Topic: VGMaps.com Atlas Project: Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night (PSX)

[TerraEsperZ]

Revned, I'll post a little template I had made for my first attempt, as well as examples on how rooms will fit inside. Just give me an hour or a bit more, seeing as I'm starving and I really need to eat something.



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"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

[TerraEsperZ]

First, the map template for a map 'square':







It is 256 x 256 pixels in size, because each room is always a multiple of 256 pixels in width, and because there's always a multiple of 256 pixels in distance between the tops of different rooms. The top line is where a room will begin, the middle one is where it will end, provided a room does end in that square, and the bottom line is where you'd put another template right under it for the room below.



Now, for some examples:



Example 1 - Single screen room (256 x 207), no scrolling:







This one is simple. The room is of course aligned horizontally, and vertically it is aligned on top of the square (including covering the top red line) and it ends right on top of the middle red line. The zone left under (including the bottom line) is exactly 49 pixels as I already said.



Example 2 - Single screen room in width, with vertical scrolling:







Now, again the room is aligned horizontally with the borders of the template and again it starts on top of the top red line. However, since the room is actually two 'squares' high, I put another template right under it. Just like in Example 1, the bottom of the room ends just over the middle red line of the second template.



Example 3 - Room with multiple scrolling:







This is actually just like Example 2, except that since the room also has horizontal scrolling, I simply put another series of two templates right next to the first. No real explainations needed here.



As you can see, the bottom of a room will always be 49 pixels short of the bottom of a template. That's why I said that to get the total height of the map, you had to substract that 49 pixels since that's where the map will end.



Also, once you'll start mapping the Inverted Castle, simply flip the template vertically as well as the alignment rules. Align rooms at the bottom of templates and the 49 pixels gap will be on top instead.



Revned and everyone else, feel free to demand more precisions to make sure you understand well.



---

"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

[Revned]

Thank you! That answered all my questions. Now I can start arranging all of the rooms, provided my computer doesn't dies trying to manipulate such a big image.

[TerraEsperZ]

I've finished the Silver Ring room from the Royal Chapel, or at least, finished except for the background which was replaced by purple for the moment.







I'm also working on the long spike corridor leading to it and the first Bell Tower (the top half is almost finished). I'm really puzzled as to how to handle the glowing blue doors; the blue aura is transparent and in the spike corridor for example, the aura appears over the parallax background which makes that part of the background hard to remove.



---

"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

[Revned]

Looks good, but now we have to decide what to do with the backgrounds in areas like that. Should we just show it through the windows, or should we have it outside like you see it in the game? That'd be fine for one room, but it would look kind of weird in the full map....

[wileee]

Just for giggles, I'm going to map a room. Top left corner of the room is 6:Z.

[TerraEsperZ]

For the blue door, I'll follow your advice and use GLIntercept's capture to separate both the door and its aura which will be added later during the final compositing, probably at 50% transparency.



As for the background, I've manage to capture it without the moving clouds; it basically looks like a dark blue sky with a static light blue cloud layer on the bottom. There are a number of ways to use that for the various rooms with that background; I'll have to do some tests with it. As for the clouds, I'm sure GLIntercept will allow me to obtain the textures used for the clouds. Since I believe that it wouldn't look good in any way to try to go with a 3D background of our own that would have correct perspective for the entire bell towers/sky corridors area, maybe we could go for something akin to how I handled the moving clouds in Harmony: simply use the cloud textures and assemble them together to fill the space of a room and put that over the static blue sky I mentionned earlier. It won't look anywhere as good as what you see in-game, but it will be consistent across the area. Again, I'll try to put together something tonight.



---

"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

[Revned]

Okay, I've updated the map with the your room, Terra, and a few I did just now. I'll upload them later, as soon as I finish with the big one I'm working on now.



If it's not obvious, the rooms are color coded by mapper. Edsword and Wileee are green, since they worked together, I am blue, and now TerraEsperZ is red.

[wileee]

Regarding your blue door problem. I encountered the same thing with the candles. Some of them have an oval glow to them that is semi-transparent. I suppose we'll have to extract the sprite and separate a glow then upload both files so that everyone can use them.



The room I'm doing also has some moving clowds that are proving to be a problem to capture.



Guess, I'll have to try the GLIntercept thing.

[Revned]

Wileee, don't worry about backgrounds too much yet. Just fill them with pink or something like Terra did. If the room has easy repeating backgrounds, then that's fine, but we aren't even sure what we're going to do with the moving clouds.

[wileee]

Well, all right. The clouds would just be a big repeating pattern anyway. They would probably look ok in a normal sized room, but this one has so much "sky" that all those repeated clouds might look funny.



Here's the "completed" room: 1792 X 1231



http://www.screenshotmaps.com/Maps/castlevaniasotn-ps1/bridgeroom09-07-06.png

[Revned]

Wow, excellent work, wileee. The only problems I noticed are that the blue candles have the wrong frame, as do two of the three-flame candles at the bottom. Look at the image in my first post to see which frames to use. But aside from that, it looks perfect, alignment and all.



Speaking of alignment, I think we're going to have to make some adjustments to Edsword's library map. It doesn't fit in the grid as it is now. Hopefully we won't have to mess up too much of his work. You wouldn't happen to have any older versions of your maps from before you assembled them, would you Ed (or Wileee)?

[TerraEsperZ]

Great job Wileee! All it's missing now are the items, and eventually remove the mountains/moon to assemble them correctly if possible.



---

"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

[wileee]

Thanks.



I wasn't going to mess with the candles just yet until I figured out how to put the "glow" around them. I liked frame of the "chalace" candles in that area. You can copy the sprite off that map to post in your introduction.



Terra, The mountains and moon are on a separate layer. The moon is behind you no matter where you are and the mountains scroll a little. I wasn't exactly sure where I should put them (in the middle, bottom, top) so I just put them at the bottom. Also the moving clouds are over the top of the moon, but behind the mountains. Why the moon looks a little "off".



My save game was after all the items were collected so I didn't have any of those.



Revned, I'll check for a previous version of the library.



Interestingly enough, the red doors actually do have that extra vertical row of pixels on the left side of the door in the game. Weird.

[TerraEsperZ]

Oups, seems I was too late editing my post. Wileee, I only mentionned the mountains and sky because I can be pretty anal about authenticity, no offense meant



As for the red doors, that might be because the door is actually a 3D object instead of a sprite. I'd personally suggest removing that ugly extraneous row of pixels.



---

"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