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[Ultima: Quest of the Avatar]

Been a li'l while since I last updated this.

From the start of this year, I finally got the dungeons for Ultima: Quest of the Avatar (NES) done. Thankfully the dungeons in this version were great abbreviated compared to the PC and microcomputer versions, so capturing all graphics and arranging them wasn't a great burden (well, once I settled on what the format for these maps was).

Another game I just finished yesterday (and should be up some time today) is Tenshi no Uta: Shiroki Tsubasa no Inori (SFC). This game was a nice break from what I had to do for Dragon Quest VI, haha. It was far smaller in size, and I barely had to worry about transparent layers, which I've found over the years can screw up the colours of the maps if one isn't careful.

And while I'm at, I may as well mention Attack of the PETSCII Robots for the Commodore PET. I was a little surprised to see it generated a new page on this site, but maybe I shouldn't be, since it is a rather obscure platform for games. While this game spawned around 20 or so ports (VIC-20, C64, MS-DOS, PSP, SNES, Sega Genesis, Apple II, Amiga, and many more!), the PET version is the original version, so it seems fitting to have that be the version available on VGMaps first. I intend to also map the MS-DOS version as well, but the PET comes first!

I think I should also mention that I didn't map these with the usual technique of taking screenshots; I instead wrote a few Pascal programs that extracted the graphics and maps from their respective files and put them into PPM files, which I could then take into Krita or Photoshop and do the rest from there. Once I had gotten the programs just right, it was amazing to see the map images get dumped in a matter of seconds, as opposed to taking at least 20 minutes per map with the screenshot method.

It'd be nice to extract the maps and graphics from other games on the PC like this, but I don't know if the file formats would be nearly as straightforward as the ones for this game were. I can poke around I suppose.

Thanks so much, mechaskrom, for your feedback!

I had to resort to a Sokoban solver as well for a few puzzles just so could continue playtesting the rest of the stages in a timely manner, haha.

Although they're not present in this beta version, I do plan on adding more story elements throughout the stages, in the form of inscriptions, just so my game can stand out a little bit from the more blatant clones.

Also, thanks for actually taking the time to rate every puzzle! I have a feeling most playtesters haven't bothered even to read the readme file (which is why I stressed it here in the initial post), so your contribution is most invaluable in that regard.

For the last year and a half or so, I've been working on and off on my own clone of the puzzle game Sokoban aimed at MS-DOS machines. My ultimate goal is to create a JRPG for MS-DOS, but since that would be far too ambitious for an initial hobby game programming project, Sokoban seemed like the perfect type of game to start out with due to its sheer simplicity.

Anyhow, I thought I'd bring it to people's attention here to see if anyone would like to participate in the second beta testing phase for it. I'm mainly interested in what people think about the difficulty (or lack thereof) of the puzzles, but if anyone manages to find some game-breaking or cosmetic bugs while playing through it, I'd definitely like to know about those as well.

Here's the download link: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/whjvatds2b68id60dr42t/Crater_Beta2.zip?rlkey=q55ss7kvsfrlpi47dmw95euvx&st=ih1jp3xn&dl=0
(Sorry for Dropbox's shenanigans; you should be able to download the file without having to sign up for a Dropbox account.)

All the details about what I'm expecting from play testers are contained within the README.TXT file in the zip file, so please be sure to read that before playing.

Looking forward to what you all think of it!

Okay, no worries! That's good to hear it didn't turn out to be nearly as massive as you first thought.

Looking forward to see how they all turn out!

[zanazac( at )protonmail.com]

Hey Yelseyking! 

I've decided to take on a new project. Dungeons & Dragons: Warriors of the Eternal Sun, for Genesis. A game I played a long time ago, as a kid, but never actually *finished*. It's kind of like... I dunno, "Ultima 6 meets Eye of the Beholder", I guess? A few large, sprawling overworld maps with turn-based battles, and first-person dungeons with action-based fighting. The overworld maps would be ripped directly, of course, whereas I'd map out the dungeons manually.

That game looks really cool! I especially like the military projection that's reminiscent of Ultima VI and VIII. When I first encountered it playing Ultima VI for the first time, I found it to be really strange, but it grew on me over time. It's also a really smart way of showing all sides of a building while still sticking to a tile grid system for graphics.

Got started on it properly last night. The dungeon maps are going smoothly, and won't be a problem, but the overworld maps may be an issue... I don't know if it's my antique image editor (Paint Shop Pro 5... yay for turn of the millennium software!) or just my aging PC in general, but I don't think I can do a *full* overworld (if an image's dimensions are too large, I get an "out of memory" error when I try to save). I've seen huge maps here before (e.g. FlyingArmor's massive 16k*16k Ultima 6 overworld maps), so I was wondering... I can rip smaller chunks of the map, and if I did, could someone else here with the means combine them into one large one? Thanks!

When I worked on the Ultima VI overworld map you spoke of, I had to break it up into four quadrants when building it up, because my PC was otherwise severely underpowered for such a gigantic image. When bringing them all together, I think I had to export them as separate image files because having the current quadrant plus the gigantic target file open at the same time would've been impossible. I even had to ask someone else to optimize the PNG because my machine didn't want to coöperate with such an onerous task, haha.

I wouldn't mind helping you stitch the chunks together into a single image. The PC I have now is far and away much better equipped than the previous one (having 16x more RAM certainly helps), so whenever you're ready, you can send them to zanazac( at )protonmail.com and I'll put them together for ya!

Please. Don't go there. I'm 100% human. None like that are around. But we must stay protected, though.

Haha, just checking.

