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Arnox

How Big Would Dracula's Castle Be In Real Life? (Aria of Sorrow) [Arnox]

Description: In a (apparently) exclusive video, Arnox will reveal the rough size of Dracula's Castle in Aria of Sorrow.

Timestamps:
00:00 - Intro
00:33 - Methodology
03:00 - Final Results
03:53 - Some Extras

Music Used:
Forbidden Area (Cover)
by qwertyGUY

Outro Footage:
Demolition Man (1993)

Transcript:
Intro:

One day, during my rediscovering of my love for Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, I got curious about how big Dracula’s Castle would be in real life, so I did a simple search. Bafflingly, it turns out no one has apparently answered this question. What’s going on here? It’s not even a hard question to answer. We have the tools.

Whatever. Fine. I guess I’ll have to do it myself.

Methodology:

Let's assume Soma has the standard average height of 5 feet, 6 inches. Soma's sprite has a height of 34 pixels and a length of 17 pixels. If we divide 66 (5'6") inches by the height of 34 pixels, we get this long number (show 1.9411764705882352941176470588235 inches/pixel). Thus, each pixel in the game is equal to that length.

Let us also assume each cell or square on the map is equal to one GBA viewport window size. Each window has a length and height of 240 and 160 respectively. Thus, if we go back to the crazy number we got and multiply the window length and the window height by that number, we will get a length and height of 465.88235294117647058823529411764 inches and 310.58823529411764705882352941176 inches respectively.

Now, let's go back to the map. We can see that from the Castle Corridor to the Chapel, end to end, the castle measures 50 cells long, and from the highest cells in the Floating Gardens to the lowest cells in the Underground Cemetery, it measures 36 cells. 32 cells if we don't count any of the Floating Gardens. Thus, the castle measures 23,294.118 (23,294.117647058823529411764705882) inches in length and 9,938.823 (9,938.8235294117647058823529411763) inches in height.

Putting those numbers into feet, we have a final length of 1,941.176 (1,941.1764705882352941176470588235) feet and a final height of 828.235 (828.23529411764705882352941176469) feet from the cemetery to the top floor. Next, we know from pictures that the castle is laid out in at least a roughly circular formation. Hence, we need to find the circular area. The formula for computing the area of a circle is pi*r2. So we divide our final length by 2 to get the radius and then plug that number into the formula, giving us a final circular area of 2,959,509.291 (2,959,509.291521249829761953704916) square feet.

The Final Answer:

So, to sum up, the castle from beginning to end measures 1,941 feet in length, or 592 meters in non-American units. The height from the cemetery up to the top floor, not counting the floating gardens, is 828 feet, or 252 meters. And finally, the circular area is 2,959,509 square feet, or 274,947 meters squared.

Just to give an idea of how big this castle is, the size of the Malbork Castle in Poland, which is the largest castle in the world, has a size of 1,545,600 square feet. Dracula’s Castle is about twice the size of that.

Extra Credit:

For the Minecraft builders out there, you may be interested in this. So, if every block in Minecraft is canonically 1 meter cubed in real life, then we see that Dracula’s Castle in Minecraft would be 592 blocks in length and would require almost the entire build height limit of 252 blocks. That is of course before the next 1.18 patch as of this writing.

Alright, that’s all I got for you. You can leave any comments you have on the Sanctuary site, even without an account. Be well.
I'm guessing alternate dimension mirror versions aren't counted in the square footage calculations? Like basements.
 
Nah, this is just looking at the Aria of Sorrow version of the Castle.
The chaos realm doesn't count as part of the castle anyway, its in an alternate dimension but its not really part of Dracula's castle per se. It's more like a self contained soul space if I had to define it, since its where the castle's power comes from and also the energy for Dracula's resurrection.
 
The chaos realm doesn't count as part of the castle anyway, its in an alternate dimension but its not really part of Dracula's castle per se. It's more like a self contained soul space if I had to define it, since its where the castle's power comes from and also the energy for Dracula's resurrection.
Yeah, pretty much. That's also why I didn't count the Floating Gardens. If the map is to be believed, it's just some feet away from the main towers, but I'm sure nobody cares. lol
 
Honestly pixel measurements are a bit iffy for calculating canonical sizes of large 2D structures like this. For example, just because a character is canonically a certain height doesn't mean that they actually appear that height in game. If you know the canonical height of two characters, it's not unheard of in games for them to not match up compared to each other. Assuming one is correct can sometimes force the other to be incorrect.

The most damning thing about measuring playable 2D spaces in this manner though is the assumption that a straight line in 2D space is canonically also a straight line in 3D space. For example, how do you know for sure that the player character is still facing the same direction when doing a screen transition while moving through a doorway? How do you know they didn't turn from say, eastward to northward while offscreen? This kind of thing could cause misalignments with the measurements, counting up to the entire round perimeter of a building as if it were just one side.

And all that is assuming that the rooms in game are representing their true size and layout, and aren't altered from their canonical equivalents for the sake of more satisfying gameplay.

None of this automatically makes any such calculations wrong, but they are enough to not immediately treat them as fact either.
 
Honestly pixel measurements are a bit iffy for calculating canonical sizes of large 2D structures like this. For example, just because a character is canonically a certain height doesn't mean that they actually appear that height in game. If you know the canonical height of two characters, it's not unheard of in games for them to not match up compared to each other. Assuming one is correct can sometimes force the other to be incorrect.

The most damning thing about measuring playable 2D spaces in this manner though is the assumption that a straight line in 2D space is canonically also a straight line in 3D space. For example, how do you know for sure that the player character is still facing the same direction when doing a screen transition while moving through a doorway? How do you know they didn't turn from say, eastward to northward while offscreen? This kind of thing could cause misalignments with the measurements, counting up to the entire round perimeter of a building as if it were just one side.

And all that is assuming that the rooms in game are representing their true size and layout, and aren't altered from their canonical equivalents for the sake of more satisfying gameplay.

None of this automatically makes any such calculations wrong, but they are enough to not immediately treat them as fact either.
Of course these measurements aren't canon. But then again, as you said, nothing will be unless Konami or Igarashi himself or one of the original level designers comes out with a hard measurement. As to junctions changing direction, that wouldn't make sense really. The map is laid out in almost a clear cross section. Sure, it's possible, but it's not likely.
 

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