Messages

1

Gaming / Re: Is there a site to download an entire library of useful save states?

« on: September 02, 2024, 03:31:51 pm »

I've amassed a ton of save states across the decades, but honestly a lot of them need specific emulator versions and in the case of Visual Boy Advance, you even need the specific bios version used or else the state won't load.

2

Map Gab / Re: Request: Samurai Shodown RPG (maps are done, need populating)

« on: December 04, 2023, 01:07:04 pm »

That's the name, yes.

3

Mapping Tips/Guides / Re: Here's a snes9x version that allows to have a colored background!

« on: November 30, 2023, 12:11:18 pm »

Just wanted to let people know that the main snes9x branch has now implemented an option to have a colored background when disabling layers.

That version is still not public, but if you download any of the nightly versions, it will be there to use!

4

Mapping Tips/Guides / Re: Annotating screenshot maps

« on: November 30, 2023, 12:09:36 pm »

Here's a collection of Bitmap Font Writer fonts I've created over the years.

https://mega.nz/file/rFQVHKaZ#irlWoay0-lGX9FUSxCFkXHMj6jN4C0sr36ZjFWJYLaM

They do not have a complete character set because I just create the characters I'm going to use, but most have the basic alphabet at least.

5

Map Gab / Request: Samurai Shodown RPG (maps are done, need populating)

« on: November 30, 2023, 11:42:14 am »

So Samurai Shodown RPG was recently translated (after 15 years).

The author of the patch also extracted all of the game's maps, but he doesn't want to release them unmarked like that. He found someone willing to populate the maps with all the chests and important stuff, but the person went M.I.A.

So my request is, would anyone be willing to play through the game and populate the maps? I'm afraid that if no one does it, the maps will just go to waste on his hard drive.

6

Mapping Tips/Guides / Re: Here's how to remove the black background when removing the BG Layer in FCEUX

« on: January 09, 2023, 02:37:33 am »

Here's an online tool that lets you create any palette you want and save it in .pal format so you can use it with FCEUX:

http://drag.wootest.net/misc/palgen.html

7

Map Gab / Re: Update: Gilligan's Island (Dawn Wells passed away)

« on: May 19, 2022, 08:29:23 pm »

Another thing I don't like is when you're not sure if something is a tagline or a subtitle.  Why does the box for the NES version of Galaga say "Demons Of Death"?  That sounds more like a subtitle than a tagline, but who actually calls it "Galaga: Demons Of Death"?  "Faria: A World Of Mystery And Danger!" is really wordy, and I would have thought the "A World Of Mystery And Danger!" would be the tagline, except that it's right there on a ribbon in the title.  Argh.

Haha, true.

8

Map Gab / Re: Update: Gilligan's Island (Dawn Wells passed away)

« on: May 19, 2022, 02:54:56 am »

I hear you. I struggle with the same stuff, but I got some "rules" that I follow to avoid going crazy.

If the name is different in box/title screen, then I either pick the longer name or I merge them both. So Gilligan's Island becomes Adventures of Gilligan's Island, and Gyromite becomes Gyromite: Robot Gyro.

As for games with creator titles in front, I just go with what's most popular. I really dislike doing the whole comma thing, such as: Amazing Tennis, David Crane's.
I don't put Disney in front of any of the titles, otherwise the letter "D" would be filled with Disney entries.

9

Map Gab / Re: Update: Gilligan's Island (Dawn Wells passed away)

« on: May 16, 2022, 09:14:00 pm »

They have been added... been up since the day after these were posted here... or am I missing something here?
https://vgmaps.com/Atlas/NES/index.htm#GilligansIsland

Ah, sorry. You're using the title screen name instead of Adventures of Gilligan's Island, that's why I couldn't find it in the letter A.

10

Map Gab / Re: Update: Gilligan's Island (Dawn Wells passed away)

« on: May 16, 2022, 08:18:19 am »

Aren't these going to be added to the site?

The game only has 4 chapters, so these maps are complete.

