Topics

1

Map Gab / Secret maps

« on: May 07, 2022, 08:19:17 am »

Recently I programmed a level viewer for Pocky & Rocky (SNES) and was delighted to find that the final level, Stage 6: Battle With Black Mantle has an unused area not seen in this (presumably) screenshot-stitched map by MagnetiC.

this is my output:


the only rooms you can actually see in-game are these highlighted here:



So here's the unused corridor:


and its background:


and my best-guess estimates of the three middle rooms


Very interesting! There are unused enemy graphics in the bank assigned to that level, but we weren't able to spawn them anywhere sadly. I was doing analysis with Random Talking Bush and they found this interesting bit too:

There's traces of an unused stage in the first Pocky & Rocky as well by the looks of it.
Setting the selected byte to "6" on the level select and moving the selection up or down makes "Stage 7" appear.

Can't be selected regardless, and forcing the stage value to be anything higher makes it default to Stage 6.
...but if you change it during the map transition...

Which is definitely different than the actual Stage 6's.

Apparently the Black Mantle's Revenge is making the game crash. 😛
Haven't gotten to parsing the level data for either game so I don't know if any actual unused stages exist yet

This is all pioneer work, by the way, so you won't find this info on the Cutting Room Floor wiki 
Nonetheless, how do you feel about "secret maps" in general? Super Mario Bros. 3 might be the most known about, or at least I think a lot of people know about the unused levels in the game... Do you know of any cool unused maps? What's your favorite?

2

Map Gab / Umihara Kawase [COMPLETE]

« on: July 21, 2009, 09:28:14 am »

Animated maps of all 50 levels will be posted in this thread. I aim to post one map per day.

- 00



Comments are welcome

[4]

3

Maps In Progress / Donkey Kong Country maps revisited

« on: May 03, 2008, 10:53:12 am »

You might remember my very first topic at Map Requests where I needed the Jungle Hijinxs map and kinda succeeded thanks to Fearnavigatr's excellent effort.



However, this time I'm into a more technical thing. I'm talking about a method contrary to screenshot-mapping; writing a program that does the maps for us. Allow me to elaborate.



Donkey Kong Country's level format is ridiculously simple. A level is always* 64 tiles wide and 16 tiles high, is sequenced in columns of tiles, one tile being 32 x 32 pixels. Take a look at the very first column of 'Jungle Hijinxs', thats level array begins at 0x190000.

81 40 67 00 78 00 80 00 68 00 49 00 EA 00 EB 00 EC 00 ED 00 EE 00 EF 00 F0 00 F1 00 F2 00 00 00



And since it's 2 bytes per tile, let's isolate to words:

81 40 | 67 00 | 78 00 | 80 00 | 68 00 | 49 00 | EA 00 | EB 00 | EC 00 | ED 00 | EE 00 | EF 00 | F0 00 | F1 00 | F2 00 | 00 00



The very first tile, '81 40' means literally 'Tile 81, flipped horizontally'. Why? Because the first byte, 81, or whatever it might be is always just the tile. You can change it to any value, and the desired tile will change. The  second byte, 40, will be read nibble-by-nibble;

The first nibble, 4, must be read in binary.

Binary table is the following:

Flip Vertically || Flip Horizontally || Ghost || Ghost

If a bit is set, the action is true. 4 is 0100 in Binary, so...

DON'T Flip Vertically, DO Flip Horizontally, DON'T make a ghost, DON'T make a ghost.

(Ghost means that the tile looks normal, but you have no interaction with it. You just walk/fall through it. No idea why it must be defined twice, and who gives a damn anyway since it doesn't serve a purpose in mapping.)

The second nibble, 0 in this case means what bank to use. 0 means use bank 0, 1 means use bank 1, etc...



Now we know how the levels work, but where are the tiles read from? That's when I kick in. I've ripped tilesets of most DKC level types. Below are the links to the Jungle tileset banks 0 to 2.

