Post by: TerraEsperZ on May 06, 2009, 09:26:11 pm
This is why I've been mostly absent from the board for the last two months:
As you can somewhat see despite the size and JPG-induced blur, it also includes all the bosses and items (and they're labeled too!).
The final, full size map hasn't been fully assembled yet (I'm still mapping the boss rush mode and making my way to include the Hard Mode items), but I'm working on it, so expect the real thing sometimes next week.
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Current projects: Aria Of Sorrow (GBA), 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)
Post by: Revned on May 07, 2009, 12:47:32 am
I never really liked the palette in the GBA games, they seems too washed out. SotN is so dark and vibrant. Speaking of which... I need to work on that. It's been what, 2+ years since we started?
Post by: Maxim on May 07, 2009, 04:21:45 am
Post by: Maxim on May 08, 2009, 02:41:39 pm
Post by: TerraEsperZ on May 08, 2009, 05:13:17 pm
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Current projects: Aria Of Sorrow (GBA), 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)
Post by: TerraEsperZ on May 11, 2009, 08:02:22 pm
Explanation: Long story short, I'm at my most active around 10 pm. Always have been. That has unfortunately, since I was a child, made it difficult to go to bed before 1 am, and usually closer to 2 and 3. Usually, I spend that time reading, drawing, playing games, listening to music, etc.
Considering I start work at 8h30 am, I'm always missing sleep during the week and catching up during the weekend when I can get up at 10 or 11, something I haven't been able to do recently thanks to said family obligations (my parents recently decided to divorce - amicably - but they've needed help with boxing things and finding new places to live; also, a few spring celebrations as well as the whole family coming together to build a terrace for his new house).
Heck, I'm starting to babble as if I was drunk (lack of sleeeeep...) so I'll end this soon. I really wanted to finished this this week, but I need to set my priorities. Sleep now, map later.
*thump*
*snore*
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Current projects: Aria Of Sorrow (GBA), 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)
Post by: TerraEsperZ on May 16, 2009, 11:26:47 am
AA61300346AA mapped it in 2006, the same time I mapped circle of the moon. We declared to map one castle each, and he finished in August, I finished 2 month later.
(http://bbs.newwise.com/viewthread.php?tid=257074)
His version is not pixel-perfect, and missed the 6 areas of the garden.
zerofighter mapped it again in 2008.
(http://bbs.cvcv.net/viewthread.php?tid=51860)
His version is perfect, but not a full map. He made a html-link system to show the rooms one by one with all the weapons and items' position.
The forum links above shows the time they finished the map, the download links are possibly invalid. You may catch them in my website: http://fcfantasy.cn/maps
Post by: TerraEsperZ on May 16, 2009, 12:03:14 pm
All the rooms are supposed to be 256*256 in size, or the integer multiple of it. But by the limit of the GBA window's scale, you always could only see rooms with 240 in long, or 160 in high.
For example, all the save point room, is 256*256, but we could only see one screen, 240*160.
another example, in your version or AA61300346AA's version, we could find so many obvious difference/mistakes between your pictures and the thumbnail in game:
[img=http://img39.imageshack.us/img39/396/sampleb.th.png] (http://img39.imageshack.us/my.php?image=sampleb.png)
I suggest to fix some reasonable bricks to enlarge all the rooms 256 in high and 256 in long. With this method, I think my com map could look correct.
Post by: TerraEsperZ on May 16, 2009, 12:08:55 pm
http://fcfantasy.cn/sample.png
Post by: TerraEsperZ on May 17, 2009, 01:25:03 pm
I would find it acceptable to enlarge a room by 16 pixels to fill an horizontal gap between two rooms, but vertical gaps here would require enlarging rooms by 96 pixels. That would be kind of cheating, because players would notice while playing that some passages are nowhere near as tall as on my map (not to mention that some would appear to be unpassable without the double jump or bat soul, while in reality they are so short you can just jump up and land up there without any upgrade).
