Honestly, I've always assumed Hallownest was built like an anthill but represented like an ant farm. This would mean that some rooms curve and layer back on themselves or other rooms, but Cornifer, being the legendary cartographer he is, figured out how to represent the 3D world in a 2D space.
The problem with that logic is that for the most part, maps and locations _do_ align, which would almost never happen in a 3D world with 3D space logic. So it is just a ton of blunders and negligence on Team Cherry's part.
Yeaahhh… (Let’s just all ignore that a good 40% or more of the actual map was never drawn by Cornifer in the first place and that all his rather “notebook sketch” like mapping of hallownest get entirely replaced by the night itself TLDR: Man cornifer’s such a good cartographer I love him No but seriously we should appreciate the knight’s drawing skills more often)
People on scripterswars recreated the entire map way back in 2017 after some months of release. It has way less unnecessary details and it is wayyy more useful: it tells you the location of all grubs, bosses, benches, charms, and other stuff.
Uh, so Nook's website has crashed due to the influx of traffic... Please be sure to check back in a few days to see the map in full! EDIT: It's back up now!
Damn, reediting every single background as well as high res screenshoting and connecting everything together?? Nook did insane amounts of work! Props to her!
People on scripterswars recreated the entire map way back in 2017 after some months of release. It has way less unnecessary details and it is wayyy more useful: it tells you the location of all grubs, bosses, benches, charms, and other stuff.
28:00 I think the problem with overlapping rooms is that we're looking at a 3D environment through a 2D lense. The stag nest probably wouldn't actually clip into other areas if a z-axis could be better included.
Yes. I would like to point out that from the little intro sequence we can see that the path to dirtmouth is winding a bit, so if we assume that the length is shortened in game to make it 2d, then the length on other side of dirtmouth could also be shortened, meaning dirtmouth could be further away from crystal peak than it appears, meaning that the view from that observation room might actually be able to see the village far away
I like to think that the hollow knight map is canonically three dimensions, and sometimes hallways or rooms can bend into the third dimension in order to account for overlaps. I guess this is supported by that one telescope in City of Tears that allows you to view the world from a different angle, and by several cutscenes.
Rain World's map does actually try to represent just this sort of three-dimensionality in game, with rooms appearing on different layers and making many connections somewhat vague to represent long stretches of pipe not depicted in gameplay. It mostly works, even if it does make things a little more confusing to navigate. I think in retrospect I'm glad Hollow Knight didn't try to literally represent that.
@@sithdude2436yeah I was wondering if the white palace really was that tall, then Ancient basin could be moved forward or backward from where city of tears is, and so that way the palace could either be a humongous skyscraper in an extremely large and high cave, or just be mostly built into the ceiling and the building is just connected to the ceiling of the cave.
I highly doubt what I said above about the palace is true though since we see the front of the palace and it really doesn’t look like it would be that tall, probably just how the game had to map it since it’s 2d and it shouldn’t make sense, or the palace was just much smaller than the possibly warped one in the dream world.
me too, but i really enjoy the thought of hallownest being narrow and pressed against glass looking like an ant farm like youre just looking at ur silly little bugs doing bug things
when you realize that none of the rooms would realistically be exactly next to each other, like the blue lake shown in game isn't the full lake, its just the bit connected to FC and RG. the elevator is suggesting that theirs some bend between. any rooms that overlap are in front or behind.
It's interesting that you consider needing to add hallways and such as misalignments in the map. I kind of always assumed that there were implied hallways and such between rooms, rather than them being perfectly contiguous. It's really awesome to see the amazing work Nook put into this, though, my goodness!
Depends. Some transitions match real well and could be expected to stitch. Others have very different style and ambiances, making the space ellipse obvious.
I had the same feeling about the stag station or the hot spring in the forgotten crossroads, where entering it might actually take you to a different Z-depth to provide the space for the taller roof and the tunnelways.
hmm... I feel like horizontal hallways I can buy that for, but vertical and jagged hallways less so? Like any vertical shaft would require the mantis claw to be used to go up it, which some of the vertical transitions don't, and stuff that has to go up or down as well as side to side during a room transition feels like it would be a room if it was actually intended.
