) screens

[worcestersource]

Xaviour was pretty huge!

[Starquack]

I liked The Custard Kid with it's low quality Atic Atac vibe but the 600 screens was really unnecessary. I mapped about 50 then gave up.

[SteveSmith]

I've always wondered why programmers added so many screens. Surely after 200 they must have thought 'that's enough, send it to the duplicators and let's get some money for this'.

[PQR]

Tantalus (1986) has a playing area of a whopping 32 x 32 = 1024 screens.

I always thought this is one of the biggest maps of any Speccy game.
(Apart from procedurally generated maps such as in The Sentinel and Explorer.)

[AndyC]

I've always wondered why programmers added so many screens. Surely after 200 they must have thought 'that's enough, send it to the duplicators and let's get some money for this'.

Because it looked great on marketing materials. Until everyone caught on the having "hundreds of screens" tended to mean "hundreds of indistinguishable screen" and that maybe less was more.

[Morkin]

It was JSW that started it for me, I was like "THAT many explorable screens?!"

Then it seemed to escalate, everyone trying to fit in more, a bit like the 'how many blades can we put on this razor' advert..

[Andre Leao]

Seraphima, The Sword of Ianna, Wonderful Dizzy

[Matt_B]

Xaviour was pretty huge!

4096 screens, I believe.

The catch is that they're nearly identical.

It's rare to see games with more than the low hundreds that aren't very liberal with the asset reuse.

[Lee Bee]

Thanks for the suggestions, chaps! I'm enjoying this thread.

I really get a kick out of big maps, especially the ones that have little repetition, and bigger structure, like landscapes.

I encourage you to add images to your suggestions so we can all see what you're talking about.

Awesome! Great call! I honestly had never heard of Tantalus until now. Seems it was the predecessor to Terminus.

I thought Terminus was huge but this looks maybe 3 or 4 times bigger!

The Sword of Ianna

Wow, that's insanely big

Wonderful Dizzy

Gosh. I always thought Spellbound Dizzy had a huge map but this puts it to shame!

Sqij?

LOL you mean this:

[Andre Leao]

If my memory does not fail, Terminus and Tantalus belongs to the same coder. So big it is almost unplayable

[Wizwords]

Yes, Paul Hargreaves. He also did Strontium Dog The Killing, another similar game!

[Sokurah]

I really get a kick out of big maps, especially the ones that have little repetition, and bigger structure, like landscapes.

LOL

[Timmy]

LOL you mean this:

Yes of course I mean this. The question was whether the game has huge maps.

Just because the player couldn't reach it doesn't mean the game didn't had a huge map.

[bluespikey]

Yeah, the map for Tantalus was splashed across three consecutive issues of Crash tips, which was a nice bit of free advertising.

Starquake is a great map. Its huge, but you learn to find your way around because of the different colours and rock types. And if you venture right down to the bottom, there is a statue of Oli Octup for no reason.

The worst is Underwurld. It goes a long way down for no reason. You only need stay in the top half.