Topics

76

VGMaps Social Board / Happy late birthday to me (November 5th)!

« on: November 11, 2007, 01:17:24 am »

I can't believe I forgot to mention my birthday here, but then again my old computer made even browsing the net a chore so...



Well, I've reached the 28th mark, hopefully wiser for it but probably not



Thanks to the fact that we're all very good buddies at work, I was taken out yesterday everning for the occasion. Nine of us first ate and drank a bit (more than that in my case ), and afterward those who were still there at 10h00 decided to take me to a nude dance club. Considering the G rated nature of this board, I won't say anything except that I woke up pretty ashamed of myself this morning. Oh, it was very fun, but in a "dumb drunk guys at a strip club", which is something I'd always thought I was above of.



I received a few presents last weekend when I was with my family. I got a very trippy yet interesting graphic novel called "Alice In Sunderland", the Transformers movie DVD, and a few other more utilitarian gifts. Oh and of course, my new computer which is one of the most expensive birthday present I've ever given myself.



Anyway, go ahead. Send those good wishes my way!



(God, I'm such an attention whore. Someone punch me already...)



---

"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



B*tch, meet reality. Reality, meet b*tch. - Me

77

VGMaps Social Board / Back online with a new PC; kinda lost...

« on: November 10, 2007, 09:44:10 pm »

Well, I'm finally back online, and with a brand new computer to boot, the first major update I've made in about 7 years.



Of course, I'm also kinda lost. A brand new keyboard means keys that aren't exactly in the same place as before, which is a bit of a pain right now as I'm a big keyboard user. And I'm also running Windows Vista now, which is still a strange and scary place. I don't know where half the stuff is, I don't know yet how to optimize it and get rid of that annoying program control thingy that screams at me whenever I run something that touches the registry. Also, since it's an HP PC, it's loaded with software I don't plan to use and don't know how to remove. Fun times ahead I'm sure.



But still, at least I'm finally current with PC technology, except for a decent graphics card which I'll look into in the coming weeks/months.



I'm eager to transfer all my old files to my new hard drive and see which of my programs and emulators work in Vista and which don't.



Oh, and if anyone knows about a good Vista tweaking site, please let me know



---

"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



B*tch, meet reality. Reality, meet b*tch. - Me

78

VGMaps Social Board / I think my HD just crashed (again) :(

« on: October 25, 2007, 12:14:49 pm »

Long story short (because I'm away from home for the rest of the week), I think the new hard drive I installed a few months ago (when my old one died ) has died too. Problem is, the warranty has been over for a long time, as I kept it in its box for over a year before installing it. The thing won't boot and just gives me an "Err. Lecture Disque" (Disk Read Error) after the POST screen, and since I noticed this morning right before leaving, I have no idea what I'll be able to do.



Honestly, I think I'm over caring at this point. The first time it happened, I flew into a rage about how unfair it was and for all the stuff I had lost after so many years. No, today I was more  tired than anything.



This time, I hadn't made a backup a few days prior to the accident, so I again lost a lot of stuff, stuff I had collected and prepared to back up on CDs like all my favorite ROMs, game soundtracks and such, and of course all my maps. It also means that unless I can get my data back, I lost some of those too, though thankfully, there's little that I had done that I hadn't posted in a finished form on the board, so there's at least that.



I'll keep you guys posted about this.



---

"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



B*tch, meet reality. Reality, meet b*tch. - Me

79

VGMaps Social Board / I'm leaving for France on Friday for 2 weeks!

« on: October 02, 2007, 10:13:44 pm »

I don't know if I've ever mentioned it to anyone outside of Revned, but I'm finally taking my vacation starting Friday October 5th. Me, my parents, my aunt and a family friend will be spending two weeks in the Alsace region near the France-Germany border.



We're renting a house and a car, as well as buying train passes so that we can pretty much go wherever we want to. I fully intend on experiencing the infamous Oktoberfest for the first time while there, as well as sample some of the local beers (instead of the obvious wine, which I don't like). We'll also going to visit Strasbourg as well as a friend of my mom which lives a few hours away in the mountains.



This should be really fun, and I'm eager to meet the people there. I only visited Paris until now, and the Parisians are famous for being real assholes to anyone who doesn't speak perfect French their way, something we experienced ourselves. A waiter kept playing dumb when a fellow traveler asked for a "Coke Diète" and then a "Coke Light", before the waiter suddenly exclaimed loudly "Oh! Monsieur veut un Coca Lit!" ("Oh! Mister wants a Coca Light" only with 'light'  being pronounced like 'lit', because the French are notorious for being either unable or unwilling to learn any sort of English accent).



