VGMaps

General Boards => Map Gab => Topic started by: RT 55J on December 25, 2006, 03:44:21 pm

Title: Contra III: The Alien Wars (SNES)
Post by: RT 55J on December 25, 2006, 03:44:21 pm
Here's a Christmas present for you:



http://img109.imageshack.us/img109/3220/stage1groundzerowipzb9.png



It's a WIP of Stage 1. The main layer is done and the other layers are just waiting to go into place.



I won't be mapping Stages 2 or 5 (the mode 7 ones).

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Dot? Dot. Dot!
Title: RE: Contra III: The Alien Wars (SNES)
Post by: Romulus on December 26, 2006, 01:44:35 pm
It's almost poinless doing level 4 as well, unless your going to try to map the ship on that level
Title: RE: Contra III: The Alien Wars (SNES)
Post by: RT 55J on December 26, 2006, 03:23:01 pm
I'll map the ship, even if it steals my sanity.



I would map the mode 7 stages for the sake of completeness, but doubt I'd get a satisfactory result unless I ripped them directly from the RAM.



I've made some progress on the map. The background for the first part of the stage has been successfully inserted.

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Dot? Dot. Dot!
Title: RE: Contra III: The Alien Wars (SNES)
Post by: Grizzly on December 30, 2006, 10:53:45 am
For the Mode 7 maps: Just use BGMapper,  it should work very easy. I only tried it with ZSNES save states, I don't know if other emulator's save states are supported, too.
Title: RE: Contra III: The Alien Wars (SNES)
Post by: TerraEsperZ on December 30, 2006, 10:37:24 pm
Nice work RT 55J, that's looking *very* promising!



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"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



B*tch, meet reality. Reality, meet b*tch. - Me
Title: RE: Contra III: The Alien Wars (SNES)
Post by: RT 55J on January 01, 2007, 04:22:54 pm
Stage 1 done!



http://img412.imageshack.us/img412/2116/stage1groundzerolo3.png



Grizzly: I ripped the Mode 7 maps. The only problem is that the palettes are majorly screwed up. The main part of Stage 5 looks fine (except the bridges), but you wouldn't even want to see the boss...



Also, that site doesn't have the latest version, which can be found here: http://oregonstate.edu/~robinsfr/snes.html

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Dot? Dot. Dot!
Title: RE: Contra III: The Alien Wars (SNES)
Post by: TerraEsperZ on January 01, 2007, 05:00:27 pm
Looks great! Personally, I wouldn't have kept a double for all those locations and just kept the most representative for each (like the intact barricades, the visible tank once the building has crumbled, the flaming streets and the visible boss at the end). But that's just me and my personal choices; what you did is just as good and besides, I miss the old days when people would discuss maps in the making more.



And thanks for that link; I've been using the old version for a long time and it's nice to know it's still being refined :)



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"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



B*tch, meet reality. Reality, meet b*tch. - Me
Title: RE: Contra III: The Alien Wars (SNES)
Post by: RT 55J on January 04, 2007, 10:24:58 pm
I would have removed the doubles, but there are about 32 pixels behind the intact barricades that are not visible and I doubt BGMapper could be used to obtain them.



In other news, Stage 3 is done!



http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/4177/stage3neokobesteelfactods3.png



I had to use my younger brother's computer because mine has major trouble with huge images (RAM, processor, etc).

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Dot? Dot. Dot!
Title: RE: Contra III: The Alien Wars (SNES)
Post by: TerraEsperZ on January 04, 2007, 11:44:36 pm
Great work again! I'm seriously anticipating Stage 6 in all it's Giger-inspired horror, as well as how the heck you'll manage Stage 4 with the auto-scrolling and that damn airship that appears in two spots (over you while driving and high in the air at the end while you're litteraly flying towards its engine exhaust). It's nice seeing a classic game finally being mapped :)



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"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



B*tch, meet reality. Reality, meet b*tch. - Me
Title: RE: Contra III: The Alien Wars (SNES)
Post by: RT 55J on January 26, 2007, 10:59:59 pm
Stage 2 done! The best part is that it matches my moniter's resolution. ;)



http://img260.imageshack.us/img260/4215/stage2turninguptheturnpwo5.png



When I tried ripping the Mode 7 stages with BGMapper, it seemed that the palletes we're messed up quite a bit. Thankfully, I stumbled across this little gem. It's like BGMapper except that it's for Windows and quite a bit less intuitive.



http://vsnes.aep-emu.de/



In other news, ZSNES 1.51 has been released. The significance of this is that the top scanline is now actually rendered. You can probably guess the implications of this. >.<



Anyways, should I name Stage 6 'No Man's Land' or 'The Final Gauntlet'? I've been going off the names in the SNESmusic.org SPC set, and both names are applicable. That reminds me, I used the wrong word in the Stage 2 map. >.< Gotta fix that now.