I don’t have any issue with all the hallways i always imagined sometimes between rooms there’d be a hallway and it’s skipped. Kinda like how a film doesn’t show every second of a character travelling somewhere
Yeh thou it slightly classes with the concept of map cartographing in the game. You often draw hallways, so why not draw the rest? That is why people usually use more the argument that technically "in lore" the map isnt all in an xy flat axis, since well, there is background that shows the world extends 3d too. Doesnt work 100% of the time, but works enought so ingame people usually dont notice the paradoxes.
I agree. I’ve always felt that it’s a good practice to differentiate how a game’s world is depicted in game vs. how it is in-universe. That what we see in game isn’t a perfectly literal representation of how it “really is”. Take Peach’s Castle from SM64 for instance. Are we supposed to believe that most of her castle is just empty rooms with paintings strewn about? Probably not. It’s just an instance of Gameplay vs. Story Segregation.
It's the vertical hallways that I'm more concerned about, since they may break the lore. A vertical shaft is only traversable with mantis claw, so in locations where mantis claw might not have been attained, the knight might be able to traverse these shafts without mantis claw, which doesn't make sense.
A fair bit of these can be accounted for by treating Hollow Knight as a two-dimensional adventure through an otherwise three-dimensional world. Just because the camera pans left on a room change doesn't mean the Knight had to have walked a perfectly straight line, the path could have angled without players being made aware. I think that particularly accounts for places like the White Palace and Soul Sanctum, and you can already see it basically canonized by the existence of doorway rooms and the Stag paths that take off outside the plane of the map.
I'm so glad you put some focus on the infamous Tuk Egg Room. That room was the place that truly made the game for me. I've beat this game and all of its endings many times. I've achieved the full 112% thrice. Yet, throughout my entire Hollow Knight journey, nothing will ever parallel the pure ecstasy of my first time stumbling into the infamous Tuk Egg Room. I cried, prayed, and donated $2,000 to my local St. Jude's Children's Hospital branch the first time I saw that beautiful big bouncing boy perusing the garbage beneath the City of Tears. Thank you, Mossbag, for bringing forth into the public eye what is quite possibly the greatest achievement in game development history. I am forever indebted to you. 24:27
The Infamous Tuk Egg Room combines the grandeur of the White Palace, the mystery of the Void, the holiness of the Garbage Pit, the isolation of Kingdom's Edge and the terrifying atmosphere of Deepnest's cryptid-filled tunnels. Truly one of a kind.
it seems more likely crossroads was made first relatively accurately, but then over time various things were added and maybe a few things remove and there simply wasn't space with other regions around to remodel as needed. it wasn't inexperience with the first map but rather general inexperience that the first section of the map suffers the worst from by merit of being around the longest.
Man... I feel like someone making something of this complexity is committing to a pretty thankless job, one most people might glance over and then walk away from. So it's kind of cool they get their work really delved into so more of us can appreciate everything that went into it
ya know, i just think a lot of "rooms that overlap" would be placed behind eachother, obviously its a 2D game but it has a lot of parralax and suggestions of 3D space, so i dont think its that bad that the map doesnt fully align 100% of the time
@@TheEmbracedOne It's a beautiful work, and a staggering amount of effort! You have my admiration for sure, I adore these kinds of maps. Gl on your game development!
Mossbag, i can't stress enough how sane your uploads keep me during the wait for Silksong. Thank you so much for everything you do for this wonderful community.
@@TutorialsGuyPlease never say that again. Any semblance of stability that remains in my mind is held together with used duct tape and a sticky substance I think might be glue.
30:16 one thing about this room is that whenever I go in it with wayward compass, it always says I’m in a completely different area like kingdom’s edge or greenpath.
I was going to say the same thing. The Map itself is a masterpiece but I have to give it to Mossbag for taking the time to break it down like he did. Good job to the both of them!
