Topic: My mapping projects

[dark_lord_zagato@yahoo.co]

I finished Magic Knight Rayearth and sent in the maps. There was a bug in the emulator that caused some backgrounds to not display right, usually water backgrounds. It wouldn't screw the whole map, just the bottom right corner. The good news is that i was able to fix most of these maps by making transparency layers and fixing the water separately. The bad news is the Crimson Underpass still looks pretty bad and there's nothing I can do about it. The ground itself is mangled in the corner and it's not something where I can just copy the good part and smooth it over.

I'll have to leave it for now. Hopefully i'll be able to do something about it eventually.

[dark_lord_zagato@yahoo.co]

Plans for 2021

Double Dragon (Atari 2600)
Double Dragon (Atari 7400)
Double Dragon (Commodore 64) (Binary Designs version)
Double Dragon (Commodore 64) (Ocean version)
Double Dragon (Genesis)
The Simpsons: Bart vs. the Space Mutants (Game Gear)
The Simpsons: Bart vs. the Space Mutants (Genesis)

[dark_lord_zagato@yahoo.co]

Possible ideas for 2022

Crystalis (Game Boy Color)
Kaitou Saint Tail (Game Gear)
Rollerblade Racer (Nintendo)
Surf Ninjas (Game Gear)

[dark_lord_zagato@yahoo.co]

I'm going to share some of my hacking notes for Bart's Nightmare on SNES.


In the Temple of Maggie, the top part of the screen (with the Maggie statues) will scroll at a different pace than the bottom of the screen where all the stepping stones are. This makes it impossible to align the Maggie statues with the stepping stones that would normally have a pacifier fly across them. In fact, the stepping stone walkway is a lot longer than the Maggie statue background at the top of the screen.

PAR code 7E0915?? was used to get the rest of what I needed from the top half of the screen. It only works when Bart is in the air, but paired with the code to make falling non-fatal this is not a problem. If the value is 01 the screen will scroll to the left. Set the value to 20 or higher to make the screen scroll to the right. The lava pool extends forever in both directions.

PAR code 7E00B200 makes falling non-fatal. If you jump on a flaming block and go into the lava you can just jump right back out. You can even out run the pacifiers by mashing right on the d-pad.

PAR codes 7E0E389E and 7E0E39E1 freeze the background animation.

The stepping stones in my maps represent the original position of these stones. This is the way the path will look before you take even one step. To do this, I went into BizHawk's hex editor and froze everything from 0E3B-0ECB in the WRAM.

36 stepping stones in a row multiplied by 4 rows = 144 total stepping stones in the Temple of Maggie.

[dark_lord_zagato@yahoo.co]

Now that GBC Crystalis is done i've decided to take up Jon's request and start on the NES Crystalis maps.

[dark_lord_zagato@yahoo.co]

Now that NES Crystalis is done I have to share some of the weird stuff I found with that walk through walls code. First of all, I think the game has a bunch of premade "screens" that it uses to build dungeons with. It doesn't lay down 16x16 tiles like most games do. Instead, dungeons seem to be built with 256x240 tiles. In a way, it kind of reminds me of the labyrinths from the original Legend of Zelda. This causes things (like doors and walls) to loop around in places that are normally off camera. I'll post unedited versions of Oasis Cave (from Goa Fortress) and the Floating Tower. The loop around effect is especially visible in the Floating Tower.



I also found a glitch door inside the wall of the armor shop in Portoa. I recorded a video of it and posted it to my Youtube account.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8ab3058oIw


Now to share some codes.

1FF1:04 freezes the background animation, although some places require 1FF1:20 instead.

0051:03 is the most useful code I found. I originally made it to get the HUD off the screen, but then I noticed that it also somehow fixes the nametable viewer in BizHawk, which wasn't working right at first.

