Messages

16

Mapping Tips/Guides / Re: Unstitching?

« on: May 31, 2016, 01:18:44 pm »

You can find the slicer tool here, but you might have to manually crop the source images beforehand since it doesn't support starting offsets (like if the map includes a border or padding).

Command line usage:
java -jar tile-slicer.jar slice -w <screen width> -h <screen height> <map filename> <output directory name>

17

Mapping Tips/Guides / Re: Map versioning?

« on: May 31, 2016, 01:13:42 pm »

I don't use them for my own organization at all - for that, I switched to full-blown version control. As mentioned, I do it because I can't control where or when my maps are reposted elsewhere, and I want to give some explicit indication that the ones here on VGMaps might be newer.

18

Maps In Progress / Re: What a horrible night to have a curse.

« on: May 29, 2016, 09:34:41 pm »

The new names are very good but more importantly, denoting the paths with a letter was very much needed. The only name I'm not crazy about is "The Outer Wall" but that's mostly because that level doesn't seem to fit aesthetically with the rest of the castle and no other name would really fit better. It's more like a mishmash of some previous levels that don't feel at all like they belong together, or inside a castle, much less in the upper parts of it (a forest, a waterfall *and* an aquaduct near the top of the castle?).

Agreed. Lack of a better idea, honestly. In general I used more plainly descriptive names for most of the unnamed sections, since it wouldn't feel right to introduce my own artistic interpretations. I'd rather go with things like "Main Hall" than try to rival "Murky Marsh of Morbid Morons"

By the way, which is the two newest palettes are you using?

I'm not using either of the two from that link, but rather this one which I settled on ~10 years ago. It's just a slight tweak to the "ntsc" one in that folder, which someone at the time had claimed was highly accurate. Sadly, that doesn't seem to be the case; the actually accurate palettes I linked previously are much duller. Maybe I'll revisit this choice someday, but for now I thought it was better just to stick with my status quo.

19

Maps In Progress / Re: What a horrible night to have a curse.

« on: May 29, 2016, 03:26:45 pm »

The revisions are now done and posted. Mostly minor stuff, but here's a summary:

For Castlevania 3, I had originally used strict alignment based on the screen sizes - even if that resulted in misaligned staircases. This time around, I decided to handle each one on a case-by-case basis. If the backgrounds weren't really continuous, then I went ahead and shifted things to make the staircases align. It's still not particularly elegant, but at least there are only a couple of discontinuous staircases now.

I added moving platforms, as well as the characters at the beginning of each stage. I was originally unsure how to do that "fairly" since there are four characters, but the numbers actually worked out nicely: Trevor gets the first 3 and last 3 levels, while Grant/Sypha/Alucard each get the 4 levels immediately after they are unlocked.

I also adjusted the palette so that now it matches all of my other NES maps. I recently found out that there's been a lot of research into NES palettes since I last looked into it 10 years ago, but I decided to keep things consistent so that I wouldn't feel compelled to update all of my other maps as well.

The final list of level names is below. Some additional details after the previous discussion:

• I gave the branching paths disambiguating suffixes: the upper path follows all of the -a levels, the lower path follows -b and then optionally branches to -c
• What I had previously called "The Underground Catacombs", I took the liberty to rename to "The Cursed Catacombs". I felt "Underground" was redundant, and "Cursed" is consistent with "Curse Castle".
• "The Inner Halls" became "The Outer Wall", because there's nothing "inner" or "hall"-like about this level. This name is also used in SotN, but seems appropriate

Level 1: Warakiya
Level 2: The Clock Tower of Untimely Death
Level 3 - Part 1: The Forest of Darkness
Level 3 - Part 2: The Forest of Darkness
Level 4a: The Haunted Ship of Fools
Level 4b: The Murky Marsh of Morbid Morons
Level 5a: The Tower of Terror
Level 5b - Part 1: The Lost Son of Dracula
Level 5b - Part 2: The Hall of the Skull Knight King
Level 6a: The Causeway of Chaos
Level 6b: The Cursed Catacombs
Level 6c: The Sunken City of Poltergeists
Level 7a: The Castle Courtyard
Level 7b: The Cliffside Entrance
Level 8: The Main Hall
Level 9: The Outer Wall
Level 10: The Castle Keep

20

Mapping Tips/Guides / Re: Map versioning?

