Topic: Jackster's Map Projects

[Jackster]

A new map of mine is now up.

Toy Story (Sega Genesis)
https://vgmaps.com/Atlas/Genesis/index.htm#ToyStory

This one was an attempt on some ideas I had to map these levels and to challenge myself to see if I can pull it off. The results were pretty good if I say so myself. You can watch how Traveller's Tales pulled off some of these effects here and here. These videos helped me further understand how to map these.

The ideas include:

• Getting the perspective right in the side-scrolling levels. Notice the floor with the furniture sides matching it. What I did was rip the background from Bizhawk's VDP Viewer, cropped and edited the floor so it looks straight, tiled it in Clip Studio Paint to expand it throughout the level and stretched it to give it a perspective. The sides were just animated background tiles made up of 22 frames that i had to rip each one by hand. Then I used CSP's perspective guide to place each of those frames to match that of the floor.
• Simulating pseudo-transparency the way it's displayed on a CRT rather than an emulator (i.e. the coin tubes in Level 10 and the glass in Level 12), something continued from mapping Kirby's Dream Land 3 that I plan to do for future Genesis games. Had to use filters for Bizhawk and Kega Fusion, as well as watching a speedrun played on a real console and CRT, as reference in order to pull this look off.
• The 3D 'Doom' level. I already knew some basics in 3D modeling for Maya, so making the map for this level wasn't entirely hard. Ripping the textures from the game took some thinking though since what you see in the level is rendered in the VDP Viewer too. So what I came up with was to position myself so I'm facing the wall straight and screen capturing each of the textures from there. It's not perfect, but since the textures are going to be distorted anyway when rendered in an orthographic view, it doesn't really matter.
• The 3D driving level. This one I had to eyeball on the road for; to see how far the turns go, how far the straight parts of the road go, etc. As for mapping it, if you're familiar with Clip Studio Paint, you would know that there is a ribbon feature in its brush engine where you can easily draw things like chains and rope with. So I created my own road texture in Aseprite, turned it into a ribbon brush in CSP, and drew it on a vector layer for easier editing. I was originally going to add in the background stuff like the buildings and the trucks, but that would have been difficult to get the textures for. So I left them out.

[Jackster]

After some time on and off, my next Game Freak game is now complete.

Pulseman (Sega Genesis)
https://vgmaps.com/Atlas/Genesis/index.htm#Pulseman

I underestimated this game. Apparently, this game makes extensive use of pseudo-transparency on a whole bunch of levels. There was like 2-3 rooms that was nothing but that. Because of that, I strained my hand in the process and there were times where I had to take breaks from mapping in order to recover. So glad to be done with this game.

Besides fixing the transparency, I also went and fixed up a bunch of the backgrounds so the foreground is a lot more visible.

[Jackster]

Since this game has been sitting on my Current Projects list for weeks, I finally got around to finishing it today.

The Apprentice (Philips CD-i)
https://vgmaps.com/Atlas/CD-i/index.htm#Apprentice

[VGCartography]

Just dropping in to say I appreciate a lot of these - the Zelda CD-I ones were amazing to see since I've never played or watched the game, it looks gorgeous if you only knew the backgrounds lol. Also the 16-bit Toy Story was a fun trip down memory lane.

[Jackster]

It's been a while since I did any maps for this site, so I'm going to attempt to get back on track starting with a game I watched in an episode of GameCenter CX: the Sunsoft game Atlantis no Nazo.

A preview of what I have so far. With 100 zones I have to do, this is going to be a loooong journey.

[JonLeung]

From what I know about this game (which is very little), there are many different routes and it's not clear where to go.  Hidden routes can include things like falling down a pit that looks just like any other (but deadly) pit.  Good luck with mapping this!  Once it is done, I am sure it will be a valuable guide.

[Jackster]

While I'm waiting for my Atlantis no Nazo maps to get in, I went and filled in something from Jon's request list: the Great Cave Offensive section of Kirby Super Star is now fully labelled.

Kirby Super Star (Super Nintendo)
https://vgmaps.com/Atlas/SuperNES/index.htm#KirbySuperStar

Wanted to try my hand at ripping these maps with the Graphic Debugger feature in Bizhawk rather than relying on the Autostitcher. As a result, the black gradient that usually appears at the bottom of the screen is now gone. The maps were then combined and labelled the same way I did with the maps for The Amazing Mirror: using Clip Studio Paint.

[Jackster]

The maps are up now! Each map contains both marked and unmarked versions inside, and many of them even have solutions.

Atlantis no Nazo (NES/Famicom)
https://vgmaps.com/Atlas/NES/index.htm#AtlantisnoNazo

This game took me over 3 weeks to map, because of how much stuff I had to put into them. Ripping the maps themselves was easy, but adding in the secrets, strategies, solutions, etc. was very time-consuming. I originally wanted to add in a flowchart connecting all of the zones after I got done with the maps, but because I spent so much time adding in new stuff to the maps after researching, I was exhausted and didn't really feel like doing it. I just wanted to get this done and over with.