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p82/Raccoon_Sam/Jungle_0.png

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p82/Raccoon_Sam/Jungle_1.png

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p82/Raccoon_Sam/Jungle_2.png



In short, the program works like this:

1. Read two bytes from desired location

2. Check bank and load corresponding PNG

3. Check the tile byte and print the corresponding tile to the array

4. Check for Vertical or Horizontal flip and apply if true

5. Read next 2 bytes and repeat process

Once 16 tiles are printed below each other, the first column is done, and another column will be started.

Repeat until 1024 tiles are printed.

I've attached a demo movie if you don't get it (requires Flash Player .





So yeah, if you're a software developer, be sure to look into this. I'm more than glad to help and will provide all the necessary tilesets if this project gets anywhere.

4

Map Gab / Rockman & Forte: Mirai Kara no Chousen Sha!

« on: February 28, 2008, 06:50:37 am »

Roughly translated 'Megaman & Bass: The Challenger from the Future!'

It's a wonderful Megaman game that got released on the Bandai WonderSwan, which is notable for being a Gameboy-esque handheld but with Three Layers instead of the Gameboy's normal two, one for sprites, one for foreground. Another interesting feature of the system is the feature of turning the system 90 degrees to play some levels in a 'vertical mode'. WonderSwan Color was released soon after, and instead of being a slight evolution of the WonderSwan like Gameboy Color was to Gameboy, WonderSwan Color possessed the same graphical capabilities as SNES, which was quite advanced for the time.



Enough of that, though.. I bring you maps from the game; behold the introduction level. It is optimized as much as possible and is very small, as seen in the attachment.

I also ripped the icon to be displayed on the WonderSwan page:

http://xs224.xs.to/xs224/08094/chousensha908.gif



More to come.

[- Level Image exporting for all levels and current level, allows users to quickly show off their latest work without worrying about cutting and pasting into MS paint.]

5

Maps In Progress / Lazy Shell is nearing its release

« on: January 18, 2008, 08:10:59 am »

It is a Super Mario RPG Level editor, below is some tasty copypasta from http://acmlm.no-ip.org/board/thread.php?pid=73948



"A couple unique features:

- Level Image exporting for all levels and current level, allows users to quickly show off their latest work without worrying about cutting and pasting into MS paint.

- Image importing into tileset is a possible feature in the works

- Level data Importing/Exporting for all levels and current level. Easily allows hackers to work in teams, and pool their work into a single rom, or just post levels online for others to use.

- Preview system for Monsters, Battle Formations, Dialogue and more make it extremely easy and convienient to edit these aspects of the game without having to load an emulator after every change and find it in game to see how it looks.

- Aspects of the GUI are able to be hidden while not being used in order to gain a larger view of the main level

- Fully integrated notes system which loads automatically and is specific to each rom. This allows the user to keep track of their progress without having to worry about other windows, and keeping track of their notes separately. This is great especially the user decides to take a break from editing. They can just make notes about their current progress, what they edited last, and their plans for each of the games aspects in their respective notes packages. Having it fully integrated into the editor will undoubtedly be a very handy feature, and if you decide you dont want to use this feature, you can just disable it in the settings and not be bothered anymore."



I bolded out the most the ever-so-useful feature for us mappers.. Can't wait! Check the thread, seriously.



Please note that I'm not calling 'dibs' on SMRPG maps. I just wanted to inform you all that it is coming and someone else might want to. I'm also aware that Peardian's maps exist... It's just that there are some parts in the game that can't be accessible by anyone without hacking.. This is the chance for flawless maps of SMRPG.

6

Mapping Tips/Guides / Abe's Oddysee / Exoddus map format

« on: December 24, 2007, 06:27:31 am »

I recently got the Demo Executables from Oddworld.com and after installing I noticed the folders consist .lvl files and after opening them in Tile Molester, I recognized some figures and after some tweaking I got very clear images. Not perfect, but good.

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p82/Raccoon_Sam/Abehmm1.png

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p82/Raccoon_Sam/Abehmm2.png

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p82/Raccoon_Sam/Abehmm3.png



So the levels aren't arrays made from tiles, but single images, so no assembly requires (except figuring out how to get rid of the vertical lines, heh).