« on: May 28, 2016, 08:08:28 pm »

I've been including revision numbers on most of my maps lately (r2, r3, r4, etc.), so I'd say go for it. I prefer just bumping a revision number each time rather than trying to come up with a reasonable version number, but that's just semantics.

The real reason I started doing it is because I noticed that many of my maps were floating around the internet, and it was unclear which ones were actually up-to-date. I don't mind that they're reposted, but I want viewers to be able to figure out that I've revised them.

I didn't bother to go back and add revision numbers to old maps; I've just been adding them when I'm already making changes.

21

Maps In Progress / Re: What a horrible night to have a curse.

« on: May 22, 2016, 08:33:48 pm »

Ah, that's a great point. I'll stick with it, then!

Someday I really need to play the 3D games in the series. I've only managed to get through Lament of Innocence, and that felt like a chore. I just can't get past the mediocre gameplay to get more than a few minutes into the rest.

22

Maps In Progress / Re: What a horrible night to have a curse.

« on: May 22, 2016, 07:44:42 pm »

Thanks for the support!

I'm definitely going to use "Causeway of Chaos" instead of just "Causeway" like I have now. It sounds more similar to the other names, and fits the style.

I had used "Mad Forest" before, which apparently comes from the soundtrack, but I've discovered that most other sites do refer to it as "Forest of Darkness". I think it's worth changing if only for consistency with the community, even though it's the only one of the bunch which actually shows up in-game (in the sound test).

I kind of want to go ahead and call it "Wallachia" since it's clearly just a case of phonetic mistranslation, but all the print material does consistently call it "Warakiya". Although, I guess they also consistently call Sypha a "he", another mistranslation which has since been retconned

I'll probably stick with my previous names for the rest, but I'll keep crossing my fingers that I can find official names, like maybe they have actual Japanese names which I could use

23

Maps In Progress / Re: What a horrible night to have a curse.

« on: May 22, 2016, 06:02:16 pm »

One of the problems with Castlevania III which I had forgotten is that there isn't a complete, canonical list of level names. The main sources which I'm aware of are the manual and the Nintendo Power guide, and they're inconsistent and both incomplete. I have no idea if the Japanese guides contain any names.

My previous maps had used a mix, and I'm not sure how I originally came up with names for the unnamed levels. I'm trying to improve them as best I can this time around. Here's the WIP list with sources, with my decisions so far in bold:

Level 1
manual: "the village of Warakiya"
NP: Warakiya
real life: Wallachia

Level 2
both: the Clock Tower of Untimely Death

Level 3
NP: Forest of Darkness
music track: Mad Forest

Level 4a
both: The Haunted Ship of Fools

Level 4b
manual: Murky Marsh of Morbid Morons
NP: Dire Mire Marsh

Level 5a
NP: Curse Castle: Tower of Terror

Level 5b
NP: The Lost Son of Dracula (part 1), Hall of the Skull Knight King (part 2)

Level 6a
NP: Curse Castle: Causeway of Chaos

Level 6b
manual: Sunken City of Poltergeists
NP: The Sunken Temple of Sarnath

Levels 7-10 are all unnamed, although both sources call it Curse Castle as a whole. Maybe I should just make one big map like I had discussed and avoid this problem altogether

24

Maps In Progress / Re: What a horrible night to have a curse.

« on: May 16, 2016, 10:30:57 pm »

Yep, I agree with the sentiment and feel the same way. It really is an art more than a science, and every artist has a different style. None of these decisions is "right" or "wrong".

