Messages

Four months later - what's happened?

...

Absolutely nothing. >_>

My motivation to make maps for Spud's Adventure dropped dead. I managed to finish up the first dungeon map but I am just not feeling it. The game's fun and all but I have zero motivation to do much of ... well, anything lately. Been that way for a while, been dealing with a lot of crap from my parents' divorce and I guess I'm starting to crack.

Not sure what mapping project I'll pursue next, if any at all for the foreseeable future...

[Spud's Adventure]

Well, I loved the heck out of Sun and Moon at least.

Anyhow, not a ton has happened since I finished working on it, mostly just writing quick guides for some simpler games. I'll be starting on Spud's Adventure soon and I'll be making maps for it, so that's something.

Ah, okay. Yeah, I probably won't then. He should probably take it over anyhow; me and a friend are getting REALLY deep on this Pokemon Sun & Moon stuff. (The review copies came out and got datamined so she and I have been parsing through that since ... ironically pretty much the day after I took on the project. =P)

I might do it for GameFAQs' sake but it's honestly pretty low-priority now because of this. Which is fine by me, I think I'm more in the mood for RPGs, but it's not like I'll be touching any until I'm done with Sun & Moon anyhow. =P

Yeah, that Victory Road change was weird. Supposed to cut backtracking down...but it's not that much to begin with. :/

I will look into Kirby's Adventure; if nothing else a friend of mine would get a kick out of it. No promises though.

[Pokémon Ruby & Sapphire Versions]

And I finally have finished Pokémon Ruby & Sapphire Versions! ^_^;;

Truth be told, I'm surprised at how many maps were in the set - 95. (I originally counted 94 but then I realized that, of all things, I forgot Sky-freaking-Pillar. XD I weirdly did the same thing last time with Crystal, where I forgot the Whirl Islands.) That's nearly double what I had from Kanto in any of the previous times I mapped that region, so it's pretty strange.

But it's nice to have this Mankey off my back at long last. Now I can focus more wholly on Pokemon Sun & Moon when it releases. (Well, a guide for it. Though the Rotom Pokedex seems to implement a sort of map it's not something I'll be pursuing for the time being because I'll be focusing more on a walkthrough for the time being.)

... still ... what. A. Project. I ... really didn't expect things to go as they did with this thing. A project I expected to have done before the summer's end ended up going three months overdue. And it all stems from bad stuff I'd rather be able to forget, all sorts of bad drama, bad emotions, and a bad time in my life. Maybe with this I'll have cut one more tie to that drama and be one step closer to just moving on and eventually forgetting everything that happened that ill-fated June.

But man... Just... Screw 2016. Just easily the worst year of my life so far. Family life, personal life, friends' lives, everything going down the drain; my grades dropping, my motivation slipping... Geez. >_>

Only two more months at least - maybe the new year will bring a clean slate and everything can go back to being good again.

...heh, sorry, didn't mean to leave a bleeding-heart type of post. Just ... there's a lot of stuff tied up in this one project, all sorts of good and bad. I mean, it's weird on the face of it, but I've this strange tendency to attach memories to some of my projects (FAQs and maps alike). Like, I can look at that one real bad fever I had some years ago and remember that I started writing my FFVI Advance guide when I fell that ill; or I can look at my EO2U guide and maps and see so ... so much of my freshman year of college fly by. I look at these maps and ... all I can see is her, and how she unintentionally messed me up for most of the entire summer; see how I've struggled so far this  year to do everything I would have otherwise excelled at; see how close, she, I, and others have come to being pushed off the edge...

In a sense I almost want to delete the maps because then ... at least I don't have to relive those memories ever again. I've relived them all too many hundreds, thousands of times by now, probably. Or at the very least, I'd be putting a stop on one means of doing so.

But then, it's like... this maps will be helping so many people beyond myself. Not only would my friend want that, but isn't that help worth suffering just a little more?

... I don't know where I was going with this, I got ... waaaaaay too deep there. I said I won't leave a bleeding-heart kind of post, so I'll shut up now.





So, anyhow, next projects.

I will only be pursuing small-scale projects for the time being, and likely most on GameFAQs, until Pokemon Sun & Moon release. You know, projects that only take a day or two to complete, mostly just filling in holes in their coverage and giving myself something to do now that I have a skeleton for the guide.

