Messages

181

Maps In Progress / Re: Final Fantasy VI (SNES)

« on: November 24, 2010, 12:24:27 am »

I managed to figure something out after much trial and error. I can horizontally offset what you see when first entering an area, but I haven't been as successful when trying vertically. Even so, I was able to finish the Vector map with this, so it was definitely worth the three or so hours of anguish! The code I used is 7E0541**.

It's been a while since I tried tackling that, so I may have exaggerated...   But Trop, you're amazing. Definitely big thanks for working that out. I wouldn't have known where to start to work out something like that. Even for my little breakthrough, it took a lot of blind and aimless tinkering. The waterfalls shouldn't be a problem if they use palette animation, they'll all stay in sync.

I've come across those maps before. Although there are some spots where he fudged things, he did manage to capture out of reach portions in some maps that I couldn't (the NW corner of Vector, for instance).

182

Maps In Progress / Re: Final Fantasy VI (SNES)

« on: November 23, 2010, 05:06:52 pm »

Time for a progress report.

But first off, I finally got South Figaro all mapped and labelled! It was quite the challenge piecing it together in a coherent manner, but I think I pulled it off. It'll be available this weekend.

I'm roughly 60% of the way through the World of Balance maps, and that's including both completely finished and works in progress. I'm kinda surprised that I was able to map so much of the game so far with just a walk-through-walls code that is pretty finicky. It works beautifully when you're inside buildings, but is so particular of where you can use it when outside. The code is AA90-74DD. There's another code floating around that claims to work even better (AA20-77AD), but it has never worked for me. (I'm using a FF3 US v1.0 ROM).

There's a few areas that I can't complete the maps for: Mt. Kolts, Lete River, and Vector. There are a few others, but the holes to fill in with those are rather minor and I can probably fill them in with surrounding tiles. I don't know if there are better codes for walking through obstacles, but they'd be a godsend for finishing these areas.

With the Lete River, the main problem is the water. There's at least three different animations going on, all with varying amounts of frames. So a code to freeze the animations would be great. Any help with this and the walk-through-walls code would be much appreciated.

So those are my concerns for now. I've begun playing through the game, so I'll be able to map all the areas that are unreachable later on.

As a little extra, here's what I've been using to keep track of all these maps: World of Balance progress sheet. I used something similar when I was mapping Lufia. A great way to keep everything nice and organized.

183

Maps In Progress / Re: Final Fantasy VI (SNES)

« on: October 02, 2010, 09:02:11 pm »

Okay, it's been a little over a month, so I went and submitted the few maps I had completed. Decided against the FF3 logo in the maps. They're much better suited to overworld maps where there's a lot more room for that sort of thing anyway.

With the Narshe South Mines map, you'll definitely notice the repetitive tiles in the corners. I may try and "fix" those areas to make them look a little more natural, but I'd rather get more of the game mapped before going back to something like that.

184

Maps In Progress / Re: Final Fantasy VI (SNES)

« on: August 20, 2010, 09:04:04 pm »

Thanks you guys! Oh, by no means will it be easy, but anything worth doing doesn't come easy. No matter how long it takes, I will see this project through to the end, don't you worry.

185

Maps In Progress / Final Fantasy VI (SNES)

« on: August 20, 2010, 02:20:11 pm »

So here I go taking on this behemoth of an RPG! I've attached two examples of the sort of approach I'm going to take with these maps. In the Kohlingen map I put the FF3 logo in there, but it isn't absolutely necessary, and there will undoubtedly be maps where there won't be space for it.

Let me know what you guys think.

186

Maps In Progress / Re: Lufia & The Fortress of Doom (SNES)

« on: August 16, 2010, 09:55:52 pm »

@ Jon: The most obvious difference is the much reduced colour palette. There was also some minor changes to some buildings, whether it be actual modification of the architecture or a different set of tiles. But for the most part both versions are pretty much the same.

That one thread served as a little motivator to get rolling with those two games actually! I had done one or two maps a while ago for each game just for the heck of it, but wasn't planning on working on the whole game. But now's a good time as any, right?

It would be totally awesome to see maps of the PS1 FFs! It'd be a lot more work to produce them of course, but nonethless doable.

@ Paco: Hey, thanks for offering! I'll let you know if I do.

@ Trop: Yep! It's definitely up there with Final Fantasy in being one of my favourite RPG series. And I'm glad to hear you're working on Runes of Virtue 2. I had tried my hand at mapping a few towns and part of the first dungeon, but that incredibly complex water animation that the game uses is what stopped me from getting any further, heheh.

187

Maps In Progress / Re: Lufia & The Fortress of Doom (SNES)

« on: August 15, 2010, 08:08:06 pm »

I've got a few things in the works. I'm working on the map of Britannia for Ultima VI: The False Prophet for the SNES. It's the biggest map I've ever worked on so far (it'll be be 16384 x 16384 pixels in the end) and I think I'm only about a quarter of the way through it. Not sure if I'd want to tackle all the dungeons, but for now I'll just stick with the Britannian surface.