11

VGMaps Social Board / Re: VGMaps.com site issues - but now, a new host!

« on: April 08, 2022, 01:54:51 pm »

Yeah, the phone people are not evil, they are just clueless because whoever works on the servers or security are not the same as the customer service reps or even tech support. Whatever changes are made in the backend, are normally not trickled down to customer service (or at least, not immediately). Although, for a company that provides server space, then they really should communicate that ASAP to everyone. However, that's not the reality. Corporate decisions are usually very detached from customer service.

I don't know if you've worked taking calls, but it's a horrible soul-draining job. I hated every minute of the many years I spent working that field and hopefully I never EVER have to rely on it ever again.

People that call customer service think the rep has the power to do anything they want or solve any issues, and that's just not true. You are only as powerful or knowledgeable as the tools or info you're given. If the company gives you limited powers and no info, then you can't really help people with more advanced issues.

But whatever, in the end, it turned out to be a positive. If the site had kept working the same slow way as it has since forever, you probably would have not made the server change. But now you did, and it's all better.

12

VGMaps Social Board / Re: APRIL 2022 SITE ISSUES

« on: April 08, 2022, 10:37:40 am »

Congrats on the move!

The parenthesis thing definitely sounds like it was the culprit. That would explain why I could browse the site just fine, but it would hang when loading a map.

Dreamhost once took a similar "security measure" when suddenly any file name "virus" would not load. Like yeah, as if someone is going to make a virus and actually call it "virus". But whatever, I just changed the file names and everything was fine.

As to why the chat people or techs didn't know shit of what was going on? That's because normally customer service is not up to date on everything that goes on in the company.

I've worked in customer service and tech support, and I got calls all of the time from people asking me stuff I had no idea the company had changed or added or offered. As the employee you should get a company email or something with anything that was changed so you are aware, but that never happens. Sometimes there's a portal where you can see the latest news, but those are usually treated like a newsletter filled with so much useless crap that no one ever reads them.

13

Mapping Tips/Guides / Re: Here's a snes9x version that allows to have a colored background!

« on: February 19, 2022, 11:17:05 pm »

Thanks, TerraEsperZ. For people that use Bizhawk, that's a nice workaround.

But for the rest of us that still like to use snes9x, that version I posted is gold

14

Mapping Tips/Guides / Here's a snes9x version that allows to have a colored background!

« on: February 17, 2022, 12:14:35 am »

The SNESManuals.com guy was asking on twitter if anyone had a snes9x version he had used a long time ago that allowed him to set a game's background to a different color, something that's incredibly useful for ripping sprites and graphics.

I've never heard of any SNES emulator that allowed you to do that, so I did a google search and found many people asking and requesting emu authors to implement such a thing, yet all the requests went into to deaf ears.

I assured this person that such a thing didn't exist, because I have been looking for something like this for years too.

Turns out, he wasn't crazy. Apparently someone created a single branch release of the snes9x-rr version that allows you to switch between 3 different background colors by pressing Shift+1 (it's customizable too!), but he never contributed the commit to the main branch, so the feature was never implemented.

I'll try to get the snes9x team to implement this in the official releases, but in the meantime, you can use this release to finally end the many issues dark backgrounds have caused graphic rippers.

https://archive.org/details/snes-9-x-1.51-rr

Enjoy!

15

Mapping Tips/Guides / Re: Here's how to remove the black background when removing the BG Layer in FCEUX

« on: March 02, 2021, 11:45:35 pm »

The number is a palette index. Here's an image of the NES palette with the numbers/indices:
http://www.mediafire.com/view/6xbrskg256wtco6/nes_palette_numbers.png/file
I believe only 0-63 are valid. Higher values probably just wraps around. Value 255 is special for don't override background color(?).

It's too bad that you can't specify a custom color instead of using one from the palette. Would've made it easier to pick a unique background color for games. Better than nothing though.

Thanks. One of the devs told me you can make your own custom .pal file with the colors want. I don't know how to do that though.

See his info here:
https://github.com/TASVideos/fceux/issues/320