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Map Requests / Re: JonLeung's Requests
« on: August 13, 2025, 09:48:17 pm »
Okay, I got around to finishing Beyond Shadowgate (PC).
I'm not sure if I want to do a "marked" version, but to make up for that (
) if I don't ever do that, even though it's maybe more work, is that I made a version showing all the possible variations of all the screens in the game. Maybe I need to come up with a better term than "Screens", but that's how I referred to them in zagato blackfist's submissions for the NES games Shadowgate, Deja Vu, and Uninvited (which inspired me to get all of those screens) as well as many other games, especially on the NES page...
Yeah, we're talking about over 1700 variations, yikes.
If a room has a single item in it that can be taken, there's two: one with the item there and one with it taken. If there's a door that might be open or closed, that doubles it again. For most rooms there aren't too many combinations. But for some, there can be multiple items or multiple states, leading to exponential numbers of possibilities. I tried to map them all as much as I could!
Believe it or not, I captured most of them in my playthroughs. Since items can't be put down after they've been picked up (unless being used) and almost all doors can't be closed after they've been opened, it required a lot of saving and loading to be able to get the various combinations. While I thought I was pretty good at getting all the combinations that I knew of per room, I kept finding stuff that I missed, like how the Wraith can appear in most rooms in the first half of Castle Shadowgate. In this and a few other instances, mechaskrom's paint.net plugin that he made when I asked about comparing pixels made it easy to isolate differences (in cases where I couldn't just copy and paste rectangular or simple shapes), and from there, to copy over the right pixels to create combinations that I know are possible in the game, even if I hadn't actually done them in-game. If the game didn't have such a rigid save system, it would be a lot easier...
Here's one example of many combinations for a single room.
.png)
And in yet another room in Themiere Mansion, there's a clock, and there are way too many combinations with that, so I just included images of what all the 16 possible clock faces could be - I wasn't going to multiply the already numerous screens by 16! And there are lots of skeleton death images there because while most monsters in the game that jump at you and kill you have the decency to cover up many of the variables in the room, this skeleton doesn't block the door (with three states) or the clock (with four states), so it appears 12 times!
.png)
Yeah, there are a LOT of ways to die in this game, so I marked deaths (and impending deaths) in red.
If you actually use these when playing, you might find them upside-down at first glance. That is, earlier rooms are shown at the bottom and later rooms are shown at the tops of these images. That's because this game moves from "south" to "north". So it generally works, except for the cursed Themiere Mansion (once again), where the basement/dungeon areas appear above the second floor, since you do go to the second floor before you go to the basement. But these are just showing combinations, if you want to find your way around, referring to the actual map with room connections makes more sense.
I can't believe it's mid-August, as this game came out last September. Sheesh! I enjoyed putting it together, and it was a good reminder of how much work even simple maps can be, but man, I got other projects to do!
I'm not sure if I want to do a "marked" version, but to make up for that (
) if I don't ever do that, even though it's maybe more work, is that I made a version showing all the possible variations of all the screens in the game. Maybe I need to come up with a better term than "Screens", but that's how I referred to them in zagato blackfist's submissions for the NES games Shadowgate, Deja Vu, and Uninvited (which inspired me to get all of those screens) as well as many other games, especially on the NES page...Yeah, we're talking about over 1700 variations, yikes.
If a room has a single item in it that can be taken, there's two: one with the item there and one with it taken. If there's a door that might be open or closed, that doubles it again. For most rooms there aren't too many combinations. But for some, there can be multiple items or multiple states, leading to exponential numbers of possibilities. I tried to map them all as much as I could!
Believe it or not, I captured most of them in my playthroughs. Since items can't be put down after they've been picked up (unless being used) and almost all doors can't be closed after they've been opened, it required a lot of saving and loading to be able to get the various combinations. While I thought I was pretty good at getting all the combinations that I knew of per room, I kept finding stuff that I missed, like how the Wraith can appear in most rooms in the first half of Castle Shadowgate. In this and a few other instances, mechaskrom's paint.net plugin that he made when I asked about comparing pixels made it easy to isolate differences (in cases where I couldn't just copy and paste rectangular or simple shapes), and from there, to copy over the right pixels to create combinations that I know are possible in the game, even if I hadn't actually done them in-game. If the game didn't have such a rigid save system, it would be a lot easier...
Here's one example of many combinations for a single room.
And in yet another room in Themiere Mansion, there's a clock, and there are way too many combinations with that, so I just included images of what all the 16 possible clock faces could be - I wasn't going to multiply the already numerous screens by 16! And there are lots of skeleton death images there because while most monsters in the game that jump at you and kill you have the decency to cover up many of the variables in the room, this skeleton doesn't block the door (with three states) or the clock (with four states), so it appears 12 times!
Yeah, there are a LOT of ways to die in this game, so I marked deaths (and impending deaths) in red.
If you actually use these when playing, you might find them upside-down at first glance. That is, earlier rooms are shown at the bottom and later rooms are shown at the tops of these images. That's because this game moves from "south" to "north". So it generally works, except for the cursed Themiere Mansion (once again), where the basement/dungeon areas appear above the second floor, since you do go to the second floor before you go to the basement. But these are just showing combinations, if you want to find your way around, referring to the actual map with room connections makes more sense.
I can't believe it's mid-August, as this game came out last September. Sheesh! I enjoyed putting it together, and it was a good reminder of how much work even simple maps can be, but man, I got other projects to do!
