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Messages - Troy Lundin

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46
Maps In Progress / Re: Troy's Junk and Stuff
« on: June 07, 2012, 09:14:53 pm »
The Sword of Mana maps have been bugging me since they were finished. The main point of irritation comes from the scenes being incomplete. Some games restrict camera movement while others have the camera follow the actor no matter what. Games that restrict the camera have to have a way to tell when the camera should stop scrolling, right? Games will usually store this in an easy to find location where the value is the minimum or maximum coordinate allowed for the camera. Sword of Mana was just a bit different.

How Sword of Mana Is Different

Sword of Mana doesn't use a simple system for restricting camera movement, or at least that's what I thought after hours of perusing it's memory. For the life of me I could not find the values for the restrictive camera coordinates. Then, I noticed a pointer at 0201C98C. The problem with this pointer was that it pointed to the ROM portion of the memory. For those that don't know, if you change a value in the ROM portion of memory you actually change the ROM itself. If you are not careful you can permanently damage or corrupt your ROM. So, I quickly made a copy of my ROM and headed to the address being pointed to.

Upon arrival, I immediately noticed the pattern of bytes presented to me. The pattern told me that each "block" of code was 24 bytes in length. The blocks weren't too complicated looking, as some of the bytes were zeroes, meaning they didn't do anything. My brain being the way it is, I noticed another pattern in this specific block. There were two bytes, one was 0F and the other was 03. These values stood out because of the following: the scene I was looking at had minimum camera coordinates of 120 on the x-axis and 24 on the y-axis. See the correlation yet?

0F, of course, equals 15 in decimal. 15 multiplied by 8 equals... 120. Omg. Did I just find the location of the camera restriction? Let's check the other one. 3 multiplied by 8 equals... 24! Yes! I found it! Oddly, I had to edit the ROM directly but I'll take what I can get. By the way, the 8 from earlier is a very basic value in most things. I just it because the size of tiles in most games is 8 pixels by 8 pixels. So, in essence, 0F means 15 tiles from 0.

So, now that I found that I went in to capture the rest of the scenes. I set both values from earlier (0F and 03) to 00 so that the camera will be able to go to the very minimum point. When I reloaded the area, I could indeed move the camera past the previous restrictions (YES!) but another problem arose. The camera could now no longer move south as far as it could before. Weird. I took another look at the block in the ROM and checked out the next two values past 0F 03. They were 2C and 20. Using the method from before, I multiplied both values by 8 and came up with 352 and 256, respectively.

From this, I deciphered that the first set of values (0F and 03) determined the minimum tile the camera can move to. The second set of values, 2C and 20, determined the size of the area. Added together like so: 352 + 120 = 472, 256 + 24 = 280, these values determine the maximum tile the camera can move to.

Now, I already knew the total size of the area was 480 by 288 from before. The values I calculated seem to be 8 pixels off on each axis. For the second set of values, I figure if I set them to 00 it would mean one tile and not zero tiles. That actually gives me another tile (or 8 pixels) to add on the totals. Finally, I arrived at 480 by 288.

This is fantastic! I can now capture all the missing areas in each scene. :D

Here are some screens that show the values:


Example of the difference:

47
Maps In Progress / Troy's Junk and Stuff
« on: June 07, 2012, 09:14:06 pm »
This will be a depository of my junk and stuff related to VGMaps. Since my OCD won't let anything ever be finished, I decided to sort my projects by submission (green) or lack thereof (red). This ordering is likely to change in the future. :D


System   Game                                         Capture        Compiled   Tagged   Notes
(GBA)    Final Fantasy: Dawn of Souls (FF2)       388 /  388 (100%)    100%       90%    Thanks to Trop for compiling. Missing shop data.
(GBA)    Sword of Mana                              ? / 2221 (  ?%)    100%      100%    Still missing many Morning, Evening and Night versions.

(GBA)    Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance              27 /   27 ( 99%)     50%        0%    No object layer.
(GBA)    Final Fantasy: Dawn of Souls (FF1)       212 /  212 (100%)      5%        5%   
(GBA)    Final Fantasy IV Advance                 495 /  495 ( 99%)      0%        0%    Some scenes are missing the object layer.
(GBA)    Final Fantasy V Advance                    2 /    ? (  ?%)      0%        0%    Found a quite hack-y way of capturing this. Very tedious.
(GBA)    Final Fantasy VI Advance                 430 /  430 (100%)      0%        0%   
(GBA)    Golden Sun: The Lost Age                 324 /  324 (100%)      0%        0%   
(GBA)    Super Mario Advance 4                      ? /    ? (  ?%)      ?%        0%   

48
Maps In Progress / Re: (GBA) Final Fantasy: Dawn of Souls
« on: June 06, 2012, 10:58:20 am »
You want me to take them out?

