Topic: FlyingArmor's Map Projects Present and Future

[TerraEsperZ]

I've never actually played Final Fantasy VII (or any FF beyond VI for that matter) nor seen a Let's Play of it, and my knowledge of the game pretty much boils down to the murky plot of Advent Children and the awesomeness of its version of "One-Winged Angel".

That being said, browsing through the maps you've made (are there still a lot missing?) certainly gives a very different feel to the game's world compared to previous games (even VI which veered into steampunk). One thing that seems to come off of them though is how the camera angle seems to change all the time, reminding me a bit of how annoying navigation used to be in the old Alone in the Dark game trilogy. Is it as distracting while playing as I imagine it to be? Or is everything still laid out coherently enough that it's pretty much a non-issue?

I'm basically asking on the off-chance that I ever decide to play it.

Great maps by the way .

[JonLeung]

Well, I guess TerraEsperZ is an exception to my "everyone and their dog has played this game" assumption.  Ah well. 

The thing that confused me the first time playing through Final Fantasy VII was not the camera angles (the solid-color polygonal models of the characters sometimes stands out against the more detailed prerendered backgrounds, if I recall correctly, and I don't remember ever being lost), but rather the fact that you don't get to the overworld for quite a while until you do a lot of stuff in the first area, the huge city of Midgar.  I remember asking if an overworld area even existed.  When you finally get out of Midgar, you'll find the overworld, with typical RPG terrain, is polygonal with a freely-controlled rotating camera.

FlyingArmor, you mentioned you'd have to come up with some other representation of the overworld, I'm curious as to how it will look?  Will we have to wait long for that? 

[FlyingArmor]

I think about half of the total number of maps are up on the site right now, so there's still a lot left to go through.

Oh yeah, it's definitely a very different style compared to its predecessors; having modern feel to it, although still situated in a fantasy world. I think Tetsuya Nomura wanted to have Final Fantasy VII set in the modern day world actually, but that idea was scrapped early on I think. Final Fantasy XV seems to be going in that direction however.

I would say the areas are fairly well designed so that there isn't really any ambiguity as to where to go or where you're situated. But in the off chance you are a little confused, there is a feature which will point out where you are, where the exits are, and what things you can climb. As Jon said, the characters are very easy to pick out in the environments.

I took a look at the first Alone in the Dark game, and I can understand what you mean by the navigation. Final Fantasy VII's navigation is nowhere near that clumsy; there is no abrupt switching between views while walking in a single room for instance.

It's funny you mention the Alone in the Dark games, because I read in an interview with Yoshinori Kitase that those games were a major inspiration for Final Fantasy VII. I think he talked about how they could have gone the route of having 3D environments and pixel-drawn characters, like what Xenogears and Dragon Quest VII did, rather than what they did end up doing.

It certainly wouldn't hurt to try it out! Thanks for the kind words, Terra!

Jon: At this moment, it's still just a thought in my head. I'm thinking of perhaps making it appear like it's drawn on parchment, and have any colours appear more subdued than what you'd see in-game. The way J.R.R. Tolkien presented his maps of Middle-earth in his novels can help give an indication of what sort of direction I may end up going for Final Fantasy VII's world.

[JonLeung]

About half already?  I guess the thing with RPGs is that they can feel longer than the maps imply due to random encounters, having to revisit areas, or to grind for experience.  And, probably what Final Fantasy is known for starting with VII, long full-motion video sequences.  Considering how epic this game is remembered by (true or not), it does seem funny (even if it's a good thing) that you're going through this quickly and making it look easy - not to disavow any challenges you may have faced, of course.  As each map has multiple screens I guess the short-ish file listing contributes to my surprise at your statement that you're halfway there.  Might be interesting to compare the number of areas with other Final Fantasy games...

I've heard that the game data (minus the FMV CG cutscenes) essentially fit on one disc, and that it's redundantly on all four discs.  If I remember correctly, by swapping discs when not prompted to, the wrong scenes would play but the game otherwise progresses as normal.