In short, I chose to "collapse" the map like Zeric did with Harmony Of Dissonance map, and moved the rooms around to leave as few spaces between them as possible. So yeah, it won't align as well as the mini-map, but it's more accurate to how it appears while playing.
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Current projects: Aria Of Sorrow (GBA), 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)
Post by: TerraEsperZ on May 18, 2009, 11:00:11 pm
See, unlike Circle and Harmony where vertically-scrolling rooms had heights that were multiples of 256 pixels (and thus fit nicely in a 256 x 256 grid where everything is aligned), Aria *always* cuts 48 pixels from the top and from the bottom of those rooms, meaning they are always vertically shorter that they should be (416 px instead of 512, 672 px instead of 768, 928 instead of 1024, etc). That means that every room with vertical scrolling would need padding, and I prefer to remain faithful to the real map instead of adding stuff just for the sake of it.
Also, now that I'm thankfully well rested, I should finish the maps this week. It's just taking more time than I had planned to had a border around all the playable areas by hand using tiles from the save select screen. It doesn't as great as I had hoped, but now that I've started, I'm going to see this through.
I've also finally calculated Paint's memory usage limit, which appears to top out around 1.3 GB after which you can't do anything (not even quit the damn program). So I cleverly split the map in two and I'm working on one half at a time which Paint can handle without any problem.
*Cue fellow posters telling me how stupid/stubborn I am for sticking with Paint instead of something better :) *
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Current projects: Aria Of Sorrow (GBA), 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)
Post by: TerraEsperZ on May 19, 2009, 09:15:04 am
Maybe KONAMI began to cut down the budget of building the castle since Aria :)
Post by: TerraEsperZ on July 03, 2009, 11:09:53 pm
Anyway, here's a half-size and color-reduced preview of the final Castlevania map (for size reason), as well as the final Chaotic Realm map (full quality).
Castlevania:
Chaotic Realm:
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Current project: Castlevania: Aria Of Sorrow (GBA)
Upcoming project: Castlevania Legends (GB)
Post by: TerraEsperZ on July 03, 2009, 11:10:37 pm
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Current project: Castlevania: Aria Of Sorrow (GBA)
Upcoming project: Castlevania Legends (GB)
Post by: JonLeung on July 03, 2009, 11:25:01 pm
Post by: TerraEsperZ on July 04, 2009, 12:29:43 am
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Current project: Castlevania: Aria Of Sorrow (GBA)
Upcoming project: Castlevania Legends (GB)
Post by: Zeric on July 04, 2009, 04:40:50 am
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Current Projects: None, I have stopped mapping since a year ago.
Post by: Maxim on July 04, 2009, 01:10:31 pm
If it's totally insane on your PC then I can give it a go - I have a US$2000 CPU in my work computer.
Post by: TerraEsperZ on July 04, 2009, 03:52:52 pm
And Zeric, considering the amazing work you usually put out (and the quantity too when you're on a roll), you really shouldn't short-change yourself like that. Too bad you've stopped mapping, but I'm sure there's a good reason for that.
Honestly, I'm 99% happy with the final result and I think I can safely say this is the project I'm the most proud of.
That missing last 1% is because I had to "fudge" certain transparent parts so they don't look exactly like they do in-game. In short, it's impossible to reproduce how the GBA handles transparencies. That meant problems with two parts of the game:
1) Transparent fog swaying in a wavy pattern over a cellar room in the Dance Hall. To reproduce the real colors, I basically took screenshots of the fog over the room in each of its 16 positions, and used single lines from each one that were in the same offset position. In short, I transformed the wavy fog into straight fog.
2) Transparent waterfalls and water surfaces over the parallax background. Transparencies over the foreground aren't a problem since you can map them as is, but the rest, I had to be creative. Thankfully, the water layer uses a single shade of blue for everything that's under the water surface, so I simply had to take a screenshot underwater, and use those colors to make a separate background for the parts underwater.