The rest of the country hates them too, and apparently they love our Quebec French so at the very least, we'll hopefully make them laugh



---

"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



B*tch, meet reality. Reality, meet b*tch. - Me

80

Map Gab / Battletoads (NES)

« on: August 15, 2007, 10:53:42 pm »

This is a sort of companion to my "Battletoads And Double Dragon" thread. I'm really not sure if I'll be mapping the whole game since several stages are tough enough to play as it is even without worrying about mapping them. Level 10 - "Rat Race" and Level 11 - "Clinger Wingers" are almost impossible for me to beat even with savestates.



Anyway, I've already mapped two of the easier stages, Level 1 - "Ragnarok's Canyon" and Level 4 - "Arctic Caverns" so I'm posting WIP versions for now. Additional maps may or may not be posted later on.



As usual, I only add the items, bosses and objects that are already there as you encounter them, which is why the first stage is almost empty (all the pigs come out of the ground or through holes in the mountains). It also means that in the fourth stage, the blocks of ice that appear from behind you as you progress through the stages are not included, but those you meet head-on *are*.



Level 1 - Ragnarok's Canyon





This level was pretty much straightfoward. Aside from the screen scrolling upward and downward and bit at certain spots, it was easy to do. I filled in the empty spots to get a fully rectangular map, then I did what I could to best represent the boss. The thing is, when you initially meet it, you only see part of its leg since it's so big. So using the PPU viewer in FCEUXDSP, I extracted all the tiles for the Tall Walker boss (enabling me to show a bit more of it) but that wasn't enough to reconstruct it completely. So instead, I then mapped the actual area that you see when fighting the boss from his point of view (in red) and adjusted the position of the info on its display and its blasters to suggest that the whole area is seen at once from its POV. And since we get to see more of the stage after beating it, I added that part after the boss view.



Level 4 - Arctic Caverns





This level took a while to map because it actually has a parallax scrolling background, or at least as close to it as the NES could get. This has forced me to take screenshots of the whole level, and then to remove by end all of said background. It took several hours but it wasn't so much hard as it was long, since the background is actually made of identical tiles that are "scrolled" internally, thus the tiles to remove were always exactly 8x8 pixels.



---

"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



B*tch, meet reality. Reality, meet b*tch. - Me

81

Maps In Progress / [Experiment] Ecco The Dolphin (Genesis)

« on: August 13, 2007, 09:16:55 pm »

As you've all probably guess, I've started using the

>[Experiment] tag whenever I've done maps that are complete and don't feel like doing the whole game.



In any case, I missed the original frenzy for the Ecco games way back then since I only ever had a NES. I've only recently tried playing it but diagonal controls just won't work in Gens (either with my joypad or keyboard) which means that it's incredibly hard to pull off the simplest of manoeuvers and thus makes the game impossible to enjoy.



In any case, I've found the intro stage pretty enough to try and map it, which proved difficult with the background because it doesn't tile well and wasn't tall enough. My workaround is a bit obvious in the middle where the corals are mirrored both vertically and horizontally, but it doesn't look too bad. I also didn't add any of the dolphins or fishes aside from Ecco because none of them seem to have a definite starting point.



I've done the stage both before and after your pod gets kidnapped by the Vortex, because the actual stage changes a bit even though it wasn't intended. I've discovered that both versions are actually side by side on the actual map, and using  the debug menu, if I entered an X coordinate that went beyond the edge of the "before" stage, I appeared in the "after" one. Anyway, the rock formations on the bottom of the stages are offset from one another. Bad coders, bad!



When I find the time, I might add in a header and submit them rather than let them be wasted on my HD.



Ecco The Dolphin - Level 1 - Home Bay (before) *EDIT 2017/02/05* See post attachments



Ecco The Dolphin - Level 1 - Home Bay (after) *EDIT 2017/02/05* See post attachments



Also, as a bonus, I found both Ecco games for the Sega CD and I find the soundtracks really interesting in an ambiant way so I'm including them here if anyone cares. They go a long way in making both games feel more than just that, games



*EDIT 2017/02/05* Links removed because they've been dead for years



---

"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



B*tch, meet reality. Reality, meet b*tch. - Me

82

Map Gab / Battletoads & Double Dragon - The Ultimate Team (NES)

« on: August 13, 2007, 07:23:05 am »

This is a little side-project I've been working on for the last week or so. I've always wanted to map the first NES Battletoads game to finally obtain pixel perfect maps but it's just too big and complicated a project right now for various technical reason, so I settled for its sequel instead



I'm posting the maps here for a final round of comments and suggestions before submitting them to the site so don't hesitate to speak your mind. Note that I only included "static" minor enemies on the maps, meaning those that are already there waiting for you when you scroll over to them. Enemies that appear after the screen has stopped scolling aren't shown. I've made exception for major enemies such as the Doormen/Windowmen of Doom and General Slaughter since I see them as an important obstacles, and of course bosses.



