16
Maps In Progress / Desert Strike (SMS)
« on: October 28, 2009, 03:02:12 pm »
Open world = easy to map; lots of bullets = hard to map...
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17
Message Board Help / Broken posts from the old board
« on: September 25, 2009, 01:27:51 pm »
I'm not sure if there's any point reporting these, but maybe it's useful.
https://www.vgmaps.com/forums/index.php?topic=516.msg6436#msg6436
This post is quoted in a reply soon after it, showing a line that was lost ("I hope you're playing...").
https://www.vgmaps.com/forums/index.php?topic=516.msg6436#msg6436
This post is quoted in a reply soon after it, showing a line that was lost ("I hope you're playing...").
18
Map Gab / [Completed] Lucky Dime Caper (Master System)
« on: September 25, 2009, 01:37:40 am »
I made a little progress on this so I thought I'd post it. Stage 3 is proving to be a bit of a killer - the sloping sections result in an enormous image. The Stage 3 image attached is only half-done, there's another downhill slope still there, and already it's making my computer slow down to work on it.
19
Map Gab / Pac-In-Time (Game Gear)
« on: September 16, 2009, 04:45:05 pm »
A few hours of hacking to get "walk through walls" (and free movement), and then some autostitching. The sprites are messed up.
20
Maps In Progress / Super Boy 4 (SMS)
« on: June 06, 2009, 04:44:20 am »
Another Mario rip-off from Korea...
Unfortunately the ROM is corrupted in stage 1-2 so I'll leave it at this until we can re-dump it.
Unfortunately the ROM is corrupted in stage 1-2 so I'll leave it at this until we can re-dump it.
21
Message Board Help / VGMaps RSS feeds
« on: May 19, 2009, 07:36:15 am »
Obviously this site is from 1995 so there's no RSS, but there are scraping services out there, and http://feed43.com is a really nice one. So:
http://feed43.com/vgmaps.xml - Front page updates
http://feed43.com/vgmaps-forums.xml - Forum posts
Add them to your RSS reader (e.g. Google Reader) and enjoy.
If the forums change, or whatever weird way the updates page is generated is changed, then these will break. Also, they're publicly editable so someone could screw them up. But it's nice to have RSS.
http://feed43.com/vgmaps.xml - Front page updates
http://feed43.com/vgmaps-forums.xml - Forum posts
Add them to your RSS reader (e.g. Google Reader) and enjoy.
If the forums change, or whatever weird way the updates page is generated is changed, then these will break. Also, they're publicly editable so someone could screw them up. But it's nice to have RSS.
22
Maps In Progress / NBA Jam (GG)
« on: February 03, 2009, 01:26:57 pm »
That's the entire game mapped
23
Message Board Help / "Auto Pager" settings for VGMaps
« on: January 26, 2009, 09:55:49 am »
Auto Pager is a Firefox extension that auto-loads the next page on lots of websites, turning them into "infinite pages" (the next page loads at the bottom as you scroll down). You can import this to make it work on this site:
Edit: out of date, see below.
Code: [Select]
<autopager>
<site><urlPattern>https://www.vgmaps.com/forums/*</urlPattern>
<guid>F24C4D6E-2E74-65FD-A503-21BA-0D19-9C71</guid>
<margin>1</margin>
<owner>Maxim</owner>
<quickLoad>true</quickLoad>
<published>true</published>
<contentXPath>//div[@id='content']</contentXPath>
<testLink>https://www.vgmaps.com/forums/index.php?page=1&topic=687</testLink>
<linkXPath>//a[@class='menu' and (contains(text(),'Next Page') or contains(text(), 'Last Page'))]</linkXPath>
<desc>VGMaps.com forums (GF++)</desc>
</site>
</autopager>Edit: out of date, see below.
24
Map Gab / Super Mario Land laser etched laptop
« on: January 22, 2009, 03:41:15 am »
You probably saw this already, it's been all over the tubes.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/46429967@N00/sets/72157612666668835/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/46429967@N00/sets/72157612666668835/
25
Map Gab / Pac-Mania (SMS)
« on: January 03, 2009, 03:38:16 pm »
Again, I probably won't do more of this. It'd be quick to map, there's only 5 levels as far as I know, one of which is a secret level.
26
Maps In Progress / James Pond II: Codename RoboCod (SMS)
« on: December 25, 2008, 05:37:10 am »
Because it's Christmas, a Christmas-themed game. No idea if I'll finish it.
27
Mapping Tips/Guides / Program to automatically save images from the clipboard
« on: December 02, 2008, 02:10:05 am »
Some emulators only support taking a screenshot to the clipboard, not to a file. This will automatically save all clipboard images to files.
http://www.smspower.org/maxim/forumstuff/saveclipboardimages.zip
You will probably want to pause it when you're in the image editor.
http://www.smspower.org/maxim/forumstuff/saveclipboardimages.zip
You will probably want to pause it when you're in the image editor.