Overlapping isnt a problem. It can easily be handwaved away with "You're underground, there are some slight curves/diagonals that you can't notice go toward/away from the camera
I thought of the White palace as deeper in the Z-axis (assuming that X is horizontal and Y is vertical here), I always imagined that the entrance was it's own long hallway that goes deeper in, and didn't line up with anything because it was on a whole other plane. But then you'd have to make multiple composite maps to make what would ultimately just become a 3D map
You know I do kind of like how Silksong is taking a long time, because we get to see fun videos like this which probably wouldn't exist if Silksong released already! I don't think this is "scraping the bottom of the barrel", I think this is getting a chance to show off a cool thing that a HK fan did and giving her the spotlight she deserves for her hard work. How Nook did this is actually really interesting and cool and I admire her effort. I hope her own games she's developing goes well and I hope to see more fun videos like this from the HK fandom in the future!
Give this man a SilkSong, before he starts studying the phylogenetics of the different inhabitants of Hollow Knight !! Seriously, cool video ! I really didn't expect a tidiness contest between the areas of Hollow Knight !
@@Blue14113 He mentioned a fan project that aimed to create a conlang in the style of Hallownest's apparent dialect, based on the signage around the world. It's been dubbed "Hallowspeak" and has its own website by the same name.
this interactive map is one of my favorite fan-made projects EVER. the sheer level of dedication and love that Nook put into making it as smoothly tied together as she could is simply gorgeous
The only conclusion one can draw from these changes, namely the re-scaling of rooms to make them fit, is that The Knight actually changes his size on a whim depending on his environment. I cant wait to see the video on all the lore ramifications this discovery has on the game.
I think that most of the overlapping rooms and misalignments can be handwaved away by saying they're in front of or behind each other, and that Hallownest isn't actually 2D and flat, only represented as such. I always thought of the Pale King's workshop as just going the other way. Like, you walk down a corridor, and take two lefts, and now you're in a new corridor going back towards where you came from.
I once had this "good idea" for a Minecraft project to create the entire map in creative (if the knight was the size of a Minecraft avatar). Now this didn't get too far as it really was a hassle to even get the outlines, but I did notice that it really was near-impossible to get the rooms to line up neatly, I had to extend some hallways or drops within the crossroads (the only part where I did stuff) to make it actually fit continuously
That and, as funny as it would be, the actual White Palace as it was before the Infection was probably _not_ a gigantic death Labyrinth of buzzsaws. I feel like that stuff was implemented when it was pulled into the Dream World and hidden behind a barrier.
First off, I'm so glad you got so many eyes on nook's project, mossbag. That's wicked cool of you! 😃 Second, thanks for taking us on that trip through the map and highlighting all of those extra/changed hallways. Third, that's gotta be your best video ending. Ohmygod. 🤣
Remember that one room in Greenpath that connects Hornet's arena with the Lake of Unn that everyone complains about because there's nothing there? Well maybe Team Cherry knew that other such connecting rooms must exist but left them out because they didn't want there to be too many rooms like that one.
Absolutely love fan projects like this, and also completely understand that "fuck no" at the end lmao. This is an impressive endeavor, but needless to say I very much understand why one would only want to do it *once.*
Fireborn, Windette, BlueSR, Skurry, CcMacci, the developpers of Pale Court and the guy who beats GPZ every day till silksong releases: Are we a joke to you
@@Snt1_ They are a joke to me, not because their content is bad or anything, but just because I don't really watch them, therefore they don't exist to me.
@@WanderTheNomadyeah, but main comment mentioned the "Hollow Knight comunity" as a whole, therefore our individuality is irrelevant in this discussion.
This makes me appreciate Team Cherry's work and the Hollow Knight community even more. I can't imagine the time it took them to make all of those ridiculously detailed rooms, pretty awesome people would take the time to make a map this big.