After that, all that remained were the water falls and water surfaces which, unfortunately, use 14 colors. It was simply impossible to capture how each color in the background would look with the transparency effect for each of those 14 shades of blue. Thankfully, those parts aren't really big and so I was able to approximate something acceptable using Paint Shop Pro. And anyway, the most important part was the underwater effect which I got perfectly.
I'll try to finish the Boss Rush tonight (all that remains are, again, the labels and final layout) and I'll look into a way to upload this ~14 Mb behemoth.
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Current project: Castlevania: Aria Of Sorrow (GBA)
Upcoming project: Castlevania Legends (GB)
Post by: JonLeung on July 04, 2009, 04:49:45 pm
Post by: TerraEsperZ on July 05, 2009, 12:24:15 am
Boss Rush:
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Current project: Castlevania: Aria Of Sorrow (GBA)
Upcoming project: Castlevania Legends (GB)
Post by: RT 55J on July 05, 2009, 12:56:30 am
And just out of curiosity, am I the only one that reads "MMIX" as "Mega Man 9"?
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"its a good day to do what has to be done by me and help my brother to defeat the enemys" - John Freeman
Post by: TerraEsperZ on July 05, 2009, 01:15:35 am
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Current project: None At The Moment
Upcoming project: Castlevania Legends (GB)
Post by: JonLeung on July 05, 2009, 08:02:14 am
Absolutely awesome, Terra. Thanks! :D And you should also congratulate yourself for finishing these maps.
I like that you included the shrine and stairs from back in Japan, as well. The border on the maps looks good, but man, that must have been a pain to place...and of course, everything within the borders is nice, as expected for any Castlevania game. But what I really like is that you took the time to label every item and boss.
Well, that does it for the three GBA Castlevanias. Maybe someone could tackle the three DS ones? I'm anticipating Symphony Of The Night (PSX) from Revned eventually. Well, the first castle, anyway.
Looking forward to your Castlevania Legends (GB).
Someone could've made a topic based around the Castlevania series like marioman's Mega Man topic. I've always thought of Mega Man and Castlevania as parallel series, since they started at about the same time, both had heroes featured on Captain N, and both series are continuing on (though both have had relatively weaker 3D iterations, and their best games are in 2D). Also, there probably aren't many games left to map, since both series are fairly popular around here, but if you couldn't tell, I'm anxious for those games that still remain.
Post by: RT 55J on July 05, 2009, 07:41:17 pm
Anyways, per Jon's request, I'll make a "Castlevania Maps" topic pretty soon.
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"its a good day to do what has to be done by me and help my brother to defeat the enemys" - John Freeman
Post by: TerraEsperZ on July 05, 2009, 08:07:35 pm
Quite frankly, I consider this done and hope not to have to come back to it for a long time if ever.
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Current project: Castlevania Legends (GB)
Upcoming project: Not sure yet
Post by: JonLeung on July 06, 2009, 07:26:14 am
The full maps for Metroid II: Return Of Samus and Castlevania: Harmony Of Dissonance are kind of big, and Zeric wanted them split up, but I don't think it's necessary. A nice gesture for any mapper to do so, but I'm happy enough with the full map.
I do notice, though, that sprays's Castlevania: Circle Of The Moon map may sometimes be a bit too big in image area for Internet Explorer to handle... Might be why the world maps for Mother / EarthBound Zero and The 7th Saga are split into quadrants.
