Messages

1

Maps In Progress / Re: YK's random map progress thread

« on: November 05, 2024, 06:55:12 pm »

Okay, no worries! That's good to hear it didn't turn out to be nearly as massive as you first thought.

Looking forward to see how they all turn out!

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Maps In Progress / Re: YK's random map progress thread

« on: November 04, 2024, 09:51:17 am »

Hey Yelseyking! 

I've decided to take on a new project. Dungeons & Dragons: Warriors of the Eternal Sun, for Genesis. A game I played a long time ago, as a kid, but never actually *finished*. It's kind of like... I dunno, "Ultima 6 meets Eye of the Beholder", I guess? A few large, sprawling overworld maps with turn-based battles, and first-person dungeons with action-based fighting. The overworld maps would be ripped directly, of course, whereas I'd map out the dungeons manually.

That game looks really cool! I especially like the military projection that's reminiscent of Ultima VI and VIII. When I first encountered it playing Ultima VI for the first time, I found it to be really strange, but it grew on me over time. It's also a really smart way of showing all sides of a building while still sticking to a tile grid system for graphics.

Got started on it properly last night. The dungeon maps are going smoothly, and won't be a problem, but the overworld maps may be an issue... I don't know if it's my antique image editor (Paint Shop Pro 5... yay for turn of the millennium software!) or just my aging PC in general, but I don't think I can do a *full* overworld (if an image's dimensions are too large, I get an "out of memory" error when I try to save). I've seen huge maps here before (e.g. FlyingArmor's massive 16k*16k Ultima 6 overworld maps), so I was wondering... I can rip smaller chunks of the map, and if I did, could someone else here with the means combine them into one large one? Thanks!

When I worked on the Ultima VI overworld map you spoke of, I had to break it up into four quadrants when building it up, because my PC was otherwise severely underpowered for such a gigantic image. When bringing them all together, I think I had to export them as separate image files because having the current quadrant plus the gigantic target file open at the same time would've been impossible. I even had to ask someone else to optimize the PNG because my machine didn't want to coöperate with such an onerous task, haha.

I wouldn't mind helping you stitch the chunks together into a single image. The PC I have now is far and away much better equipped than the previous one (having 16x more RAM certainly helps), so whenever you're ready, you can send them to zanazac( at )protonmail.com and I'll put them together for ya!

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

« on: August 24, 2024, 12:14:44 pm »

Please. Don't go there. I'm 100% human. None like that are around. But we must stay protected, though.

Haha, just checking.

If you're really human, then you're really good at controlling your emotions, unlike a certain someone that was active many years ago demanding us to work on Looney Tunes games. Some of us gave the slightest pushback, and he exploded with rage. It's rather hilarious now looking back on it all these years later. 😆

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

« on: August 24, 2024, 10:31:12 am »

You're very spot-on for valid points. I don't want to be too demanding on anything.

Should I decide to do mapping myself, well, I'm sure I'll have fun doing it. What I'd use and do for mapping, in terms of tools and techniques, that's something I've not yet thought of where to start. Not that it is difficult or anything.

After reading all your responses on this forum over the past few days, I'm starting to think you may simply be an AI bot... 🤔

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

« on: August 22, 2024, 09:55:19 pm »

OK, I understand your reasons and yes, its true you've not heard of it and you're not interested. I only saw some videos about the game because I felt I would inform the community.

I'm only new around here. Thanks, but I ain't yet a skilled mapper. I don't know anyone else who could do it yet.

Well, you won't ever get skilled if you never try, right?

I know most of the low-hanging fruit is long gone on the more popular consoles, but there's still thousands upon thousands of games that're within reach for a newbie mapper to practice on. There's also nothing stopping you from mapping games that have already been done if what you're after is getting better at mapping. You could map out Super Mario Bros. for instance. While Jon probably won't accept them as proper submissions, you can post them here on the forums and ask for feedback. Then try another game that's slightly more challenging to do and keep repeating that process until you get to the point where you're submitting for games that aren't present on the site yet.

The thing is, you're not gonna get anything done by poking and prodding people on these forums to do the games you want seen done. It's only going to cause annoyance and resentment. No one likes anyone who's all talk and no action. "Be the change you want to see", as the saying goes.

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

« on: August 21, 2024, 10:17:04 pm »

Unrelated, but I just had a look at your DeviantArt page. I had no idea you were such an excellent artist beyond your stuff on VGMaps! Your work is really impressive, your portraits in particular remind me of official Phoenix Wright artwork. Cool to see all that variety!

Thanks so much for the kind words, VGCartography! I'm glad you enjoy my artistic output.

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

« on: August 21, 2024, 10:10:25 pm »

Well, that's fine, and I know you prefer your more simpler routine, but there are others still in need of mapping, and that game may have to be sometime later. A good DSi compatible emulator can do the trick for it, though, I understand you're not versed on that.

As far as some have played, being a bite-sized content-packed RPG for DSiWare, I can presume its maps may not be quite too large/complex, 'cause it had to adhere to the tight limit of 20MB at the time.

Mappers do have to cover all corners in game cartography history sooner or later.

You may want to curb your enthusiasm there, buddy.

It matters not whether I'm versed in NDS game mapping or not: I'm simply not interested in mapping DS games. There isn't enough attention being paid to DS games that haven't yet been mapped? Not my problem.

Also you're suggesting a game I've never ever heard of. Why would I spend any of my time on something I know nothing about?

If you are willing to offer to pay several thousand dollars to get it mapped, then I would give it consideration certainly, but it wouldn't be a guarantee.

