Topic: Fantastic Adventures of Dizzy, The (NES)

[Blublu]

Hey (first post , I've been working on mapping this game lately and I thought I might post it on this site. I've mapped the treehouse area, the town, the pirate ship, the beach, the river rapids, the mines, the minecart ride and some other areas that have no names. I'm going to map the entire game and then try to combine each image into a humongous map of the entire game (I'm not sure if that'll be possible, though). I'm doing the original NES version, not the Aladdin cart one with 150 extra stars and some differences in map layout and item placment.



Anyway here are some pics:



Treehouse village (need to fix the star in Dozy's house, the stars rotate and it accidentally came out flat):

http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/6659/treehouseall2oq.png



Mines (small section missing, will be added later when I can actually get there)

http://img53.imageshack.us/img53/1039/mineallincomplete2ah.png



Mine cart ride:

http://img53.imageshack.us/img53/9176/minecartride3ms.png



The town:

http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/3733/townall7wm.png

(need to see if I can lay it out better, any thoughts?)



Pirate ship:

http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/4755/pirateshipall9hb.png



It appears that some sections of the maps are repeated. I will now explain why. You see, the game only scrolls horizontally, not vertically, and when you travel up a screen, sometimes elements of previous screens are presents in the next screen as well. This is only because of the level design and not because of my map. Note that both the mine and the pirate ship were mapped in exactly the same way, yet the pirate ship appears to have double sections everywhere. I've thought about putting a border where one screen ends and the next one appears, but I don't think it would look very nice.



So there you have it. Any comments?



By the way, please don't complain that I'm not doing the Genesis version (with better graphics). This is the game I played long ago and I'm doing this version damnit! Also I'm thinking about making a tool-assisted speedrun of the game (which is why I'm making the map in the first place) and the music in the NES version is vastly superior to the Genesis one.

[Blublu]

Hmm, I can't edit my post so I'll just add another one (sorry).



About the labels. I'm going to add labels for the items later on, and there will be two version. One without any labels and one with labels for every item PLUS labels where you should use each item. For example, near the snappy weed there will be a label saying something like:



USE:

(picture of item)

A bottle of snappy weed killer (that's the name of the item in the game)



And also I will make a version with no labels whatsoever. THAT is the reason I'm only labeling the keys at the moment in a very uninvasive way that can easily be removed later.

[Blublu]

By the way, I'm not posting this to submit to the site yet. I just have temporarily run out of motivation to continue, so I'm showing it off for now just for fun.

[Grizzly]

Dizzy is cool. I like him. And it's great to see some new maps of his adventures



Now welcome on the boards. The text above the items on the maps is nice because it's not too big. But I do not think that showing were a screen ends is that bad. I think I always showed the scrolling borders on my maps. It makes clearer what you can see at once on screen. Especially when things don't line up fine, it shows better that it's not the mapper's fault. I did it for Treasure Island Dizzy (Amiga), because without screen borders it would look really bad.

[TerraEsperZ]

Welcome to the board!



I agree with Grizzly about showing the borders, as the repetition of some graphics near them is a bit distracting. The sad thing is that for the pirate ship for example, you could almost remove those repetitions and do a tiny bit of editing to make a big and coherent map, while the treehouse village is absolutely chaotic as things at the top of screens are completely different from things at the bottom of the screens just above!



I also second the creation of purely aesthetic maps without labels.



---

"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]

Hello and welcome.  I recognize the name...didn't you do a Duck Tales map?  I honestly didn't look, if I'm right, I don't know why I remembered that.



Man, the Dizzy games are hard.  I had a brief Dizzy phase a while back on the old forums after seeing them available on Abandonia (I think they still are there, for those of you who are interested, until Codebreakers or whoever it is brings up a beef with them).  But I never got very far, though I probably got farthest in the PC version of this one.  I guess you're adamant about doing the NES one over any other version.  The parallax in the PC version is a pain anyway, and if I recall correctly, someone (maybe Terra or Grizzly, I think) posted a link to the PC version's maps on a foreign language web site.



I'd like labelled maps, though I suppose making an aesthetic map without labels comes first anyway, so you might as well keep an unlabelled version for those who don't want any text on 'em.



Because the Dizzy games are those that aren't easy at all, and it's not clear where to use items, I encourage on-map labels.  Though as with anything else they should be neat and concise.  If people came to VGMaps.com for strategies, they'd come more often.

[DarkWolf]

As Terra said, it looks like the pirate ship will line up if you over lap the sections (but maybe not).  For the treehouse, I would just put some seperation space between the vertical levels.  Without it, it just looks like a bad job (I know you explained, but not everyone who visits the site will read these forums).



Also, if you don't want to do the Genesis version I might consider doing it.

[Blublu]

Thanks for the nice comments. "Unfortunately" I just got a job, so my free time just went out the window. But I'll still work on this, albeit more slowly now. Thankfully this game is super easy to map, no annoying parallax backgrounds or icons over the playing field or anything. Yes, I think I will add borders for better clarity.



It would be fine to have a Genesis version as well because the map layout is not exactly the same, and some items are in different locations and stuff.



(yes, I did do those Duck Tales maps)

[JonLeung]

I have a funny memory which kicks up at odd times - did you also do a speed run of Duck Tales?



If you did, maybe I should find out why I'm forgetting where I see something that I remember.

[Blublu]

No, I did a _tool-assisted_ speedrun of Duck Tales (big difference). But it has since been obsoleted twice.

[TerraEsperZ]

Personally, I really like speedruns, even tool-assisted ones, as long as they don't rely on bugs in the game's engine. It just looks more impressive to see the character take the long way and do things perfectly. Some see it as cheating, but I see it as an exercise in patience and determination rather than pure skills.



---

"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

[Blublu]

Okay, I finished mapping all individual areas, now I just have to add borders and paste them all together. Expect that to take a very long time. I'm hoping I will have the entire game mapped out in one huge image file. Something like this:



(warning: 580 KB image)

https://img208.imageshack.us/img208/1743/bigoneel4.png