If you're really human, then you're really good at controlling your emotions, unlike a certain someone that was active many years ago demanding us to work on Looney Tunes games. Some of us gave the slightest pushback, and he exploded with rage. It's rather hilarious now looking back on it all these years later. 😆

You're very spot-on for valid points. I don't want to be too demanding on anything.

Should I decide to do mapping myself, well, I'm sure I'll have fun doing it. What I'd use and do for mapping, in terms of tools and techniques, that's something I've not yet thought of where to start. Not that it is difficult or anything.

After reading all your responses on this forum over the past few days, I'm starting to think you may simply be an AI bot... 🤔

OK, I understand your reasons and yes, its true you've not heard of it and you're not interested. I only saw some videos about the game because I felt I would inform the community.

I'm only new around here. Thanks, but I ain't yet a skilled mapper. I don't know anyone else who could do it yet.

Well, you won't ever get skilled if you never try, right?

I know most of the low-hanging fruit is long gone on the more popular consoles, but there's still thousands upon thousands of games that're within reach for a newbie mapper to practice on. There's also nothing stopping you from mapping games that have already been done if what you're after is getting better at mapping. You could map out Super Mario Bros. for instance. While Jon probably won't accept them as proper submissions, you can post them here on the forums and ask for feedback. Then try another game that's slightly more challenging to do and keep repeating that process until you get to the point where you're submitting for games that aren't present on the site yet.

The thing is, you're not gonna get anything done by poking and prodding people on these forums to do the games you want seen done. It's only going to cause annoyance and resentment. No one likes anyone who's all talk and no action. "Be the change you want to see", as the saying goes.

Unrelated, but I just had a look at your DeviantArt page. I had no idea you were such an excellent artist beyond your stuff on VGMaps! Your work is really impressive, your portraits in particular remind me of official Phoenix Wright artwork. Cool to see all that variety!

Thanks so much for the kind words, VGCartography! I'm glad you enjoy my artistic output.

Well, that's fine, and I know you prefer your more simpler routine, but there are others still in need of mapping, and that game may have to be sometime later. A good DSi compatible emulator can do the trick for it, though, I understand you're not versed on that.

As far as some have played, being a bite-sized content-packed RPG for DSiWare, I can presume its maps may not be quite too large/complex, 'cause it had to adhere to the tight limit of 20MB at the time.

Mappers do have to cover all corners in game cartography history sooner or later.

You may want to curb your enthusiasm there, buddy.

It matters not whether I'm versed in NDS game mapping or not: I'm simply not interested in mapping DS games. There isn't enough attention being paid to DS games that haven't yet been mapped? Not my problem.

Also you're suggesting a game I've never ever heard of. Why would I spend any of my time on something I know nothing about?

If you are willing to offer to pay several thousand dollars to get it mapped, then I would give it consideration certainly, but it wouldn't be a guarantee.

Besides, have you ever thought of working on it yourself?

[Shadowrun]

Shadowrun would be cool to work on. I'll definitely give it some thought. 👍

Now that I've got a template to use for the dungeons in Ultima: Quest of the Avatar in the form of Dungeon Despise, it'll be a little less painful to map the rest, haha. At least the NES version is simplified compared with all the microcomputer versions, so there'll be less to worry about.

Speaking of Secret of Mana, I think it's probably time to work on it. I've begun laying out a number of areas using Tropicon's raw maps. I'll just take my time with it though and do 1 or 2 maps a day.

Thanks for the suggestion, Cyartog959, but I think anything beyond the fourth generation is kind of the opposite of "simpler" for me. I tend to like working on games from the 1980s and the first half of 1990s, or games with similar aesthetics that would've fit in that era, Nox Archaist being one such example (I've only released the overworld so far, but will eventually get around to everything else some day).


For some new maps, I've got all the levels for Super Soukoban (SFC) mapped out. I just sent them to Jon, so they should be available fairly shortly.

Thanks so much, Zagato.

While I had started mapping DQ6 years and years ago with only mapping a handful of locations like Lifecod and Reidock, I only really ramped things up in February of this year, so it's mainly been six months of work with long breaks in between mapping sessions. I'd say the main thing holding everything up was me playing through the game once more just so I could put the maps in the proper order.

The main reason for the mini maps was because of multiple locations that look exactly the same in both the Dream and Real Worlds, and I didn't want the file name to be the only way to differentiate them. Plus I think it'll be helpful with pointing out all the tiny locations scattered everywhere in the game.

After this one, I probably wanna work on something a little more simple, haha.

[Dragon Quest VI]

Hrmmm... I thought I had replied to VGCartography & Cyartog959 last month, but I guess it didn't get sent or something. Anyhow, thanks to both of you!

The remaining maps for Dragon Quest VI are now up on the site, everything except for the hidden dungeon areas, which I'll get to once I've played through them properly.

One thing I wasn't expecting was just the sheer number of areas this game holds! I think it'll end up clocking in at 146 maps once the hidden dungeon stuff is added in. What made things easier was the fact that there was a lot of reuse of areas throughout the game (which is especially evident with the wells) so I could basically copy an area from one map and paste it into another without any problem.

[Dragon Quest VI]

Update on Dragon Quest VI: I've got about 3/5 or 4/7 of the game up on VGMaps so far, amounting to 74 maps, excluding the overworld maps. The other portion will come in the next couple of weeks or so.

Along with that, I also completed the map set for Ihatovo Monogatari (SFC), which will be up as soon as Jon is able to spare time for them.

Also brewing at the moment is a map set for Super Soukoban (SFC), which I partly took up because I'm currently writing my own Sokoban clone for MS-DOS, and wanted to get some ideas for how difficult puzzles are put together. These should be forthcoming fairly soon.

Excited to see DQ6, appreciate all the effort!

Thanks! I'm excited to share them. Just got something like 25 more areas left to map before I begin labelling them up.