Me and my brother used to record playthroughs of video games on VHS tapes, especially when we often rented games and were good enough to finish them on a rental...the biggest multi-tape recording was of our playthrough of Final Fantasy VII (minus random battles and unimportant stuff) when we rented a PlayStation specifically to play it, and I even lent a friend these tapes so he could experience Final Fantasy VII without having to get the game and a PlayStation (this was before the PC release).  I suppose these days there's always YouTube...

[FlyingArmor]

If you count the number of maps already up on the site, you'll find there's 61, so it's already surpassed FF4 (which has 41), and is closing in on FF5 and 6 (which have 71 and 69 respectively). From what I can tell, it may look like Final Fantasy VII will get pretty close to 100 maps. Part of that however is me splitting up huge areas into multiple maps, Junon being one such example.

If BumFengShui hadn't pointed me to 7mimic, I'd probably still be having a hell of a time trying to capture a lot of the areas manually. It only looks like I'm zipping through them because much of the organizing and layout work was done before June.

Mapping this game has had its challenges, but I'd say a lot of them had to do with presentation. Since there is no 16 x 16 grid that everything fits into anymore, I had to come up with different ways of denoting things, like using icons for treasure chests and save points, and arrows for indicating scenery changes in the case you cannot return to the previous scene. The rest is still pretty much my usual way of mapping things though.

You would be correct about the game data without the movies fitting onto a single disc. It sure does make mapping FF7 that much more convenient! No having to worry about disc swapping. I've never heard about that other thing though, haha.

That's pretty cool. It's like a Let's Play without the commentary to go along with it.

[JonLeung]

You would think that being the one who updates the tables and uploads the maps I, of all people, should clearly know exactly how many maps you have submitted.    I think because of all of the Midgar maps, I didn't think we were that far away from it, so it still felt like we were early on, so your "halfway done" remark made me think there weren't many maps overall, because I was too lazy to count to check.  Indeed, you're right, it will be a very large map set when complete, even by FF standards.

On a similar note, should all the Midgar maps be relabelled using "Midgar" as the main category?  I think it would be neat to see more clearly how much Midgar takes up of the game, plus when you're travelling all over the world later on, it's easy to find what you're looking for, knowing that all of Midgar is listed as such.  Thoughts?

EDIT: And perhaps Junon is well.  And isn't the Chocobo Race Waiting Room part of the Gold Saucer?

[FlyingArmor]

Sure, I don't find anything wrong with grouping all the Midgar areas under that category. And the same applies to Junon as well. I will however be putting the emergency stairs in the Shinra Building as a separate map, which I placed under the "Shinra Building" category. Not sure if that will cause any problems with organizing them.

The Chocobo Race Waiting Room is technically a part of Gold Saucer, but I didn't group it in with the rest of that map because it's an area you only ever visit once and can never return to afterwards. But if you're looking to place it under the "Gold Saucer" category, I won't object.

[FlyingArmor]

It's been a few months since I had last submitted maps for Final Fantasy VII, and that is mainly because I was stuck on how to present the "Great Glacier" map in a aesthetically pleasing way.

I was wondering whether or not to include all the transition scenes between landmarks. If I did so, I think the map would've been next to useless since it would've been so vastly huge, making it a chore to find the areas with items present. In the end, I decided to not bother with the transition scenes (except for one because there was an "Added Cut" materia to be found there) and simply used arrows to indicate which areas connect to where.

Hopefully the map isn't a complete mess with all the arrows everywhere.

Besides that, I've been working away on a new RPG, Silva Saga II for the SNES. I had played this a couple of years ago and found it quite nice, so why not map it as well. I got quite a number of maps laid out already, so once I get most if not all of the game mapped out, I'll start labeling them up. There are tons of hidden items that can be found in towns, so it'll be quite the task to find them all!