Post by: Maxim on July 09, 2009, 10:16:46 am
Post by: TerraEsperZ on July 09, 2009, 11:01:58 am
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Current project: Castlevania Legends (GB)
Upcoming project: Not sure yet
Post by: Revned on July 09, 2009, 04:43:12 pm
Post by: TerraEsperZ on July 09, 2009, 05:42:44 pm
Revned, what exactly is that 'bash' thing? Some sort of script or batch utility? I'm afraid that with the name alone, "not 'nuff said" is more like it ;)
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Current project: Castlevania Legends (GB)
Upcoming project: Not sure yet
Post by: Maxim on July 10, 2009, 02:51:23 am
2. Make a batch file that says >>pngout /f0 "%1"<< and drag/drop onto it or do the open with thing
3. Ever tried pressing Tab in a command prompt? Try entering the start of the filename first. Bash does a similar thing, but it's been in Windows for years :)
Post by: Revned on July 10, 2009, 07:26:25 am
Post by: Maxim on July 10, 2009, 02:55:33 pm
Post by: Revned on July 10, 2009, 09:15:51 pm
Post by: TerraEsperZ on October 19, 2010, 09:10:41 pm
At first I only wanted to fulfill the request for maps of each individual area but after making a few tests I'm actually going to upgrade the main map.
-First of all, thanks to the experience gained while mapping Max Payne, I've found the memory addresses which allow me to play around with the position of the background layer. This will allow me to capture the water transparency in the Underground Reservoir perfectly since it was the parallax scrolling that was forcing me to try and recreate it imperfectly. I'll also redo the tiling of the glowing cavern background in the same area which I had improvised before;
-I'm pretty sure I messed up a bit and placed the highest part of the Floating Garden too high relative to the castle;
-Considering my intention to get the map of the entire castle printed and my desire to improve my (horrible) composition skills, I'm looking into including a scaled up image of the castle in the background of the map (first with a nice filter to get more resolution out of it, then simply enlarged to get a pixelated look to the final result). It shouldn't look too distracting when seen up-close, but will be really nice-looking when seen as a whole. I'm also doing the same with the Chaotic Realm and Boss Rush maps.
It will be a few days until I have anything ready to show you, but it should be a worthwhile upgrade.
Post by: alucard on October 20, 2010, 11:55:12 am
Post by: TerraEsperZ on October 22, 2010, 05:43:18 am
I can show you however the revamped maps for the Chaotic Realm and the Boss Rush. As I said, I suck at composition so I'm essentially looking for honest criticism regarding the background images. Don't be shy!
Chaotic Realm:
(http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/3194/castlevaniaariaofsorrow.th.png) (http://img135.imageshack.us/my.php?image=castlevaniaariaofsorrow.png)
Boss Rush:
(http://www.imageshack.us/thumbnail.png) (http://img528.imageshack.us/my.php?image=castlevaniaariaofsorrow.png)
Damn it, what's wrong with ImageShack and thumbnails?
Post by: Maxim on October 22, 2010, 08:15:19 am
Post by: TerraEsperZ on October 22, 2010, 10:53:20 am
Brightness aside, do you feel that having the image of the castle in the background looks good or is it still too distracting? I'm not exactly happy with the Boss Rush one, but I couldn't really come up with a better way to do it given its mostly horizontal orientation. As for where the idea came from, I was influenced by the way many game magazines presented their maps during the 8 and 16-bit era.
Anyway, I'll work some more on it and hopefully be able to share more tonight.
Post by: Peardian on October 22, 2010, 12:15:15 pm
Post by: alucard on October 22, 2010, 12:30:29 pm
Post by: TerraEsperZ on October 22, 2010, 04:54:18 pm
Chaotic Realm, hopefully better with less saturation:
(http://img838.imageshack.us/img838/7210/chaoticrealm.th.png) (http://img838.imageshack.us/my.php?image=chaoticrealm.png)
Castlevania, same deal:
(http://www.imageshack.us/thumbnail.png) (http://img534.imageshack.us/my.php?image=ariaofsorrow.jpg)
I'm actually disappointed that no one seems to like the concept itself instead of simply the execution. I've always wanted to make better looking maps or at least more interesting ones but I've long accepted that I have very little artistic talent (trust me on this, it's just how my mind works).
