Messages

61

Map Gab / Re: Equinox SNES maps

« on: June 30, 2020, 10:42:19 am »

*A lot of work* is the right answer!

So far, I've had to use a few different techniques to create the shape of the shadows.

Those spikes from Dungeon 3 are identical to those found in another one (can't remember off-hand which) except these have no shadows because in this dungeon, spikes can hang in the air instead of always being on the ground. So I just took the shape of the shadow from the identical spikes that do have one.

For round pillars and square blocks, I'm basically using the upper "north" and lower "south" edges for the exact shape, and use the surface to determine the exact placement for that block in relation to the tile grid. It's hard to explain but I've made a few templates for grid alignment for every type of blocks I've used so far. Some things are highly simplified such as the caged skeletons in Dungeon 1 having a full, round shadows.

After that, I basically have to rebuild the room in as many horizontal layers as required for the shadows to make sense. The game itself builds a room from 3 or 4 basic blocks (cage, pillar, block, spike, etc) then builds a single composite layer that is displayed over the empty floor/wall layer. If there are multiple elements in a given room that would project shadows over one another, I have to determine which elements are located at which position and height, then replicate each horizontal layer separately and add in additional layers in-between for the shadows with simple homemade masks. It's long and complicated but strangely exciting to do!

The shadows done this way are far from perfect, but they give a better understanding for the layout at a first glance. I still need to determine a good way to represent blocks that can be moved, blocks there are invisible, blocks with a conveyor effect, blocks that fall as soon as you enter the room, etc.

62

Map Gab / Re: Equinox SNES maps

« on: June 29, 2020, 10:35:49 pm »

Here are the custom shadows tests I've done so far :



I'm hoping to do the whole game like this but I fear that some dungeons like Quagmire might be almost impossible to depict this way because of all the vegetations...

63

Map Gab / Re: Equinox SNES maps

« on: June 26, 2020, 07:22:30 pm »

From what little I've seen, it seems to be pixel accurate but the colour values are slightly different because older emulators like Snes9x don't convert the SNES's 15-bit BGR colour values to 24-bit RGB the same way more recent emulators like BizHawk do.

Basically, the 0-31 colour range is converted either to 0-248 (Snes9x) or 0-255 (BizHawk). With the newer method, pure white has a value of 255,255,255 instead of 248,248,248, which is close but not quite enough.

You can see for yourself if you check the individual pixel colours. Lower values are identical but start being off by a few point the higher they are:



I myself had to do some work because the Mode-7 overworld map graphics couldn't be captured by BizHawk because of some programming quirk in the way Equinox displays the map. I had to use a ZSnes savestate with a utility called vSnes to capture the graphic from it, then a custom, GUI-less, barely functional QB64 program to convert the colours to the right format.

See what I mean when I say I'm obsessed with details ?

64

Map Gab / Re: Equinox SNES maps

« on: June 26, 2020, 05:27:58 pm »

Hi Cleeem and welcome to the forum! As a fellow French speaker (from Quebec), it's nice to see new faces around here as the forum is really a lot less active than it used to be!

Thank you for the offer but I'm *way* too finicky about details (like spacing and exact color values) to ever use someone else's maps as a base. It's why it typically takes me years and several restarts to finish mapping any one game!

I only really need to submit the overworld map at the moment which is practically finished and with your set, the whole game will be on the site. My dream version of the dungeon maps, if I ever finish them, will no doubt take me *years* because I'm hoping to do kind of the same thing that Guillaume Saint-Amant did with his Solstice map, namely to make them easier to read by adding proper shadows under every floating object. I did a few rooms as a test and it looks neat but I'm not sure how feasible it will be to do the whole game like this.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to seeing your maps (I've only done the basic capture of the first three dungeons myself) and I hope you stick around!

65

Gaming / Re: An unusual map

« on: June 25, 2020, 06:33:30 am »

Please tell me that's not your channel, otherwise I might have to scold you for not giving us a slow overview of that map's detailing!

