Topic: Peardian's map projects in progress and planned

[Peardian]

Looks like I forgot to register here after it switched over to this new board.



Anyway, for future reference, I'm going to list here the mapping projects I have in progress (and a few that I have planned). Feel free to comment or whatever.


Yoshi's Island: Super Mario Advance 3 - Secret Levels
Currently at: Secret 3
This game would take a lot longer to map if I couldn't turn into a helicopter at will. Currently being neglected.

The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask
Currently at: Southern Swamp
Finally, the first real quarter of the game! I don't quite know what to expect, since the layout of the swamp has always confused me.

Densetsu no Stafy
Currently at: World 1
It's the first game to feature Starfy! Since it's in Japanese, I'll just refer to the worlds as World 1, 2, 3, etc. Currently being neglected.




Next mapping projects:
- Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Mini-Land Mayhem
- Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Minis March Again (do they even have DSiWare emulators?)


Misc. games that I have considered maybe mapping if I feel like it:
- Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time (unless someone else gets to it)
- Kirby's Dream Land 3 (leaning towards no right now)
- Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards (would be original maps)
- Super Mario Sunshine (might have to be original maps)
- Quest 64

[TerraEsperZ]

Woohoo! Finally someone who has way too many project going on at the same time like me



Of all your projects, I'm really intrigued by the N64 ones. By VRML data, do you mean that you're extracting/intercepting the vertex and textures data and that's why your Paper Mario maps show complete areas with no perspective distortion? If so, man I'm absolutely impressed!



I remember Revned wanting to map at least the outdoor areas from Ocarina Of Time using a (very) high jump cheat code which allowed him to take a screenshot of a particular place from high up, but having 100% perfect top-down maps with textures and all would be even better (doubly so because I'm a huge Zelda geography nut and seeing how the areas really fit together would be great). Hope you eventually go down that road, but all in good time; I'd be a huge hypocrite to ask someone to do more maps than he/she is already doing



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Current projects: Bucky O'Hare (NES), Metal Storm (NES), Clock Tower (SNES), Ristar-The Shooting Star (Gen), Sonic The Hedgehog (Gen), Sonic CD (Sega CD), Mega Man Zero (GBA), Battletoads (NES)

[Revned]

Silly TerraEsperZ, misremembering things again. It wasn't me.

[Peardian]

Yes, that's exactly what I mean. The advantage this has over taking screenshots is not only lack of perspective distortion, but also the ability to make it as high-resolution as I want. When I make my Paper Mario maps, I actually render them to around 2000-8000 pixels in either dimension, then resize them as needbe to the same scale using reference circles (spheres with same diameter in each image) and then resize even more so that the height Mario would be at is around 32 pixels. And still the maps turn out to be pretty large.


And yes I do have too many mapping projects going on. The sad part is, I probably have just as many other projects going on as well, some related to previous mapping projects. They include: ripping the tileset from every area in Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, making vectored versions of all the backgrounds in Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2, making a 3D model of Space Station Silicon Valley (almost done), rigging up the robots from Tetrisphere and Star Fox 64 to skeletons for me to play with, making a cutesy vectored wallpaper of every character and enemy in Super Paper Mario, and my never ending comic, just to name a few.

[TerraEsperZ]

Hey, cut me some slack It was quite a while ago, and even probably on a previous iteration of the VGMaps forums. Incidentally, do you remember who it was?



And that's really interesting Peardian, though I suppose it requires pretty advanced coding or 3D modelling skills to achieve that right?



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Current projects: Bucky O'Hare (NES), Metal Storm (NES), Clock Tower (SNES), Ristar-The Shooting Star (Gen), Sonic The Hedgehog (Gen), Sonic CD (Sega CD), Mega Man Zero (GBA), Battletoads (NES)

[Revned]

I think it might have been Zeric... or Osrevad...



Some graphics plugins let you dump the models of running games. I've never tried it, but I've always wondered how well it would work for mapping. Good luck, Peardian.

[JonLeung]

Ah, hello, Peardian, our resident Mario fan.  I'm going to have to get you your Mapmaker Of The Month items and etc. a bit later today.



I would support (okay, at least encourage) the mapping of the Zelda and Kirby games you mentioned.  Considering how big Ocarina Of Time is (it just recently turned 10 years old and is still awesome), and how Majora's Mask should be better known, I would certainly be giddy as a schoolgirl if VGMaps.com could have complete map sets of those.  



