Topic: Pokemon Platinum (NDS)

[ChronoSquare]

Hey all! Remember how the 4th generation Pokemon games have been out for about four years now and NOBODY has yet found out how to map out the towns and routes and rivers and lakes and caves of Diamond/Pearl/Platinum? Well, the waiting can now begin in earnest, because while primitive, the technology is out there!

I need to make a constant map of Sinnoh for a project I'm involved in, and all current sinnoh maps just won't cut it. They're several varieties, ranging from being edited together by tiles (looks like), to other screenshot-stitched maps, to maps using completely custom tiles for more 3rd-gen style maps. Those maps don't line up; we need up to a whole overworld map of Sinnoh itself, and I aim to help with that!

The biggest downside is going to be limited in the hours I can work on the map, because of the time of day and the game's lighting... so it's likely I can only get 1-4 maps (or levels of a cave/dungeon) stitched together at once. Although Twinleaf and Route 201 are kind of rough (since I was figuring out how to do this with those), here's what I got done today... (I'll separate the routes and towns better at the end, when I'm ready to submit them to vgmaps!)

[ChronoSquare]

progress report: Sandgem, Route 202, and Routes 219-221 have now been mapped.

This also brings me to a question. How much info do you guys like on your map? Like if I should make an effort to expunge all enemy trainer icons from the map, and if I should make a legend for the items that can be found lying around the routes.

[Peardian]

Very nice job on these so far. I'd say leave the trainers/items in the map since they're pretty important, but the item key is up to you. If you go for labeling items, I suggest also labeling all the hidden items as well. That, I imagine, is no small feat, but serebii.net should be able to help with that.

[ChronoSquare]

Thanks for the input. I think then what I'll end up doing is making two versions of the maps: A full version, with all trainers and items to submit to here, and a clean version, without the trainers and pokeballs, that we will use (and that I'll see if they wouldn't want to use on Bulbapedia.)

I think I'll keep the overworld cohesive map as a clean only, however. That'll give some meaning to having the individual routes

Man, I didn't realize just how much Jubilife had changed from DP - just compare the Platinum version of Jubilife to the DP version of the town they have on Bulbapedia :O

(I wasn't sure about how to cut off the top of the map for Iron Island, so I just left in there where it cuts off - interestingly enough, after a certain height, you just see white for a background!)(I don't like having uneven edges to the map, so that's why I didn't trim the top of Iron Island just yet...)

[Revned]

You should submit both sets here. I'm sure Jon would be happy to host them both.

[ChronoSquare]

Route 205, I hate you! You have a super-sucky shape! D:<

[ChronoSquare]

Sorry for no updates yesterday - Easter dinner with relatives and some visiting afterwards, you know. Just did three small insides - Fuego Ironworks, Valley Windworks, and Ravaged Path.

To make up for it, however, I have a treat for today - almost perfect animated Eterna Forest and FULL route 205! Who knew the mt coronet inside fit PERFECTLY between the two halves? (It doesn't look like much of anything now, but I assure you, it will be noticeable once it's time to make a full overworld map...)

Animated Eterna Forest actually is too large for an attachment, so here it is from being hosted on imageshack... :3



oops, looks like I missed a sliver of the canopy overlay! Hahaha!

[Revned]

These look great. Are you using a level editor or something? I know this game has 3D landscapes.

[ChronoSquare]

These look great. Are you using a level editor or something? I know this game has 3D landscapes.

Nope, no kind of level editor. Level editor would be much more awesome, but it would produce a look distinctly different from my maps. What I use is an AR code to change the camera angle, and so I change the camera to "Inside buildings", which produces pretty much straightforward 2D landscapes. Although it may look 2D, however, it still is all 3D - walking up and down elevations changes the field of view ever so slightly. (In addition, some 3D objects still retain their properties and change pixels as you walk away; ledges and height ledges are an example of this.) It's my job to take screenshot by screenshot and make them line up, smoothing out any such distortion or covering it up so it's not as noticeable.

I just use DeSmuME to take the screenshots (quick screenshot function) and use the 0.9.5's new frame-advance feature to line up animated areas, such as water or the coal elevators in Oreburg. (That took a longer time to get through than you'd think... D: ). The screenshots I then place together in Photoshop, erasing or masking parts to make the whole consistent.


Hey guys, I just realized a little something I could do - I could include the route #, town name, or cave name on the maps in the upper left-hand corner like they appear in the game. I've taken the liberty to do this in these next four maps; should I do it with all maps?

[ChronoSquare]

OH MY GOD

SIX HOURS TO EDIT OUT THE CYCLING ROAD

@_@

EDIT: Please excuse the filename... I was getting rather frustrated with the tangled mess of layers and pixels and what needed to be on top of what that I started taking my frustration out in the layer names/finally filenames when I finished...

Route 206/207 being done now means that I've mapped the whole of West Sinnoh in a week's time! FUCK YEAH SEAKING! (Well, the overworld anyways. Iron island, wayward cave, and that other cave next to it still remain, but still.) I'd upload/show the connected west sinnoh, but I don't know where to host a nearly 6000x6000 4.3 MB png :U

[Maxim]

With PNGOUT it'd get a lot smaller (e.g. your Route 206 map drops to 277KB). Still, it's be in the >2MB range; Jon ought to raise the size limit for attachments here.

[ChronoSquare]

That PNGOUT sounds interesting. Is there any way to know what parameters to set to get an optimized compression? Even after looking at a tutorial (essentially just an operation manual describing the inputs) I can't see myself doing anything other than trial-and-error guesswork at trying to get the best compression possible, hahahaha.

[Revned]

Don't bother, just use the default options. You can tell it to randomize the parameters, but it doesn't help much. I ran it on one of my recent Mega Man maps for over an hour with random options and saved something like 60 bytes over the default settings.

[Peardian]

Great job so far! Oops... looks like there's an extra piece of a person down there at the bottom of Hearthome.

[ChronoSquare]

Oops! Hahaha, thanks for catching that! I saw it at first and thought to simply come back when I finished to clean it up, but I just plum gone and forgot about it completely ;p