[JonLeung]

Because I'm an impatient jerk (well, hopefully not, but I've been called similar), I'm curious as to what the status of the Final Fantasy VII maps are...

And Ultima VI: The False Prophet was my favourite game that I could run on the first PC that our family owned, a 286 way back in the day (now I feel old).  To be a further jerk, and I don't recall if I ever asked, but are there plans to map the dungeon/cave areas as well?

[FlyingArmor]

Since my last post, I haven't worked on them at all. But I suppose now is a good time to get back to them. I simply haven't bothered to progress the game to get to the next area for map labeling. So I can have about six or seven new maps ready by Friday or so.

As for Ultima VI, I have started doing maps of the dungeons and caves, but I've only worked on the small ones (like the Spider Cave for instance). I'm still deciding upon how to label the item legends, so once that's sorted out, you can be sure to see them in your inbox before too long.

I recall other people asking my about mapping the dungeons in the past, so you're not the only one. Just thinking about mapping some of those dungeons is a great deterrent to working on them, since many of them are so incredibly massive, not to mention dragon-infested!

[KeyBlade999]

Random thought.

Since you love doing Final Fantasy maps - or at least seem to - would you be able to complete the Final Fantasy III set: the Famicom version, not the one from the SNES that you've already done. 

[FlyingArmor]

Oh I do enjoy mapping Final Fantasy games, even if they can be a pain sometimes.

I have thought of mapping Final Fantasy III before. I did in fact map the first cave just for the fun of it, but never bothered to post it anywhere. I do remember Will submitting maps for it however (checking the update log, back in September 2014), so I'm not sure if he's still keen on continuing on or not. But if no one steps up to the plate, I would indeed be interested in mapping that game as well.

[Will]

You can continue mapping Final Fantasy III if you really want to. I only did these few maps as samples.

[JonLeung]

Good to see these aren't forgotten or abandoned.

I don't know what it is about Ultima VI that I love so much...I had trouble getting into the earlier ones, I guess I liked VII but definitely not as much as VI...okay, I guess I liked VIII but it was definitely very different, and I guess I never played IX.  Though I suppose any long-running series that can get to nine entries or more are bound to have some good ones and some not-so-good ones, I'm sure I have varying opinions on the various Final Fantasys and Mega Mans.  (Final Fantasies?  Mega Men?)  Come to think of it, "liking VI more than VII and VIII being different" pretty much applies to Final Fantasy as well.  Does that mean if I get around to playing Ultima IX I might like it as much as I enjoyed Final Fantasy IX (which was underrated, in my opinion)?  And Mega Man is kind of like Final Fantasy where the seventh is on a new platform, the eighth feels different (though in MM's case it's probably just the evolution of the graphics) and the ninth is a return to an older feel (though in MM, again, it's more technical).

Um, anyway, my point is I really really love Ultima VI, whatever the reason is. 

[FlyingArmor]

@Will: Okay, thanks for letting me know. If I ever get to it, it'll certainly be a while, since I gotta play through the game first of course.

@Jon: Ultima VI is my favourite as well. It was also my introduction to the Ultima series in general. One thing I like about it is the strange perspective it utilizes for presenting the world. It certainly takes a bit to get used to, but works very well.

I really liked Ultima VII: The Black Gate's story and presentation very much, and I feel the same about Serpent Isle as well, although I haven't played that game all the way through (mainly because a bug with either the game itself or Exult stopped me from progressing). But the combat system is quite a chaotic mess, especially when compared with Ultima VI, which is much more structured and orderly.

Yeah, it's interesting comparing these long-running series with each other and finding these bizarre parallels. I wonder how Dragon Quest would compare?

Final Fantasy IX is probably my favourite Playstation Final Fantasy game, even though I like Final Fantasy VII quite a lot. So if there was a program like 7mimic for Final Fantasy IX, I would jump at the chance to map it! *hint hint*