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Gaming / Re: Crater, a Sokoban clone for MS-DOS
« on: January 18, 2026, 11:21:57 am »
Looks great, mechaskrom! I'm happy you enjoyed playing Crater to the point of wanting to map it. 
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Maps In Progress / Re: FlyingArmor's Map Projects Present and Future
« on: January 15, 2026, 04:39:17 pm »Did you use Tiled to do the maps? If not, well, give it a go. It helps cut down time.
Using Tiled would've taken 10 to 20 times longer than just taking 30 seconds to a minute to clean up each room. I used Tiled for the very first room, then I switched straight away to screenshots because it took way too long. All the tiles don't fit into a neat 18 x 24 grid since there're tiles that sit halfway between those grid lines in pretty much all the rooms. While Tiled is great for a ton of other games, it's a bad fit with how ElecHead is constructed.
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Maps In Progress / Re: FlyingArmor's Map Projects Present and Future
« on: January 14, 2026, 06:37:51 pm »
A new year has come and I bring with me a new map set!
For a little change of pace, I decided to try mapping a more modern game instead of the SNES stuff I usually gravitate toward, so here's the PC game ElecHead. Given how the graphics are fairly NES-like, it wasn't too difficult stitching rooms together. The main annoyance was getting rid of the particle effects that were present in nearly all the rooms. The rooms with stars had me taking twice as many screenshots just so I wouldn't accidently erase a star I had thought was a stray particle.
I'm fairly certain I didn't forget any rooms, but if I did, I'm sure the ElecHead fans will let me know.
I'll probably try to merge all the stages into a single image some time just for the fun of it. Hopefully 32 GB of RAM should be enough to make that happen, haha.
Since I've mapped this game, I've been thinking of taking on Nama Takahashi's most recent game Öoo as well, but that'll be something to do later down the road.
For a little change of pace, I decided to try mapping a more modern game instead of the SNES stuff I usually gravitate toward, so here's the PC game ElecHead. Given how the graphics are fairly NES-like, it wasn't too difficult stitching rooms together. The main annoyance was getting rid of the particle effects that were present in nearly all the rooms. The rooms with stars had me taking twice as many screenshots just so I wouldn't accidently erase a star I had thought was a stray particle.
I'm fairly certain I didn't forget any rooms, but if I did, I'm sure the ElecHead fans will let me know.
I'll probably try to merge all the stages into a single image some time just for the fun of it. Hopefully 32 GB of RAM should be enough to make that happen, haha.
Since I've mapped this game, I've been thinking of taking on Nama Takahashi's most recent game Öoo as well, but that'll be something to do later down the road.
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Gaming / Re: Crater, a Sokoban clone for MS-DOS
« on: January 11, 2026, 10:44:25 am »That is such a cool project! There is something incredibly satisfying about coding for MS-DOS—it’s like the ultimate "back to basics" challenge. Using Sokoban as a stepping stone toward a JRPG is actually a brilliant move. It forces you to master the core logic of tile-based movement, collision detection, and level loading, which is exactly the foundation you'll need for those top-down town and dungeon maps later on.
That's all well and good, but have you played the game?
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VGMaps Social Board / Re: External site using VGMaps content?
« on: December 21, 2025, 08:08:12 am »You got the heart to stand your ground, bud. And it's very noble you did.
Honestly, I'm really not all that concerned over my maps being over there. I'm being attributed properly, for one thing. And once my maps are up online, I have no control over where they may end up. There have been a number of people who have asked permission for hosting my maps on their websites over the years, but even if they had not asked but still properly credited, I'm still fine with that.
I was just curious what the response would be, and I was not at all surprised a clanker was used even for e-mail correspondence, given the nature of everything else on that site.
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VGMaps Social Board / Re: External site using VGMaps content?
« on: December 20, 2025, 08:56:47 am »
Oh yes, some of us are very familiar with that website. Yes, it's unauthorized and no one was asked beforehand to have any of our maps put up there.
I think Jon brought it to my attention about two years ago, since so many of my maps were present over there. I eventually e-mailed whoever owns that site to have my maps taken down, but I just got an AI response asking for all my real world details to determine whether I was the "legitimate copyright holder". Obviously I wasn't gonna give all that away to who knows who (especially someone hiding behind a clanker), so while unfortunate, we just have to live with that website existing.
But I have the hope that most people who happen to find their way there would see through the highly polished facade it puts up and recognize that the true source of the content comes from this place (which has been around FAR longer), complete with its human, hand coded jankiness.
I think Jon brought it to my attention about two years ago, since so many of my maps were present over there. I eventually e-mailed whoever owns that site to have my maps taken down, but I just got an AI response asking for all my real world details to determine whether I was the "legitimate copyright holder". Obviously I wasn't gonna give all that away to who knows who (especially someone hiding behind a clanker), so while unfortunate, we just have to live with that website existing.
But I have the hope that most people who happen to find their way there would see through the highly polished facade it puts up and recognize that the true source of the content comes from this place (which has been around FAR longer), complete with its human, hand coded jankiness.
