Topic: FlyingArmor's Map Projects Present and Future

[FlyingArmor]

Yesterday, my maps for Exodus: Ultima III (PC) were posted, so more old-school Ultima goodness is available for viewing here! Although most people don't have much fondness for CGA graphics these days, I kinda like how the colours were used for this port.

And just a little bit ago, I got the bathroom level done for The Addams Family: Pugsley's Scavenger Hunt (SNES) and it should be up fairly soon. It was quite an ordeal getting all the elements of each room together the way they're presented in-game. I had to come up with a solution for the backgrounds in the taller rooms, since the art for the background doesn't scroll vertically, so I just took the gradient part and stretched it to the height of the room, and kept the sink, mirror, and door elements at the bottom along with the horizontally parallax scrolling bubbles.

For the underwater portions, I managed to get the colour math correct for most of the layers except for the wavy water layer, but just as I am typing this out, I may have stumbled upon a solution, so I'll need to resubmit this map once that's figured out.

And as for Jon's comment on the stage in the crystal ball, that'll be an interesting challenge to tackle, especially since I don't like to leave platform game stages without their respective backgrounds present.

I got a little further with Ultima VI: The False Prophet (PC) since I last submitted maps in October. I've been a little slow with this project since I have two desktop computers that I switch between: my old Windows XP machine that I've had since 2011, and my newer Linux Mint machine. Since I'm so used to using Photoshop and all its handy keyboard shortcuts, trying to use GIMP has been a rather painful experience. Maybe if I can figure out how to get Photoshop to run under Wine without it throwing error messages at me, I wouldn't have to constantly switch between both computers.

[TerraEsperZ]

And just a little bit ago, I got the bathroom level done for The Addams Family: Pugsley's Scavenger Hunt (SNES) and it should be up fairly soon. It was quite an ordeal getting all the elements of each room together the way they're presented in-game. I had to come up with a solution for the backgrounds in the taller rooms, since the art for the background doesn't scroll vertically, so I just took the gradient part and stretched it to the height of the room, and kept the sink, mirror, and door elements at the bottom along with the horizontally parallax scrolling bubbles.

For the underwater portions, I managed to get the colour math correct for most of the layers except for the wavy water layer, but just as I am typing this out, I may have stumbled upon a solution, so I'll need to resubmit this map once that's figured out.

This is the kind of challenge I miss the most about mapping.
Sometimes, you'll just run into a game where some elements just seem impossible to represent properly on a static map. You get frustrated and might spend days, weeks or even months trying to come up with a solution. And one day, it finally just pops into you mind and after a bit on tinkering, you implement your workaround and produce something amazing!

I too am curious as to how you'll handle the crystal ball stage

[JonLeung]

If all the rooms for the stage seen in the crystal ball can be rearranged (hopefully without twisting "door lines" too much) into a compact, roughly circle-like cluster, then you could have a giant-sized crystal ball and a giant Granny overlooking the entire stage.  Assuming this looks okay, that is.  With the cartoon style (since it is based on the 1992-1993 cartoon), she has large areas with one solid colour each (hair, face, shawl), so that probably won't be an issue (other than perhaps looking flat or plain in the immediate area).  But if the pixels are oversized into these big squares, I wonder if the edges and details, like the outline of the nose and mouth, might look odd, especially when looking right at screen level.  That will probably be dependent on how much larger the individual pixels have to be.  As a look at the entire area, that seems to be the most logical idea that I imagine, but it's probably just one of those things that needs to at least be tried out to see.

[FlyingArmor]

This is the kind of challenge I miss the most about mapping.
Sometimes, you'll just run into a game where some elements just seem impossible to represent properly on a static map. You get frustrated and might spend days, weeks or even months trying to come up with a solution. And one day, it finally just pops into you mind and after a bit on tinkering, you implement your workaround and produce something amazing!

I had those moments of figuring out how to present things more accurately when I was working on Final Fantasy VII, where there'd be multiple layers of lighting for some areas that I couldn't simply layer on top of each other and have the resulting image be what I'd see when actually playing the game. But once I had figured out how to layer those things properly in the late areas, I went back to previously finished maps and added the extra layers that I didn't bother with. The map that comes to mind where that happened is the Whirlwind Maze, with the greenish-blue wavy mist. I think I had to manually mask out the foreground elements not affected by those layers by inspecting multiple in-game screenshots with slightly different animation frames to see which pixels the mist didn't affect. It was lots of tedious work, but ended up looking fabulous when it all came together.

If all the rooms for the stage seen in the crystal ball can be rearranged (hopefully without twisting "door lines" too much) into a compact, roughly circle-like cluster, then you could have a giant-sized crystal ball and a giant Granny overlooking the entire stage.

That'd be a really interesting way of doing it! I'd have to first put together all the rooms and then see what I can do with them, and if it works out that they can be arranged to fit into a circular pattern, then great! If not, I suppose the most background I'd add to the rooms would be the colour gradient behind Granny. Or maybe I try my hand at smoothing out the pixelated edges of a scaled-up Granny so it wouldn't be as obvious that she's been scaled up. It would not be as true to the in-game graphics as I would have then tampered with them, but it'd better reflect the spirit of that level. I'll give it more thought once I get to that point though!

[FlyingArmor]

Li'l update from me! I've got about 16 more maps for Ultima VI: The False Prophet (PC) done. All that's left is 6 more, most of which are huge, expansive dungeons like Destard and Hythloth. I'll take care of 'em one by one, and before I know it, they'll be ready for prime time! 