I don't have any particularly big projects planned at the time. Honestly I want a break from GBA Pokemon because just ... damn, the Braille. I mean, it's funny, but that's the part I hated most about these maps, the damn Braille. So I don't know what other projects I might pursue in the meantime. I have a list of like 70+ games I could work on though so it's not like I'll have an absence of projects, but with Sun & Moon releasing in 11 days I doubt I want any kind of big RPG project. So I'll likely mostly stick to platformers, maybe? IIRC, GameFAQs doesn't have Sonic maps, so I might look into that. Or maybe some of their Satellaview games.

Well, I guess it's been about two months, time to check in.

College, as last year, is proving to be the biggest hurdle to getting anything done; not much time for anything these days. Still, things are getting better. Me and aforementioned best friend are back together - though the rationality of the idea still bugs me. Even so, we've only hit a few bumps in our friendship and we're both managing to better ourselves and get past them. (I guess it bugs me simply because of how much we've been through as well as ... well, she's a very depressed person, to say the least, and it's serious enough for me to think almost that me leaving her permanently would likely result in her doing some significant harm to herself. ... But I mean, heck, we like each other, right? That's reason enough to stick by each other's side.)

Given everything I'm seeing from her, the events that originally sank me into that depression will almost likely never happen again. (I'll spare the long story ... heh, I could write a whole book on the entire thing. >_>)

Not much of anything has been getting done. I have done some work for Pokemon Sun & Moon's pending release; mostly a quick guide for the demo and some other stuff in preparation for the full release in a few weeks. I did also get some more work finished on Pokemon Ruby & Sapphire - insofar I'm just about done with a good chunk of everything up to Mossdeep, bar a few finicky things, so that's good. "Too much water" is definitely a thing, though; I'll be glad to be done with the ocean areas when it happens.

Ideally I'll finish Ruby & Sapphire just before Sun & Moon launches, but I honestly don't know. I'd planned it done three months ago. >_>

It's always hard to hear about friends that struggle over something that might otherwise be trivial or at least shouldn't be a big deal (I would know, it's happened to me) but that for whatever reason it comes at the wrong time, or the wrong thing was said, or the emotions were set a certain way and the molehill becomes a mountain, or a crack becomes a crevasse, or whatever.

It was definitely nothing minor, I will say that much. As much hell as the two of us have been through it was take more than the trivial to break the two of us up, I'd think. Like I said, we were best friends at the time; in certain regards neither of us would be alive if it wasn't for the other.

But at the end of the day, probably no one NEEDS the maps you were working on, or at least it's certainly not worth your emotional well-being.  Or on the flipside, if you really want to finish the maps to get all of that behind you, perhaps you can find another person who also really wants them or another reason like that to displace your original intent.  I can see how that might be one of those easier-said-than-done things, but might be worth a try.

Perhaps, but I can't think of anyone I'm close to who'd be interested other than my sister, and she's more into Emerald and the remakes as opposed to Ruby & Sapphire. My boyfriend maybe, but he's more of a Digimon person. Plus it'd almost feel like regifting something (probably not the right verb but I think it makes my point clear) and that almost feels dirty to me, you know?

I mean, if we're talking about Pokémon: Ruby and Sapphire Versions, like seriously, lots of people will want them, not just your friend.  Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, the latest games, are based on these, so they're kind of current, too.  Trust me, they'll be appreciated.

I know; that was one of the reservations I had about actually doing them as a sort of present (since they in the end wouldn't have been for just her but pretty much everyone, and that on top of the fact that I was pretty much going to do them at some point). I mean ... I wanted to do something only *I* could do, something that would be *just* for her, but that was the best I could think of doing. So I guess when I settled on the project idea it was like I was doing more for her than for anyone else, selfish as that seems.

... WOOOOW the past few months have been rough on this project. >_>

Had an extreme falling out with the (now ex) best friend I was doing the maps for. (Probably best if I spare you the convoluted details there, it's beyond freaking crazy.) We've since gotten back on ... better terms but I don't think we're anywhere near as close as we were before. That's probably for the better though.

In the meantime, my motivation was absolutely shot for the project; I guess that's what I get for giving a project a more emotional attachment. My current best friend was able to kick my ass into getting some stuff done though; I ended up mapping a couple of games in June and July (nothing not already covered here though) thanks to her.

My motivation on Pokemon Ruby & Sapphire is still pretty shot though. It's been hard as hell to keep going with this because of just how bad the memories are that keep getting brought up. Ironically though I've started writing a fanfiction that kinda-sorta follows the general course of my playthroughs and that's strangely driven up my motivation again to map. Insofar I've just beaten the fifth Gym and - bar a few areas I'll need to one day backtrack to complete - I'm nearly forty maps in.