Funny how you're working on the Space Station Silicon Valley games in the midst of all these Mario (and Mario spin-off) games.  I remember playing the N64 Space Station Silicon Valley.  It's memorable as one of the earliest games I started but couldn't finish (and remember, I've been playing games since the NES era).  I would blame that on the sudden shift in gameplay in the last area, where you have to fly around the city destroying all the animal robots within a time limit, instead of hijacking the robots like how the rest of the game was.  Grrr.



I think the Ocarina Of Time thing was attempted by Osrevad.  (If I remember correctly he was also attempting to at least connect all the in-game mini-maps together, but the change in scale made things difficult to piece together while looking good.)



Good job with finding unconventional ways to map!  Though I guess it's not really unconventional, it's just beyond the simplicity of just stitching screenshots together.  And I guess with 3D games it's pretty much necessary.  I look forward to when Paper Mario is complete.



I've played it twice before, and I wanted to replay it on the Wii Virtual Console, which my brother downloaded when it first came out - like a year ago I think, along with Super Metroid - and I haven't made time to do that.  Too many new games get in the way.  >_<

[Piranhaplant]

So how exactly do you rip the N64 models and textures.  I would be interested in using this for mapping Mario Kart 64

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Games I have mapped--Zombies Ate My Neighbors (SNES), Mario Party 3 (N64), Super Mario Bros Deluxe (GBC), New Super Mario Bros. (DS), Mario Kart DS (DS)

[Peardian]

Well, I use the 1964 emulator with some kind of graphics plugin, which allows you to export the current 3D models (and textures on those models) into a VRML file. Of course, after I do that, I have to do some editing to get it to look like in the game. This means scaling up the image 1000-fold so that I can actually work with it (the models are ripped at microscopic size for some reason), applying colors, applying alpha channel, and other things. I'll get the name of the plugin when I get home and actually have access to it.


Oh, and keep in mind that some games might not be easily mapped with this method. The way Star Fox 64 works, the world actually moves around the player and is at a ~4 degree incline (and not to mention frequently involves flying through empty space) so it's pretty much impossible to map. You can still rip models from it, though, which I have done.

[Peardian]

A bit of an update on Space Station Silicon Valley for the N64...

It seems the map data is kept rather consistant and thus can be mapped easily. However, it does not capture things like the power cells or energy balls or even flowers. Additionally, many of the textures are screwed up, even in the emulator. It will be possible to map, but it'll require an extra bit of effort. I'll probably not worry about the details of the map and focus on just getting the layout correct.

[Peardian]

On a whim, I decided to start mapping Mario Party Advance, since I figured it would go quickly. I might have a map done by the end of the day.

[Peardian]

Sorry for the multiple posts in a row, but I wanted to announce that I finally mapped out the last special promo level from Super Mario Advance 4! And, since there'd be no point in re-mapping SMB3 again, this means I'm finished with the game! It's a shame they didn't continue releasing levels. Look for the map on the site soon.

Also, I'm at Dry Dry Desert in Paper Mario.

[Peardian]

I really hate to bump my topic with so many posts in a row, but I have exciting news! Tomorrow is the release of Lazy Shell, the Super Mario RPG editor. I'm going to use it to fill in the gaps for places I couldn't reach previously and possibly even combine all the rooms into one map. I'm quite excited to go back and improve the first maps I submitted to the site. I'm thinking of even combining them and adding enemy stats to make them resemble my Paper Mario maps. Look forward to it!

[JonLeung]

I do look forward to it!  



As nice as it is to have the complete Super Mario RPG, I always felt there should have been some way to combine the rooms.  Individual room images don't tell much by themselves...



Of course, once each area is combined, Super Mario RPG will lose the distinction of having the most maps for a single game, but no one really wants to have more maps than necessary...  

[Peardian]

Looks like I was wrong, in fact it came out today! I've tried it out and it's pretty awesome. I'll be able to do a lot with my maps thanks to this thing. Anyone who's into ROM hacking and SMRPG will love this editor.

Unfortunately, I'm not at home right now, so I don't have access to my lovely Super Mario RPG Player's Guide. With that in hand, I'd be able to make excellent maps. (Also, it's a hassle to emulate SNES on this laptop.)

So, don't expect any major SMRPG stuff until around the second weekend of February. I'll try and do some of the simpler ones until then.