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Gaming / Re: Crater, a Sokoban clone for MS-DOS
« on: December 10, 2025, 03:02:01 pm »
At long last, Crater is finally finished!
Download link: Crater VGA Version 1.0
After over two years of working on and off on this thing, I'm so happy it's done and I can move on to my next game project.
I hope anyone who's interested in my humble rendition of a classic puzzle game enjoys their time with it.
Download link: Crater VGA Version 1.0
After over two years of working on and off on this thing, I'm so happy it's done and I can move on to my next game project.
I hope anyone who's interested in my humble rendition of a classic puzzle game enjoys their time with it.
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Maps In Progress / Re: FlyingArmor's Map Projects Present and Future
« on: September 23, 2025, 07:00:31 pm »I'm new to these forums, but what I do know is that FlyingArmor does great maps, especially for RPGs.
Is Ultima: Warriors Of Destiny (NES) one of those current projects?
Welcome to the VGMaps forum, RetroidPrimeX! And thanks for the kind words.
I work on it on and off whenever it strikes me to. If I had a way of walking through obstacles and over water, the mapping process would've been done a long time ago. I had a heck of a time just trying to freeze the water animations, nevermind anything else.
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Map Requests / Re: Request Listings
« on: June 04, 2025, 12:55:09 am »
Maybe you could try asking ChatGPT or Gemini for help then?
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Map Requests / Re: Request Listings
« on: June 03, 2025, 11:59:36 pm »Is anybody gonna rip the maps from the Looney Tunes games?
In the 8 or 9 years since your last post here, you could've easily mapped most of those games yourself if you wanted them that badly. A little bit of hard work each day goes a long way.
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Map Requests / Re: List of unmapped NES games
« on: May 09, 2025, 12:26:07 pm »As for Ultima: Warriors Of Destiny, i'm going to leave that alone for now just in case FlyingArmor wants it.
*Just seeing this now* I have been mapping it on and off for the past year or so, so it is in the works!
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Maps In Progress / Re: FlyingArmor's Map Projects Present and Future
« on: May 06, 2025, 11:37:53 pm »
Thanks for the kind words, YelseyKing!
I suppose it can be categorized as an action puzzle game. The "story" can be summarized in the following two sentences (taken from the manual): "Sometime in the future, robots attempt to take over human settlements on various planets. Your goal is to infiltrate these settlements and destroy all of the robots." So it's up to you to find various items scattered throughout each settlement and use them along with objects like chairs and crates to figure out ways of destroying the malicious robots without getting yourself killed in the process.
David Murray did a fantastic job of using the text characters from the PET to create such cool looking environments. You can more or less tell what everything's meant to be from just a glance. While the later ports pretty up the graphics to various extents, the original PET version still can hold its own.
If you'd like to know more about it, you can check out David's channel on Youtube: The 8-Bit Guy. He put out a number of videos dedicated to the development of this game.
I suppose it can be categorized as an action puzzle game. The "story" can be summarized in the following two sentences (taken from the manual): "Sometime in the future, robots attempt to take over human settlements on various planets. Your goal is to infiltrate these settlements and destroy all of the robots." So it's up to you to find various items scattered throughout each settlement and use them along with objects like chairs and crates to figure out ways of destroying the malicious robots without getting yourself killed in the process.
David Murray did a fantastic job of using the text characters from the PET to create such cool looking environments. You can more or less tell what everything's meant to be from just a glance. While the later ports pretty up the graphics to various extents, the original PET version still can hold its own.
If you'd like to know more about it, you can check out David's channel on Youtube: The 8-Bit Guy. He put out a number of videos dedicated to the development of this game.
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Maps In Progress / Re: FlyingArmor's Map Projects Present and Future
« on: May 03, 2025, 11:25:20 am »
Been a li'l while since I last updated this.
From the start of this year, I finally got the dungeons for Ultima: Quest of the Avatar (NES) done. Thankfully the dungeons in this version were great abbreviated compared to the PC and microcomputer versions, so capturing all graphics and arranging them wasn't a great burden (well, once I settled on what the format for these maps was).
Another game I just finished yesterday (and should be up some time today) is Tenshi no Uta: Shiroki Tsubasa no Inori (SFC). This game was a nice break from what I had to do for Dragon Quest VI, haha. It was far smaller in size, and I barely had to worry about transparent layers, which I've found over the years can screw up the colours of the maps if one isn't careful.
And while I'm at, I may as well mention Attack of the PETSCII Robots for the Commodore PET. I was a little surprised to see it generated a new page on this site, but maybe I shouldn't be, since it is a rather obscure platform for games. While this game spawned around 20 or so ports (VIC-20, C64, MS-DOS, PSP, SNES, Sega Genesis, Apple II, Amiga, and many more!), the PET version is the original version, so it seems fitting to have that be the version available on VGMaps first. I intend to also map the MS-DOS version as well, but the PET comes first!
I think I should also mention that I didn't map these with the usual technique of taking screenshots; I instead wrote a few Pascal programs that extracted the graphics and maps from their respective files and put them into PPM files, which I could then take into Krita or Photoshop and do the rest from there. Once I had gotten the programs just right, it was amazing to see the map images get dumped in a matter of seconds, as opposed to taking at least 20 minutes per map with the screenshot method.
