Topic: Battletoads (NES)

[Grizzly]

I remember that scene from the game. Inside the game it looks very impressive because of the 3D feeling, but it must be horror to map it. Another idea, but I think this will take very much time, would be to create an animated GIF image that shows a rotating tower. The viewer then could really see everything and also at the right position.

[TerraEsperZ]

An animated GIF would be a nightmare to do; even a very rough 16 steps rotation (with increments of 22.5 degrees) would require me to basically position all the platforms around the tower 16 times, not to mention how big such a file would be considering it would still have a resolution of 256 x 6112, and GIFs are really inefficient for such big files.



I'll just try making a front and back views for now, and *then* consider the feasibility of such an enterprise



---

"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

[JonLeung]

You could make an animated GIF by taking a bunch of screenshots during gameplay, and then editing out all the enemies and other junk.  You'd be avoiding putting back on what you took out in the first place, and it'd be accurate.



Of course, the problem is that playing the game and trying to get everything at the proper angle is quite the difficulty in itself.  The last stage in one of the hardest NES games ever?  Yeah, I guess that's pretty much out of the question.  >_<

[TerraEsperZ]

Well, I did my best and I'm pretty much finished with Level 11 - Clinger Wingers. Some areas where completely off-screen so I had to improvise in filling them in. I included a minimap where the filled-in areas are circled in yellow; they don't look that good but they're acceptable.











---

"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]

After several hours of work, Level 12 - The Revolution is finished! Considering how long it took just to make two views of the tower, I shudder at the thoughts of making more or worse, creating an animated GIF of the whole thing...



Anyway, I stuck with a "Front" and "Back" views, the front one being approximately the place where the stage start. Now, my maps aren't exactly authentic to what you'd see on a treal NES for various reasons:



-When viewed from the same exact point of view on two different occasions, some platforms have their positions off by one pixel;



-Due to the all the cheating done to create a seemingly rotating 3D effect, some platforms on the other side of the tower from you might not appear even though the tower is thinner there and shouldn't hide it. I create a mask of the tower by hand to only hide what the tower "should" hide to compensate;

-Many objects actually move around the tower; for simplicity's sake, I placed them right in the middle on the front side. That includes the spiked balls and several yellow platforms and springs.







---

"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

[Grizzly]

I think that's the best way you could make to make everything visible and still don't have work of years or at least months.

It looks nice and I can think of what the tower would look like quite easily.

[JonLeung]

Really good, TerraEsperZ.  I'm impressed!



But if this is the front/back of the tower, shouldn't the parts of the tower that are off-center (those things that look like shafts but are off to one side) be on the opposite "side" on the other side?



It's been a while since I've played this game, so I forget if those actually rotate with the whole thing as it looks like it should.

[TerraEsperZ]

The thing is, the tower doesn't actually rotate graphically, which would be way too much for the NES hardware. Rather, the background tiles that comprise the tower's central pink section are either "animated" or "scrolled internally" whenever you move around the tower to give the impression that it is turning while the actual tiles never move; only the sprites actually do.



This becomes evident in those off-center sections that seem to turn around their own centers, as well as near the top where there seems to be two tower shafts side by side, each one rotating on itself. When seen in action, those parts look weird and fake, so I suspect Rare did this intentionally to create this bizarre Escheresque tower of evil that could only exist in a videogame.



---

"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

[JonLeung]

I remember now.  Yeah, that's weird.



I find that some NES games by Rare use very bright, saturated colours.  (I'm thinking games like Battletoads & Double Dragon: The Ultimate Team and the Wizards & Warriors games.  They did those, right?)  Almost to the point of being too hard to look at.  But for whatever reason, Battletoads looks really good despite that.  As is usually the case with any TerraEsperZ project, I can't wait to see it finished!

[TerraEsperZ]

I haven't posted anything new in a while since my social life's picked up a bit lately. I haven't forgotten any of you though, and I'm still working during the week.



So far, I've made a few changes to Level 11 - Clinger Wingers, namely I removed the two biggest areas I had filled by hand (above and under the starting point respectively) because I wasn't happy with them and they are the only two parts of the stage that are really far from the player's path. I haven't done any more stages yet, but that's because I'm doing a double project, namely the first Battletoads game for gameboy. It's a nice break because it's easier to map than its NES counterpart so whenever it's giving me trouble, I switch to its younger brother for a bit. So far, I've done Stage 1 and 5 for the GB version which I'll post tonight once I'm home.



---

"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]

Battletoads (NES):



Level 9 - Terra Tubes





Level 11 - Clinger Wingers (corrected)





Battletoads (GB):



Level 1





Level 5





---

"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 post updated with Level 8 - Intruder Excluder*



---

"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 post updated with Level 6 - Karnath's Lair & Level 13 - Armageddon*



I have two more levels done, plus I've finalized and optimized all the other completed maps with a header and a few bits of descriptive text.



Level 6 - Karnath's Lair is actually made of four maps that I did as animated GIFs instead of PNGs because none of my attemps to show all the snake paths at the same time ended up looking legible because too many of them overlap. Hopefully they didn't get mangled when they were optimized; the first program I used for that messed up a few colors in one frame, but I didn't notice anything wrong with these which I did with another software.



Level 13 - Armageddon wouldn't normally warrant a map all for itself but it *is* considered as such by the game as if you lose all your lives during the fight with the Dark Queen, the map actually shows your new position as a different stage. Trivia aside, I hate how the header format I chose takes more place than the map itself, but I'll live with it.



---

"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 post updated with Level 10 - Rat Race*



This level took some work to make it look right, just like Level 08 - Intruder Excluder did. I had to go back and use the same frame for the two types of monitors in the background (static and diagonal lines) and do all the see-through holes with the fake parallax background in a way that looked pleasing but isn't totally accurate to the game (because in the real game, it's badly tiled in a few spots that break the illusion of the parallax effect; I've corrected those).



This stage consists of three races where you have to beat Scuzz the racing rat to the bomb at the end before he blows up the place (incidentally, I've included the spots on the map where he materializes so that you know when it's time to start running to gain a few seconds on him). The first two are relatively easy to beat, but the third is hard core where the slightest mistake will most likely condemn you because Scuzz is litterally flying in this segment. Hopefully my map can make beating him to the end a tiny bit easier.



You know, this game's maps are really getting long and/or tall. Until now it's been relatively manageable (this map is over 14 000 pixels high and one from the sequel was over 27 000 pixels long!!!) but there's no way that I plan on putting all five Turbo Tunnel races on the same map without making it unviewable by most people *including* me.



---

"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 post updated with Level 2 - Wookie Hole*



---

"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