Well, it's been 5 months. So, time for an update.
The project lingered in limbo for about 2 months after my original post, but has since picked up speed in recent months.
I hammered through some of the most annoying areas when I was feeling up to the tedium, and once that was done, things got rolling again.
Here's where everything stands:
Main MapsAll playable areas have been fully mapped to still images. Variations related to gameplay progression have also been made (i.e. secret passages open, obstacles removed, paths built, etc.) I even did building interiors. Only 3 maps from an unplayable intro sequence remain.
For Rey, here's a preview of the 1st of 6 overworld segments, the Salyan Desert:
https://i.postimg.cc/BsN88qRb/Lunar2-Sega-CD-Salyan-Desert01-Overworld.png(I'll be url-linking full images in this post due to size. If they appear in a web page instead of as an individual file, just right-click and re-open in a new tab. You may also have to click a shrunken image to make it full-size. (The site went to garbage well after I'd established my account.))
AnimationsI've done GIF animations for most areas with some amount of noteworthy animation. I started with key areas that had large amounts of animation, but got carried away and did a number of smaller things as well.
However, I stopped short of animating every torch or light source in the game
See, I'm real picky about having my still maps all be on the same frame of animation. It's a little bothersome when maps are assembled from different frames at different positions (though, as a gameplay guide, I'm still glad people put them together). As a result, I had already captured all the frames of animation in order to assemble whichever one worked best, so since I had everything in sequence anyway, it actually didn't take too long to compile the animated sequences. Only a few maps had a lot of things animating at different speeds, but a few little framechart spreadsheets in Excel got that sorted fairly easily.
All animations I planned to do are done, except one. I've got a really annoying situation where two separate animations from different areas are combined in a third area. One's a light flicker in a transmission room, and the other's a floating planet model at the top of a spire. Each one has an accurate speed in their own map, but when they're both combined in the third area, the difference in framerate will both create an absurd amount of frames and an inaccurate animation speed for at least one of the sequences. Because animation speed is done in decimal rather than fraction, accounting for certain 1FPS frames in the sequence is basically impossible due to rounding, so they'll lose synchronization as well. And I'm like, do I have the same animation be inconsistent across different maps, or do I make the other individual maps use inaccurate animation speeds so that all the maps match? It's a really obnoxious thing to happen on the very last map, that I'll probably deal with absolutely last.
So that's where animation's hanging.
For now, here's a preview of an animated town, Meribia:
https://i.postimg.cc/DFFT9Lj4/Lunar2-Sega-CD-Meribia01x-Meribia-Animated.gifMarked IndexesLunar 2 can be extremely large and very complex at times. The designers were certainly intent on out-doing Lunar 1 in every way, and some areas just go on and on and on.
As such, I found it necessary to do area-based compilation images with marked entrances/exits, treasures, warps, and other significant developments fully noted.
(In fact, the origin of this project is me trying to find my way through some of the game's more convoluted areas.)
Currently, all "levels" and towns have been fully assembled and marked. However, while the levels were generally easy to organize (most fit into a neat vertical stack), the towns are proving a pain to come up with any clear and consistent manner of organized layout due to the often odd variety of interior spaces, and so this is the area where I'm most behind.
I also need to come up with a title header for the images that explains the markings.
For a title-less preview, here's the marked index for Mystic Ruins:
https://i.postimg.cc/1PLjxQ5C/Lunar2-Sega-CD-Mystic-Ruins-M01-Mystic-Ruins-Marked-Preview.pngIt's not the most exciting level in the game, but its variety of features and functionalities shows off the marking process fairly well.
At the bottom of the image, you'll notice I've added a thing called "The Direct Route" - this lists the shortest path through a level while accomplishing all necessary goals. Thanks to rooms like the 3F mirror maze, even looking at a marked guide can be confusing without being told which markings to follow. These are done for about half the levels.
Battle BackgroundsThe game launches into side-view mode for enemy encounters.
These scenes are somewhat like the backgrounds to other 1-on-1 fighting games I've seen mapped here, so I've included these as well.
All are complete.
Submission OrganizationThe naming of some areas is very counter-intuitive.
Looking at the file names, would you ever guess that the order to progress through the Larpa Secret Passage is part 1, part 4, part 2, and part 3? That the Illusion Woods zigzags through 1F, B1, 2F, B2, 3F, etc. rather than going in a continuous ascent? Or that the Clearing goes between 6F and B6? Perhaps you wouldn't guess that Taben's Peak Top was just past the half-way point of Taben's Peak? Maybe you'd think it was my own spelling mistake that Blue Labyrinth is spelled "Labyrinth" in B3, but "Labrynth" in B2 and B1? Maybe you'd think Ghost Manor had any sensible name organization at all!
There was no way I could dump an image collection into site submissions and hope they'd end up in the correct order on the site, so I opened the vgmaps index html source and filled out a table with the maps as they generally progress in-game. Then once I started that, I figured I might as well also fill out the resolution/size/type/contact info boxes. Since it's done with the site's existing code, hopefully all the host will have to do is paste it into the appropriate page and it'll be ready to go.
Overworld MegamapI messed around a little more with assembling all 6 overworld segments into a full map.
Annoyingly, while I originally said that you should be able to fill the uneven edges with water since the world was essentially a giant island, it turns out some land masses are cut off between segments, meaning that would require manually building a significant amount of mountains and cliffs from existing map structures rather than simply filling void spaces with water tiles. That's beyond the amount of time and effort I can spend on a thing like this.
Regarding the color differences in the water, this overlapping area in the two sides of the Katarina Zone should illustrate the point:
https://i.postimg.cc/Rh0Yy9wr/Lunar2-Sega-CD-Katarina-Zone-Overlap01-East.pnghttps://i.postimg.cc/vTSKdjv4/Lunar2-Sega-CD-Katarina-Zone-Overlap02-West.pngIn fact, there's a bit of land difference as well. But this is the most extreme example, the water turning from summer fresh to icy cold. And of course there's a waterfall connecting the upper land of KZ east to the lower ocean of KZ west, so I couldn't separate them by height. A gradient fade could be a thing, but it would undermine that 16-bit color efficiency and boost what's probably under 100 colors total into tens of thousands of colors.
Yeah, what I figure I'll do is post a raw assembly, then a partial tweak, as an addendum in the forum thread, and people can take it from there if they want. But it'll probably remain a curiosity with no way to get it to submission-level quality.
So anyway, that's the progress report. Would be great to be done by spring, but we'll see. For now, just know that it's still being worked on, and completion is in sight.