You might know (or not) that back in the 80s, Nintendo Power magazine had a promotion where they gave you a free copy of Dragon Warrior with a full subscription, which is how I obtained the game. I'm intimately familiar with this map, enough so that it took me only as few seconds to realize the map wasn't oriented properly for the majority of the video. I *really* wish we had gotten a better closeup of it because the way they handled altitude seemed really cool.

In any case, thanks for sharing!

66

Map Gab / Re: Dark Wizard (Sega CD)

« on: June 22, 2020, 06:20:43 pm »

I actually started mapping Solstice in 2010 but as is common for me, after capturing about 65% of the game and playing all the way through, I was both tired of the project and no longer curious about the game's world after having seen all of it. So I never finished it and another mapper, Guillaume Saint-Amant, submitted his own (his only contribution to the site, sadly) that was just amazing and much better than anything I could have done myself!

And yeah, I've heard about Landstalker several times over the years but I already have so many games to play and map, I can't justify adding yet another one, especially since I most likely won't finish 90% of the maps I've started of the years. But thanks for the suggestions anyway!

67

Map Gab / Re: Dark Wizard (Sega CD)

« on: June 22, 2020, 05:30:16 pm »

I *love* isometric perspective in everything but I'll be honest, I haven't played many games using it simply because they tend to be of genres that I hate (tactical RPGs, RTS, etc). I only played a few through emulation over the last decade that were more action-oriented.

Equinox has fascinated me ever since I read about it in an old issue of the Nintendo Power magazine and especially the overworld. Sadly, many early SNES emulators didn't render the overworld correctly and I only recently switched to a more accurate one (BizHawk) that allowed me to map it properly. I've been putting off making a thread about it for a few weeks because I was hoping to be further along on the dungeon maps but if I keep waiting, I know I'll just put it aside and eventually, someone else will end up mapping it instead. I guess I should get on that soon, right?

As for Landstalker, I'm sure I would have loved that game back in the days but I have to admit, isometric games are more fascinating for me when I'm actually exploring and discovering them. Once they've all been mapped, the mystery is gone and I tend to quickly lose interest. Heck, I've recently realized that I regularly buy games mainly because I'm curious to see how the game world fits together and to see awesome-looking levels and once I've seen everything, I don't even bother finishing them!

68

Map Gab / Re: Dark Wizard (Sega CD)

« on: June 21, 2020, 09:32:38 pm »

Interesting and kind of impressive! I never would have thought that Excel could be used to make maps!

How old are these actually? I'm curious to know because my very first game maps from about 26 years ago were lost more than a decade ago when I threw out old of my old floppies and I've always regretted not backing them up for nostalgia's sake.

69

Maps Of The Month / Re: 2020/02: Sonic Advance (GBA) - TerraEsperZ

« on: June 04, 2020, 04:19:40 pm »

I'm actually a lot more comfortable using Lua scripting when available in an emulator. I remember reading a Cheat Engine tutorial once about searching for a memory value that was referenced by a pointer and that just broke my mind. With Lua scripting, provided the values you need have a static location instead of a dynamic one, you can make a pretty powerful script.

With this game (and the other two), my script allows me to decouple the camera from Sonic's position with one key, move the camera around in fixed increments in both directions with two others and basically freeze all moving platforms and objects in their initial position/state with yet another key (since they all follow a small counter that keeps looping back to 0, freezing that counter at 0 effectively positions everything at the very start of a stage).

Now don't get me wrong, Cheat Engine has been a big help in other situations (such as moving the camera in Makai Toushi SaGa in the WonderSwan emulator Oswan) but I'm just not experienced or knowledgeable enough to use it properly. If I had a real need for it, I would probably make the effort but since I don't, well... I've always been somewhat lazy...

70

Gaming / Re: What are the best emulators for directly capturing video?

