Messages

91

Maps In Progress / Re: Sonic Advance 3 (GBA)

« on: February 25, 2012, 01:24:14 am »

I make small, custom programs that can freeze memory values for me. I customize them to give me complete control over what I want to do in the game. I made these mostly because the cheat feature in VBA is garbage. Utterly useless. If you would like, I can send you a copy of the program.

I made one for Sonic Advance 2, since you said you hadn't done that one yet I figured I'd see what was up. All it does for now is freeze the NPCs and rings. It also lets you change your position any time you want. If you send me the addresses for SA3 I can make a custom program for that as well. It's all very easy and takes less than five minutes.

I made freeze programs for all the games I have captured so far. Makes the process very simple.

92

Maps In Progress / Re: Sonic Advance 3 (GBA)

« on: February 24, 2012, 02:13:44 am »

I notice in your thread on Sonic Advance that you mentioned you could just move the camera around to capture the scene without actually moving your character. Is this all it takes for this game? If so, I could use my capture program to zip through the scenes making the capturing process take mere hours.

Let me know if I can help.

93

Maps In Progress / Re: (GBA) Final Fantasy: Dawn of Souls

« on: February 22, 2012, 10:46:25 pm »

Finished capturing all the scenes in FF1. Now, I just need to polish them and they will be finished.

I would like to give some insight into the Soul of Chaos.

Let's say you enter Earthgift Shrine, the smallest of the four dungeons. The game will pick four of the possible Earthgift Shrine areas and give them to you in a random order. The fifth floor is always the boss. Now, this sort of randomness could drive any sane cartographer insane in a short amount of time. But, that's not all.

Each area you enter can have up to ten chests. Not all areas are capable of yielding ten chests. Now comes the fun part. The game will randomly choose which chests show up. So, not only do you have to deal with a randomly picked area but you also have to cope with randomly chosen chests. This is downright rude.

But, there is a way to make this super easy. Use your everyday memory manipulation skills to force the game to give you the area you want as well as any chests you choose! As I explained in my previous post, there is a byte in memory that holds the ID of the next area you will get. There are two bytes that hold which chests will be shown. Set that to 0xFFFF and your set. Every chest that can possibly show will now be shown. Without this method I don't see how you could possibly capture these areas in any reasonable amount of time.

Edit: Update to show that chest maximum was ten instead of eight. I had to go back over all the Soul of Chaos maps to capture any treasures that may have been missed.

94

Maps In Progress / Re: (GBA) Final Fantasy: Dawn of Souls

« on: February 21, 2012, 12:38:41 pm »

Found a nice, easy way to capture the (not so) random scenes in the Soul of Chaos.

There is a spot in memory that hold all the information for the Soul of Chaos when you enter one of the areas. It holds all the areas you will visit as well as the treasure in those areas. The process was simple. I saved a state right next to a set of stairs in the Soul of Chaos. This allows me to quickly reset my position. I then change the ID of the next area that I would visit. Now, when I enter the stairs, the game loads the area of the ID I input. Some of the areas aren't working this way.

In most games I can simply freeze the area ID then enter a door and the game will load the area I chose. This game does that but it also freezes the screen so I can't capture the new area. The above method is the only shortcut I have found.

Up to 136 scenes captured.

95

Maps In Progress / Re: (GBA) Final Fantasy: Dawn of Souls

« on: February 21, 2012, 02:08:29 am »

Up to 116 scenes captured. Slow day and the game isn't making it easy for me.

96

Maps In Progress / Re: (GBA) Final Fantasy: Dawn of Souls

« on: February 20, 2012, 11:28:11 am »

Don't worry, I am only capturing scenes. You can still compile and mark them if you want.

Also, I noticed that the World Map on the site you linked (along with the one on this site) is incorrect. The actual one is 4096x4096 pixels and the positioning is different. I guess you could only know this if you were using the in-game co-ordinates. Here is a pixel-perfect version of the World Map.

97

Maps In Progress / (GBA) Final Fantasy: Dawn of Souls

« on: February 20, 2012, 01:56:09 am »

Progress: 600 of 600 (100.0%)
     FF1: 212 of 212 (100.0%)
     FF2: 388 of 388 (100.0%)

All FF2 scenes are captured. I just need to add final touches to them. Currently working on FF1. Should be done within a day or two.

Update (22 FEB): Finished capturing the scenes. Going to start polishing them tomorrow. Should take no longer than two days barring any unforeseen complications.

Update (02 MAY): Here are the scenes, complete with sprites. If someone is willing to compile them into coherent maps, let me know.
                 [Scenes] Final Fantasy - Dawn of Souls

98

Maps In Progress / Re: Final Fantasy VI Advance (GBA)

« on: February 15, 2012, 09:29:41 pm »

Finished all 430 scenes. There are ~114 that need minor touchups (mostly color fill).


Thought I would share a scene that shows how devoted this game is to looping scenery.



As you can see, the top appears to be cut off. In fact, it isn't. It loops around to the bottom. The sides loop around as well. These kinds of scenes would be a complete headache with traditional screenshot capture, I would imagine.

99

Maps In Progress / Re: Final Fantasy VI Advance (GBA)

« on: February 14, 2012, 08:15:12 pm »

Ok, decided to do a few of these. I am just capturing raw scenes so nothing will be marked.

I noticed that some maps repeat. For example, review the following scenes:



They are the same town. The first two are from the World of Balance though they have separate IDs, 0154 and 0155, respectively. The third scene is from the World of Ruin.

