Topic: Request: S.O.S. (Super NES)

[TerraEsperZ]

Among the regular VGMaps contributors, I'm probably more guilty of this than all the others combined. I tried to push out a bunch of partially complete projects a few months back but I kept a few back, either because I was planing on finishing them shortly (which I *haven't* done yet in Bucky O'Hare's case) or because the raw maps themselves weren't of much use without at least some indication of the relationship between the various parts like with S.O.S. and Clock Tower. It's too late to do S.O.S. but at least I can salvage Clock Tower.

And yes, if I didn't recognize this big character flaw in myself at this stage, I'd be a lost cause

[JonLeung]

Getting semi-back on track, when I first saw this topic, I thought of another Super NES game, Sink Or Swim, which, as you can see by its box art, is also referred to as S.O.S.  I think my only encounter with this was a brief mention in Nintendo Power, and I find it weird that I remember such odd things.  From the looks of things, the S.O.S. that you brought to my attention looks way more interesting.

How did you find S.O.S., anyway?  Seems obscure.  I always think I have such a comprehensive knowledge of (North American-released) NES and Super NES games that I'm surprised to learn of games I've never heard of.  At first I thought this was a Japan-only game like the original Clock Tower but apparently S.O.S. was indeed released in North America, according to GameFAQs...

[Trop]

Well the non upside down and burning part of the ship is done, here's a little preview.  Now the real work begins getting what's behind all those locked doors.

[ReyVGM]

Well the non upside down and burning part of the ship is done, here's a little preview.  Now the real work begins getting what's behind all those locked doors.

And the boiler room

Good work, looks good.

[TerraEsperZ]

And the boiler room .

*AND* the inner workings, don't forget that part, as it spans the whole ship. Also, from reading a bunch of FAQs online, I'm pretty sure there are some doors that are always locked and can never be opened. I don't remember which though, since linking the various doors together is where my mapping attempt fell through.

[Trop]

Yes I discovered the boiler room.  And yes some doors say "doesn't open" instead of "locked" to indicate they go nowhere.  My next step is to check each and every door that was locked when the ship was right side up.  Which is almost every door.  The annoying thing is how many doors behind doors are initially locked.  I hope it's not too much of a spider web of rooms.

[Trop]

Right side up ship is finished.  The main halls and the ship guts of the upside down ship are finished.  Now, for the hardest part, I have to explore each little room and see which doors actually lead to the same set of rooms.  After a full door check of the upside down ship I've only found 2 locked doors.

[ReyVGM]

Great progress! Can't wait for the final product!

[Trop]

So I just discovered the boiler room and Ahhhh!  That's a mapping nightmare compared to the rest of the ship.  It'll take me quite a bit of research and work to do that one room.  Anyway here's what I have for the rest of the ship:
Main halls - gets super confusing once the ship flips, full mapped.
Small individual rooms - largely empty and almost all the same but I suspect they secretly interconnect a lot.
Large connecting rooms - Haven't checked the upside down versions yet, shouldn't be too hard.
Ship guts - Easiest place to die yet the most straight forward area, fully mapped.

Overall there's only a handful of locked doors, less then 10 so far in fact.  I'll post an image once I've mapped all I can.  I know the bathrooms interconnect to other floors and rooms but I've yet to explore this, and the biggest challenge next is just that.  I know I quoted you completion by this weekend Ray but you'll have to throw that out because it's only going to be disconnected rooms and scraps.

Having only gotten the main characters sister to safety I've got to say getting all the endings is going to be a heroic feat.  There are a lot of people trapped in weird locations and it looks like substantial backtracking will be involved.  I may have to make a total time freeze code but we'll see.  The stuff on GameFAQs talks about recruiting order and it sounds like a real nightmare.  Why do I always think these projects will be small and easy.

[Trop]

I was wrong, I was able to finish it.  The polished version will look much better and be actual size but this diagram will guide you around the ship in it's entirety.  I don't think I missed any rooms, except the boiler room, but let me know if I did.

As you can see there are only 4 locked doors that seem to go somewhere that can't be accessed any other way.  And as for the 5 doors I can't get to I think they're fake.  This might help you out too:
7E0228** scroll control
7E04E3** X coordinate (requires savestate)
7E04E7** Y coordinate (requires savestate)

[TerraEsperZ]

You did a much better job organizing all that information than I did while I was researching it, and you pretty much got the same conclusions in terms of which doors are accessible and which aren't. As for those fake doors, they either don't show up on the in-game map (the bathroom doors on the far right of the middle decks, which are obviously a re-use of the far left section of the same deck) or are only there to suggest a bigger ship (the neighboring room when inside either a cabin or the bunks near the bridge).

I wanted to map the small portion of the ship visible during the ending, but there were just too many to bother doing them all. This is also the point where I pretty much gave up finishing this. Hope you keep at it

[ReyVGM]

Man, you rock Trop! I don't know how you do it so quickly.

On the final map, are you going to note where the characters you can rescue are at?

[Trop]

The ending room where you're either at the bottom of the ship or being rescued from the blown out hull might be impossible to map but I will give it a shot.  I still don't know just how difficult the boiler room is going to be but I'm about to find out.  The codes for everywhere else don't work in the boiler room and It's one of the few places in any SNES game that uses the 4th background layer.

As for the locked doors I can only hope GameFAQs helps me there because I can't really hack those doors open.  Yes the final map will be marked up and fancy but next week I've got to get back to Mystic Ark.  I'm only half way through the world map project and It's already taking way to long.

[Trop]

OK I added people and fire to the map.  Now only 4 locked doors remain, but they'll have to wait a while as next week is going to be nothing but Mystic Ark.

[Trop]

Update. I added more survivors to the map, I'm only missing 4 now.  You're supposed to be able to get the last 4 when the ship starts sinking at 33:00 but for me the ship never starts sinking until 10:00 so I don't know.