I also decided to submit a couple of maps from Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness (PC). I put them together a while ago and was going to release them with the other mappable areas of the game all at once, but I haven't gotten to that yet, so Sosaria will have to do for now.

[VGCartography]

Enjoy reading about the layering challenges upthread! I didn't notice until reading your comments what was "faked" for the map like that, which is always the goal 

Tomba on PS1 mixed sprite billboards with 3D level geometry and parallax scrolling, so I had to do some goofy tricks to try and stretch/tile/recreate gradients over larger areas to simulate the effects as best as possible.

https://vgmaps.com/Atlas/PSX/Tomba!-VillageOfAllBeginnings.png
They swap out BGs as you move across the level, so here the clouds are used in the first part but when you climb up they secretly swap it out for a "forest canopy in distance" BG. No great way to blend them nicely so I just left a big artificial crop on it where it appears.

https://vgmaps.com/Atlas/PSX/Tomba!-LavaCaves.png
This one had a cool graphical effect on PS1 I couldn't duplicate in Blender to make the caves recede into the darkness, so I just cropped the main red outer wall shell I had and duplicated it, shrinking and making it darker each time. It actually is fairly different to in-game (which also has pulsing lights) but at a glance I got it close enough to be happy.

Your FF7 maps are one of the biggest influences that made me decide to try my hand at some of my own, btw.

[FlyingArmor]

Yeah, some games don't allow for clean, aesthetically pleasing representations as two-dimensional maps, so one has to tweak things and get creative to get them looking as close to the authentic article as one can. It can be really tough at times, can't it?

It's wonderful to hear you were inspired to take up mapping from seeing my humble maps! When I can find some time, I'll be sure to peruse your maps for Tomba and Vagrant Story. The cursory glance I've taken of both map sets thus far leaves me very impressed!

[FlyingArmor]

Hey all! Long time no speak.

I haven't been doing much lately as far as mapping goes, though I've done a little here and there. There's one map I've been working on and off for the better part of this year: a map of the Isles of Wynmar from the recently released RPG, Nox Archaist. It's been rather interesting working with Apple II Hi-Res graphics to say the least, haha. I've still got a long way to go before finishing the game, but I've got more than half of the overworld captured thus far.

The only other major mapping I've done is mapping out the Commodore 64 version of Ultima IV. I used Tiled along with the C64 tileset to construct the maps while looking at the PC maps I've already compiled. Mapping out the Britannian overworld tile by tile took quite a number of hours, though it beats having to do so with just screenshots. I should have all the townes and castles and villages submitted some time tomorrow.

[alucard]

I love your Dragon Quest and Dragon Warrior Maps. I used them on latest replaying of the games. Any thoughts on ever mapping Dragon Quest 6 for the SNES?

[FlyingArmor]

I love your Dragon Quest and Dragon Warrior Maps. I used them on latest replaying of the games. Any thoughts on ever mapping Dragon Quest 6 for the SNES?

Thanks very much! I'm glad they were helpful.

I think I gave mapping Dragon Quest VI some thought after completing V, though around that time someone else had submitted maps for it. I've taken some time to glance through them, and I'm of the opinion that it's not a complete set, so I wouldn't mind doing a proper job of mapping it fully, haha. It's been quite a while since I mapped an RPG for the SNES/SFC. Perhaps it'll be a project for 2022!

[FlyingArmor]

Quick update: I got the Isles of Wynmar (a.k.a. the overworld) map in Nox Archaist finished!

[VGCartography]

Fun doing a new map of an old-style game!

I just submitted the first few maps for Xenogears to the site: https://www.deviantart.com/vgcartography/gallery/81393244/xenogears Trying to follow your footsteps on the FF7 masterwork with another RPG from the era.

[FlyingArmor]

Another quick update! I got the last map for Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar finished yesterday (The Great Stygian Abyss!), so this map set is now complete. The Commodore 64 versions of the dungeons will eventually follow.

I just submitted the first few maps for Xenogears to the site: https://www.deviantart.com/vgcartography/gallery/81393244/xenogears Trying to follow your footsteps on the FF7 masterwork with another RPG from the era.

Apologies for not responding to your message earlier!
Those Xenogears maps of yours look amazing! The way you've presented the graphics here is almost as if they were originally meant to be pixel art rather than polygonal.
I have yet to play Xenogears from beginning to end, although I do have a copy of it. I suppose I'll eventually get around to it one of these days.

[FlyingArmor]

Update: the Spider Venom level from The Addams Family: Pugsley's Scavenger Hunt is now finished. It's only been a year and a half since the Octopus Ink level, hasn't it? Jon joked to me via e-mail that he was looking forward to seeing the next level some time in 2023, but I don't think it'll be that long, haha.

As far as new stuff goes, I've begun working on mapping Dragon Quest VI for the Super Nintendo! About half a year ago, alucard had suggested I take it on, and since I've mapped DQ1+2 and DQ5 already, I thought why not?

Stahlbaum had submitted a number of maps for DQ6 many years ago, and when that happened, it put me off from doing so myself. But after a cursory glance at what was submitted, it's woefully incomplete. Thus far, I've completed the "dream" and "real" overworld maps, and a dozen or so town and dungeon maps. Just from viewing what's on the overworld maps, it looks like this game will have well over 100 maps by the time all is said and done.

I'll send an e-mail to Stahlbaum asking whether he has any intention of finishing his DQ6 map set, but it's probably safe to assume that he doesn't at this point.

[TerraEsperZ]

Big complex maps do take a lot of time to make or at least, to make *properly* .