Topic: Karnov (NES)

[fusoya]

Hello all! This site is great, and combines my two favorite hobbies - video games and cartography!

I noticed that there weren't any maps for one of my fav games, Karnov, so I felt obligated to give back. I created a map for the first stage.....it took about 2 hours to put together with Nestopia screenshots and editing in Photoshop....however, stage 1 is the simplest stage in the game, so also the easiest map to make - most of the later stages have multiple paths, which would make interesting maps, but also would take much longer to compile. Is there some way to extract the maps straight from the ROM? Or would that be too easy.

For this map, I left all of the visible items intact, as well as the stage's boss, but edited out all of the regular enemies. There are also items which only appear by jumping in certain places, but #1 none are needed to complete the game and #2 I don't know where most of these are...

Anyway, here's stage 1. Please provide some feedback before I invent my time in stages 2-9.

[Maxim]

It's conventional to map at 1:1 scale; you've done it with hq3x or some other filter applied.

Ripping the maps directly from the ROM is likely to be very tricky unless you're in the habit of reverse engineering games.

Adding hidden items is nice but as you say, hard to get 100% right. It's a matter of opinion whether you add enemies - I usually do if they always appear in the same place. It's quite common to add in the player sprite at the level's starting position. Some also add "title cards" with the title screen logo, level name and mapper name, often using the game's font.

You might like to try my autostitcher to see if you find it easier than joining screenshots in Photoshop (it depends on the game and if your emulator can record video).

[fusoya]

The map was done at a 1:1 scale. Karnov is a game where the screen can scroll up as well as left/right, by jumping. There are two items, the ladder and the high jump shoes (and in some later stages, you can fly with a wing item), which allowed me to take some of the screenshots at the top of the screen. The parts I was unable to reach with this method, I filled in with the dark blue background. There was also a small part of the second sewer pipe which is impossible to see in screen, so I had to borrow some pixels from the first pipe.

There are two possible codes which would make mapping the rest of this game much easier - the ability to use the wings at any point in the game, and infinite time before items expire. If there was the ability to change how high Karnov can jump (which might be possible, considering that there's an item in the game that lets you jump twice as high), that would also help. Unfortunately these codes have never been published, and it's been a LONG LONG time since I've used memory searching to figure out how to modify these, so any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Revned]

Maxim doesn't mean that you resized it after the fact, he means that your emulator is set to display at a larger-than-normal resolution. See how the pixels are big and blocky? The game should look like this image I found on Google.

It looks good otherwise, but you should probably redo this first level before you get too far in the game.

[fusoya]

Oh, I see what you mean, the 256 pixel resolution. I'll give level 3 a go like that sometime today.

Karnov is a game where ALL enemies appear (in a literal puff of smoke) at a certain spot once the screen is scrolled over far enough, so the task of adding regular enemies to the screen wouldn't be that difficult. I'll try doing that for level 3 (it's easy enough to remove them if I decide to later) and see what the consensus is.

[Maxim]

As I said, it's a matter of opinion. Some go so far as to make multiple versions of the maps with various layers on or off. Adding the sprites in a separate layer can make mapping simpler, especially if you want to have all identical enemies be on the same animation frame.

[fusoya]

Here's stage 3.

I turned off the filters and zoom in Nestopia this time (256x240 screenshots are actually much easier to paste together in Photoshop!). I have all enemies placed at their appearance frame, although another problem with this game is that enemies won't always appear - they get triggered by your character moving over a certain section of the screen, so if he's in mid air (or sometimes if he ISN'T in midair), the enemy appearance won't get triggered, so I tried to include all of the enemies that were possible to make appear. And as suggested, I have Karnov at his starting frame.

[Revned]

Looks pretty good, but I think I see some slight alignment issues. See the attached image.

[Maxim]

I use Paint Shop Pro, not Photoshop, so I don't know if there's an equivalent feature, but in PSP I can turn on a grid set to 8x8 or 16x16 or whatever that overlays the image and lets me easily see if things become unaligned.

[fusoya]

Stage 2 is done. I'm calling dibs on stages 4-9, so nobody else do them!

[fusoya]

Got most of the stages finished. Will have them online soon!

[TerraEsperZ]

Checking alignment is easy even in Paint; you just quickly cycle between Undo and Re-do with the keyboard and check to see if anything changes between the two.

[fusoya]

Hey, sorry about the delay. I just submitted the entire game, so it should be on the site soon.