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Dot? Dot. Dot!
Title: RE: Contra III: The Alien Wars (SNES)
Post by: Grizzly on January 27, 2007, 12:51:38 am
Finally! But it was the bottom scanline for me that wasn't rendered. I always liked ZSNES but when I used it for Secret Of Evermore I always had to recreate the last line of pixels for every map because it was missing. So when I made the Lion King maps I used Snes9x instead.

Oh and thanks for the link to the Mapping tool, it might help :)
Title: RE: Contra III: The Alien Wars (SNES)
Post by: RT 55J on January 30, 2007, 05:12:33 pm
I discovered that v1.5 and v1.51 render exactly the same (as far as this game is concerned). The only difference is the location of the unrendered scanline (top vs bottom).



Now my problem is that the main background color (when the layer is disabled) is the same color as most of the foreground in the part near the alien heart in Stage 6. >.<

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Dot? Dot. Dot!
Title: RE: Contra III: The Alien Wars (SNES)
Post by: TerraEsperZ on January 30, 2007, 05:46:29 pm
Don't you just hate it when that happens? Sadly, as far as I know, all you can do is either try to guess where the foreground ends and edit it by hand or, if the background shares few colors with the foreground, use an advanced painting program to replace the colors of the background by a neutral tone which is easier to remove afterward. If both layers share most of the same colors, then you are truly and hugely fucked. Good luck; this kind of problem has made me quit mapping several games so far.



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"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



B*tch, meet reality. Reality, meet b*tch. - Me
Title: RE: Contra III: The Alien Wars (SNES)
Post by: RT 55J on January 30, 2007, 07:58:03 pm
I'm not sure about you, but I just disable the back layer when mapping so I only have one color to deal with. I turns out that the "black" color that's left behind when I disable the layer is the exact same "black" that is used by the foreground. I only noticed this near the end. >.<



The good thing is that the "black" color isn't used in the actual background, so it still is possible to map. It'll just be much more tedious.



This is the practically exact same reason mapping Lyle in Cube Sector has been so slow.

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Dot? Dot. Dot!
Title: RE: Contra III: The Alien Wars (SNES)
Post by: TerraEsperZ on January 30, 2007, 08:39:28 pm
I'm facing the same challenge in Virtual Boy Wario Land. Not only can't I disable the background layers, but there are only 4 colors used in total, so figuring out where one thing ends and the next starts is really hard too.



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"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



B*tch, meet reality. Reality, meet b*tch. - Me
Title: RE: Contra III: The Alien Wars (SNES)
Post by: JonLeung on January 31, 2007, 03:18:41 pm
Contra III: The Alien Wars came out on the Wii's Virtual Console two days ago, didn't it?  Though I guess this topic started on Christmas before we knew this was coming relatively soon.



(When Rick Bruns mapped out Mario Bros. and Solomon's Key the weekend the Wii came out (those two games were among the very first available VC games), I knew something was up.)
Title: RE: Contra III: The Alien Wars (SNES)
Post by: RT 55J on February 10, 2007, 12:15:02 pm
The funny thing is that it's rated E+10 for "Fantasy Violence".



Stage 5 Done!



http://img262.imageshack.us/img262/7312/stage5nestinginthesandszh1.png

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Dot? Dot. Dot!
Title: RE: Contra III: The Alien Wars (SNES)
Post by: RT 55J on December 03, 2007, 09:23:10 pm
After nearly 10 months of not touching the project, I decided to finish it. Unsurprisingly, I found the solution to the problem that was bugging me in stage 6 in no time at all. :P Given the fact that I already had the images I needed, it didn't take much effort to finish.



https://img141.imageshack.us/img141/6226/stage6nomanslandph8.png



I've also decided not to map the fourth stage, because I've concluded that regardless of would do for it, the image would have little relation to the stage being mapped. :P



In other words, unless anybody has any complaints, I'll be submitting this soon.



Note: Please direct any complaints concerning the naming scheme to here: http://snesmusic.org/v2/profile.php?profile=set&selected=597

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Dot? Dot. Dot!
Title: RE: Contra III: The Alien Wars (SNES)
Post by: marioman on December 04, 2007, 06:00:11 am
Are you sure that Stage 4 is impossible?  It seems that if you ripped the background, you could just tile it and insert boss sprites where needed.
Title: RE: Contra III: The Alien Wars (SNES)
Post by: TerraEsperZ on December 04, 2007, 10:07:20 am
If I remember, the problem with Stage 4 is that everything keeps moving so it seems impossible to make a single continuous map. There's the road with the desert background, there's the battleship that flies over you, then there's the helicopter ride with that alien mini-boss, and then there are the missiles flying toward the battleship's engine. That makes too many large elements which keep moving in relation to one another.



The best you could hope to do is a series of mini-maps showing the various sections of the stage, such as the initial desert chase with the ship overhead, then a single screen with the helicopter mini-boss, and finally the boss fight with the missiles and all. I wouldn't feel like doing it myself in his place.



But good work for all that you've done. I'm quite happy with Stage 6; I've always loved it when Contra does things Giger-style.



