CLICK AND DRAG to look around and use WASD to move the camera
February 22, 2019 9:57 PM   Subscribe

noclip.website
A browser-based 3D model viewer that lets you explore reverse-engineered video game maps.
posted by drumcorpse (14 comments total) 22 users marked this as a favorite
 
This is pretty great. I should note that, despite its name, these maps are mostly from Nintendo games. Super Mario Sunshine is especially fascinating to just wander around and see which areas are visible from where.

Also, you can use Q and E to change elevation without turning.
posted by wanderingmind at 11:22 PM on February 22, 2019


Awesome stuff! It's kind of an occasional geek hobby of mine, searching out fan-made tools for exploring old favorites in this style of interface. My favorite was always Halo (see this photo-essay exploring the geography of New Mombasa from the ODST days), but finding a secret dev-released program for flying through Star Wars: The Phantom Menace levels probably took the cake for obscurity.

Some other titles I'd love to explore someday:

- Shadow of the Colossus - pretty sure it was one seamless landscape, no?
- Katamari Damacy - playing the Switch remake recently reminded me that it actually only had three levels: a house, a town, and the world. Scale limits in earlier stages hid that pretty cleverly, though.
- Crazy Taxi - I'd just love to see the different tricks they used to make the whole thing fit together. I'm pretty sure they had a highway running through a building at one point, and a river that went nowhere.
posted by Rhaomi at 12:19 AM on February 23, 2019 [4 favorites]


I found that the mouse controls were annoying, because I kept having to click and drag to adjust my direction, but if you click and hold M1 you can move around just like any normal 3D game when noclip is engaged.
posted by mystyk at 4:59 AM on February 23, 2019


Heh. None of this click-and-drag stuff! I'm just gonna hold M1 for mouselook!
[Roll_Safe_dude_tapping_his_forehead.gif]
posted by straight at 6:14 AM on February 23, 2019


Hmmmm...Requires WebGL2. My browser (Firefox) supports it, but apparently the graphics chip in my trusty old iMac doesn't. Am sad :(
posted by Thorzdad at 6:22 AM on February 23, 2019 [1 favorite]


This is lots of fun. I remember the first time I used "noclip" in Quake. For some reason I never thought about cheat codes until Quake. It just never dawned on me that there were ways to hack/cheat at games, I just played them the way they were meant to be played.

Great post.
posted by Fizz at 6:52 AM on February 23, 2019


Hmmmm...Requires WebGL2. My browser (Firefox) supports it, but apparently the graphics chip in my trusty old iMac doesn't.

I was gonna blame Apple, they're notorious for crappy OpenGL support. (It's now deprecated entirely in favor of Apple's proprietary Metal graphics.) But WebGL2 in general is not well supported; only 50% of devices or so, compared to 95%+ for WebGL.
posted by Nelson at 7:11 AM on February 23, 2019 [2 favorites]


wow my 2015 MacBook Pro fan kicked in HARD on BoTW map. Also, that's bad ass.
posted by nikaspark at 11:35 AM on February 23, 2019


There's also a website where someone extracted the tracks of the original WipEout https://phoboslab.org/wipeout/

How he did it
posted by WhackyparseThis at 8:17 PM on February 23, 2019 [1 favorite]


This is awesome and I look forward to the time I'm going to waste. I do kinda wish that the directionality of the drag was reversed, probably because I'm used to googlemaps. This combined with the speed and the noclip makes it a little less feel-good to operate, sometimes with a hint of nausea.

EDIT: You can select invert Y axis to change this. This is so damn good.
posted by es_de_bah at 10:44 PM on February 23, 2019


- Shadow of the Colossus - pretty sure it was one seamless landscape, no?
That's my recollection too, but it's now probably 10 years since I last played it. I bought the PS3 update on a whim but it was quite buggy compared to the original. Apparently they did a complete graphics overhaul for a PS4 edition last year?!?

- Katamari Damacy - playing the Switch remake recently reminded me that it actually only had three levels: a house, a town, and the world. Scale limits in earlier stages hid that pretty cleverly, though.
In a way that was one of the coolest things about it, because you'd scale up and suddenly that annoying giant dog that knocked you for a loop two minutes ago was twitching in your Katamari while you rolled up its owner. Rolling up the house where you were initially confined always felt like a total triumph. We Love Katamari would probably be more fun to explore in browser. Shoot, I missed that the switch reboot happened.

I'm very much reconsidering my decision to get out of the console market.
posted by aspersioncast at 9:14 AM on February 24, 2019


Katamari Damacy Reroll is also on PC!
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:40 AM on February 24, 2019


While this is pretty great, it makes me want to have a universal level converter.
Drive a Mario Kart around the Quake Deathmatch Arena!
Explore your Ocean Biome in a Grumman Goose!
Lara Croft vs. Lemmings!
posted by nickzoic at 9:17 PM on February 25, 2019 [1 favorite]


This is astonishing. When I read the initial post I was imagining 2D SNES maps or I guess maybe Super Mario 64 Level at 10fps.

But then I saw games like Windwaker? And Pow! I'm looking at all of Outset Island. Make another selection, and after only a slight delay, I'm looking at the entire ocean overworld and zipping around it at 60fps. And Dark Souls! Now I'm zipping around all of Anor Londo?!?

And... now wait... the "Main Field" of Breath of the Wild? Like the entire overworld? Now that's just impossible.

[Ron Howard: It was possible.]

I mean it's "just" the topography without all the detailed textures. "Just."

I can't imagine this will be around very long with him streaming all those copyrighted art assets on demand. But, wow, amazing while it lasts.
posted by straight at 10:06 PM on February 25, 2019


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