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Maps Of The Month / 2020/08: Blasphemous (PC) - Eishiya

« on: July 31, 2020, 08:44:40 PM »

Blasphemous

For this month's "Maps Of The Month" featurette, I wish to draw your attention to Eishiya's Blasphemous (PC) maps.

You are The Penitent One, the sole survivor of the massacre of the "Silent Sorrow".  Wielding a sword and mastering abilities earned by Relics, you seek to free the world from a curse known as "The Miracle".  Will you succeed, or die trying?  Well, you will die.  Again and again...

Blasphemous (stylized in lower-case as "blasphemous") is a Spanish indie game that features impressive art.  There is a variety of locales, each drawn with such detail, including lots of religious iconography.  There are definitely some strange and disturbing sights.  Yet it's beautiful, in that eerie way, where you don't want to look away, even when you should be creeped out.  Eishiya has laid out all of this horrific splendour into maps that can help you - and The Penitent One - to navigate the cursed land of Cvstodia.  Who wouldn't want help in a world like this, as you take on challenging sidequests and titanic bosses while you scour the land for useful Relics?  (Eishiya won't help you avoid getting torn in half by a giant baby, though - that's on you.)

Eishiya is clearly a fan of indie "Metroidvania" games, having also mapped Momodora: Reverie Under The Moonlight and Catmaze in recent years, and earning "Maps Of The Month" honours for those games as well.

So to recognize the effort put into mapping this gorgeous nightmare, Eishiya's Blasphemous (PC) maps will be known as VGMaps.com's Maps Of The Month for August 2020.

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

« on: July 24, 2020, 06:58:36 AM »

For The Addams Family: Pugsley's Scavenger Hunt, it will be interesting to see how you do Stage 4: Dragons Fire, especially the background/foreground.  This is the one that takes place in the attic but is seen through Granny's crystal ball...

Ultima VI: The False Prophet does have a bazillion objects, doesn't it?  As a game I just happened to find on our first PC (my dad got it used), it was one of the aspects of the game that just blew me away.  With so many objects that can be picked up, used, and interacted with, it really opened my eyes as to how big games could be.  Now open-world games are kind of a bit TOO commonplace, but back in 1990 or whatever, this was a revelation to me.

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Map Requests / Re: JonLeung's Requests

« on: July 22, 2020, 09:56:59 PM »

Cleeem has submitted the maps of Equinox!  It joins TerraEsperZ's world map from the other day, and that's another game checked off.  Yay!  Great work!

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Map Gab / Re: Equinox SNES maps

« on: July 22, 2020, 09:52:40 PM »

And... the maps are up!  Great work, Cleeem!

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Map Gab / Re: Equinox (SNES) - Isometric overworld & enhanced dungeons

« on: July 15, 2020, 09:14:53 PM »

Well, TerraEsperZ, your map is now up!

I noticed you put the date of completion on the map - 2020.07.14, yesterday's date.  You know why July 14 is interesting?

The only other Equinox map we have is from Tropicon, which is a shot of the world as it appears in the intro.  Though it wasn't put up on the site until July 18, 2013, it appears that I received it on - you guessed it - July 14, 2013.  Exactly seven years in between the intro map and the full-sized map.

Pretty neat coincidence.  (Maybe you guys should have completed or sent them in to me on March 20 or September 22 or 23 to take it one step further...)

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Map Gab / Re: Equinox (SNES) - Isometric overworld & enhanced dungeons

« on: July 15, 2020, 11:45:17 AM »

I remember thinking that Jet Grind Radio - one of the very few Dreamcast games that I ever played and finished - actually looks cool on the GBA.  Ocean's licensed games are usually crap but for some reason I actually like The Addams Family on the Super NES (and though irrelevant to this topic, I even like its sort-of-sequel - no, not Addams Family Values, which I haven't played, but Pugsley's Scavenger Hunt - which I believe is a game based on a cartoon based on the '90s movies based on the '60s TV series based on the 1938 comic...)  And I sure hope you finish Drill Dozer; that's a great Nintendo game that's fallen off the radar, other than an assist trophy in the Super Smash Bros. games.

But Shantae is getting a physical Switch release as well as a physical Game Boy Color rerelease (!!!) courtesy of Limited Run Games!  That's got to be exciting, right?  Perhaps motivational? 

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Maps In Progress / Re: maps By Hellcio

« on: July 03, 2020, 10:49:46 PM »

Hello Hellcio.

I normally would like submissions emailed to me so that I don't miss them.  I guess I do see them here now, but I don't think I saw the first post with the Andro Dunos stages back in May...  However, those are so small, do you have them at the proper size?

Did you map all of these yourself?  A couple of these say they are ripped by "Elcioch".  Almost an anagram of "Hellcio" but not quite.  Is that you?  What name should you be credited by?

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Maps In Progress / Re: eishiya's Maps.

« on: July 03, 2020, 05:40:22 PM »

NO WAY!!! :___)

I'm so happy, and humbled, and... WOW! I just found out that an user by the name of @DerpTree made a full map for for @VGMaps of all @BlasphemousGame areas captured directly from the game... and they look BEAUTIFUL! Thank you! https://t.co/smERdSnCci #LevelDesign pic.twitter.com/yh7xigAvIV

— Enrique Colinet (@Baxayaun) July 3, 2020

https://twitter.com/Baxayaun/status/1278979278483357696

Looks like Enrique Colinet (who has worked on Blasphemous) likes your maps!  Good job!

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Map Gab / Re: Equinox SNES maps

« on: July 02, 2020, 11:03:37 AM »

SQUEEE!  I don't get too excited by much as often as I'd like, but I am looking forward to seeing complete maps of these.  To be honest, I haven't made a serious attempt at playing this game, but I love how it looks.  Who knows?  I might try again when some maps are ready. 