Besides, have you ever thought of working on it yourself?

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

« on: August 20, 2024, 01:06:53 pm »

Shadowrun would be cool to work on. I'll definitely give it some thought. 👍

Now that I've got a template to use for the dungeons in Ultima: Quest of the Avatar in the form of Dungeon Despise, it'll be a little less painful to map the rest, haha. At least the NES version is simplified compared with all the microcomputer versions, so there'll be less to worry about.

Speaking of Secret of Mana, I think it's probably time to work on it. I've begun laying out a number of areas using Tropicon's raw maps. I'll just take my time with it though and do 1 or 2 maps a day.

Thanks for the suggestion, Cyartog959, but I think anything beyond the fourth generation is kind of the opposite of "simpler" for me. I tend to like working on games from the 1980s and the first half of 1990s, or games with similar aesthetics that would've fit in that era, Nox Archaist being one such example (I've only released the overworld so far, but will eventually get around to everything else some day).


For some new maps, I've got all the levels for Super Soukoban (SFC) mapped out. I just sent them to Jon, so they should be available fairly shortly.

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

« on: August 17, 2024, 07:46:05 pm »

Thanks so much, Zagato.

While I had started mapping DQ6 years and years ago with only mapping a handful of locations like Lifecod and Reidock, I only really ramped things up in February of this year, so it's mainly been six months of work with long breaks in between mapping sessions. I'd say the main thing holding everything up was me playing through the game once more just so I could put the maps in the proper order.

The main reason for the mini maps was because of multiple locations that look exactly the same in both the Dream and Real Worlds, and I didn't want the file name to be the only way to differentiate them. Plus I think it'll be helpful with pointing out all the tiny locations scattered everywhere in the game.

After this one, I probably wanna work on something a little more simple, haha.

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

« on: August 17, 2024, 01:26:50 pm »

Hrmmm... I thought I had replied to VGCartography & Cyartog959 last month, but I guess it didn't get sent or something. Anyhow, thanks to both of you!

The remaining maps for Dragon Quest VI are now up on the site, everything except for the hidden dungeon areas, which I'll get to once I've played through them properly.

One thing I wasn't expecting was just the sheer number of areas this game holds! I think it'll end up clocking in at 146 maps once the hidden dungeon stuff is added in. What made things easier was the fact that there was a lot of reuse of areas throughout the game (which is especially evident with the wells) so I could basically copy an area from one map and paste it into another without any problem.

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

« on: June 28, 2024, 03:11:45 pm »

Update on Dragon Quest VI: I've got about 3/5 or 4/7 of the game up on VGMaps so far, amounting to 74 maps, excluding the overworld maps. The other portion will come in the next couple of weeks or so.

Along with that, I also completed the map set for Ihatovo Monogatari (SFC), which will be up as soon as Jon is able to spare time for them.

Also brewing at the moment is a map set for Super Soukoban (SFC), which I partly took up because I'm currently writing my own Sokoban clone for MS-DOS, and wanted to get some ideas for how difficult puzzles are put together. These should be forthcoming fairly soon.

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

« on: February 20, 2024, 08:19:01 pm »

Excited to see DQ6, appreciate all the effort!

Thanks! I'm excited to share them. Just got something like 25 more areas left to map before I begin labelling them up.

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

« on: February 05, 2024, 01:06:38 pm »

Now that I'm finally done with Lufia: The Legend Returns, I've gone back to slowly working on Dragon Quest VI. I've been concentrating on mapping all the locations in the Dream World and I've got around 50 maps so far.

One thing I'm probably gonna add to these maps is a mini-map which indicates what world you're in as well where in that world the location resides. Since there are many locations which look identical in both the Dream World and the Real World, this'll be a good way of easily differentiating them.

The one frustrating thing about mapping this game though is having to capture all the graphics via vSNES through save states since the usual approach of taking tons of screen shots has the problem of discolouring portions of those screen shots, and that doesn't manifest in the save state data. What's worse is that this only happens in some locations and not others, so I've simply resigned myself to using vSNES for everything. While these discrepancies are not readily visible at a glance, they sure do bug me, haha! This sort of problem only seems to exist in games that were made in the latter part of the SNES era (I remember having to deal with this when mapping Lennus II).

This explains why it's been a year and a half since I first announced that I would take on this game and I have nothing to show for it. But it won't stay that way for much longer.

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

« on: January 24, 2024, 11:05:36 am »

Gosh, it's nearly been a year since I updated this thread... O_O

Anyhow, the map set for Lufia: The Legend Returns is now complete.

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Map Requests / Re: JonLeung's Requests

« on: March 22, 2023, 04:24:57 pm »

The NES version of Ultima V is so incredibly lackluster that it's more or less not worth looking at; the computer versions are far superior in pretty much every way. Though saying that, I do wanna try my hand at mapping it anyway, along with Ultima: Exodus, and maybe even the SNES port of The Black Gate while we're at it, haha.

Yeah, Ultima IV on the NES plays very much like a JRPG, and as I was playing through it to at least get to one of the dungeons, I noticed a lot of changes from the computer versions that I liked quite a bit. It streamlines a lot of stuff, like not having to mix reagents before casting spells, not having to worry about food, etc. One aspect I really liked was being able to equip both melee and long range weapons at the same time, so no need unready and ready them in the middle of combat if there's need for that. But compared to the PC version, some things were stripped out. While I only have mapped one dungeon so far, the magic fields, and a number of dungeon rooms were removed. It at least made mapping it easier.

While I won't promise anything, I'll at least tackle whatever catches my fancy, like the aforementioned Ultima games.