[dark_lord_zagato@yahoo.co]

Plans for 2023

Adventures of Lolo 3 [NES]
Arkista's Ring [NES]
Athena [NES]
California Raisins (NES)
Crystal Kingdom Dizzy (Commodore 64)
Fantastic Adventures of Dizzy, The (NES) (Aladdin cart)
Rollerblade Racer (NES)
Rygar (Commodore 64)
Strider (EU) (Commodore 64)
Super Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back (SNES)
Surf Ninjas (Game Gear)
Toobin' (NES)

[dark_lord_zagato@yahoo.co]

Plans for 2024

Cool World [NES]
Cowboy Kid [NES]
Flying Warriors [NES]
Ikari Warriors 2 [NES]
Thundercade [NES]

[JonLeung]

Some good choices there!

Looks like you got most of your 2023 planned maps done.  Great job!

But does that mean you gave up on Super Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back?

[dark_lord_zagato@yahoo.co]

Not so much given up, but i've put that on hold in favor of getting other things done. There's going to be a lot of work involved in Super Star Wars.

One of the first things I did was make codes, including x/y coordinate mods to see where i'm at on the map. After flying all the way to the end of Hoth (stage 1) I checked the coordinates, which suggest the first map of the game is supposed to be 17904x3616.

I've briefly explored other games too and hesitate to commit due to not knowing if I will be successful. From what I can tell, the maps in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure on NES would all be 12000x6000 in size.

I did actually finish Surf Ninjas though after getting side tracked for a few years.

[JonLeung]

Ah, okay.  Just curious.

The Super Star Wars games are interesting to me personally.  Growing up in the '80s, I was certainly aware of Star Wars, and probably saw them then, but might have been too young to remember or "get" them.  In the Super NES days, I rented games very often, and I certainly rented and enjoyed the Super Star Wars games.  These awakened the interest in Star Wars for me, so I watched the movies again, but now was old enough to understand and appreciate them.  So my true Star Wars fandom actually started, in a way, with the Super NES games.  Looking back on them, they do have a bunch of weird inconsistencies and creative licenses when compared to the movies, which are easy to criticize, but if not for the games as a whole, what would have made me a Star Wars fan, if at all?  Would it have been Shadows Of The Empire?  Or the Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace film?  Would I have even wanted my mom to line up for seven hours to get tickets for it?  (I mean, she did, but only because I was a Star Wars fan already by then.)  It would be weird if it was the prequel trilogy that would make me a fan... and would that really?  Not to be a bandwagon hater of them... but I think I have more "cred" to say that I've been a fan since the time of the original trilogy (even if by the Super NES games it was already the '90s and closer to 1999's The Phantom Menace than 1983's Return Of The Jedi)...

That said, I know the Super Star Wars trilogy has its fans, so it has always been odd to me that all we have after all this time are just two unmarked maps from the early areas of the first game by Will Mallia.  If there are technical challenges with these games specifically, I suppose that might explain why we don't have more, but I hope one day that changes.

[dark_lord_zagato@yahoo.co]

I'm going to have to update my Sweet Home map. I just found out there's a wall in the dungeon that you can use the mallet on, and it opens a path to the boiler room in the basement. I've numbered it as door 101. Thanks to TCRF for pointing this out.

I can't help but be a little disappointed that there's no longer an even 100 doors in this map, lol...

[VGCartography]

I referenced your maps when I played through Sweet Home this summer! Neat little NES game, wish that had made it over to the US back then.

[dark_lord_zagato@yahoo.co]

Glad to hear this map is already getting some use! Who would have thought Capcom made an RPG besides Breath of Fire... and Destiny of an Emperor too I guess.

Speaking of, the legless zombies in Sweet Home are a lot like the legless zombies that you encounter in Breath of Fire. Maybe it was a subtle reference to Sweet Home.

[dark_lord_zagato@yahoo.co]

Since Jon has expressed an interest in this, here are some of the more subtle differences between Matendouji (NES) and Conquest of the Crystal Palace (NES). The above is a platform that has been raised in stage 1. The below is a platform that has been widened in stage 2.



The most striking difference is still in stage 3, where the background tiles were redrawn to make the entire stage look different. We see more of these redrawn tiles at the start of stage 4.