Level 1 - Tail Of The Ratship





This level was pretty easy to map, but since the scrolling is automatic and goes up and down along the way, I extrapolated a little and filled the blanks to get a clean rectangular map. I didn't include the Mechno-Mitts despite them being obstacles because I think they take up too much space and hide the main map too much.



Level 2 - Blag Alley (2-1)





This level is split up in three parts only because the discontinuity between them is obvious and because the third is way larger than the first two. If you've played the game, you know that the floor has a neat 3D effect to it that I had to remove to be able to map it properly. At first I simply remade it but so that the effect would span the whole stage and not just the screen, but I changed my mine considering how large 2-3 was.



Level 2 - Blag Alley (2-2)





Level 2 - Blag Alley (2-3)





Now you see what I meant by "larger" (it is indeed 27200 pixels large), and I couldn't even break it up because there are no natural "breaks" like the various Turbo Tunnel races in the first Battletoads games. As you can see, I've had to alter the floor to remove the 3D effect, but I also had to adjust the position of all the obstacles to match the new perspective. There's a rather long empty section in the middle where a number of enemies riding bikes attack you one after the other who don't have a starting point as such; they just attack you the moment you defeat the previous one, so I just defeated them as fast as possible to prevent the section from looping needlessly. Also, the second batch of bonus pods seem to vary in number, so I put in 24 of them because that's how many I got when playing the stage as perfectly as possible, but a lower number is also possible.



Level 3 - Ropes 'N' Roper (3-1)





Level 3 - Ropes 'N' Roper (3-2)





I haven't put a starting point for the player here or in the next part because all three parts of the level flow directly from one to the other, and the only reason I didn't put all of them together is because the file resolution would be so big neddlessly that Paint couldn't save it anymore. If it looks too weird, then say so; I'll add in a Rash sprite.



Level 3 - Ropes 'N' Roper (3-3)





Level 5 - Missile Mayhem





Level 6 - Shadow-Boss Showdown





In this stage, that shadow standing in the light at the beginning is the Shadow-Boss himself, and as you move foward you can see him follow you in the background shadows before coming out to fight you. I kept it in addition to the revealed Shadow-Boss himself because I felt it looked cool, but if it looks bad to have him twice I'll probably remove it.



Level 7 - Armageddon II - The Rematch





All comments, *any* comment are appreciated as always.



---

"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



B*tch, meet reality. Reality, meet b*tch. - Me

83

VGMaps Social Board / Best video game movie ever: Minesweeper - The Movie!

« on: August 11, 2007, 08:50:53 am »

Watch it and laugh



http://www.destructoid.com/minesweeper-the-movie-37770.phtml



---

"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



B*tch, meet reality. Reality, meet b*tch. - Me

84

Mapping Tips/Guides / By default, FCE Ultra doesn't draw top and bottom 8 scanlines *furious*

« on: August 09, 2007, 09:19:53 pm »

After messing with FCE Ultra's Video settings, I realized that by default, the drawing area (which can be changed) starts at the 8th scanline and ends at the 231th, meaning that it only displays 224 lines out of 240. This means that there's a big chance that most of the maps I've done so far for the NES are missing some tiles on the top and bottom >



My compulsion for "as perfect as possible" maps is telling me to go back and correct them all but... I really don't feel like going back and checking/correcting them all. At least I can easily correct something I'm working on right now without much hassle...



Has anyone ever run into something like this? I think I remember Revned realizing something similar for his Mega Man maps but he didn't feel like going back to add a few rows of pixels to all the maps and I can understand this



---

"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



B*tch, meet reality. Reality, meet b*tch. - Me

85

Map Gab / Gradius: The Interstellar Assault (GB)

« on: July 19, 2007, 10:53:39 pm »

And it's time for another game in my recent "let's map Gradius" phase, namely Gradius: The Interstellar Assault. So far, I have the first three out of six stages mapped, and along with the map I'll also be doing some commenting.