Besides that, I've begun tackling Final Fantasy IV and VI. I may also map V in the future, but for now I'll stick to what I'm more familiar with. For now I'm just making the raw maps; may as well get all that grunt work out of the way first. Then I'll later play through the games and label all the chests and stuff like that.

I may need to start a "FlyingArmor's map projects in progress and planned" thread... heheh.

188

Maps In Progress / Re: Lufia & The Fortress of Doom (SNES)

« on: July 12, 2010, 10:48:04 pm »

Actually the water needed Linear Burn, but it only took a few seconds fiddling around to figure that out. I've downloaded all the Japanese games that have requests, so I'll take a look at them to see how they'll be.

I would say the Lufia games are pretty good (I've played them all except for the GBA one). With you liking Dragon Quest as you say, I don't think you will be disappointed. It follows the traditional Japanese RPG formula pretty well in terms of battle and exploration. Later sequels have challenging puzzles, IP skills (sort of similar to FF7's limit breaks), randomly generated dungeons, etc. So if you can get them, I'd say go for it.

The new one for the DS looks pretty interesting. It's a re-imagining of Lufia II but takes an action RPG approach. Don't know if I should buy the Japanese version (so I can have fun practicing Japanese) or just wait for the North American release, heh.

189

Maps In Progress / Re: Lufia & The Fortress of Doom (SNES)

« on: July 10, 2010, 03:22:45 pm »

Alright, so with this weekend's update, I'll be all finished with mapping Lufia. *yaaay* Thanks to Trop for the movement modifier codes. Without them, I don't think I could have completed the Platina map.

And also for mentioning about Linear Dodge in another thread. Before that, I had not bothered putting the water in the underwater maps (I didn't think to use BGMapper at the time), but after a little research and experimenting (thankfully openCanvas, which I would have never considered using for maps, had the right blending modes which my Photoshop 5 did not, but instead of Linear Dodge and Linear Burn, they were called Addition and Subtraction) I got the water displaying correctly.

Now on to consider other interesting projects...

190

Gaming / Re: Anyone got a favorite puzzle game?

« on: May 10, 2010, 07:13:30 pm »

Picross is my favourite by a long shot. And I see there's the new "Picross 3D" for the DS, which looks pretty interesting.

191

Maps In Progress / Re: Lufia & The Fortress of Doom (SNES)

« on: April 18, 2010, 12:05:54 am »

You can see my art at http://zanazac.deviantart.com. The gallery is mostly filled with manga and animesque artwork, but there's also a bit of what I did in university (the abstract/surreal paintings). I'm certainly not a professional yet, but I'm slowly making my way there.

192

Maps In Progress / Re: Lufia & The Fortress of Doom (SNES)

« on: April 15, 2010, 06:42:06 pm »

Well it certainly is better than nothing. When I get the time to, I'll play around with those codes and see what I can get out of them.

But hey, thanks for all the time and effort in helping me out with this. It definitely went far beyond my expectations. And I still need to get that Wally wo Sagase request all finished for you! I did map and figure out the solution for the level that I assume is level 6, but then another level followed up after that, so I'm not sure which is the one needed. Regardless, I'll eventually map every level and provide the solutions anyway once I find the time to do so.

And to let everyone know, I won't have any new maps out until the beginning of June. Right now I'm in the middle of preparing for Anime North, so I won't have much time aside from painting and drawing to work on mapping. It's tough being an artist... heheh.

193

Maps In Progress / Re: Lufia & The Fortress of Doom (SNES)

« on: February 14, 2010, 09:31:28 pm »

Hey all.

I decided to forget about finding some magical code to make oneself impervious to obstacles. It just isn't worth the effort, at least not for these maps. I'm sure you wouldn't notice anything out of place even if I told you I made up half the map or something. A little copying and pasting never hurt anyone.

https://www.vgmaps.com/Atlas/SuperNES/index.htm#LufiaTheFortressOfDoom

Anyway, I've mapped up to Surinagal so far. Should have at least ten more maps ready by next week.

194

Maps In Progress / Re: Lufia & The Fortress of Doom (SNES)

« on: January 07, 2010, 09:35:50 pm »

Well, there is the invisible bridge in the Ghost Cave, so maybe that's something to look at.

I've been using the game genie code B689-DF69 to help map the towns. It's meant so you don't encounter any enemies, but it also disallows you from entering and exiting towns, caves, etc. So when I enable it in a town, I can walk over the tiles that would usually take me to the overworld and be able to see the outermost boundaries. I've got a screen shot below that shows you what you see. If you walk into the black void (in this instance) it'll take you up to the castle entrance (so in essence, the map wraps around itself). But in other areas I found I could keep walking and end up in other areas altogether.

But of course all that doesn't help me walk through trees... XD I've also posted a map of Alekia with the best completeness I could muster.

Thanks Peardian. It definitely keeps things clean and tidy, haha.

195

Gaming / Re: What Games Are We Playing

« on: January 04, 2010, 08:28:49 pm »

I finally finished Mother 3, after a year of not playing it, haha. Very satisfying I must say! Now I just gotta wait for my Mother 3 Handbook to arrive. About the only other game I've been playing lately has been Lennus II. Slowly still making my way through that.