---

"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



B*tch, meet reality. Reality, meet b*tch. - Me
Title: RE: Contra III: The Alien Wars (SNES)
Post by: marioman on December 04, 2007, 01:27:25 pm
If I remember, the problem with Stage 4 is that everything keeps moving so it seems impossible to make a single continuous map. There's the road with the desert background, there's the battleship that flies over you, then there's the helicopter ride with that alien mini-boss, and then there are the missiles flying toward the battleship's engine. That makes too many large elements which keep moving in relation to one another.



The best you could hope to do is a series of mini-maps showing the various sections of the stage, such as the initial desert chase with the ship overhead, then a single screen with the helicopter mini-boss, and finally the boss fight with the missiles and all. I wouldn't feel like doing it myself in his place.(TerraEsperZ)
Title: RE: Contra III: The Alien Wars (SNES)
Post by: RT 55J on December 04, 2007, 03:41:49 pm
Fine, I'll take a stab at it. It shouldn't be too hard...

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Dot? Dot. Dot!
Title: RE: Contra III: The Alien Wars (SNES)
Post by: marioman on December 04, 2007, 03:44:02 pm
Sure.  I was just looking at the forum name - sorry.  Fixed.
Title: RE: Contra III: The Alien Wars (SNES)
Post by: RT 55J on December 04, 2007, 10:18:55 pm
I've mapped the ship, but I'm not sure how good it looks:



http://img472.imageshack.us/img472/4884/shipmp4.png



Obviously, you can tell that I just vertically flipped it. It does look kind of weird (upside-down monkey bars, anyone), so I'm considering cleaning up the top, but I want some opinions first.

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Dot? Dot. Dot!
Title: RE: Contra III: The Alien Wars (SNES)
Post by: TerraEsperZ on December 04, 2007, 11:15:23 pm
It looks surprisingly good, but I'd personally get rid of all that stuff on top like guns and bars, except maybe for the little antennas, which don't look that much out of place there.



---

"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



B*tch, meet reality. Reality, meet b*tch. - Me
Title: RE: Contra III: The Alien Wars (SNES)
Post by: marioman on December 05, 2007, 06:54:49 am
Looking good.  I will admit that it looks a little awkward when it is mirrored like that.  I am sure that you will figure it out.



For some weird reason, I didn't realize that the boss of the level was actually the engine of the ship.  Now it makes more sense.



Good job.
Title: RE: Contra III: The Alien Wars (SNES)
Post by: Zeric on December 05, 2007, 09:57:02 am
The ship looks good but there is a few errors.

The first one is the place where the enemies jumps out, you missed one of the holes. The others are pretty minor. I pointed them out on the image below.



http://img223.imageshack.us/img223/4536/shipmp4ry1.png



Other than that I agree with the others.



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Current Projects: Akumajo Dracula (X6800)
Title: RE: Contra III: The Alien Wars (SNES)
Post by: RT 55J on December 05, 2007, 04:27:57 pm
I honestly can't believe I missed one of the holes. I guess that's what happens when you think something is so easy that it doesn't deserve attention.

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Dot? Dot. Dot!
Title: RE: Contra III: The Alien Wars (SNES)
Post by: RT 55J on December 05, 2007, 05:42:27 pm
I addressed the errors and cleaned up the top. I also added in the swinging thingy right before (ie right of) the holes.



http://img460.imageshack.us/img460/5051/shipcrf0.png



If there are no complaints, I'll be putting the actual stage together now.

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Dot? Dot. Dot!
Title: RE: Contra III: The Alien Wars (SNES)
Post by: TerraEsperZ on December 05, 2007, 05:48:27 pm
Looks great so far.



---

"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



B*tch, meet reality. Reality, meet b*tch. - Me
Title: RE: Contra III: The Alien Wars (SNES)
Post by: marioman on December 05, 2007, 06:15:53 pm
I'm good with it.  Nice job.
Title: RE: Contra III: The Alien Wars (SNES)
Post by: RT 55J on December 05, 2007, 08:07:45 pm
I've finished putting the map together. If everybody likes the layout, I'll submit it.



http://img480.imageshack.us/img480/7040/stage4roadwarriorsii3.png

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Dot? Dot. Dot!
Title: RE: Contra III: The Alien Wars (SNES)
Post by: marioman on December 05, 2007, 08:15:45 pm
Perfect!  So it wasn't impossible after all.  :)



Congratulations on finishing these maps.
Title: RE: Contra III: The Alien Wars (SNES)
Post by: TerraEsperZ on December 05, 2007, 09:41:30 pm
It works beautifully :) That being said, I would have found it impossible to do, but then again I'm not good at thinking "outside the box" at all. It wouldn't even occur to me to put the same object (battleship) twice in the same continuous map. I have some strange hangups sometipes :P



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"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



B*tch, meet reality. Reality, meet b*tch. - Me
Title: RE: Contra III: The Alien Wars (SNES)
Post by: Zeric on December 05, 2007, 11:36:16 pm
Looks very good, congratulations on finishing mapping the game.



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Current Projects: Akumajo Dracula (X6800)