I think I really figured out my style and became happy with my skills about 5-6 years ago, and mostly just want to revisit my really old maps which I don't feel are up to snuff. I'm not planning to constantly revise things forever. Looking at my list of maps, I only expect to revisit ~3 more games, and then I'll be satisfied. Of course, that will lead into my next problem these days which is that I rarely find things that I both want to map and aren't already mapped by someone else.

25

Maps In Progress / Re: What a horrible night to have a curse.

« on: May 16, 2016, 09:14:50 pm »

And personally, I would have enjoyed that full map of Castlevania 3 even if you had to use a few connecting lines here and there. There's just something about having an entire game visible with a single glance that appeals to me.

I might give it another shot when I finish the rest of the tweaks I'm planning, but no promises. It's just not very satisfying to me that only 5 of the 19 stage connections would actually fit together without connecting lines.

The only thing it missed I feel are the names for the various areas. True, they're not exactly given to you out loud but it would make it more complete while not being too obtrusive since all areas are rather small and easy to separate from their neighbours.

I don't know, I've never really been one for labels. I guess I just prefer to present maps as art which can stand by itself, rather than as a guide. I even considered removing the items (hearts, meat, etc.) from my Castlevania 1 and 3 maps for that reason, but decided they weren't too obtrusive. In this case I think I'll just point to Rick Bruns' map if you're interested in "completeness" or as reference material.

26

Maps In Progress / Re: What a horrible night to have a curse.

« on: May 16, 2016, 07:37:32 pm »

Thanks! It was an easy map set, so it was nice to complete my trilogy (other than the mansions). If you're wondering whether I'll go back and tweak my Mega Man maps to match the header/border style, the answer is "no". I'm happy with those maps; I just wanted consistency within this series.

One of the things I wanted to do was create a full map for Castlevania 3, but it didn't pan out. The areas just don't connect very well:




The ship could be forgivable since it's supposed to be in motion, but the lower right section doesn't work either. The whole exterior unfortunately just doesn't line up well enough with the in-game map for it to work out (without rotating individual levels).

27

Maps In Progress / What a horrible night to have a curse.

« on: May 14, 2016, 11:31:55 pm »

I was always a little disappointed that both of the existing Castlevania II maps are arbitrarily broken into three pieces. I was in the mood for mapping a few weeks ago, so I spent a weekend making my own maps which add new value to the atlas:





It's up to Jon whether to post the daytime map in addition to the two already on the site. These are the widest maps I've ever made, and this is the first time in ages that I've had my tools choke (pngout crashes, for example).

I'm also working on some minor revisions to Castlevania 1 and 3 so that my whole collection is consistent. Mostly just small things like tweaking the headers/outlines, adding some moving platforms which I had previously chosen to omit, and fixing a few errors I've noticed.

28

Map Requests / Re: Sonic 4 Maps

« on: May 06, 2016, 07:20:28 pm »

This kind of conversation has popped up again and again for as long as this site has had forums. The truth is that mapping is so time consuming that (almost) no one is going to spend the effort to fulfill requests. They're going to map things that interest them personally. That's just the way it is, and newcomers to the site have always been a little surprised by it.

This has always been a niche site, but I definitely wouldn't say that nobody cares. Many of us have been here for 10+ years and are just as into it as ever.

29

Maps Of The Month / Re: 2015/10: Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night (PSX) - Revned

« on: October 02, 2015, 06:03:00 pm »

Time sure flies. Hard to believe it's been a year since my scramble to finish the inverted castle. It was a relief finishing after so long, but I kind of miss being able to go back to it whenever I got the mapping itch.

That vertical text is pretty hard to read, so I think you chose well. There's so much incredible art in the game that I can imagine dozens of equally good looking thumbnails, but Dracula's chamber is the most iconic for sure.

30

Gaming / Re: Video game box art scans?

« on: August 20, 2015, 06:31:53 pm »

I was pleasantly surprised to find out that MobyGames finally removed the watermarks from all their images this May. Now it's actually a great resource for box art.