« on: May 29, 2020, 11:37:06 pm »

I honestly have no idea myself but I know where you might find a satisfying answer...

You should ask around on the TASvideos Forums. Given the focus of the site on tool-assisted speedruns, many contributors there could give you good recommendations for whatever system you're trying to capture video from. I bet their pet emulator BizHawk is very good for that purpose although I've never tried making a video with it.

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Message Board Announcements / Re: 2018-01-12: Forums are up again, thanks to bustin98!

« on: May 15, 2020, 05:49:52 pm »

I always worry though that someday you won't be there to save us

72

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

« on: May 12, 2020, 09:31:01 pm »

I like the way you depicted the pressure plate effects, as it's immediately obvious what they do.

As for the dungeon levels, I'm a bit torn between depicting the layout logically (8 x 8 tiles with wrap-around) and physically (as they would appear if mapped traditionally). This way is more consistent with every level being the same size and uses space better, but the layouts are bit harder to grasp just by looking at them. It's a matter of preference I guess and faced with a similar choice, I'd probably be partially unhappy with both depictions and just give up on the project wholesale.

Kudos for sticking with it, which I imagine must not be easy considering how old and outdated that game is nowadays!

73

Map Requests / Re: JonLeung's Requests

« on: April 25, 2020, 10:13:53 am »

Okay so I hope I'm not promising in vain but I think there's a good chance I might eventually check another request on that list *eventually*...

I don't want to bog down this thread with a ton of unnecessary details (I *do* tend to rant a lot) but I've been working on mapping Equinox (SNES) for the past few weeks. Long story short, this game finally forced me out of my comfort zone and I started using the BizHawk emulator which has made mapping this game possible. I've found a way to render the Mode 7 overworld in an isometric perspective with pixel-perfect accuracy (better than the actual game) and adding sprites over it as I go. I only have one dungeon done, but a lot of the time was spent experimenting with presentation so the rest *should* go faster and smoother but with me, you never know...

So yeah, I'm looking forward to sharing my progress in a dedicated thread .

74

Map Gab / Re: Looking for things visible only by zooming out (like zelda dungeon swatiska)

« on: March 28, 2020, 02:35:57 pm »

I know I used to have more cases like that in mind, but the only one I can remember is for Solar Man's stage in Mega Man 10. The stage itself is shaped like a series of three steps, going up-right-up-right-up-right. In the background, there are a small number of diagonal patterns/pipes in each segment and if you look at the stage as a whole, these diagonal lines are perfectly aligned throughout the whole stage. It's such an insignificant detail and yet, someone still spent the time to make sure everything was lined up just right.

75

Maps Of The Month / Re: 2020/02: Sonic Advance (GBA) - TerraEsperZ

« on: February 12, 2020, 04:21:41 pm »

Thanks for the compliment eishiya!

This project, like a few others, was a long time coming since I ended up completely re-doing it in 2011-2012, which was several years after my incomplete first attempt (2004-2006).

I honestly didn't think I would ever attempt this again but I changed my mind when I learned that the VisualBoy Advance-ReRecording emulator supported Lua scripting. A bit of reading online made me realize that Lua was incredibly similar to other programming languages I learned back in my IT courses in college. After playing around and doing some tests, it turned out that all three Sonic Advance games all feature very similar engines that are easy to exploit when it comes to moving the camera around and freezing all moving objects in their starting spots.

Without my custom Lua script, I wouldn't have been able to accurately capture everything that's inacessible and I would have been forced to "fudge it" like in my first attempt. Over the years, I've become a lot more obsessed with accuracy and I prefer to stick only to what's actually present in game (with the occasional exception like Sonic 3D Blast where the isometric maps are so full of bad tiling and holes that I've elected to correct and/or fill in what's messed up or missing).

I wish I had the time to do the second and third games as well but their maps are so much bigger than this game (which still took me so long to fully capture) that I doubt I'll ever get to them. Still, one out of three is better than nothing, right?