Topic: Tropicon's map projects

[Trop]

-Latest completed projects-
Grandia soundtrack.  Sort of.
The truth is someone else has already done this project, just not in MP3 or any other normal format.  I have it about half done in WAV but it seems their rips are better quality, if unnamed.  I'll be going back through the game checking to see if they missed anything and naming along the way.  Once I'm done I should have every one of Grandia's almost 250 songs.  So like with my other soundtracks if anyone's interested just tell me and I'll post it somewhere when I'm done.

[Trop]

-Latest completed projects-
Phantom 2040.
Finally!  The nightmare is over.  So glad that hell is behind me.

[ReyVGM]

I don't know where that other thread went to, so I totally forgot about it

Thanks for the Phantom maps!

[Trop]

-Latest completed projects-
Cyber Knight.

Really.  It's been since April that I finished a project?  Maybe I'm forgetting one or something.  Oh, right, Casper.  Well that wasn't much of a project.

[vorpal86]

Good job Trop! Although we'll never have every game map in existence, we still have plenty done. Don't take on too much at once. It'll drive ya crazy!

[JonLeung]

Should the "Galaxy" map of Cyber Knight really be at the end and not at the beginning?  Just asking.

We may never have every game map in existence, but it could be possible to have every map on a particular platform.  Unfortunately the popular consoles will have many more games to map and the less popular consoles might not have as many tools to map them with.

But in the first case, as there are no new NES and Super NES games being made - I'm talking official ones, of course - being the most popular consoles here, we may eventually get there.  The NES atlas section has had some slow periods lately but, again, any progress, even if it's a map a year, is infinitely more than the rate of new NES games (which is zero).  Of course, at that rate, it may take longer than our lifespans...

Sometimes I really wonder if I should make use of the Requests section of this board myself.  I shy away from explicitly requesting things because I probably overthink how my requests will be received just because I'm the one running VGMaps.  But I won't be running this forever.  I'm not planning an exit anytime soon, but obviously in a hundred years these maps will be in someone else's hands - assuming anyone cares about these games for what would then be antique electronics.  Might be nice to see particular maps completed before then, even if it means I have to ask (if I should even see that as a lowly/overbearing/touchy/awkward thing to do).

EDIT: I guess I did have my NES Game Atlas recreation topic and a topic about a possible Super NES continuation, and the still-incomplete ones include a bulk request similar to those for the Game Boy, plus the Nintendo Power topic.  Hmmm.  I guess I didn't think those were big deals because for the most part, they're popular-enough games that would get mapped eventually, even without my themed mass requests.  I'm sure I have others that don't fall into those categories which I hesitate to ask about, hence my musing on that above.

[Trop]

The Galaxy map is the world map so you can put it wherever.

I always wondered if at some point emulator technology would be able to make maps on its own.  Something like an advanced feature building the whole level straight out of the code.  Sure it would be extremely difficult to create such a thing since it would be like making a level editor on the spot for any game loaded.  But I could see an advanced program writing the necessary code itself.

[JonLeung]

A short while ago I saw a headline on GoNintendo linking to a YouTube video about some program that learns to play Game Boy games.  I didn't watch it or read very much about it, but that's probably a step towards a self-mapping emulator program.

I guess it would first have to figure out the "rules" of a game, especially movement and where one can and can't go.  Top-down RPGs and sidescrolling platformers are quite different, obviously, but either you would initially tell it what genre is or perhaps an AI could figure it out given enough fundamental information.  I imagine some maps look different than you'd expect if it was just dumping images (palettes, or perhaps smaller unrelated areas are lumped together) so it would have to understand how everything is intended to look during normal play and how things should be intuitively connected and even labelled.  There might be some creativity involved there.  But hey, I heard of a computer program that learned to write its own computer game, so I suppose it's possible.

[Trop]

I'd still take someone to make the initial program but I could still see it happening.  Computers are getting so pro active now I'm sure they'll be genuinely scary in just a few years.

[Trop]

-Latest completed projects-
Magical Vacation. *phew*

[Trop]

So the translation of Dark Half came out and I'm more or less retiring from mapping.  I'm announcing this so that anyone who wants to take anything off my to do list can, I'm effectively un-calling dibs on all of them.  I intend to map a few more easy games and finish up with Dark Half so I can end on a nice RPG.  The only reason I'm leaving the list at all is that I might want to map at least once or twice, who knows when, in the future and It's a convenient bookmark.

[GHS]

Dark Half looks like an interesting isometric game. I think ill take on that project.
Trop what tools do you recommend I use to map it? Any walk through walls cheat code?

[Trop]

*smacks forehead*  I meant that Dark Law is the last project I'm going to do.  I just finished Der Langrisser and Dark Law is next.  Of course if you want to race too see who can map it first...  I did Power of the Hired and Der Langrisser from start to finish just in the past three days so I could probably get Dark Law done from start to finish by next Monday if I went full tilt, although I hadn't intended too.  I'm not doing any mapping for the rest of today though.  Everything I found for mapping Power of the Hired, Der Langrisser, and Dark Half was and still is up at https://tcrf.net/The_Cutting_Room_Floor

[GHS]

Trop how did you get the full world map of Ys 5? what tool did you use? what emulator do you use?
Also are you sure you don't want do do Dark Half (not Dark Law) and will you finish Energy Breaker?

[Trop]

Yes, yes, I meant Dark Half.  And it's already kicking my ass.  It's full of fancy graphic tricks that I now have to learn to capture.  But it's going OK so far.
As for Ys 5 I used BGMapper.  Go here: http://pikensoft.com/
And download and read about the BGMapper tool you find there.  BGMapper is great for sucking hidden or distorted graphics out of lots of SNES games.  If a game looks like it's using a graphic trick BGMapper can usually show what's really going on.
Energy Breaker mapping is what I'd call bizarre difficulty.  The over all mapping is easy but applying all the graphic layers and arranging the rooms gets really complicated real fast.  You'll find yourself reworking the same spot over and over.  I'd love to go back to it but it's just to huge a project.