Messages

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Maps In Progress / Re: FlyingArmor's Map Projects Present and Future

« on: July 23, 2020, 06:47:22 PM »

I just submitted two maps for The Addams Family: Pugsley's Scavenger Hunt for the SNES. I had actually mapped them five years ago, but didn't think to submit them until I had a few more of the levels done. Since then, I hadn't made any more progress, but since seeing this game on Jon's Requests list, I thought I may be as well submit what I've got.

Also, I've begun making a bit more progress with mapping Ultima VI: The False Prophet for the PC. Because there are so many more items you can actually pick up in this version, I thought the legends would get a bit unwieldy with the sheer number of items that can be acquired (like chairs, wall mounts, silverware, inkwells, and other such furnishings), but after mapping Cove and Skara Brae, it doesn't look to be too bad so far, though I wonder how bad it'll get with the bigger towns like Britain, haha. I haven't submitted anything yet, but will likely do so in the next few days once I have a few more maps put together.

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Maps In Progress / Re: FlyingArmor's Map Projects Present and Future

« on: May 12, 2020, 11:32:36 PM »

Thanks Terra! I'm glad that you find the pressure plate portion easy to understand. I just noticed a mistake with room 12 where the step markers are in the wrong instances of the room, so I'll be sure that's fixed for my next update.

I totally understand your frustration with how to depict the dungeon levels, as I had had them as well. I was at first wanting to show them in the more traditional way rather than in the squares I eventually put them into, but after examining some of the levels from this dungeon as well as others, I opted for the square layout partly for saving space as you mentioned, but also so it would be easier to see where the ladders connect between levels without the need for alphabetic markers. Another consideration was for the Up and Down spells, as it would be easier to see where you will end up between levels. Also, there are levels that wrap around from all sides anyway, and if mapped out traditionally would end up with maps that go on forever in all directions, so confining those ones to squares is a necessity (the fifth level of Dungeon Wrong being one such).

But I do understand they're a bit more difficult to read. When I was going through this dungeon to verify where things were as well as the pressure plate stuff, I was looking at my map and having to double and triple check that I was going in the right direction a few times. Luckily with Ultima III, the dungeons don't wrap around on themselves, so they'd be easier to make maps for as well as read, though each level is four times as big (16 x 16 tile grid as opposed to 8 x 8 in Ultima IV).

It's not too hard to stick with something you love, so while the user interface is rather clunky and would be considered very unintuitive nowadays (reading the manual is certainly mandatory for a game like this!), I do love it for its world-building and the art style the PC version exhibits. And I suppose a hindsight reason would be because it is not nearly as brutal as a lot of CRPGs were in the 1980's, such as Wizardry or Pool of Radiance, to name only two examples. After seeing a number of videos highlighting retro RPGs from that era through Matt Barton's channel on Youtube, it gives me an extraordinarily great appreciation for not having to pool and split gold constantly, memorize then rememorize spells after they've been used via camping, or roll then reroll your stats over and over again to make sure your character has a relatively decent balance for their character class, then rinse and repeat five more times. So comparing it with those games, Ultima IV isn't that bad. Plus having a save editor really helps!

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Maps In Progress / Re: FlyingArmor's Map Projects Present and Future

« on: May 12, 2020, 07:25:36 PM »

Not too long ago, I finished up Phantasy Star II. It is no wonder this game needs maps for anyone to make any sense out of its labyrinthine dungeons, as was provided in the instruction manual when it first came out back in 1989. I hope my maps can help those struggling with navigating this game to get through it without ripping their hair out.

And speaking of games from the 1980's, I have recently sent in the map of Dungeon of Despise from Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar for the PC. I had submitted my maps for the townes, villages, and castles back in January 2019, but had struggled with laying out the dungeons in an aesthetically pleasing way since then. After much trial and error, I finally came across a style that I liked for the dungeon levels as well as a way of depicting where the pressure plates in the various rooms are and what happens when you stand on them. So all in all, I'm happy with what I came up with and will now apply this to the rest of the dungeons in the game. Mapping the Abyss is gonna be quite the ordeal though, but I'm up for the challenge!