28
Mapping Tips/Guides / How long does it take to make a map?
« on: November 25, 2008, 11:06:34 am »
Of course, the answer is "it depends". But since writing my autostitcher I've pretty much given up on making maps without it, because I'm convinced that it is hugely faster.
Old process:
1. Play game
2. Take screenshots roughly every half-screen-width-or-height, possibly with extreme use of hard pause/frame advance if the game is fast-moving
3. Open screenshots in Paint Shop Pre in groups of 30 or so
4. Ctrl+C to copy, Ctrl+Del to close and delete from disk, and then (Shift)-Ctrl-Tab to get to the "map" image
5. Ctrl+E to paste
6. Mouse to erase the bits I want to get rid of (sprites, mainly)
7. Go back and re-screenshot as needed to patch it up, also edit things to look good (eg. fill in inaccessible gaps)
With this process I'd guess it'd take an hour or so to map a decent-sized level.
New process:
1. Play through game, trying to make sure I see every part of the level, and avoid getting a predominantly blank screen (which the autostitcher can't handle very well)
2. Autostitch, watching how it goes and tweaking the parameters until the stitch is fast/reliable
3. If the stitch is hard (lack of detail on-screen), doing stitches of the parts that work and merging them together by hand
4. Go over and edit out/fix up sprites that are left on the stitched image
5. Hacking/rescreenshotting/reautostitching as needed
6. Edit to perfection
This seems to produce a map in 20-30 minutes. If I'm being anal about adding enemies, with the exact correct animation frame, then it'll add more time on to both methods.
One way I can check up on this is to look at the times when I "live post" my progress; for example, on Chuck Rock II it seems it took me 25 minutes to completely map a boss and a 4096x288 stage, PNGOUT, upload to Imageshack and type in the link/pic tags to post it as #006. For Micro Machines II, it took me 21 minutes to map a 2432x3432 level for post #030.
Are these times consistent with what others are doing? Am I really slow because I'm not using l33t MSPaint skillz?
Old process:
1. Play game
2. Take screenshots roughly every half-screen-width-or-height, possibly with extreme use of hard pause/frame advance if the game is fast-moving
3. Open screenshots in Paint Shop Pre in groups of 30 or so
4. Ctrl+C to copy, Ctrl+Del to close and delete from disk, and then (Shift)-Ctrl-Tab to get to the "map" image
5. Ctrl+E to paste
6. Mouse to erase the bits I want to get rid of (sprites, mainly)
7. Go back and re-screenshot as needed to patch it up, also edit things to look good (eg. fill in inaccessible gaps)
With this process I'd guess it'd take an hour or so to map a decent-sized level.
New process:
1. Play through game, trying to make sure I see every part of the level, and avoid getting a predominantly blank screen (which the autostitcher can't handle very well)
2. Autostitch, watching how it goes and tweaking the parameters until the stitch is fast/reliable
3. If the stitch is hard (lack of detail on-screen), doing stitches of the parts that work and merging them together by hand
4. Go over and edit out/fix up sprites that are left on the stitched image
5. Hacking/rescreenshotting/reautostitching as needed
6. Edit to perfection
This seems to produce a map in 20-30 minutes. If I'm being anal about adding enemies, with the exact correct animation frame, then it'll add more time on to both methods.
One way I can check up on this is to look at the times when I "live post" my progress; for example, on Chuck Rock II it seems it took me 25 minutes to completely map a boss and a 4096x288 stage, PNGOUT, upload to Imageshack and type in the link/pic tags to post it as #006. For Micro Machines II, it took me 21 minutes to map a 2432x3432 level for post #030.
Are these times consistent with what others are doing? Am I really slow because I'm not using l33t MSPaint skillz?
29
Map Gab / Chuck Rock II (SMS)
« on: November 22, 2008, 02:10:39 pm »
This may well be another game I never get inspired to work on ever again, but for now I'm exercising my autostitcher and hacking skills (wrote me a moon jump hack that makes it mappable).
30
Mapping Tips/Guides / Mml Stitcher
« on: November 07, 2008, 05:27:28 am »
http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=467902
I don't think this is released but it looks like something I was thinking of writing, only better. It's kind of like my autostitcher but for human-made screengrabs, relying on you to drop it in roughly the right place and then it "snaps" to the perfect position.
I don't think this is released but it looks like something I was thinking of writing, only better. It's kind of like my autostitcher but for human-made screengrabs, relying on you to drop it in roughly the right place and then it "snaps" to the perfect position.