Video Game Geography: Difference between revisions

'''Type 1''' has to do with video game [[World Map|World Maps]]s. You might think that the map you're looking at makes pretty good sense until the following [[Fridge Logic]] kicks in: "If this were really a normal spherical world, I ought to not be able to move like this." Common map oddities include:

* '''Toruses ("donut-shapes")''': Going off one side of the screen causes the player to appear at the opposite, implying a toroidal (or donut) shape.<ref>Technically, worlds like this have the same ''topology'' as a donut, but not the same ''geometry''. That is, they look the same until you try to measure something, and then they don't anymore. Among other things, a rectangular map of a toroidal world should vary in width at different latitudes (or, equivalently you should move across the map at different speeds horizontally at different latitudes)</ref>. Thus you scroll off the bottom and end up at the top, instead of going in the opposite direction from a different area at the bottom. It allows, among other things, faster travel around the map, allowing players to not have to cross the equator every time they want to get from the north pole to south pole and vice-versa.

* '''Cylinders''': Like toroids, but circumvents the polar issue by making them impassable, either with [[Invisible Wall|Invisible Walls]]s or the geological equivalent of [[Insurmountable Waist High Fence|Insurmountable Waist High Fences]]s - ice, glaciers and mountains. (This is believable in a game where you start out with primitive tech but gets less plausible when you advance up to [[Global Airship|airplanes]].)

* '''Flat and rectangular''': You can't walk off the edge of the map at all thanks to [[Invisible Wall|Invisible Walls]]s. In theory there may be more game world out there than the map shows but you'll never know, will you? Frequent in the case of video game [[Fantasy World Map|Fantasy World Maps]]s and many [[RPG|RPGs]]s.

* ''[[Tail Concerto]]'' uses the "there's more to the world but you can't go there" method ([[Justified Trope|Justified]] by claiming navigation systems go haywire when you reach the edge of Prairie and it's just too dangerous to continue, but somehow Waffle and friends manage to make [[Continuity Cameo|Continuity Cameos]]s in ''[[Solatorobo]]''). [http://www.cc2.co.jp/mamoru/bronx/img/bronx.jpg This map] shows Prairie (''[[Tail Concerto]]'') relative to Nipon (from the ''Mamoru-kun'' games), but leaves out future installments like Shepherd (''[[Solatorobo]]'') and whatever land ''[[Strelka Stories]]'' will be based in.

=== [[Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game|MMORPG]]s ===

** Azeroth, in this example, would be a Type 2 flat world -- doworld—do you ''really'' want to spend three days on the boat to Northrend?

* The titular setting of ''[[Might and Magic]] III: Isles of Terra'' had a toroidal map. I, II, IV and V all had flat and rectangular worlds, but that was because they were [[Flat World|Flat Worlds]]s (in IV and V's case, opposite sides of the ''same'' world).

* [[Fury 3³]] maps are donut-shaped, apparently, despite them supposedly taking place over a small portion of a spherical planet's surface.

* Averted in ''[[The Getaway]]'' series, the makers prided themselves that you could navigate your way through the game using a [[Real Life]] A-Z.

=== [[Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game|MMORPG]]s ===

* The later ''[[Ultima]]'' games also did this--thethis—the earlier games had a world map and separate cities, but the later ones had a single map where everything was laid out, which meant that a city only had a dozen or so buildings in it and the world was only a few miles around.

* In ''[[Adventurers!]]'' (where RPG clichés have precedence over realism), a scientist makes the alarming discovery that [https://web.archive.org/web/20130613080624/http://adventurers.keenspot.com/d/0345.html it is impossible for the world to be round].