3331
Map Gab / RE: VGMaps.com Atlas Project: Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night (PSX)
« on: September 08, 2006, 05:50:39 pm »
Now one of these days maybe I'll find time to do some mapping so I won't seem like such a nosy bum in here.
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3332
Map Gab / RE: VGMaps.com Atlas Project: Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night (PSX)
« on: September 08, 2006, 02:20:45 pm »
Sweet! How is that Zeric doing? That bum ought to be here more often. (I only call him a bum because he's not here.) 
At this rate, it may not take a year, even for both castles!
At this rate, it may not take a year, even for both castles!
3333
VGMaps Social Board / RE: Transformers Movie discussion
« on: September 07, 2006, 06:31:41 pm »
Can't get enough? How about his weapon?
3334
Gaming / RE: Anyone been to the Video Games Live concert?
« on: September 06, 2006, 05:47:13 pm »
You live in Germany, though, don't you, Grizzly?
Unfortunately, looking at the list, it looks like the closest tour location to where you are is in London, UK, on Nov. 25.
Unfortunately, looking at the list, it looks like the closest tour location to where you are is in London, UK, on Nov. 25.
3335
Gaming / RE: Anyone been to the Video Games Live concert?
« on: September 06, 2006, 02:04:28 pm »
Video Games Live
My friend brought this to my attention, that it's coming to Edmonton, and looking at the site today, I see that she's right! It is coming up next on the list, though a date and location and ticket sales aren't yet set up. I'm guessing it'd be December or January. (Does anyone really want to be in Edmonton during the winter?) Maybe I'll ask her if she wants to go, she thought it'd be "pretty freaking cool" to hear the Super Mario Bros. jingle being performed, but I'm sure it's got more than just that.
Actually, looking at the list of games, I'm surprised to see Beyond Good & Evil...I loved that game, but I thought it went pretty much unnoticed this past generation, and yet it's here among big franchises like Mario, Sonic, Castlevania, and Myst. I don't really care much that Halo is on there...a five-year-old franchise with two games shouldn't be mentioned BEFORE Mario and Zelda...but I gripe too much.
I hope it's cool. Has anyone gone to this? Would you say it's any good?
EDIT: Here's a good review. Sounds neat. I like the playing of Frogger being accompanied live by the orchestra, and that it includes seeing Martin Leung (the blindfolded Mario pianist you probably have seen on YouTube) there.
My friend brought this to my attention, that it's coming to Edmonton, and looking at the site today, I see that she's right! It is coming up next on the list, though a date and location and ticket sales aren't yet set up. I'm guessing it'd be December or January. (Does anyone really want to be in Edmonton during the winter?) Maybe I'll ask her if she wants to go, she thought it'd be "pretty freaking cool" to hear the Super Mario Bros. jingle being performed, but I'm sure it's got more than just that.
Actually, looking at the list of games, I'm surprised to see Beyond Good & Evil...I loved that game, but I thought it went pretty much unnoticed this past generation, and yet it's here among big franchises like Mario, Sonic, Castlevania, and Myst. I don't really care much that Halo is on there...a five-year-old franchise with two games shouldn't be mentioned BEFORE Mario and Zelda...but I gripe too much.
I hope it's cool. Has anyone gone to this? Would you say it's any good?
EDIT: Here's a good review. Sounds neat. I like the playing of Frogger being accompanied live by the orchestra, and that it includes seeing Martin Leung (the blindfolded Mario pianist you probably have seen on YouTube) there.
3336
VGMaps Social Board / RE: Transformers Movie discussion
« on: September 06, 2006, 09:40:18 am »
Maybe. It's hard to make out the eyes on that poster. Now we need a clear image of the supposedly final version.
Do you get the feeling that we're almost seeing TOO MUCH now? By the time the movie comes out there won't be much in the way of surprises.
Sometimes I wonder if these "leaks" are deliberate to gauge fans' reactions so that they can make some changes that will appeal to them. We've seen more of Optimus and Megatron and Bumblebee than other characters, for instance, and those are fan favourites. I expect we may see more of Starscream soon.
Do you get the feeling that we're almost seeing TOO MUCH now? By the time the movie comes out there won't be much in the way of surprises.
