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Maps Of The Month / 2025/12: Daze Before Christmas (Au) (Genesis) - John Brain

« Last post by JonLeung on Yesterday at 09:36:52 pm »

Daze Before Christmas (Au)

For this month's "Maps Of The Month" featurette, I wish to draw your attention to John Brain's Daze Before Christmas (Au) (Genesis) maps.

Evildoers like Louse The Mouse, The Evil Snowman, The Timekeeper, and Mr. Weather really have something against Christmas, so one night, they curse the presents, scare away the elves, and steal parts from the toy-making machines.  As Santa, you'll have to take them on while restoring the toys in order to save Christmas!

There aren't many Christmas video games from this era, but one that is undoubtedly holiday-based is Daze Before Christmas, a 16-bit platforming action game.  If you haven't been bestowed with this game's presence (heh... like "presents", get it?) it's probably because it was only released in Europe and Australia for the Super NES, and here we have the version for the Genesis - excuse me, Mega Drive - that was only released in Australia (hence the "(Au)").  What is amusing about this being an Australian exclusive (for the Mega Drive) is that Australia is in the southern hemisphere, so their Christmas happens in the summer, a stark contrast to the wintry scenes in this game! All of the levels named with countries and geographical areas (England, Russia, Japan, USA, and the North Pole, of course) are all in the northern hemisphere.  In any case, John Brain has mapped all of these 24 levels, drawing attention to this globe-trotting - but regionally limited - Christmas caper!

So to recognize the effort put into mapping this "advent adventure", John Brain's Daze Before Christmas (Au) (Genesis) maps will be known as VGMaps.com's Maps Of The Month for December 2025.

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Maps In Progress / Tileset Curiousities

« Last post by Cyartog959 on November 29, 2025, 06:35:36 am »

A little curious about this, but, how come the background layers count as tiles themselves as the foregrounds' tiles are, and why are they're in a tileset as if they're part of one, anyway? Weren't they sorta separate from each other?

Well, I've seen tilesets being made time to time, but the foreground and background tiles being part of one whole tileset rather than being in their own tilesets, even if a stage does have many background layers, is what I've yet to really understand. How does it suit well for optimization in developing stages' maps, anyway?

Anyone with knowledge and experience, please answer this.

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Maps In Progress / Re: Shovel Knight (PC)

« Last post by dant7623 on November 28, 2025, 05:20:50 pm »

Cool! Nice to see someone else pick this project up because Shovel Knight sure deserves it.

Are you using tools to capture the various background layers or are you suffering through it manually like I (stupidly) did?

i found a tile-set that includes the background tiles, and then stitching those together

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Gaming / Starbuster, by Strange Matter

« Last post by Cyartog959 on November 28, 2025, 01:21:13 am »

So, I went and found a rather promising action-packed indie game, made by Strange Matter, consisting of, I think so far, PrototypeTheta, taking place in its own galaxy, and its home planet to two playable characters, Alpha, the latest creation from the antagonistic organization, Grey Imperium, and Cassie, a salamander-like alien with her right arm somehow lost in a dangerous infliction from her past and replaced with a cybernetic arm that turns into a multi-purpose, weaponized tool of her liking.

...I'll be honest, the details of its story are, so far, scarce, but, the overall goal seems to be clear; trek through numerous stages with Alpha and Cassie, tear through numerous robotic legions of Grey Imperium, find and collect numerous weapon mods, along with secrets, avoid many hazards and overcome challenges and obstacles, and, what else, fight numerous bosses to get to the goal.

Though each character does have their own perspectives, along with their strengths and weaknesses, they'll no doubt travel through much  of the same stages, but they'll have to go to their own stages at particular points in the story, example being, they have their own intro stages.

Did I forget mention this before? The stages in Starbuster are going to be huge, perhaps even more than Freedom Planet 2's stages, and whatever 2D Sonic game that held the longest/largest map yet. Should the game get launched(hopefully sometime soon), let's hope the mappers can handle doing its maps.