It'd be nice to extract the maps and graphics from other games on the PC like this, but I don't know if the file formats would be nearly as straightforward as the ones for this game were. I can poke around I suppose.
From the start of this year, I finally got the dungeons for Ultima: Quest of the Avatar (NES) done. Thankfully the dungeons in this version were great abbreviated compared to the PC and microcomputer versions, so capturing all graphics and arranging them wasn't a great burden (well, once I settled on what the format for these maps was).
Another game I just finished yesterday (and should be up some time today) is Tenshi no Uta: Shiroki Tsubasa no Inori (SFC). This game was a nice break from what I had to do for Dragon Quest VI, haha. It was far smaller in size, and I barely had to worry about transparent layers, which I've found over the years can screw up the colours of the maps if one isn't careful.
And while I'm at, I may as well mention Attack of the PETSCII Robots for the Commodore PET. I was a little surprised to see it generated a new page on this site, but maybe I shouldn't be, since it is a rather obscure platform for games. While this game spawned around 20 or so ports (VIC-20, C64, MS-DOS, PSP, SNES, Sega Genesis, Apple II, Amiga, and many more!), the PET version is the original version, so it seems fitting to have that be the version available on VGMaps first. I intend to also map the MS-DOS version as well, but the PET comes first!
I think I should also mention that I didn't map these with the usual technique of taking screenshots; I instead wrote a few Pascal programs that extracted the graphics and maps from their respective files and put them into PPM files, which I could then take into Krita or Photoshop and do the rest from there. Once I had gotten the programs just right, it was amazing to see the map images get dumped in a matter of seconds, as opposed to taking at least 20 minutes per map with the screenshot method.
It'd be nice to extract the maps and graphics from other games on the PC like this, but I don't know if the file formats would be nearly as straightforward as the ones for this game were. I can poke around I suppose.
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Gaming / Re: Crater, a Sokoban clone for MS-DOS
« on: April 23, 2025, 01:04:19 pm »
Thanks so much, mechaskrom, for your feedback!
I had to resort to a Sokoban solver as well for a few puzzles just so could continue playtesting the rest of the stages in a timely manner, haha.
Although they're not present in this beta version, I do plan on adding more story elements throughout the stages, in the form of inscriptions, just so my game can stand out a little bit from the more blatant clones.
Also, thanks for actually taking the time to rate every puzzle! I have a feeling most playtesters haven't bothered even to read the readme file (which is why I stressed it here in the initial post), so your contribution is most invaluable in that regard.
I had to resort to a Sokoban solver as well for a few puzzles just so could continue playtesting the rest of the stages in a timely manner, haha.
Although they're not present in this beta version, I do plan on adding more story elements throughout the stages, in the form of inscriptions, just so my game can stand out a little bit from the more blatant clones.
Also, thanks for actually taking the time to rate every puzzle! I have a feeling most playtesters haven't bothered even to read the readme file (which is why I stressed it here in the initial post), so your contribution is most invaluable in that regard.
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Gaming / Crater, a Sokoban clone for MS-DOS
« on: March 29, 2025, 10:41:58 am »
For the last year and a half or so, I've been working on and off on my own clone of the puzzle game Sokoban aimed at MS-DOS machines. My ultimate goal is to create a JRPG for MS-DOS, but since that would be far too ambitious for an initial hobby game programming project, Sokoban seemed like the perfect type of game to start out with due to its sheer simplicity.
Anyhow, I thought I'd bring it to people's attention here to see if anyone would like to participate in the second beta testing phase for it. I'm mainly interested in what people think about the difficulty (or lack thereof) of the puzzles, but if anyone manages to find some game-breaking or cosmetic bugs while playing through it, I'd definitely like to know about those as well.
Here's the download link: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/whjvatds2b68id60dr42t/Crater_Beta2.zip?rlkey=q55ss7kvsfrlpi47dmw95euvx&st=ih1jp3xn&dl=0
(Sorry for Dropbox's shenanigans; you should be able to download the file without having to sign up for a Dropbox account.)
All the details about what I'm expecting from play testers are contained within the README.TXT file in the zip file, so please be sure to read that before playing.
Looking forward to what you all think of it!
Anyhow, I thought I'd bring it to people's attention here to see if anyone would like to participate in the second beta testing phase for it. I'm mainly interested in what people think about the difficulty (or lack thereof) of the puzzles, but if anyone manages to find some game-breaking or cosmetic bugs while playing through it, I'd definitely like to know about those as well.
Here's the download link: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/whjvatds2b68id60dr42t/Crater_Beta2.zip?rlkey=q55ss7kvsfrlpi47dmw95euvx&st=ih1jp3xn&dl=0
(Sorry for Dropbox's shenanigans; you should be able to download the file without having to sign up for a Dropbox account.)
All the details about what I'm expecting from play testers are contained within the README.TXT file in the zip file, so please be sure to read that before playing.
Looking forward to what you all think of it!