First off, as I mentionned previously, this game is an anomaly for the series since Gradius games are known for recycling level themes/enemies/bosses from previous games, and this one has none of that. Instead, it's a game with an actual (implied) story, where you can see the actual connections between levels. On the downside, it's a bit more classic and none of the stages are really remarkable in themes or execution. Can't have everything I guess.







Stage one is the longest one in the game and starts with a bang: the intro shows your ship escorting some battleships which are promptly shot down by huge energy beams. Then the actual stage starts with a high speed chase through an asteroid field as the attacking cruiser races behind you. You eventually enter a big planetoid and the pursuing vessel eventually crashes into rock walls as it's too big to fit through.



After that, you make your way through the caves which at first are full of gothic ruins and ruined statues of knights and angels. After that, the cave walls turn organic and the next area is full of large mushroom structures and alien nests. At the end, you face two brain-like alien creatures hiding inside a huge statue. Once they're finally dead, you leave the planetoid from the back only to get captured and emprisoned inside the ship that chased you earlier.







Stage two is pretty unremarkable and consists of making your way through the alien ships which is full of turrets and flames and what's worse, you lose all your upgrades at the start! Thankfully, your prison is full of breakable glass domes where you can manage to pretty much repower your ship almost to the max before facing what I guess could be the ship's engine. Whatever it is, it spins and attracts you while electricity arcs along the height of the screen trying to zap you. Once it's destroyed, the ship blows up and you escape.







Stage three is (yet another) asteroid field, and although it's not as stressful as the first stage,  it's full of rocks with enemy generators, attacking satellites as well as little ships you'll push asteroids toward you. At the end, you'll face a bizarre contraption which is basically a fusion of the classic Gradius Core ship boss and those annoying erupting volcanoes. So it alternates between shooting beams at you and throwing rocks while erupting (and for some reason, the rocks behave as if the individual volcanoes had their own gravity well since the rocks arc back down/up depending on whether it's the top of bottom volcano eruption). And in one of the coolest level transition in the series, once the boss is finally defeated, it doesn't blow up. Rather, since you were both descending toward a planet during the fight, it starts to break up on re-entry, slowly desintegrating from the outer edges down to the core while you, as the player, are obviously protected for plot convenience.







Stage four is rather dull, and is simply the surface of some alien planet with lots of enemies and a city visible in the background. The boss is a collection of giant guns that keep firing missiles and energy balls at you and after destroying it, you travel down a long vertical chute leading to...







Stage five, which is the typical final base with lots of enemies and turrets. At the end (or rather, the middle technically), you'll face this wall that fires energy balls moving in a zig-zag pattern as well as this giant laser beam that spans almost a third of the screen in height. Once beaten, you simply have to avoid all the panels flying at you while you escape the base.







Stage six can be either very short or very long since the part with ships wreckage keeps looping. You're chasing the final boss now which is, disappointingly, this little spinning ship that drops mine behind it, and it won't stop until you've hit it enough. Afterward, it will start sending missiles and these wide vertical beams at you and once it's destroyed, you don't even get any kind of graphic ending screen.



...I know nobody cares about all this stuff, but indulge me okay ?



---

"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



B*tch, meet reality. Reality, meet b*tch. - Me

86

Map Gab / Nemesis (GB)

« on: July 09, 2007, 10:50:03 pm »

This is the second Gradius game I've mapped, and since the maps aren't that big, I'm posting them all inside a single file, like Fabio Albergaria did with his MSX Nemesis maps. I'm not sure if I'll be sending them this way to JonLeung or not; I tried the same thing with Gradius II but the file felt a bit too big.



There's not much to say about this game; it feels like a remix of the first Gradius game with much better graphics (especially the bosses) but below-average gameplay.



Enjoy!







---

"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



B*tch, meet reality. Reality, meet b*tch. - Me

87

Map Gab / Gradius II (NES)

« on: July 05, 2007, 01:39:35 pm »

I know it sounds weird to post this here since it's no longer a work-in-progress, but at least people will notice it more here



In short, due to my tendency to almost never complete things, I decided to see if I was going to finish mapping this game before talking about it. Well, it's done, so I'll be sending the maps to JonLeung soon, in addition to posting them here.



For some reason, I went on a bit of a Gradius trip recently, and upon finding the only map on the site really disappointing, I wanted to do better. Maybe I'll map Gradius and Lifeforce too, and maybe the Gameboy games as well, but I'm not sure yet.