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Maps In Progress / Re: FlyingArmor's Map Projects Present and Future

« on: March 27, 2020, 10:21:53 AM »

Wow, very cool! Thanks for bringing this to my attention, Jon. I never thought anything like this would be done with my maps, so it's really nice to see this! One thing I didn't know before watching the video was that the boss fights take place in separate areas from the main dungeon, so I suppose I'll have to amend my map with those.

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Map Requests / Re: JonLeung's Requests

« on: January 22, 2020, 12:06:11 PM »

I've been working on Dragon Warrior II on and off for the past year. I just have a few more dungeons to map out, then labeling can ensue.

Secret of Mana is also a game I've been thinking of working on for a long while. With all the hard work done thanks to Tropicon, arranging and labelling the maps should be a piece of cake.

And I see you're requesting the PC version of Ultima VI. Seeing that it will be 30 years old this year on June 1st, it would be a fitting time to have it all mapped out by then. Though listing out every item that can be picked up is going to be madness... I'll try mapping out a small area, like Cove, and see how crazy it gets!

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Maps In Progress / Re: FlyingArmor's Map Projects Present and Future

« on: January 10, 2020, 12:27:04 PM »

One game I didn't think I'd be finishing up is Lufia & The Fortress of Doom. I was going through the game capturing the enemy sprites for a sprite sheet I'm making and I noticed there were several areas I didn't bother mapping when I was working on this game ten years ago.

They were mostly shrine type areas like the four shrines that warp you to Doom Island and other areas where no chests or hidden items exist. From a gameplay perspective, I didn't think mapping those areas out would've been all that helpful to players looking for hidden items and such, so I suppose I skipped them for that reason. Well, many years later, and I'm much more likely to map out any area that's seen in-game, even if it's just for short cutscene.

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Maps In Progress / Re: Nosferatu (SNES) Mapping

« on: October 01, 2019, 03:01:54 PM »

Hey Robert. It's great to see new people contributing to video game cartography!

It's been about seven months since you have posted here, so I was wondering how far you've gotten with mapping this game? I'm curious because I've been watching a let's play of this game by the Japanese group "Ii Otona-tachi" for the past two months or so, seeing Taichou and Ossan die over and over again, and use up all their continues to get through all the levels on hard mode. I think I've made it up to part 42 and they've finally gotten to Nosferatu at the end of Level 6, though they didn't last long there.

Through watching their videos I got to see what a really amazing game Nosferatu is, so it'd be awesome to see your maps from that game make their way onto VGMaps. Those two maps you've shared thus far look great and I look forward to seeing the more complex level layouts found in later levels.

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Maps In Progress / Re: FlyingArmor's Map Projects Present and Future

« on: October 01, 2019, 02:43:16 PM »

Mapping for Shinseiki Odysselya is finally done (or rather it was two weeks ago)! Some maps had dragged on this project for more time than I would have liked, but at least it's now complete.

As for what to do next, I'll focus on finishing up a few of the mapping projects that I started but haven't completely finished up yet, such as Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar and Final Fantasy VII, before starting anything new.

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Maps In Progress / Re: FlyingArmor's Map Projects Present and Future

« on: September 14, 2019, 07:22:06 PM »

My co-worker's been twice recently and he says it's easy to get around in Tokyo without needing to know English.

I think you mean " without needing to know Japanese"?

My friends and I have been planning this trip since the beginning of this year, so I'm certainly looking forward to visiting and exploring that beautiful country. It's always been a dream of mine to go there ever since I became fixated on the Japanese language (through video games and manga), so I'm really excited to finally see that dream come true!

I've got a notebook of all the books and other stuff I'd like to get while I'm there, the bulk of it being books related to video games that are out-of-print for the most part. Although I have some things I'm set on finding, I'll probably find a lot of things I never knew existed and just can't resist, haha! But we'll see how it goes.

And of course, I'll be sure to write up a trip report or something to that effect afterwards.

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Maps In Progress / Re: FlyingArmor's Map Projects Present and Future

« on: September 14, 2019, 03:55:40 PM »

After my trip to Japan in October I'll definitely have the time to finally devote to working on the world map. Plus now that there's a concrete release date for FF7 Remake, that's help spur me on.