Each room has it's own ID. Though, if I pass through the wall and map the entire area they look the same. Take the following, for example:



The IDs are 0196 and 0198, respectively. As you can see, they look almost identical. The only differences are the sprites. When you enter a room, only that room's sprites get loaded. Every other room on the scene is a dummy. No sprites and the doorways don't work.

I have found how to freeze animations and sprites so all the scenes will contain them. I was not able to successfully capture background layers in certain mountainous scenes. I am up to 291 scenes currently.

100

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

« on: February 14, 2012, 08:01:59 pm »

Ebot's Rock does indeed only consist of two scenes. I just completed it about five minutes ago.

Since I am only capturing the raw scenes, I won't get all the possibilities. You could place a marker or a key to show which walls can be moved. Nice job!


Edit: I was wrong in my earlier statement. There are only two scenes for Ebot's rock. I will show you what I got. They are 0194 and 0195, respectively.
The first one is what the shifting room looks like without any walls missing (I guess?), while the second show the entrance and boss. Just looking at the first image I have no idea how you would even get in the room to start with, unless you fall in from the room above or something.



Also, are you using any type of Freemove code or cheat? Are you using a map freeze code or cheat to get to any map you want on demand? If not, I can help you find these, if you want.

101

Maps In Progress / (GBA) Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance

« on: February 13, 2012, 02:27:11 am »

I wanted to try an isometric-type game. Not sure why I thought it would be any different than a normal game.

Notes:

 - Screen and character positions are separate.
 - When the scene index is changed manually, the new scene is loaded instantly.

Spent about an hour or so on this. There is no object layer and a couple scenes are missing layer four. I may update them later but I don't really feel like it right now.

(GBA) Baldur's Gate - Dark Alliance Maps.zip

102

Maps In Progress / Re: Golden Sun II: The Lost Age

« on: February 11, 2012, 04:30:57 pm »

There are some areas that limit the movement of the camera. Usually, this can be overcome by using the debug menu to head to a room that doesn't exist, such as room zero. Some maps, however, don't adhere to this and confine your camera. Yesterday, while trying to sleep, I though, "There must be a location in memory that holds the minimum and maximum co-ordinates that the screen can pass. This is how the game knows when to stop scrolling."

So, this morning I set out to find that location. It took about ten seconds.

It's grouped together with the other screen co-ordinate addresses so it was quite easy to find. While testing this out, I noticed that the maximum value for the x- or y- co-ordinate was 7FFFh or 32767. This also happens to be the maximum value of a 16-bit signed integer. No coincidence there. While scrolling past previous camera bounds I noticed that the scene repeats after 2048 pixels. This makes the maximum possible scene size 2048x2048.

Now, most of this area seems like junk. Some of it looks like the main area with layers missing. I have been contemplating whether or not I should capture the entire 2048x2048 area for completeness's sake. Anyway, it was a very exciting find and I have created a full-sized scene to show. It is of the town of Champa. As you can see it contains some junk and a portion of a different scene. Enjoy!

103

Maps In Progress / Re: Golden Sun II: The Lost Age

« on: February 10, 2012, 02:03:10 pm »

Ok, all the scenes are captured except a couple. There were a few scenes with a snowstorm on the sprite layer and I have no idea how to get rid of it. This happens in some outside scenes in Mars Lighthouse.

I found out how to synchronize the layers that move at a different speed such as the background clouds in scenes at the top of lighthouses. Also, foregrounds such as sunbeams or clouds in some towns. This allowed me to capture these at the same time as the scene.

Also, found out how to remove the characters shadow! I noticed while doing Magma Rock that if I am climbing, there is no shadow. This made it super easy to find the address that made the shadow disappear when I am climbing. With that figured out, It increased scene capture time exponentially.

I am going to organize the scenes and them provide an download link later today.

Here is a link to a small video I made. It show me capturing the entirety of Anemos Sanctum in ~3 minutes. Enjoy!

GS2anemossanctum.zip

Update:
I figured out how to stop the snowstorm. Each sprite contains three 'snowflakes'. There are about 80 separate sprites in the snowstorm.

104

Maps In Progress / Re: Golden Sun II: The Lost Age

« on: February 08, 2012, 06:36:24 pm »

I went back and started adding the sprite layer to the maps I currently have. I ran into some minor complications, most of which I was able to solve on my own. But, now I need help from someone who is knowledgeable about the game.

In the Dehkan Plateau there are pillars that block your path. If I turn on my NPC freeze codes these pillars are brown, akin to wood. But, with the codes off they are gray, akin to stone. I added a screenshot of my updated scene capturing program (shameless plug). The large, upper image shows the stone-like coloring while the smaller, lower image shows the wood-like coloring.

My question is what is the actual color of these objects?

Update: Finished about 50 more maps. These are completed raw scenes. This means they contains all layers but do not contain any notation. I, personally, will not add notation to the scenes. They are completed as far as I am concerned. If someone else wants to slap 'em together and mark 'em up, be my guest.

GS2 - Kibombo and Gabomba.zip

Here is a sample set of Kibombo and Gabomba. These ones were neat because they contained a gaggle of moving objects, especially inside Gabomba. Enjoy!

105

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

« on: February 08, 2012, 06:06:05 pm »

Lete River: Still a pain in the neck, lol. I've tried using the remote viewing code that I found, but it's pretty much useless when riding the raft because it messes up a lot of the tiles on screen. But I've decided to use Troy Lundin's Lete River map as a template to fill in the extra areas that I can't reach.

Does the GBA game use the exact same tiles as the SNES game? That's pretty cool, if so. Also, I am able to get anywhere in this game. If there is another area you would like help on, do not hesitate to ask.