No, I was just commenting on them. :D

Do you happen to know where the forest scene may come into play?

49
Maps In Progress / Re: (GBA) Final Fantasy: Dawn of Souls
« on: June 05, 2012, 11:55:43 pm »
The "single tree" scene, as I call it, just seems to be a placeholder for IDs that aren't used. Some games would freeze or just display black (or another solid color) for unused IDs. The other unknown scene (forest) may be from an in-game cut-scene of some sort. I haven't played through the game in years so I'm not quite sure.

50
Maps In Progress / Re: (GBA) Final Fantasy: Dawn of Souls
« on: June 05, 2012, 03:04:41 pm »
I swear the monster rooms were the worst scenes to capture. It was like, "Oh, look. It's a room that looks exactly like the others! I could just copy and paste or hit the capture button twice." Truly annoying. :D

51
Congratulations! :D

52
Maps In Progress / Re: Golden Sun II: The Lost Age
« on: May 29, 2012, 09:57:10 pm »
Hmm, haven't been in this thread in a while.

A couple posts ago I spoke of a snowstorm on the sprite layer that I couldn't freeze. It is indeed made up of many, many copies of a single sprite that move very quickly. I have attached a image of the sprite. Also, I have finished all of the scenes, besides the snowstorms (do they even matter?) and some backgrounds that I couldn't freeze.

53
Maps In Progress / Re: (GBA) Final Fantasy: Dawn of Souls
« on: May 29, 2012, 07:17:34 pm »
I believe the most time consuming part for most mappers is the capturing process. I believe the opposite is true for me. I can capture an entire game in a day or two if I don't take any breaks. With everything captured, the rest goes together pretty painlessly.

54
Maps In Progress / Re: (GBA) Final Fantasy V Advance
« on: May 25, 2012, 12:12:38 am »
Been slacking lately. I got myself hooked on newly released games and I have been neglecting everything else.

Here are a couple scenes I grabbed recently. As you can see, there are areas that aren't even finished. I guess they figured the camera would never go over there so why even put something there. Makes sense. Also, the scenes are definitely 1024x1024 pixels. It won't even loop around when I hit the edge. The character just stops. It's such unusual programming.


55
Maps In Progress / Re: (GBA) Final Fantasy: Dawn of Souls
« on: May 24, 2012, 09:11:43 pm »
I just noticed the first floor of the Dreadnaught doesn't have any NPCs on it. Looks like I overlooked something. :D

I'll look into it.

56
Maps In Progress / Re: (GBA) Final Fantasy: Dawn of Souls
« on: May 24, 2012, 01:53:30 pm »
Looking good. :D

57
Maps In Progress / Re: (GBA) Final Fantasy: Dawn of Souls
« on: May 22, 2012, 01:50:33 pm »
Looks good.

I not trying to be unreasonable, I just feel they should be accurate. Would be silly to think the doors in the destroyed town lead to the non-destroyed shops. :D


58
Maps In Progress / Re: (GBA) Final Fantasy: Dawn of Souls
« on: May 22, 2012, 01:32:06 am »
Ok, I guess I should step in before you get too much done.

Would it be possible to make the background color a dark gray or something? Pure white is terribly ugly. Also, there are separate scenes for Altair after it's destroyed. They are 012F, 0130, 0131, 0143, 0144. The normal ones are 00FD to 0101. They are different so maybe make a separate map for each version of the towns?

I know the scenes seem out of order in the list, but that is how they are ordered in the game code. Enjoy. :D

59
Maps In Progress / Re: (GBA) Final Fantasy: Dawn of Souls
« on: May 21, 2012, 11:54:06 am »
This is how they'll look then.  What do you think?
http://www.vgmapper.com/Tank/semitt%20falls.bmp

Holy bitmap load time!

Looks fine to me. It was fun capturing all the monster trap rooms. :D

60
Maps In Progress / Re: (GBA) Final Fantasy: Dawn of Souls
« on: May 20, 2012, 10:18:17 am »
Using letters would be fine. It doesn't matter much to me. All I wanted to do was rip the scenes, which I did. I just need someone to compile them into a format compatible with this website. I have tried to compile scenes into a proper map, but my OCD does not allow me to be happy with the result. So, I ask to wonderfully talented community to do it for me. :D

So, in a roundabout way, I am saying just use your best judgement. Compile it as you would if you had ripped the scenes. Enjoy. :D

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