The inspirations of the game's development are surely from Mega Man Zero, Sonic Advance, the novel series, The Culture, and, moreover Freedom Planet 1 and 2.

The game's got a demo, and it's available for anyone to play and try the game. I'll leave a link for it here for anyone to give it a try - https://strange-matter.itch.io/starbuster

I have to say, the pixel art is GORGEOUS!

There's a Twitter/X account about the game, and, so far, the deliverance of sneak peeks are amazing, and neat to watch. Here's its link if anyone wants to go give a talk - https://x.com/Starbuster_Game

There's a few preview clips, too. I have about one featuring Cassie grinding and fighting against a massive robot as a boss fight to a stage. If you pay attention to the video's bottom-left corner, there's a distance indicator showing how far Cassie's grinding to, well... you know what and where, exactly.

Here - https://x.com/Starbuster_Game/status/1665010449417658370#m

Drop on by to chat. I hope we hear some details in the story soon enough.

And another featuring a clip collection, including those that have new stages made so far. Video link is here - https://x.com/Starbuster_Game/status/1984666209283887118#m

I must say, with each few new stages seen in more clips, makes the anticipation to play the game all the more thrilling! Even their pixel art scenery's getting more gorgeous every time.

Hope the game gets ported to consoles soon, once its launched on PC.

And, I also hope we get some story insights from Strange Matter... really.

Give the demo a try, and see how well you could go along with others.

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Maps In Progress / Re: Shovel Knight (PC)

« Last post by TerraEsperZ on November 27, 2025, 04:41:26 pm »

Cool! Nice to see someone else pick this project up because Shovel Knight sure deserves it.

Are you using tools to capture the various background layers or are you suffering through it manually like I (stupidly) did?

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Maps In Progress / Re: Shovel Knight (PC)

« Last post by dant7623 on November 26, 2025, 08:13:34 pm »

Interesting.
Is that Yacht Club logo really hidden at the start of Pridemoor Keep?

yes it is, you just need to break the wall to the left of the start

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Maps In Progress / Re: Shovel Knight (PC)

« Last post by JonLeung on November 26, 2025, 05:30:34 pm »

Interesting.
Is that Yacht Club logo really hidden at the start of Pridemoor Keep?

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Maps In Progress / Re: Shovel Knight (PC)

« Last post by Cyartog959 on November 26, 2025, 06:31:28 am »

I will be planning to finish mapping out shovel of hope but it will probably take me while because i still have school, and thank you for the tip cyratog, will keep that in mind

No problem. I look forward to more. Even with school, it takes great focus to document the maps. However amount of maps you can do in a day, its in your hands. Keep writing reminders now and then, too.

And, don't worry. Working alongside Tiled will take some getting used to.

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Maps In Progress / Re: Shovel Knight (PC)

« Last post by dant7623 on November 24, 2025, 06:28:23 pm »

I will be planning to finish mapping out shovel of hope but it will probably take me while because i still have school, and thank you for the tip cyratog, will keep that in mind

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Maps In Progress / Someone's Resumed Mapping Shovel Knight! :)

« Last post by Cyartog959 on November 23, 2025, 02:43:00 am »

Well, it seems someone's already began to resume work where TerraEsperZ left off, and it turns out that, aside from others waiting, I won't have to be disappointed about this at all.

I took a look at the game's maps, and found that a mapper, David Tait, has mapped Pridemoor Keep, King Knight's stage, and has been added to the Atlas' PC page.

I'm more relieved there's someone able to contribute to this, but more happy to see more of the game's maps documented! And, as always, it still helps for those still trying to find all their secrets hidden.

David Tait, if you're around, I commend you for tending to that task! Plenty ahead, yes, but, I'm looking forward to seeing more!

Small time-saver advice: Shovel Knight's stages are made with Tiled, the map editor. It's pretty much evidential when you go to its website. If it helps, use it to cut down on trying to document the stages' maps by using their tilesets without needing to use the backgrounds to occupy them, unless its for decoration. After all, the background layers aren't entirely static like numerous NES games; they're free roaming. Give it a try, if you want.