Topic: Final Fantasy IV: The After Years

[N. Harmonik]

If it's not too difficult, may somebody please create maps of this WiiWare game, with items indicated?

[Trop]

I'm sorry to break it to you but mapping this game would be nothing short of impossible.  ...Then again maybe not.  Let me ask you, what kind of quality do you want the maps in?  Do you want a map all the original graphics like most of the maps here?  Or would you tolerate a simplified line or tile map.  I ask because I've created a technique for accurately mapping games like the early FF's without using screenshots, but I've gotten complaints that's it's not pretty enough.

[JonLeung]

Are you perhaps confusing The After Years with some other FF WiiWare game, Trop?  I don't see why it would be impossible.  I don't know what method was used to map Mega Man 9 or 10 (sounds like a WiiWare emulator), so couldn't the same method be used?

Plus, at least as far as I could tell from playing just the first chapter of the After Years, it looks like it uses the same tileset as Final Fantasy II/IV on the Super NES.  Many of the areas are probably mostly the same.  If we had more Final Fantasy IV maps (sheesh, VGMaps.com needs more Final Fantasy maps overall), it could be as easy or maybe easier to edit those maps to recreate the new ones rather than trying to rip them directly.

[Trop]

Oh yeah, I forgot about the Mega Man 9 maps.  So if you made or got a hold of a good tile library you could do it.  And it's funny you mention the lack of FF maps because my site's like that too.  Funny given it's popularity.

[N. Harmonik]

Er... Original graphics please? Why should it matter how pretty the maps are?

Oh and could there also be marked entrances and exits?

[Trop]

Hmm, let me see if I can explain.  When I started making game maps years ago I thought their only real purpose was as informational tools, after all isn't that a major definition map?  But when I found vgmaps it opened me up to a whole idea of ethicist map making.  Almost all the maps here work to show off the beauty of the original game art without the intentional, color, texture, or sprite loss you'd find on a GameFAQ's map, hence the "pretty".

[JonLeung]

As I remarked in the thread about E.V.O., if it's possible to provide information neatly and unobtrusively, that'd be the best route.  Of course, that requires more time to do, obviously.

Maps can certainly be pretty, but I doubt anyone's going to be using one of the floors of one of Castle Baron's towers as a wallpaper...