Recent Posts

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VGMaps Social Board / Re: YouTube channel! (JonLeung1)

« Last post by JonLeung on October 08, 2021, 10:54:16 AM »

It's been a while - I had some quick content on my channel - including some movie leaks that got taken down, LOL.  Back to original content, I am close to finishing my review of Bitmap Books's "A Guide To Japanese Role-Playing Games".  But I had to shift gears to quickly make a new episode of "The Geek Fiction Multiverse" to see how the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate - Fighter's Pass 2 characters are connected to Mario, with Sora (from Kingdom Hearts) being revealed only three days ago.  Probably one of the fastest videos I've ever made of this size!  This is one I'm proud not just because it's timely, but also technically.  Full subtitles, green on a shirt while using a green screen... fun times!  Let me know what you think!

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Maps Of The Month / Re: 2009/04: Metroid Dread (DS) - JonLeung

« Last post by JonLeung on October 08, 2021, 09:23:54 AM »

Happy Metroid Dread release day!

Kind of hard to believe that I worked on these fake maps for months, and even late into the evening on March 31.  Ah, back when I had time on my hands...  But speaking of time, it's also hard to believe this was 12.5 years ago - or, one-eighth of a century ago.  And it was a rumour for a few years before that, for it became infamous enough for me to consider it for a VGMaps.com joke.  What a ridiculous amount of work into a mere (though elaborate) joke.

I'm behind on my games (as has perpetually been the case since about 2015) but I will make time to prioritize playing the real Metroid Dread, now that it has finally arrived.  How exciting, especially after almost two decades (almost one-fifth of a century!) since Metroid Fusion!

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Maps Of The Month / 2021/10: Darkmere: The Nightmare's Begun (Amiga) - George s

« Last post by JonLeung on September 30, 2021, 07:30:56 PM »

Darkmere: The Nightmare's Begun

For this month's "Maps Of The Month" featurette, I wish to draw your attention to George s's Darkmere: The Nightmare's Begun (Amiga) maps.

As Prince Ebryn, you are given a magic sword and an elven crystal from your dying father, King Gildorn.  Gildorn was once an elven hero who had defended the kingdom from the great dragon Enywas.  But now, the kingdom is plagued by orcs and dragons, as well as the "Darkmere" - a cloud of darkness - and so it is your turn to destroy the approaching evil.  The nightmare may have begun - but can you end it?

The Amiga is a classic computer platform that we haven't seen represented much here on VGMaps.com, and the last time we saw an Amiga game featured in the Maps Of The Month was nearly 15 years ago!  George s is no stranger to isometric maps, having been honoured for the Maps Of The Month for Landstalker and Lady Stalker, which are both isometric adventures, as well.  But this one is triply mapped!  First, there are full screenshot maps of each area, fragmented, but as they appear in-game.  Second, there are "connected" maps with the screens stitched together, providing a more cohesive look at the world.  Third, there's a more recent addition of simplified maps that are ideal for printing.

So to recognize the effort put into mapping yet another isometric game, and three times over, George s's Darkmere: The Nightmare's Begun (Amiga) maps will be known as VGMaps.com's Maps Of The Month for October 2021.

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Maps In Progress / Re: FlyingArmor's Map Projects Present and Future

« Last post by FlyingArmor on September 27, 2021, 06:59:35 PM »

Hey all! Long time no speak.

I haven't been doing much lately as far as mapping goes, though I've done a little here and there. There's one map I've been working on and off for the better part of this year: a map of the Isles of Wynmar from the recently released RPG, Nox Archaist. It's been rather interesting working with Apple II Hi-Res graphics to say the least, haha. I've still got a long way to go before finishing the game, but I've got more than half of the overworld captured thus far.

The only other major mapping I've done is mapping out the Commodore 64 version of Ultima IV. I used Tiled along with the C64 tileset to construct the maps while looking at the PC maps I've already compiled. Mapping out the Britannian overworld tile by tile took quite a number of hours, though it beats having to do so with just screenshots. I should have all the townes and castles and villages submitted some time tomorrow.

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VGMaps Social Board / Re: Any idea why the Genesis "index.htm" file is a problematic file?

« Last post by JonLeung on September 19, 2021, 06:20:07 PM »

So I've tried binary transfer as well as replacing the special characters.