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Maps In Progress / Re: FlyingArmor's Map Projects Present and Future

« on: July 26, 2019, 12:51:15 PM »

Alright, I think a quick update is in order.

I'm still whittling away the remaining maps for Shinseiki Odysselya. I think I got about seven more maps to do and that should be it for that game. I've been submitting maps for it since January 2018, so it'll be nice to have this mapping project finally behind me.

I also submitted maps for Golf and Snow Bros. a few weeks ago.  They were pretty simple to capture and compile, so it's the least I could do to fill in some gaps in the NES Atlas. And speaking of filling in the gaps some more, I'm steadily working on Legacy of the Wizard, so that should be awesome to see once it's complete.

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Map Requests / Re: One request…

« on: April 16, 2019, 12:02:37 PM »

After much finagling with FCEUX, I figured out how to use those addresses to "teleport" myself around the world map to capture the inaccessible areas I couldn't capture before, as well as figure out how far away China is from Japan in-game. So thanks so much Zagato for bringing those memory addresses to my attention! I'll have the world map sent to Jon shortly and with that this request will be fulfilled.

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Maps In Progress / Re: FlyingArmor's Map Projects Present and Future

« on: April 11, 2019, 08:35:39 PM »

Not copyright, but trademark (though it's understandable that you confused them since they're confused all the time). And from what I could glean from the United States Patent and Trademark Office's website, all the uses Nintendo applied for trademark protection were simply for the word "TRIFORCE", and not the symbol itself.

Now as for The American Academy of Actuaries you had mentioned? Their trademark does indeed also apply to those three triangles as well, but they could only go after anyone using that symbol in conjunction with actuarial matters, not any other possible use (though I could be incorrect).

The closest match I could find to the three triangles in the "triforce configuration" in relation to video games was for YOGATRON, but the triangles are inverted, and the trademark has been dead since 2012.

So yeah, it doesn't look like my use of the triforce symbol is my fanart is actually infringing any trademark related to video games. The funny thing about the coordinators telling me to take down the "infringing" prints was that they did so about one hour before the convention ended, so I had those prints up for 95% or so of the rest of the convention anyway, so looking back, it wasn't a great loss. But still it's pretty ridiculous whichever way you look at it.

And as for the Final Fantasy VII world map, I did some searches for a few of the more unique place names (Midgar, Junon, Gongaga, etc.), and did not get any relevant matches. So I should be in the clear with that, though I wouldn't be surprised if the coordinators raise an objection to it.

I know they're trying to protect artists from possible lawsuits and legal action, but making artists take down pieces of work for hypothetical infringement is I think going a little overboard.

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Map Requests / Re: One request…

« on: April 05, 2019, 12:57:20 PM »

I'm back to report that I have the overworld map for this game mostly finished. The problem I've come across is figuring out how to walk through walls (or in this particular instance, walk on water) since there are a few areas that are very far away from the main islands of Japan that are difficult to place accurately if you play through the game normally. I should try again with the hacking to see if I can come up with something, but so far I've had no luck.

In the meantime, I suppose I could release what I have so far of the map, as rough as it is.

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Maps In Progress / Re: FlyingArmor's Map Projects Present and Future

« on: April 05, 2019, 12:41:40 PM »

I did make a tiny bit of progress some time ago, but haven't done anything with it since then. Basically, I just took the in-game map and traced around the coastlines of the continents and islands in a paint program. My next step is to print it out big on multiple sheets of paper, then painstakingly go through the game and draw what I see on that map.

Since Anime North is coming up at the end of next month, perhaps I can get it done before then to sell as a print to con-goers? I'd need to consult the organizers of the Comic Market (a.k.a. the artist alley) to see if that would be allowed, since they've become very strict when it comes to trademarks. They're so strict in fact that even the triforce symbol is not allowed in fanart (I found that out last year when I was asked to take down my two Legend of Zelda prints that depict shield designs, this being one such). So I wouldn't be surprised if they decide that the names of towns and places on the map would be considered trademark infringement, as ridiculous as that sounds.

But first I'd need to get the map finished before proceeding to that stage!