Sometimes I wonder if these "leaks" are deliberate to gauge fans' reactions so that they can make some changes that will appeal to them. We've seen more of Optimus and Megatron and Bumblebee than other characters, for instance, and those are fan favourites. I expect we may see more of Starscream soon.
3337
Map Gab / RE: NES Game Atlas: recreation
« on: September 06, 2006, 09:21:14 am »
That sounds good. Do you update Videogamemaps.net much anymore, mephea?
I think Revned is currently working on Castlevania III, though...and Rick Bruns on Zelda II...
I think Revned is currently working on Castlevania III, though...and Rick Bruns on Zelda II...
3338
Map Gab / RE: NES Game Atlas: recreation
« on: September 05, 2006, 09:27:28 pm »
That's off-topic, but I can't answer the question accurately for a couple reasons.
The past couple months, as you may have noticed, the site went overbandwidth and became unviewable right near the end, at over 50 GB. Now this would be a good indicator of how much I used (since it maxed out at the end) except for the fact that for some reason the hotlinking protection was disabled (I don't know if Inty did that, or if I did that for some reason and forgot to reenable it, or something else entirely). I know leeches hurt my bandwidth in the past, but I don't know by how much. Now that hotlinking protection's back on, my bandwidth won't be killed by someone posting a direct image link to a big map on a popular forum, for example.
I just finished compressing all the NES maps. I've saved 32.5 MB from the compression I have done so far (52.8 MB instead of 85.3 MB, a reduction of 38.1%), so with both hotlinking protection and a possible overall size reduction of about 40%, I may see significantly reduced bandwidth usage in the coming months.
The past couple months, as you may have noticed, the site went overbandwidth and became unviewable right near the end, at over 50 GB. Now this would be a good indicator of how much I used (since it maxed out at the end) except for the fact that for some reason the hotlinking protection was disabled (I don't know if Inty did that, or if I did that for some reason and forgot to reenable it, or something else entirely). I know leeches hurt my bandwidth in the past, but I don't know by how much. Now that hotlinking protection's back on, my bandwidth won't be killed by someone posting a direct image link to a big map on a popular forum, for example.
I just finished compressing all the NES maps. I've saved 32.5 MB from the compression I have done so far (52.8 MB instead of 85.3 MB, a reduction of 38.1%), so with both hotlinking protection and a possible overall size reduction of about 40%, I may see significantly reduced bandwidth usage in the coming months.
3339
VGMaps Social Board / RE: Transformers Movie discussion
« on: September 05, 2006, 08:29:52 pm »
Allow me to beat Terra to the punch...
Again, taken from TFW2005.com...
Even if they widened his face a little it would be a major improvement. Is there some reason that it has to be so skinny?
Again, taken from TFW2005.com...
Even if they widened his face a little it would be a major improvement. Is there some reason that it has to be so skinny?
3340
Mapping Tips/Guides / RE: Mapping Tools
« on: September 05, 2006, 06:16:59 pm »
Wow, I saved 7.20 MB (actual size)/6.05 MB (size on disk) on the EarthBound Zero maps alone! Then again, it's because it has one huge world map and four quadrants, each of which are pretty big by themselves. But one quadrant had 16 colours or less, which helped.
I'm ALMOST done with the NES section. Perhaps I should take the time to compress every map I ever got in EVERY section. If I can still squeeze 20%-70% out of most maps, that will certainly save my bandwidth. I'm sure the NES section being compressed will probably already help since that's one of the biggest and most popular sections.
Another plug for CompuPic Pro: to keep track of which maps I've compressed, I've used CompuPic's timestamp-changing ability to change all compressed-to-the-max maps to exactly midnight. That way I can still view the maps in the order that I received them (since I don't change the date), but also "mark" which ones I've done without having to remember, without keeping a separate text file listing, without having to keep them in separate folders, etc.
Come to think of it, I could code various other things I need to do with maps using other similar times. Maybe 12:00 means a perfect file, as I've stated, but I could use, say, 12:01 or 12:02 to mean something too.
EDIT: Finished compressing all the .PNG maps in the NES section! It only took me three days...
Size / Size on disk
83.6 MB / 85.3 MB = original size
55.0 MB / 52.8 MB = after brute force compression
---------------------
28.6 MB / 32.5 MB = difference
34.21% / 38.1% = difference in percentage
See why I love PNGGauntlet so much?