Interestingly, a single "©" that I hadn't previously replaced with "©" and the "ü" you pointed out to me were both with Lunar: Eternal Blue, and I believe that is the largest map set on the Genesis page, if not all of VGMaps, as Lüt did a whopping 791 maps - honoured recently as the Maps Of The Month for August 2021.  So it was quite the replacement!

However, the uploading issue remains.  How annoying.  And baffling.  Thanks for the info and suggestions though.

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VGMaps Social Board / Re: Any idea why the Genesis "index.htm" file is a problematic file?

« Last post by Grizzly on September 18, 2021, 11:46:51 AM »

The number 12 corresponds exactly to the number of newline characters in the Genesis index.htm. On Windows a new line is historically written with two bytes, \r\n, so the upload process most likely is converting the line endings to Unix style, removing 12 bytes.

Using binary transfer should help with this because it should exempt the file from any conversion (as does the Auto setting if it sees a file extension that normally corresponds to a binary file format; like .png).

The file replacement error also might have to do with the text processing and a hickup on certain special characters in the extended ASCII range. For example, Super Nintendo index.htm uses © (169), ® (174), ³ (179) and ÷ (247) while Genesis index.htm uses © (169), á (225), ï (239) and ü (252).
Here binary transfer should also help, or alternatively using the HTML replacement codes (e.g. á) and inserting them instead.
But binary transfer sounds more promising because as you said: the uploading process or server should not inspect the file at all but use it as is.

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Maps In Progress / Blake Stone SVG remake

« Last post by DarkWolf on September 02, 2021, 09:15:35 AM »

I'm getting close to finishing this, so I wanted to share a preview. I've been working on re-doing my Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold maps in SVG. Those files can then be loaded into a webpage to create a viewer with some interactive options. Not sure when it will be done, as it's always the small details which take the most time and energy right?



If the image tag doesn't work: https://garoux.net/forum/blakepreview.png

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VGMaps Social Board / Re: Any idea why the Genesis "index.htm" file is a problematic file?

« Last post by DarkWolf on September 02, 2021, 08:57:38 AM »

Is your web hosting using Linux? If so check your folder and file permissions. There exists scenarios in Linux where you can delete files from a folder because you have write access to that directory, but you can't overwrite a file in that directory because you don't have write permissions on that specific file. I would expect you'd see an error message with this sort of thing, but it's possible the server or maybe your client isn't properly handling the error or suppressing it for some reason.

Text vs binary mode can also create issues, but this usually has to do with white space or character encoding, that is, I would not expect the behavior you're describing. Doesn't hurt to try though.

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VGMaps Social Board / Re: Any idea why the Genesis "index.htm" file is a problematic file?

« Last post by JonLeung on September 01, 2021, 09:24:33 PM »

Never mind... the problem is back.

Why?

So strange!  Guess I'm going back to the old workaround method... sigh.

Also, why does FileZilla have to shave off 12 bytes from .htm files when I upload them, but keep the filesizes the same for all other files?  Why does it have to do anything different with HTML files anyway?  Just... upload them.  That's like a delivery person going through my packages and taking away something probably insignificant.  It's like... that's not your job... just bring it where it's supposed to go.  By uploading the Genesis .htm as a .png and then renaming it to .htm, I notice it keeps all its bytes.  Maybe when I have some time I'll download an .htm file off my site and compare it to the original and see what it removes.  Maybe I should make a much smaller one so it's easier to tell.

EDIT: A quick Google search says something about different file systems like Linux vs. Windows and recognizing it as text or something.  I should go to bed now so I'll look more into it tomorrow, including trying to upload with the "binary" transfer instead of "ASCII" or "Auto".

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Maps Of The Month / Re: 2021/09: Tomba! (PlayStation) - Electromax

« Last post by Electromax on September 01, 2021, 11:54:48 AM »

Thanks! Tomba is one of my favorites. In general most of my favorite games from the NES/SNES area are well-covered here but the PS1 era not as much, understandably because the areas are 3D and not easily extracted so your options are either drawing maps from scratch or trying to pull out the assets in some form like I've done here. Anyone interested in PS1 work, happy to answer questions here/twitter/etc. Every game is different but some are easier than others.

Tomba 2 will be along in the coming months, here is a preview map for the sequel: https://twitter.com/vgcartography/status/1429861130709708802