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Like the title says, what features helpful to map-making you wish emulators would have?

I'm working with the author of SuperSNES9X (who has already added a ton of improvements over the regular snes9x) and I can push to get new stuff added to it.

So, what would your dream emulator be like for map-making? What helpful features would you like to have?

It could be tiny things obscure emulators already do, but more popular ones don't; or even features from external programs that could realistically be implemented in an emulator.

I think there's a tool that takes screenshots of games and auto stitches them together? It would be awesome if something like that could be implemented natively.

SuperSNES9X now has native Super Game Boy support.

Someone called shanytc has developed a fork of SNES9X called SuperSNES9X which has a lot of good features lacking from the main branch, features which can be helpful to map makers.

Some of these features, of course, are available on more modern emulators such as BSNES, Bizhawk, Mesen and the sort. But personally, I still prefer to use snes9x because it's really fast and has the least amount of annoyances when compared to other emulators.

Anyway, some of the new features it has is a BSNES-quality sprite/titlemap viewer with the option to export the graphics.

The cheat search and cheat editors have been updated too. You can now batch add addresses and edit them. There's right click implementation too and having the cheat editor open no longer pauses the game. It also now allows to have multiple bindings so you can assign both a controller and keyboard to the same input.

Every config file or save state from the regular snes9x will work with this branch and viceversa.

Here's the latest release:
https://github.com/shanytc/snes9x/releases/tag/1.63.10

I've amassed a ton of save states across the decades, but honestly a lot of them need specific emulator versions and in the case of Visual Boy Advance, you even need the specific bios version used or else the state won't load.

That's the name, yes.

Just wanted to let people know that the main snes9x branch has now implemented an option to have a colored background when disabling layers.

That version is still not public, but if you download any of the nightly versions, it will be there to use!

Here's a collection of Bitmap Font Writer fonts I've created over the years.

https://mega.nz/file/rFQVHKaZ#irlWoay0-lGX9FUSxCFkXHMj6jN4C0sr36ZjFWJYLaM

They do not have a complete character set because I just create the characters I'm going to use, but most have the basic alphabet at least.

So Samurai Shodown RPG was recently translated (after 15 years).

The author of the patch also extracted all of the game's maps, but he doesn't want to release them unmarked like that. He found someone willing to populate the maps with all the chests and important stuff, but the person went M.I.A.

So my request is, would anyone be willing to play through the game and populate the maps? I'm afraid that if no one does it, the maps will just go to waste on his hard drive.

Here's an online tool that lets you create any palette you want and save it in .pal format so you can use it with FCEUX:

http://drag.wootest.net/misc/palgen.html

Another thing I don't like is when you're not sure if something is a tagline or a subtitle.  Why does the box for the NES version of Galaga say "Demons Of Death"?  That sounds more like a subtitle than a tagline, but who actually calls it "Galaga: Demons Of Death"?  "Faria: A World Of Mystery And Danger!" is really wordy, and I would have thought the "A World Of Mystery And Danger!" would be the tagline, except that it's right there on a ribbon in the title.  Argh.

Haha, true.

I hear you. I struggle with the same stuff, but I got some "rules" that I follow to avoid going crazy.

If the name is different in box/title screen, then I either pick the longer name or I merge them both. So Gilligan's Island becomes Adventures of Gilligan's Island, and Gyromite becomes Gyromite: Robot Gyro.

As for games with creator titles in front, I just go with what's most popular. I really dislike doing the whole comma thing, such as: Amazing Tennis, David Crane's.
I don't put Disney in front of any of the titles, otherwise the letter "D" would be filled with Disney entries.

They have been added... been up since the day after these were posted here... or am I missing something here?
https://vgmaps.com/Atlas/NES/index.htm#GilligansIsland

Ah, sorry. You're using the title screen name instead of Adventures of Gilligan's Island, that's why I couldn't find it in the letter A.

Aren't these going to be added to the site?

The game only has 4 chapters, so these maps are complete.

Yeah, the phone people are not evil, they are just clueless because whoever works on the servers or security are not the same as the customer service reps or even tech support. Whatever changes are made in the backend, are normally not trickled down to customer service (or at least, not immediately). Although, for a company that provides server space, then they really should communicate that ASAP to everyone. However, that's not the reality. Corporate decisions are usually very detached from customer service.

I don't know if you've worked taking calls, but it's a horrible soul-draining job. I hated every minute of the many years I spent working that field and hopefully I never EVER have to rely on it ever again.

People that call customer service think the rep has the power to do anything they want or solve any issues, and that's just not true. You are only as powerful or knowledgeable as the tools or info you're given. If the company gives you limited powers and no info, then you can't really help people with more advanced issues.

But whatever, in the end, it turned out to be a positive. If the site had kept working the same slow way as it has since forever, you probably would have not made the server change. But now you did, and it's all better.

Congrats on the move!

The parenthesis thing definitely sounds like it was the culprit. That would explain why I could browse the site just fine, but it would hang when loading a map.

Dreamhost once took a similar "security measure" when suddenly any file name "virus" would not load. Like yeah, as if someone is going to make a virus and actually call it "virus". But whatever, I just changed the file names and everything was fine.

As to why the chat people or techs didn't know shit of what was going on? That's because normally customer service is not up to date on everything that goes on in the company.

I've worked in customer service and tech support, and I got calls all of the time from people asking me stuff I had no idea the company had changed or added or offered. As the employee you should get a company email or something with anything that was changed so you are aware, but that never happens. Sometimes there's a portal where you can see the latest news, but those are usually treated like a newsletter filled with so much useless crap that no one ever reads them.