Measuring the Unknown
I read a fun article speculating on the geology of Runescape and that got me thinking. Just how big is Gielinor anyway? How long before Jagex fills up the entire map?
First take a look at the Runescape map. There are still a lot of unbuilt black areas. Hmm . . . OK, I have too much time on my hands, here is what I did. First I opened an image of the Runescape map in Photoshop and measured the width and height in pixels. Then I drew rectangles covering all the unbuilt black areas. I measured the area of those rectangles and did some math. Turns out that 34.84% the map is still unexplored territory. Given that from December 2001 to April 2009 Jagex filled 65.16% of the map, it would take them another 47.5 months to fill out the remainder - about 4 years.
Of course, if they ran out of room they could just go beyond the current borders. But how big is Gielinor? When will they completely run out of room?
There are a bunch of globes in Runescape so we know that Gielinor is round. The Runescape Wiki has a mention about sextant coordinates being used to compute the size of the planet. But I just couldn't follow the logic, so I made my own calculations (which don't match the wiki's).
The Runescape sextant presumably works the same as real world sextants, and the latitude and longitude system is much like our own. We know that the observatory is at zero degrees East, and that the little peninsula in the lake at Taverly (where you get Excalabre) is at exactly 15 degrees East. There are a total of 360 degrees around the world from East to West, so 15 degrees is 1/24th the way around the world. I measured the East-West number of pixels in my map from the observatory to the Lady of the Lake, multiplied by 24, and increased the size of the canvas accordingly.
Next up; North-South. In the real world system there are only 180 degrees from the North Pole to the South pole (+90º to -90º). In Runescape the mine in the jungle near the nature altar is exactly 4 degrees South. So I measured that distance, multiplied by 45, and increase the canvas' North-south dimensions accordingly.
If you printed out nineteen Runescape maps and tiled them out; 5 1/3 across, and 3 1/2 tall, you would see how big Gielinor is.
This big:
19 times bigger than everything we've seen so far.
Proportionately on Earth it looks like this:
The known RS world is proportionately similar to the size of Europe on Earth.
If you assume the ratio of ocean to land in the future is going to be the same as it has been so far . . . and you assume Jagex builds new territory at the same rate they have been so far, then . . . (drum roll) . . . they will finish mapping the entire globe of Gielinor 203 years and 7 months from now!
First take a look at the Runescape map. There are still a lot of unbuilt black areas. Hmm . . . OK, I have too much time on my hands, here is what I did. First I opened an image of the Runescape map in Photoshop and measured the width and height in pixels. Then I drew rectangles covering all the unbuilt black areas. I measured the area of those rectangles and did some math. Turns out that 34.84% the map is still unexplored territory. Given that from December 2001 to April 2009 Jagex filled 65.16% of the map, it would take them another 47.5 months to fill out the remainder - about 4 years.
Of course, if they ran out of room they could just go beyond the current borders. But how big is Gielinor? When will they completely run out of room?
There are a bunch of globes in Runescape so we know that Gielinor is round. The Runescape Wiki has a mention about sextant coordinates being used to compute the size of the planet. But I just couldn't follow the logic, so I made my own calculations (which don't match the wiki's).
The Runescape sextant presumably works the same as real world sextants, and the latitude and longitude system is much like our own. We know that the observatory is at zero degrees East, and that the little peninsula in the lake at Taverly (where you get Excalabre) is at exactly 15 degrees East. There are a total of 360 degrees around the world from East to West, so 15 degrees is 1/24th the way around the world. I measured the East-West number of pixels in my map from the observatory to the Lady of the Lake, multiplied by 24, and increased the size of the canvas accordingly.
Next up; North-South. In the real world system there are only 180 degrees from the North Pole to the South pole (+90º to -90º). In Runescape the mine in the jungle near the nature altar is exactly 4 degrees South. So I measured that distance, multiplied by 45, and increase the canvas' North-south dimensions accordingly.
If you printed out nineteen Runescape maps and tiled them out; 5 1/3 across, and 3 1/2 tall, you would see how big Gielinor is.
This big:
19 times bigger than everything we've seen so far.
Proportionately on Earth it looks like this:
The known RS world is proportionately similar to the size of Europe on Earth.
If you assume the ratio of ocean to land in the future is going to be the same as it has been so far . . . and you assume Jagex builds new territory at the same rate they have been so far, then . . . (drum roll) . . . they will finish mapping the entire globe of Gielinor 203 years and 7 months from now!
posted by Knifestorm at 8:30 AM
12 Comments:
Gielenor is a big place for big adventures!
GAH!!!! Thats big!!! I always figured that the current map would be more like the size of North America or Asia...
Great work!
Very interesting calcualtions, would you mind calculating how big some of the houses, cities, etc in runescape are based on that? O.O
Truly inspiring! I love this article! I always knew that this place was small, I think it may even be even smaller than you say. Think about this:
As a kid, did you ever walk to like a local store or something? It took me like 30 min to walk about a mile. Now think how far you could walk in Runescape in 30 min? The results are staggering. It is my belief that Runescape towns are only the size about a small neighborhood. maybe.
So I think that Jagex has even yet to break the size of my hometown in their tiny little world.
Thanks for your kind words.
I was only trying to figure out how big the known world is compared to the entire globe of Gielenor. I was not trying to see how big RS is in real terms, but you could figure that out if you wanted.
On average a person walks 1 mile in 20 minutes. So you could walk in RS for 20 minutes (in a straight line) and that would be 1 mile. I doubt you could find a place to walk that long, so walk for 4 minutes and then multiply by 5.
this is a good link for things like this: http://services.runescape.com/m=forum/forums.ws?185,186,251,62831809
How big is Runescape in sq. miles? I assume it's probably about 100 square miles (about 20 for free world area)
This comment has been removed by the author.
I'd love to see a side-by-side map comparison of RuneScape and GTA San Andreas!
lol that's impossible have you seen karamja on ur map is as big as belgium you can walk the whole of karamja in 10 minutes but you can't walk the whole of belgium in 10 minutes
lol that's impossible have you seen karamja on ur map is as big as belgium you can walk the whole of karamja in 10 minutes but you can't walk the whole of belgium in 10 minutes
lol that's impossible have you seen karamja on ur map is as big as belgium you can walk the whole of karamja in 10 minutes but you can't walk the whole of belgium in 10 minutes
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