Topic: How do you guys make these maps?

[MrBlank]

I was wondering how you guys make the maps. Do you just emulate the games and do screen captures or is there a utility that can extract graphics out of the games?



Thanks!

[Inty]

Nice to see new blood around here. Stick around, make a few friends...this is a new forum not just for discussion on maps, but a social community as well.



In answer to your question...

I've only ever submitted 1 map. I used MSPaint, but i'm not at all an avid map-maker. I just administrate the forums here...



You'll probably have to wait a while for the makers to get home from work/school for a real answer.

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[Thraxian]

I started a thread on this earlier this week.  You might check for the topic "Mapping Tools" in the Message Board Help forum.  Here's a link:



https://www.vgmaps.com/forums/index.php?topic=55



For the most part, I'm guessing it's pasting together screen captures, with certain layers turned off (like the character sprites).  Good mappers will also work to ensure that moving parts look consistent, like moving water or flames, so that the edges where the captures are pasted together aren't detectable.



I haven't done any maps worth posting, but I'm looking to start doing some in the near future.  Let's keep pestering those veteran mappers until they reveal their secrets to us!



Inty is right.  The forums are new, so there is much to be said.  Keep checking in for more information, and we look forward to seeing the contributions you make, both socially, and videogamemapally.

[TerraEsperZ]

I can't wait for us to be able to gain basic abilities like editing posts but mostly posting real links and pictures. Otherwise it's kinda hard to make a visual tutorial.



What sucks is that I'm pretty sure the old board had a link to a basic tutorial for making a screenshot map with a parallax-scrolling background (meaning it moves slower than the stage itself), from a Wiki site, but I don't know the link unfortunately.



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"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



B*tch, meet reality. Reality, meet b*tch. - Me

[JonLeung]

I'm pretty sure it was on the main Wikipedia site, under the article "screenshot map", but I believe the image has been replaced with a Legend Of Zelda map.  Ah, here it is: "Screenshot map" @ Wikipedia.org



I guess having tutorials on Wikipedia would be really cool and we could get a lot of information from other people who may not have heard of VGMaps.com.  Naturally there would be a link from it to VGMaps.com.  The forums would be good for specific questions but I think it would really be making more of a mark on the web if Wikipedia had some article(s) about what we do.  



I definitely would like some good topics about techniques here, but if they're good enough, no reason why they can't also be at Wikipedia.  (Unless they don't like the grey area about having maps made from screenshots.)  Wikipedia is always less likely to be obliterated at any moment...I'd like to think that Wikipedia may still be around in some form hundreds of years from now.

[TerraEsperZ]

On the other hand, anyone can edit a wiki entry and the staff may decide that the extra tutorial information is not warranted.



And I'm not sure this is what I was talking about. The tutorial I remember showed how to assemble screenshots for the foreground and background, and to combine them to make a finished map.



Personally, I'd prefer to have tutorials either on  VGMaps or on some private space or other if it's feasible. I should really consider getting some webspace of my own just in case.



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"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



B*tch, meet reality. Reality, meet b*tch. - Me

[Inty]

If you guys plan on making tutorials. I'm sure a /tutorials folder is more than feasible. You know...you post the tutorials here, and then they get added to the main website.

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[MrBlank]

Wow! Thanks for the replies.



I've mapped a bit of Legacy of Kain because it was easy with screen grabs, but it took a long time.



I also tried some ROM hack programs, but couldn't make heads or tails out of what they were doing. Don't emulators have some sort of edit mode feature where you can scroll through levels and get screen grabs? Maybe I need to find some gameshark codes that let me go into edit mode ...

[TerraEsperZ]

MrBlank Said:

Wow! Thanks for the replies.



I've mapped a bit of Legacy of Kain because it was easy with screen grabs, but it took a long time.



I also tried some ROM hack programs, but couldn't make heads or tails out of what they were doing. Don't emulators have some sort of edit mode feature where you can scroll through levels and get screen grabs? Maybe I need to find some gameshark codes that let me go into edit mode ...

Nope. There's no standard data format for games, except maybe when a company reuses the same code. Either a level editor is hidden in the game and can be accessed with a secret code (like Debug Mode in the various Genesis Sonic games) or a cheat code, or someone needs to program such an editor to be able to display the maps from a rom. Needless to say, doing the later requries an in-depth knowledge of the game in question and really good coding skills. Nothing comes easy unfortunately, and using a hacking program takes time and skills and is not intended for beginners.



The best I've seen is in VisualBoyAdvance which has a Map Browser. It basically shows you the content of what I'd call the map buffer, which is the portion of the map loaded in memory. You can cycle through the various layers but it doesn't show really far beyond the screen borders, and things are not always in order because of the way it's refreshed I guess (for example, you might need to remove a 'blue screen' color, or split the area in two and paste the second part before the first; it'S really hard to explain without a picture).



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"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



B*tch, meet reality. Reality, meet b*tch. - Me