Stage 1:





This stage is impressive thanks to all those big stars and the fact that the central area loops vertically. Afterward, the rest is reminiscent of Stage 3 of Lifeforce where you must avoid deadly solar flares.



Stage 2:





This stage is clearly inspired by H.R. Giger's designs, from the skull and tube motifs everywhere to the giant bio-mechanical skull at the end.



Stage 3:





This stage is actually a fusion of two stages from the arcade game and it shows. First, a classic rocky area with volcanoes followed by a crystalline cavefilled with crystal fragment bouncing off of each other.



Stage 4:





The classic stage with giant Moai statues atacking you. First, they just shoot at you, occasionally rising from a flat surface. Then they turn red, attack faster and even turn around to face you constantly.



Stage 5:





The now classic boss rush. In order, the Core from Gradius, the brain, tentacle ship and giant cell from Lifeforce and finally something called the Armored Core, a nightmare that keeps firing tons of missile at you while you try to shoot its core while the armor spins around it. Nasty.



Stage 6:





This is the enemy base, where everything shoots you and then some. First you face tons of turrets and bases, then the high speed portion starts where you have to avoid the walls and dead-ends and finally you face another portion of the base where the floors and ceilings rise and fall, panels fly at you and you finally face a giant wall covered in weapons and then a giant mechanical spider whose legs you must avoid at all cost.



Stage 7:





This is it, the final organic stage. It's not too hard; just shot through the vines and avoid the growing masses from the top and bottom of the screen before facing the final boss, a giant flesh-less head. Kinda disgusting.



Any comment is appreciated as always.



---

"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



B*tch, meet reality. Reality, meet b*tch. - Me

88

Gaming / SMB3 oddities - Yeah, I'm slow...

« on: June 27, 2007, 08:36:13 pm »

Almost two decades after its release, I just realized a few things about Super Mario Bros 3's world maps, things that I must be the last person in the world to notice



As you can see on this montage made from the maps of the SMB3 Project:







Desert Land:

This one is more me being puzzled over the roman numeral 3 on the right-most screen. I've always wondered what significance it might have had, aside from me imagining that it's simply the developers telling you "watch out, you're close to World 3!"



Water Land:

I just realized that the small island near the middle with two mushroom houses is shaped like a mushroom itself. Also, the shape of the islands with the palace always hinted at something I couldn't quite get, but I'm starting to think that they might be shaped kinda like the islands of Japan, but in a blocky 8 bits style.



Giant Land:

The main land is shaped like a koopa with a giant head!



Pipe Land:

I still don't understand how I could have missed that the land masses are shaped like three pipes.



Anything else that someone might have noticed that I haven't?



---

"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



B*tch, meet reality. Reality, meet b*tch. - Me

89

VGMaps Social Board / Next TF series: Transformers Animated!

« on: June 25, 2007, 01:22:22 pm »

Fans of Teen Titans and other recent superheroes cartoons, behold! In the new upcoming Transformers cartoon series (finally produced in the U.S. after  several years of pure crap), the Autobots will be battling both Decepticons and evil humans as a sort of superhero team in a near future Detroit where robots are common place.



As for the rest, to paraphrase Rainier Wolfcastle: "My eyes! The goggles do nothing!"







Read about it here



---

"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



B*tch, meet reality. Reality, meet b*tch. - Me

90

Map Gab / Maniac Mansion (Famicom)

« on: June 05, 2007, 11:37:38 pm »

This will be a little distraction since I don't have much time to map this week, and since I heard that a very different version of Maniac Mansion had been release on the Famicom (Japanese NES) two years before our version, I just had to find it and map it. Maybe I'll do the PC version one day, like I thought about doing a few years back. That,  or maybe the Deluxe fan-made game with 256 colors instead of 16. Anyway.



I should be finished with this either tomorrow or the day after. If anyone isn't familiar with this older port of the game, it looks bad. *Really* bad. Most rooms are now contained in a single screen, and they are now pretty much featureless except for the larger furnitures and items. Walls are mostly barren, and all the characters look like dinky little playskool figures.



About a third of the game was mapped today, and in truth the biggest hurdle is in noting how each item is named in japanese so I can find them again to use them. Oh, and it took me about 15 minutes to figure out where all the action verbs were located now, since their number is intact but they all changed place in the interface. Everything else is just point and click, thankfully.



---

"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



B*tch, meet reality. Reality, meet b*tch. - Me