Topic: Parasite Eve (PSX)

[mephea]

Well, I plan on mapping at this now that you guys have blessed me with a working psx emulator and whatnot.  This is the game that made me go to sony and whatnot.  Expect strategies and tips.  This and TMNT II, along with some SotN are the only things im going to be doing for a while.  I have a lot of other games to finish, but this is my parasite eve thread anyhow.  



Havent started, but I plan to today.

[mephea]

well, the maps are beautiful, they lay out nicely on a large palette and i made nifty little arrows to specify how the rooms are connected.



I am also putting the usual guide in as well.  Also, I am throwing in a few captures from the actual cinematics to give it a more artistic feel, and like because i think the cinemas are beautiful.



The arrows overlay the maps so you wont be seeing each prerendered section completely.  also, I use little item boxes to label where items are.  They kind of lame though, i really need to find something that will let me type neat words with pretty outlines around each letter so it wont be a lameass square.  



Also, i am editing these all in BMP atm so the colors shouldnt be screwed up like a lot of my maps were (can we say kid icarus maps? *cough*).  Pretty big image file too, 45 megs. heh.  I also have to move the sections around.  The way things are i have the second floor coming before the first floor.  could be confusing.



blah blah, i think you guys may like.

[JonLeung]

This was one of my favourite games (if only because I really wanted to finish it) for the PlayStation.  I had to play it four times (in a certain sense).



When I borrowed a PlayStation, I played Parasite Eve.  Then I played EX mode, but couldn't make it all the way through the Chrysler Building.  (For those of you who don't know, the Chrysler Building in this game has 77 floors, with most of those floors being randomized.  You can only save after beating a boss on each 10th floor and getting an Elevator Key to be able to leave the building.)  As it takes an hour to go through each ten floors, you can imagine my frustration when I couldn't repeatedly got defeated by the cockroaches on floor 50 or 60 or whatever.



When we got bleem! (the first commercial PSX emulator, and also the first we got running on our computer), I gave it another shot, but of course had to play through Parasite Eve another two times (well, one and four/fifths) to be able to access the Chrysler Building again, since I didn't know anyone with a DexDrive to be able to transfer my PSX saves to the PC.



I didn't realize that after Level 35 or 36 or somewhere around there, the EXP required for the next Level drops so significantly, it's easy to get to Level 99 from there.  So with a maxed-out Aya and the AK-47 I could finally take down the cockroaches and the remaining bosses.



I must say I was a little bit disappointed at the FMV-less "better" ending, mostly because of all the trouble it takes to get through the Chrysler Building.  But I do like the game, and it's probably the first horror game I really wanted to play.



Despite that, I haven't gotten far in Parasite Eve II, which is on the short list of games I ought to finish but haven't.



I look forward to these maps of the original game, if only for the memories.



mephea, are you going to map the non-randomized floors of the Chrysler Building?  (I think those are the 1st, 10th, 20th, 30th, 40th, 50th, 60th, and 70th-77th.)

[mephea]

I didn't know there were permanent sections to the Chrysler building.  Heh.  If there are, yeah, I will most likely do that.

[mephea]

http://img220.imageshack.us/my.php?image=psogl092ce1.png



to pass the time whilst we wait for teh first map ever!

[JonLeung]

I wonder why that mutated rat looks freakier than I remember - like I said, I played through most of the game four times.  o_0



Makes me wonder what I'll think when I see those people melting later on in the game.  That was way more bizarre than them lighting up in flames at the beginning.



They showed that people-in-flames scene on TV on some entertainment show back when they wanted to make a movie with Madonna starring as Eve.  I wonder what that would've been like.

[mephea]

That parasite eve movie was gona be so cool *sigh* I just finished capturing all of the appropriate images for day 1, now I am going to add in the bulky/intrusive arrows, the tips and tricks, the item locations and blah blah.  Maybe i will finish before class.

[wileee]

I look forward to seeing these maps as well. Many fond memories of playing through PE, and PE2.



I was also pretty excited when I found out that after level 36 the EXP needed to advance was MUCH less. I think that happens because you can only have 9,999,999 EXP total and LV35 to LV36 takes about 1,400,000. if it kept rising each level, your EXP go way higher than the cap.



Anyway, yeah, the Chrysler Building is a pile of random frustration. Until I leveled up and added the Cyanide "ability" to my main gun. I was actually doing 999 damage per hit to some of the enemies.



One last thing, as I'm cruizing down memory lane regarding upgrading weapons. I found out that Damage is actually divided among all the bullets in your clip. So if your damage is 100, for example, and you have a 3 shot clip, you'll do 33 damage per bullet. If you upgrade a weapon's clip size to 10, you don't get 33 damage per bullet anymore you get 10 damage per bullet.



I thought it would be awesome to be doing 999 damage per shot with a 10 round clip but it turned out not to be worth it. So, anyone playing this, don't mess with the clip size.



Oh, and Jon, Go finish PE2 before it gets too dated.

[JonLeung]

I don't have a problem with playing dated games, I think I was stuck somewhere in that desert town area at night.  I think I saved when my health was too low and the mitochondrial power (I forget what it's called) could only regenerate during battle, couldn't it?  Maybe I should've saved on multiple slots if that was what the problem was.

[mephea]

I deleted the 35 meg bmp file.  The PNG was 5 megs,   any ideas on compressing the png?



anyhow, this is a crappy jpeg.  I will link the png from my site in a moment.



http://img177.imageshack.us/my.php?image=day1resonancecarnegiehallwg5.jpg

[mephea]

http://www.videogamemaps.net/personal/mephea/Parasite%20Eve/Day%201,%20Resonance,%20Carnegie%20Hall.png



ok, heres the PNG.   its about 5 megs im guessing.  anyhow, give me opinions!

[mephea]

and wilee, yeah, the damage is distributed between each shot (i think its very stupid) but the purpose of multiple shots was not meant for focusing your attacks on one target.  I think the games general mechanics are for you to have a method to attack multiple enemies at once.  The damage is divided into however many shots you get, but you still do more damage technically.  im not arguing with you though, i think to improve clip size you gotta actually use slots for weapons or something (memory is quite foggy about how all of this works). i would rather do something else to make my one or two shots more powerful, like with fire or something.  i think....

[Revned]

I got it down to 3.9 MB with OptiPNG. Maybe you can convince Jon to brute force compress it. It would take forever, though. It took 2 or 3 minutes just to compress it regularly.

[mephea]

ill just leave it as is i think, im submitting it to be hosted on vgmaps, so if john wants to compress it in any manner, he can.  i decided to just keep the uncompressed version for my site. o-0

[JonLeung]

I had forgotten how cool (and disturbing in parts) this game was.  Ah, the memories.



What I do remember most is the music.  I lost the soundtrack when my hard drive got wiped out last year, I should probably look into getting that again.  Square games usually have good music, though, so it's no surprise, though horror games aren't exactly their cup of tea, so in that way I really like that they did it well.



Can't wait for you to finish every area, mephea!  Though I'll also take each of them as you finish if you want, when you're sure you're done with each one.