With the White Palace, it's worth remembering that it could have gone deeper into the background rather than lying flat on the current map. With the workshop entrance, it's possible that the halls would be curved in some way. Or it's all just a dream, oh well.
I feel like some room misalignments can be explained away with the room being in a different plane in the 3D space, like how the door rooms are in the background.
The fact that this map and by extension Hollow Knight contains 307 rooms is honestly kind of mindblowing. The amount of work Nook put into this to connect everything in a seamless way is incredible. I’m shocked at how few rooms there are, Hallownest is huge and I would’ve thought it had 500 rooms, if not 1000. Though, I guess a lot the rooms in Hollow Knight are quite large, which is something I never really thought about.
Fun fact, the game Rain world (has a lot of similarities with HK) has a fully interactive map, made with screenshots that shows all the rooms and how they connect in ghe regions, the map even features the geometry of rooms the creature spawns in them and the in game file names for ALL of the rooms. I just think thats cool
@micahjones7837 the map is so big, and you barely have a sense of where you are supposed to go. I think ive explored most of it, but I have to go back and finish the game, probably restart again
True but the map doesn’t really attempt to fit things together super well and the different areas are all given fully separate maps. Also the game kinda uses pipes to cheat with how it puts stuff together.
Yeah for real! Just going over the number of edits in the forgotten crossroads I was thinking “man I would have given up already at this point”. The dedication is remarkable.
I commend her for her dedication and persistence. This sounds like a project that I would’ve started and quickly given up on because of the jank and misalignments and not knowing how to properly make it all look right. God bless her work ethic
So much weird, understated humor in this video. And I hate weird things. Thanks for showcasing this incredible work, and walking through all the challenges involved in making it!
When this video started, I assumed the map was going to be a project handled by a full team or something. Like, one person per area. One gets Crossroads, one gets Deepnest, and so on and so forth. To learn one person took care of all of it, and even provides the necessary edits to make it look good AND make sense is just mind boggling. Kudos to Nook for taking on such a project!
Then you see a map of a game like Rain World and realize that the map is separate into distinct LAYERS, meaning several rooms are in front or behind many others. This extra level of depth really makes the world feel more real, which is precisely what Rain World strives to do with its real-time ecosystem.
Hey mossbag, i just wanted to thank you, i absolutely love your videos and you are probably by far the biggest reason why i even was able to finish this game. Normally i have the habit of dropping games pretty frequently either if something new catched my interest or if I'm just too frustrated (people might call me casual haha ) anyway, your videos kept bringing me back and back at the game until i pretty recently finally finished the game with everything that didn't require the buzzsaw Palace or nightmare grim and just succeeding that far gave me some real sense of accomplishment and confidence. Something i had been really lacking at that time so i wanted to say thank you, especially since that accomplishment probably gave me just the necessary strength to finally seek help with my depression so hey it might actually be that your videos kinda saved my life ^^ thank you
The skeleton character Papyrus from the hit game Among Us is actually a secret Hollow Knight character. A fly, to be specific. Don't believe me? To start, the word "papyrus" is actually a well known reference to the font that Papyrus uses in-game. What some people may not know, however, is that "papyrus" is also a type of grass-like plant historically known to have been made into paper in ancient Egypt. This is why touching grass is such an important game motif in Hollow Knight. Furthermore, in this thing called "Real Life" there is a type of paper called flypaper, which traps and kills flies with a sticky coating on its surface. And as we've already established, the papyrus plant can be made into PAPER. Additionally, the paper tries to trap flies in it, much like the traps and puzzles that Papyrus uses in the game to trap the protagonist. All of these facts clearly lead up to the logical conclusion that Papyrus is in fact actually a fly character in Hollow Knight.
As someone who aspires to code my own game in the HK style, watching educational and practical tutorials on world-building is very beneficial, especially given the amount of time and devotion required to create masterpieces like these
If u ever do it, put a plague doctor character named “Doc” in there and I promise I (Doc, aka Mud) will be your hardest fanboy and promote it when I am a multi millionaire and personally beat the shit out of anyone who critiques your game
I actually noticed or at least presumed some misalignments but I always just thought of them as being a result of Hollownest being 2D. I imagined the rooms to never be exactly on top of each other but kinda in front of behind from our point of view. The rooms you walk through don't actually face exactly east or west but may turn a bit towards or away from the camera.