So yeah, if anyone has the original PSX game, go ahead and insert it to your CD Drive and check for .lvl files. Check 'em out and see if you can find anything.

2-Dimensional, 80 x 30 tiles, 16BPP RGB.

7

Maps In Progress / Kirby's Dream Land 2

« on: August 10, 2007, 09:53:09 am »

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p82/Raccoon_Sam/1.png

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p82/Raccoon_Sam/1-1.png

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p82/Raccoon_Sam/1-2.png

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p82/Raccoon_Sam/1-3.png

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p82/Raccoon_Sam/1-Boss.png



\o/

8

Mapping Tips/Guides / Extremely useful trick for anyone on a Mac, using emulators by Richard Bannister

« on: August 10, 2007, 09:48:34 am »

Instead of saving a million separate screenshots to clog your desktop up, you can use the key combination Command-C to copy the screenshot to your clipboard! Paste into AppleWorks and repeat until you're done.

Just wanted to point that out since just about every Mac Application has the Command-C option, but it is very often mis/non-functioning. This trick saves a lot of time and brains.



In a nutshell; Instead of taking quick screenshots, push Command-C and paste to the image editor of choice.

---

If you're interested on hacking Donkey Kong Country, contact me via AIM. My screen name is "Raccoon Sam C"

9

Map Gab / Zelda II Overworld maps

« on: July 20, 2007, 03:39:00 am »

http://xs117.xs.to/xs117/07295/DeathMountain.png <- Death Mountain

http://xs117.xs.to/xs117/07295/EastHyrule.png <- East Hyrule

http://xs117.xs.to/xs117/07295/WestHyrule.png <- West Hyrule



Mega thanks for Trax for writing ZIIGE which allowed these to be done. Thanks, Trax!!

---

If you're interested on hacking Donkey Kong Country, contact me via AIM. My screen name is "Raccoon Sam C"

10

Map Gab / Gimmick!

« on: July 18, 2007, 02:12:09 pm »

This game is an extraordinary gem I found today. It is visually very appealing, and it has a special built-in chip that adds four extra sound channels to the normal 4, thus creating an incredible audio pleasure. The game is about a green dude who walks around in a some kind of a dream-world and kills stuff with stars. Simple concept and wonderful design. Nonetheless, I present you the first level of Gimmick! (Warning, 2048 x 760 pixels)

http://xs217.xs.to/xs217/07293/Gimmick.png



I am going to do an animated GIF of the whole level with its background animations just because they're so damn awesome. Allow me to elaborate with a 4-frame animation of only one screen:

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p82/Raccoon_Sam/Snap.gif

^Now that's what I call a SMOOTH animation!

---

If you're interested on hacking Donkey Kong Country, contact me via AIM. My screen name is "Raccoon Sam C"

11

Map Requests / Donkey Kong Country: Jungle Hijinxs

« on: June 24, 2007, 07:53:34 am »

I know it's very awkward me coming here and as my first post coming right here and demanding a Map, so I apologize for that in advance.

The map I'm in need of is the first level of Donkey Kong Country, under the name "Jungle Hijinxs". Below are some notes I gathered.



-The Foreground (And just about the only thing I really need to be ripped) is in Layer 0.

-The Background palmtrees are in Layer 1. I don't really need these at all, and it'd be frustrating and time-consuming to rip it aswell.

-The HDMA Mask is in Layer 2. It's useless and varies on your X and Y position, and ripping them would take much time and you can turn off HDMA Emulation anyhow (If you're on SNES9X, it's the key 0)

-There is nothing on Layer 3.

-Sprites are on Layer 4. I don't require these either.



I'd really appreciate any effort put in this, seriously. I'm not doing this because I just enjoy looking at the maps, but it's because I'm working on a ROM Hack of Donkey Kong Country, and modifying levels without a proper reference is utter, utter pain.

If it helps, Donkey Kong Country games rely heavily on a 32 x 32 Tile Grid, instead of the usual 16 x 16 Grid which is used in most SNES games.



Thanks you so much for anyone who is putting any effort or even consideration to this.

Thank you.