Still ... wow. I thought Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold was a hellish project but this was nothing short of a nightmare. Hopefully I can put Hoenn or the memories one behind me soon.

[Final Fantasy III/VI (SNES/SFC)]

So, an update.

Lately, I've been mostly poking at a hole in the coverage on GameFAQs - Final Fantasy III/VI (SNES/SFC). Recently finished up those maps. It was nice to replay, been some years since I touched it.

So, what's next?

It'll be maps for Pokémon Ruby & Sapphire Versions (GBA)!

This will be a cool project to finally pursue for several reasons. Firstly, the nostalgia. Sapphire was my first Pokemon game, and it's sadly been quite some time since I've played the Hoenn games.

Secondly, this will actually be a bit of a birthday gift for my best friend. Turns out, when we met through GameFAQs, she had a bit of a crush on me because of my FAQs and stuff. She recently sent some meaningful stuff for my birthday (namely an awesome picture of Shiny Charizard - my fave Pokémon - she drew and an Espeon/Umbreon T-shirt to match hers), so I figured I could return the favor. Since she loves my guides and maps, and is really into Pokémon (Hoenn and Sinnoh namely), and is an artist in her own right, what better gift for my broke ass to give her than detailed maps of one of her favorite games, a rather beautiful one no less?

... Sounds cheesy still, I guess, but at least it won't be the only thing I'll do and this will at least get me doing it.

Granted, I won't be starting for a bit, so I can cool down from FFVI, but I have two months to finish so I'd better get on it.

[Pokemon Crystal Version]

Heh... it's been one hell of an interesting past couple of weeks on the personal life end of things. Things have gone to hell in some respects, and in others it's been better than ever, it's weird. I think it might be going for the overall positive though, and there's one more thing to add to that...

At long (ish) last, Pokemon Crystal Version is complete!

Compressing the set of 123 maps right now (mostly so I can get them up on GameFAQs), and then I'll be emailing them right to ya Jon.

... And then I need to get some sleep. It's like 6:00 AM here. Thank Arceus it's my day off from class...

Yeah, I'm seeing it too. XD

It's not something that'd work with Generation II - the only sprites small enough to actually fit are the menu sprites. Otherwise, I'd have to use the full-body sprites like in the Summary screen, which are simply too big. The generic sprites can be a bit of a problem. The attached screenshot, for example, shows the sprites of several Pokemon: not many are distinct from each other, and are presumably grouped by body type. (Fun fact: That's my endgame team from when I mapped Gold/Silver.)

I'll probably end up doing it when I get around to Ruby/Sapphire though, whenever that will be, since the sprites in the menus in Generation III onward are small yet actually distinct.

[Pokemon Crystal Version (GBC).]

So. New project decided: Pokemon Crystal Version (GBC).

Started it up tonight and got most  everything situated. Attached is my first map of ~110 for the game: New Bark Town. Also tried out the idea of implementing a wild-encounters table, which is there as well.

Time for an irregularly-timed update.

STILL working on EO2U. I got caught up in a roleplaying game I'm hosting on GameFAQs, so it's been eating my time. I just finished my map for 29F, which means I have the  walkthrough for 29F (minor stuff) plus 30F's map and walkthrough and a few trivial details before I can consider myself done.

Finally... It's been seven long months and I can firmly say I am (probably) never making a guide for Etrian Odyssey ever again. I've clocked over 250 hours on ONE playthrough of this thus far and spent far too long in making it (nearly my entire freshman year of college). Longer than any other guide, and probably my most tedious, most involved project. But it looks like I might be able to finish it this weekend at long last. Which means you'll finally get some maps from me, Jon. Probably not my best work, but still an improvement over my Persona Q format.

...

So, what comes next...? That, I'm not sure. I was thinking Momotarou Densetsu Gaiden from the Famicom, writing a walkthrough and guide for it ... or maybe making maps of FFVI for GameFAQs that I already started ... or making maps for Pokemon Crystal Version. Hm...

I completely forgot - my mind's more oriented towards Pi Day. >_>

I don't I'll be playing anything Mario-related. If anything, I MIGHT get back to work on EO2U, who knows. Just dealing with some nasty stuff in real life at the moment in addition to the usual stuff that'd keep me from working on it.