I'm ALMOST done with the NES section. Perhaps I should take the time to compress every map I ever got in EVERY section. If I can still squeeze 20%-70% out of most maps, that will certainly save my bandwidth. I'm sure the NES section being compressed will probably already help since that's one of the biggest and most popular sections.
Another plug for CompuPic Pro: to keep track of which maps I've compressed, I've used CompuPic's timestamp-changing ability to change all compressed-to-the-max maps to exactly midnight. That way I can still view the maps in the order that I received them (since I don't change the date), but also "mark" which ones I've done without having to remember, without keeping a separate text file listing, without having to keep them in separate folders, etc.
Come to think of it, I could code various other things I need to do with maps using other similar times. Maybe 12:00 means a perfect file, as I've stated, but I could use, say, 12:01 or 12:02 to mean something too.
EDIT: Finished compressing all the .PNG maps in the NES section! It only took me three days...
Size / Size on disk
83.6 MB / 85.3 MB = original size
55.0 MB / 52.8 MB = after brute force compression
---------------------
28.6 MB / 32.5 MB = difference
34.21% / 38.1% = difference in percentage
See why I love PNGGauntlet so much?
3341
Map Gab / RE: Castlevania: Harmony Of Dissonance (GBA)
« on: September 05, 2006, 08:46:58 am »
By area, wouldn't it then be 1/16th the size? If it's 1/4 the height and 1/4 the width? Man, that's going to be huge. What's that...*calculates*...15104 x 7936? At least? Whoa. And I think Revned said that SotN will be much larger, even. o_0
3342
Mapping Tips/Guides / RE: Mapping Tools
« on: September 04, 2006, 03:26:21 pm »
I spent the last couple days using PNGGauntlet on brute force compression on several (but not all) of the NES game maps. I started with the Mega Man maps, many of which were reduced in size to 45%-55% of their original size. Then I moved on to all the maps that had palettes of 16.7 million colours, when I was sure they didn't have more than 256 (many NES maps fit in 16 colour palettes).
I haven't done them all, but I've already reduced the size of the NES maps directory from 85.3 MB to 59.9 MB. That's 25.4 MB of extraneous and useless filesize shaved off! That'll save on the bandiwdth!
I haven't done them all, but I've already reduced the size of the NES maps directory from 85.3 MB to 59.9 MB. That's 25.4 MB of extraneous and useless filesize shaved off! That'll save on the bandiwdth!
3343
Map Gab / RE: NES Game Atlas: recreation
« on: September 03, 2006, 07:56:46 pm »
I spent a good deal of today compressing several NES maps with PNGGauntlet using brute force compression. I found last night that most of the Mega Man games' maps shrank to about 45%-55% of their original size, though one compressed to only 86% but a few shrank to about 25%-35%!
So today, aside from a few random ones that I KNEW didn't have 16.7 million colours, (most NES maps should have less than 256 colours, several of them even have 16 or less,) I made sure to also compress everything that we currently have for the NES Atlas recreation.
If I can shrink all the popular maps down to half their filesize, I may be able to take a big chunk out of my bandwidth usage! Plus, they'll load faster, too.
PNGGauntlet's still working on Castlevania II, though...that one's a huge one...
So today, aside from a few random ones that I KNEW didn't have 16.7 million colours, (most NES maps should have less than 256 colours, several of them even have 16 or less,) I made sure to also compress everything that we currently have for the NES Atlas recreation.
If I can shrink all the popular maps down to half their filesize, I may be able to take a big chunk out of my bandwidth usage! Plus, they'll load faster, too.
PNGGauntlet's still working on Castlevania II, though...that one's a huge one...
3344
Map Gab / RE: VGMaps.com Atlas Project: Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night (PSX)
« on: September 03, 2006, 11:13:28 am »
Sweetness!
You guys ought to get some guidelines in place - you wouldn't want to have to resynchronize a bunch of candles and other animations!
You guys ought to get some guidelines in place - you wouldn't want to have to resynchronize a bunch of candles and other animations!
3345
Maps Of The Month / RE: 2006/09: Kid Chameleon (Genesis) - DarkWolf
« on: September 02, 2006, 08:08:26 pm »
Well, like I said, you have been contributing a lot of maps lately. It was time for about time for a Sega game to get one, and since you seem to love the Genesis, hey, why not? Congrats.