Topic: Contra III: The Alien Wars (SNES)

[RT 55J]

Here's a Christmas present for you:



http://img109.imageshack.us/img109/3220/stage1groundzerowipzb9.png



It's a WIP of Stage 1. The main layer is done and the other layers are just waiting to go into place.



I won't be mapping Stages 2 or 5 (the mode 7 ones).

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Dot? Dot. Dot!

[Romulus]

It's almost poinless doing level 4 as well, unless your going to try to map the ship on that level

[RT 55J]

I'll map the ship, even if it steals my sanity.



I would map the mode 7 stages for the sake of completeness, but doubt I'd get a satisfactory result unless I ripped them directly from the RAM.



I've made some progress on the map. The background for the first part of the stage has been successfully inserted.

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Dot? Dot. Dot!

[Grizzly]

For the Mode 7 maps: Just use BGMapper,  it should work very easy. I only tried it with ZSNES save states, I don't know if other emulator's save states are supported, too.

[TerraEsperZ]

Nice work RT 55J, that's looking *very* promising!



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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

[RT 55J]

Stage 1 done!



http://img412.imageshack.us/img412/2116/stage1groundzerolo3.png



Grizzly: I ripped the Mode 7 maps. The only problem is that the palettes are majorly screwed up. The main part of Stage 5 looks fine (except the bridges), but you wouldn't even want to see the boss...



Also, that site doesn't have the latest version, which can be found here: http://oregonstate.edu/~robinsfr/snes.html

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Dot? Dot. Dot!

[TerraEsperZ]

Looks great! Personally, I wouldn't have kept a double for all those locations and just kept the most representative for each (like the intact barricades, the visible tank once the building has crumbled, the flaming streets and the visible boss at the end). But that's just me and my personal choices; what you did is just as good and besides, I miss the old days when people would discuss maps in the making more.



And thanks for that link; I've been using the old version for a long time and it's nice to know it's still being refined



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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

[RT 55J]

I would have removed the doubles, but there are about 32 pixels behind the intact barricades that are not visible and I doubt BGMapper could be used to obtain them.



In other news, Stage 3 is done!



http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/4177/stage3neokobesteelfactods3.png



I had to use my younger brother's computer because mine has major trouble with huge images (RAM, processor, etc).

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Dot? Dot. Dot!

[TerraEsperZ]

Great work again! I'm seriously anticipating Stage 6 in all it's Giger-inspired horror, as well as how the heck you'll manage Stage 4 with the auto-scrolling and that damn airship that appears in two spots (over you while driving and high in the air at the end while you're litteraly flying towards its engine exhaust). It's nice seeing a classic game finally being mapped



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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

[RT 55J]

Stage 2 done! The best part is that it matches my moniter's resolution.



http://img260.imageshack.us/img260/4215/stage2turninguptheturnpwo5.png



When I tried ripping the Mode 7 stages with BGMapper, it seemed that the palletes we're messed up quite a bit. Thankfully, I stumbled across this little gem. It's like BGMapper except that it's for Windows and quite a bit less intuitive.



http://vsnes.aep-emu.de/



In other news, ZSNES 1.51 has been released. The significance of this is that the top scanline is now actually rendered. You can probably guess the implications of this. >.<



Anyways, should I name Stage 6 'No Man's Land' or 'The Final Gauntlet'? I've been going off the names in the SNESmusic.org SPC set, and both names are applicable. That reminds me, I used the wrong word in the Stage 2 map. >.< Gotta fix that now.

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Dot? Dot. Dot!

[Grizzly]

Finally! But it was the bottom scanline for me that wasn't rendered. I always liked ZSNES but when I used it for Secret Of Evermore I always had to recreate the last line of pixels for every map because it was missing. So when I made the Lion King maps I used Snes9x instead.

Oh and thanks for the link to the Mapping tool, it might help

[RT 55J]

I discovered that v1.5 and v1.51 render exactly the same (as far as this game is concerned). The only difference is the location of the unrendered scanline (top vs bottom).



Now my problem is that the main background color (when the layer is disabled) is the same color as most of the foreground in the part near the alien heart in Stage 6. >.<

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Dot? Dot. Dot!

[TerraEsperZ]

Don't you just hate it when that happens? Sadly, as far as I know, all you can do is either try to guess where the foreground ends and edit it by hand or, if the background shares few colors with the foreground, use an advanced painting program to replace the colors of the background by a neutral tone which is easier to remove afterward. If both layers share most of the same colors, then you are truly and hugely fucked. Good luck; this kind of problem has made me quit mapping several games so far.



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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

[RT 55J]

I'm not sure about you, but I just disable the back layer when mapping so I only have one color to deal with. I turns out that the "black" color that's left behind when I disable the layer is the exact same "black" that is used by the foreground. I only noticed this near the end. >.<



The good thing is that the "black" color isn't used in the actual background, so it still is possible to map. It'll just be much more tedious.



This is the practically exact same reason mapping Lyle in Cube Sector has been so slow.

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Dot? Dot. Dot!

[TerraEsperZ]

I'm facing the same challenge in Virtual Boy Wario Land. Not only can't I disable the background layers, but there are only 4 colors used in total, so figuring out where one thing ends and the next starts is really hard too.



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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