Guidelines for mappingAnyone can help out with this project, but please follow the rules in this post to make sure everything will go relatively smoothly. Please read through all of this before you start mapping.
RequirementsFirst of all, you need the US version of the game. Then, to make sure we don't have any palette conflicts later on, you should use the same emulator and graphics plugin as everyone else. The emulator we've chosen is
ePSXe, and we're using
Pete's OpenGL graphics plugin. You need to use
these settings.
Getting started mappingChoose a room to map. Any room is fine, but you should try to stick to the first castle for now. I also advise that you don't choose a room with a scrolling background for your first try. See this map for the unmapped sections:
<div class="quote"><center><img src="
http://revned.googlepages.com/NormalCastle.png" width="498" height="386" alt="User posted image" /></center><font color="C00000">Red = TerraEsperZ</font>
<font color="E08000">Orange = Zeric</font>
<font color="008000">Green = Edsword/Wileee</font>
<font color="0000C0">Blue = Revned</font>
<font color="8000C0">Purple = mephea</font></div>
Anything grey is fair game. The colored sections have already been mapped or are in progress by another mapper. Please use the fancy grid I made to refer to the rooms. It took forever to make ;-)
Alright, now that you've chosen a room you can get started. Take screenshots in ePSXe with F8. Then just put them together in your favorite image editor. Save all images as PNGs (I suppose BMP would be fine, too). Since we can't disable layers in ePSXe, you might have trouble getting rid of the status bar in the upper left. If you need it, you can use
GLIntercept to get the tiles behind the sprites. Just put the DLL file and the settings file in the ePSXe folder. Then run the emulator, and lots of images will get dumped to the "images" folder. Since it makes hundreds of files very quickly, you should only use it briefly. Get to the place you need without GLIntercept, make a savestate, exit the emulator, put the DLL file in the folder, then run it and unfreeze for a second or two. Then just look through all the images for the tiles you need.
Animated elementsWe're going to have all the animated elements synchronized in the end, so it's best if you do this while mapping the first time. There are lots of different kinds of candles and torches, so I'll post the frames we're using for reference. If you come to a room with candles unlike the other rooms mapped so far, just choose a frame you like and stick with that.
<img src="
http://revned.googlepages.com/animatedtiles.png" width="136" height="64" alt="User posted image" />
You shouldn't copy and paste these into your image, except the red door.
Parallax backgroundsThese are tricky to deal with. You probably won't want to do many of these. I won't go into details right now, but you need to separate the background from the foreground and keep them in separate files. Please leave them in separate files in case we need to change them later.
Other difficultiesThere are several areas that we're going to have to figure out strategies for later, like the chapel with the 3D background. If you come to one of these rooms, either skip it for now or post in this thread for assistance.
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Original message:
If this meets with general approval, I'll have Jon move it to the Maps in Progress board.
This game is inherently difficult to map since there is no layer disabling in ePSXe (or any other PSX emulator). I suggest that we all pitch in and map a room or two each, and slowly progress towards a full map of this game. It would take a long time, but we don't have any deadlines. We would all have to make sure to use the same emulator with the same settings to ensure uniform palettes, as that got to be a problem in the last project. Anybody have any ideas for or against?
I'll write more later, I'm late for class...