Anyone here knows or remembers Mephea? She used to post here and submitted maps a few years back and she always included tons of stuff like sprites, strategies, quotes and stuff. I never really liked how most of that stuff wasn't perfectly aligned or resized or seemed placed randomly, but I always envied how she seemed to have a ton of fun doing them! Me, I often anguish about every little detail of the final presentation and I sadly still want validation that what I'm doing is good or right.
I mean, I was really happy to change my maps and try to make them look a little better (it's not artistic, but probably the closest I'll ever get) and I'm asking for honest comments and the moment I get it and it's not what I wanted to hear, I feel deflated and also stupid for it. Oh self-esteem issues, will you ever fully go away?
...
OK, you know what? I really want to do this, and by that I mean use images of the castle in the background. Boss Rush can do with a simple purple background but for the other two, I'm sticking to my guns. That doesn't mean I don't want criticism anymore, but I'd prefer some that would help me make the idea look as good as it can. The pixelated look is intentional by the way.
Post by: alucard on October 23, 2010, 12:22:11 am
On the map you have here: http://img534.imageshack.us/img534/2775/ariaofsorrow.jpg
the background looks good, but when you make the map bigger and its pixelated you cant tell what it is. Also the colors are distracting when you enlarge the map. I do like how you have the Map Key, its cool to add stuff like that.
I think this map of yours is great
https://www.vgmaps.com/Atlas/GBA/Castlevania-AriaOfSorrow-Castlevania.png
because you used black for the background. Its Castlevania, it has got to be black all the way. That's how Dracula would have wanted it.
Post by: TerraEsperZ on October 23, 2010, 02:16:47 am
Post by: JonLeung on October 23, 2010, 09:26:02 am
When scrolling around huge maps, it's easy to get "lost" in large expanses of black (or a solid colour), so there's a utilitarian purpose for having something else there.
Post by: Revned on October 23, 2010, 11:27:25 am
Post by: alucard on October 23, 2010, 12:07:24 pm
Post by: Maxim on October 23, 2010, 03:23:45 pm
(http://img263.imageshack.us/img263/5697/50black.th.png) (http://img263.imageshack.us/i/50black.png/) (http://img153.imageshack.us/img153/2089/hardlightj.th.png) (http://img153.imageshack.us/i/hardlightj.png/)
The concept itself, I think it's good.
Post by: TerraEsperZ on October 23, 2010, 04:49:12 pm
Your comment helped me realize what my goal really is really about, and it's simply to add something that shouldn't distract you when viewing the map up close, but gives you something neat to notice when seeing it as a whole. In that respect, making the background much darker (but not too much) would be best.
Post by: Revned on October 23, 2010, 05:11:56 pm
Tiling would look ugly.
No need to be rude, it was just an idea. Sheesh.
Post by: Maxim on October 24, 2010, 02:49:44 pm
TerraEsperZ: I took your images, cloned to 2 layers, erased the background on the top layer, stuck a black layer in the middle and set it to 50% regular transparency (1st image) and then to "hard light" (2nd image).
Post by: TerraEsperZ on November 09, 2010, 10:23:49 pm
1) Correcting the water transparencies is much harder than expected, and probably impossible anyway despite somewhat "hacking" the camera. The glowing cavern background is simply too shitty (i.e. it doesn't tile and is extremely small). Not worth wasting time over;
2) The elaborate background is, quite simply, an aesthetic fancy. There's no urgency to do it considering that the map is complete is available anyway;
3) Replaying this game has made me want to map Dawn Of Sorrow, and mapping while discovering a new game is simply more enjoyable than replaying a game I almost know by heart;
I do intend to finish the individual maps in the short term (in fact, most of them are already done). I just need to spend a few hours doing it...
Post by: alucard on November 20, 2010, 01:03:29 am
Post by: alucard on June 17, 2011, 07:41:38 pm
Post by: ummwat on April 29, 2012, 09:50:52 pm
The two rooms shown in the attachment aren't connected!
Post by: TerraEsperZ on April 29, 2012, 10:24:04 pm
Post by: TerraEsperZ on May 01, 2012, 03:08:42 pm