Had to rely on a Japanese guidebook I found on Archive.org, a Japanese walkthrough with pictures, a combination of Capture2Text and DeepL, a GameFAQs text walkthrough, a flowchart I found on StrategyWiki, a code site containing addresses that aided me through this game, and a few 100% speedruns of the game on Youtube and Twitch. It was a lot of work.

With this finally out of the way, onto the Swan of Wonders!

[TerraEsperZ]

Old, mostly forgotten games like Atlantis no Nazo can be pretty hard to fully map since, unlike modern games that get datamined from top to bottom on the week of release, you can't be sure that all the secrets have been found and documented even after several decades. That or their age might mean that complete guides once existed in print but haven't necessarily been scanned or otherwise preserved on the Internet.

Good job on taking on such a challenging game!

[Jackster]

The first of 3 Klonoa puzzle platformers is now mapped. The other two, Empire of Dreams and Dream Champ Tournament for the GBA, are already on my to-do list. This one was an attempt to add more stuff to the Wonderswan page as well.

Klonoa: Moonlight Museum (Wonderswan)
https://vgmaps.com/Atlas/WS-WSC/index.htm#KlonoaMoonlightMuseum

[Jackster]

After almost a whole month working on this, the maps are now done and finally up.

Plok! (SNES)
https://vgmaps.com/Atlas/SuperNES/index.htm#Plok

Man, I don't know where to even start with this one:

• This game sure had a lot to offer. Since I never really played this game up until recently, it got confusing at first. Multiple times, I had to go back to add stuff in after I was familiar enough with the game.
• To my surprise, the shells were on the same layer as the foreground, so all I had to do was find the code to freeze the animation (which also freezes all background animation; just that one code), and run it through Screenshot Autostitcher. Saved a lot of time compared to other games where collectables are in the sprite layer and had to rip them separately.
• The backgrounds took the longest time to do. At first, I thought they were static background images, but it turned out to be made up of reused tiles. The Cotton Island/Legacy Island backgrounds for instance, while they don't scroll, were basically the same tiles with a different color palette for each level. So I hatched up a plan to expand the backgrounds and use the recycled tiles to recreate the expanded areas. While it wasn't all that difficult to do, it was tedious work that took me longer than expected.
• I went and tried out Aseprite 1.3 during the making of these maps, as this version introduced a new tilemap system that made recreating those backgrounds quicker and easier than normal.
• There were parts of the levels in the game that were left incomplete since they were unreachable anyway without cheating or hacking (such as some of the Fleapit levels). So I had to recreate those areas as well.
• After submitting the maps, I got told by Jon via email that the overworld maps were missing, which I completely forgotten about as I meant to do those after I got done with the levels. So I spent 4 hours this morning mapping those and submitted before I had to go to work. These contain both marked and unmarked versions.

So yeah, it was a wild ride, and I'm relieved that I finally got this game done.

[TerraEsperZ]

Those maps are amazing! Great work as always

[VGCartography]

Very cool, always liked this game but I never beat it. Some of those levels towards the end get pretty bizarre, huh. Thanks for these!

[TerraEsperZ]

It also reveals that most of the maps aren't nearly as big as the game makes them out to be, which is neat I think.

[Cyartog959]

Popped by here to talk, even though this hasn't had a post in long.

I have a heads-up for Jackster, who's been away for quite so long since last doing any maps and being here, so...

A contributor from The Spriters Resource(if any heard of it yet or not, or haven't seen it in a while), a site that contributes to archiving sprites of all kinds, custom included, has already saved Jackster the work of doing Nazo no Murasam... eh... Actually, The Mysterious Murasame Castle's(the name translated from Japanese to English) maps and uploaded them there, listed underneath a category as "Backgrounds" in the site's NES section, alongside the game's bosses and other misc. sprites, too.

I took a quick stop-in one day, and saw them and the contributor's work responsible for it, MisterMike. I was a little surprised that guy did most of the game's sprites and all of the maps for each stage, and nobody told the VGMaps community about that, nor uploaded its maps, too.

Jackster's mapping plans did include that game, but MisterMike saved that work for him without knowing.

I only found it, so you know.

From looking at them, the FDS game's maps aren't that too large nor complex, but that doesn't mean it didn't present great challenge in its time. Big shame it never got worldwide availability, but, given the FDS' unfortunate problem pileups about the hardware and its splintered reliability, it is kinda understandable. Up until lately, the game finally got that availability onto the 3DS.

The link about that is here - https://www.spriters-resource.com/nes/themysteriousmurasamecastlejpn/

JonLeung, if you're around, I felt this should be brought up to your attention, and take a look at MisterMike's work. Hope you can get a hold of Jackster and MisterMike, when you have time, that is.