I absolutely loved the in-depth look at the details and making of this map! More content like this! It's such a cool alternative look at a world we love so well.
Mossbag doesn't lack object permanence. Objects only exist when mossbag looks at them. That's why I carry a locket with his picture with me wherever I go in order to not disappear.
Dang the effort she put into the map… thats crazy. Also it honestly is kinda a relief that the places I got the most turned around were where the unaltered map was misaligned the most.
DS1 is mostly geographically consistent, aside from Tomb of the Giants, which clips into New Londo pretty significantly and also is nowhere near deep enough for the view into Ash Lake to actually exist. Aside from that, it's remarkably accurate, and the interconnections really do make geographical sense, and the existing inaccuracies are relatively minor and well-hidden. DS2 is... not spacially accurate, to say the least. It does a horrible job of actually covering those inconsistencies up, so it's blatantly obvious that the world makes no sense even when playing casually. DS3 also has quite a few inconsistencies, but unlike DS2, those inconsistencies are definitely intentional and very well-hidden. Basically every existing inaccuracy is in service of making the world feel larger than it really is, and it definitely works to the game's advantage to disguise how actually compact the game space is.
@@twistedgwazi5727 I think a lot of the inconsistencies in ds2 are probably intentional as well. Like, the infamous one, a lava lake at the top of a windmill. That's too obvious for devs to not have known. That *has* to be intentional. I think it works to highlight how messed up the world is, as long as you don't assume poor work from the devs and manage to see it from the perspective of a character in the world
personally ive always viewed the scene change loading as the knight travelling through some areas in the background (like the hallways being addrd by nook), which helped me understand why the rooms don't match exactly, as we just weren't showed the "gaps" very good video though!!! made me think about this more (and also got me more amazed at nook's insane efforts)
I'd love to see something like this for Rain World, but unfortunately the map is kind of cursed in that game because of the layers, so it's probably a lot trickier to manage.
At least Rain World does have the advantage that you have a lot more freedom to line things up, since even the in-game map just represents pipe connections as wobbly dotted lines to suggest that it's cutting out longer stretches of pipe. So it's at least *conceptually* possible to make a consistent "canonical" map ... even if you'd need some kind of 3D software to do it.
That's because Rain World's map layers are meant to simulate a more 3D world. None the less a map like this has already existed with the interactive map project for Rain World. Someone is going even crazier by remaking the entire map, height and all, in Minecraft.
Nook did an amazing job with everything, really an amazing work of art completing the puzzle. Thank you for showcasing such an amazing project and showing every change that had to be made to make it all perfect!
Thanks for this video - this really explains why I kept not _understanding_ how the heck I kept getting lost when I tried to play Hollow Knight, and what I subconsciously disliked about it without being able to put my finger on it.
I'm a writer and...while we all have some drawings in the early part of our projects they get modified a lot over time. My current maps looks nothing like they used to. Stuff was added, some places were teleported etc...
Yeah the above comments pretty much cover it. I'm sure consistency was a focus in the design phase, but various changes (some for gameplay, some for flow, some for clarity, etc.) would result in the end product being very different.
Just when I ran out of interesting content to watch on RU-vid, a 45 minute Hollow Knight video from the mossbag himself! "Where Birds Go to Sleep" has been on my wishlist for two or three years now!
The lore video I want now is an analysis of the different styles bugs wear, and seeing if we can use it to make some sort of timeline. For example, a lot of older bugs we see wear maroon armor, but the modern guard all where blue armor. Might be nothing there, but I think could make a cool video
amazing work from both you and Nook! i love it when you can see behind the scenes in situations like this, it shows just how much you sometimes need to kind of bend/break things in order to make it work in games