Guillaume Saint-Amant's map of Kâstleröck in Solstice is incredible.  TerraEsperZ, I wish you the best of luck in achieving your goal of coming up with Equinox maps to match.  It seems like something already well within your skills and it sounds like you desire to do it.  Probably only a matter of time, rather than of ability or motivation.

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VGMaps Social Board / See something familiar in this picture?

« on: July 02, 2020, 06:45:08 AM »

Hmmm...

Also, not sure how to feel about this yet, to be honest.

Flattered?  Probably.
Angry?  Not really?  Not as much as I thought?

EDIT: I contacted her on Instagram, as I initially thought she was selling the dresses and wanted to know if she would at least mention VGMaps.com.  Turns out I misread that she is talking about the game's Kickstarter going live, not her dress.  Her full response:

hey there!! This is a wonderful design, thanks for bringing this to my attention! I actually bought this from someone off of Poshmark, a second hand clothing app, and the tags are from Koala Fashion. I'm very sorry if they used your print without your permission, but I'm just a clothing collector that likes to play dress up - I absolutely will not be trying to sell this design, I wouldn't even know how! I hope you have a wonderful week ☺️

Well, Koala Art & Fashion doesn't appear to be selling it anymore.  Probably for the best as I don't need a repeat of the whole Super Kid Icarus / Flip Industries fiasco.  I wouldn't have expected compensation but if it was still selling, and selling well, it would be nice if they mention VGMaps.

I guess in any case I should be flattered.  Made this morning interesting...

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Maps Of The Month / 2020/07: Rolan's Curse (GB) - Shiny

« on: June 30, 2020, 08:33:28 PM »

Rolan's Curse

For this month's "Maps Of The Month" featurette, I wish to draw your attention to Shiny's Rolan's Curse (GB) maps.

The evil emperor Barius has cursed the land of Rolan.  As a heroic (and generic) knight, it's up to you to stop Barius and lift the curse!

That's not much of a story, but not every fantasy game has to be a sprawling epic.  This top-down action-adventure is often compared to similar-looking Zelda games, but Rolan's Curse is very short and sweet.  There are only four chapters, with the fourth one much shorter than the first three.  Unlike the legendary game series its appearance evokes, this is a more linear experience and can be cleared in one sitting.

Even so, there may be some areas where maps can be handy, and VGMaps.com has got that covered - twice - with marked and unmarked maps of every chapter, so you won't feel alone in your quest to defeat the evil Barius, with Shiny, one of our resident Game Boy cartographers, as your guide!

But maybe you aren't really alone if you have a Game Link Cable!  Rolan's Curse has a feature that not many people have utilized - this journey can be done with two players!  Maybe it hasn't been played this way often enough because the game is not hugely popular to begin with - which is a shame, as it is simple and charming, the very epitome of pick-up-and-play Game Boy fun.

So to recognize the effort put into mapping a game cursed with obscurity, Shiny's Rolan's Curse (GB) maps will be known as VGMaps.com's Maps Of The Month for July 2020.

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Map Gab / Re: Equinox SNES maps

« on: June 30, 2020, 07:13:41 AM »

That's impressive.     How do you make the custom shadows?  I mean, in general.  I imagine that takes a lot of work, even before trying to line them up in isometric space...

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Map Gab / Re: Dark Wizard (Sega CD)

« on: June 22, 2020, 08:56:28 AM »

I've seen Excel maps, but they're usually just using each cell, made into a square shape, colored in, so each one is a single pixel.

But these are interesting.  I can see how they can be done, but I can see why it wouldn't be the first thing one would think of, considering the hexagons.

I just tried making them in Excel by making diagonal lines across cells.  It works, but requires six cells per hexagon (though you can merge the center two, if that matters), though I'm not sure how to go about fully colouring them, unless there's a way to apply two colours to a cell.

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Maps Of The Month / Re: 2013/01: The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time (N64) - Peardian

« on: June 13, 2020, 07:47:49 PM »

Peardian's maps are still loved and utilized!  They appear in this recent video at 3:00.

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Maps Of The Month / Re: 2020/05: Trials Of Mana / Seiken Densetsu 3 (J) (Super NES) - xyzbilliu

« on: June 04, 2020, 04:27:34 AM »

Thanks for asking, G.E.R.  You might be the first person on the forums to even ask me about the background images since I started doing them in February (and the second person ever (the first being John Sesia who emailed me about them shortly after I put up the first one)).

The background images are not related to the Maps Of The Month, and are meant to be related to the season or a holiday in the month more directly.  So far, this is what I've used:

February - Virtual Boy Wario Land - Level 6 by Trebor Almasy (red (after I applied redscale), hearts, begins with the letter V, all relating to Valentine's Day, also used on the Virtual Boy page)
March - The Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past - Lost Woods (Shade) by Tropicon (green, relating to St. Patrick's Day, also used on the Super NES page)
April - The Legend Of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX - Koholint by Osrevad (egg, relating to Easter, also used on the GB/GBC page)
May - Little Nemo: The Dream Master - Dream 2: Flower Garden by Chiasm (flowers, relating to the rhyme "March winds and April showers bring forth May flowers" - first one not also used on another page)
June - Soul Blazer - Grass Valley Highlands by Rick Bruns (nice summery sort of area, but not too much like summer just yet)

Not sure if I will reuse them all every year (Easter will be in March in 2024, so that definitely changes things there) or find new ones.  Well, now that I think about it, most likely I will reuse the ones that I really like and replace them if I find something better.  If I end up having a pool of a few options that I really like, I could see about randomizing them.