Messages

151

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

« on: February 08, 2013, 04:09:03 pm »

Hey all, just thought I'd update this thing with some of the new things I've been up to.

First of all, I decided to revise all my Paladin's Quest maps to reflect the style of mapping I've been doing since FF6. This means that many of the items that can be found in houses and buildings that weren't included before will now be documented. I've revised about twenty maps so far.

Next off, I've been mapping the Japanese version of Final Fantasy IV. I have most of the overworld locations mapped thus far. All the labels and items will be in Japanese, so that shouldn't deter people from doing their own maps for the English version (perhaps Locke_gb7 will resume work where he/she left off?).

Lastly, I have been working on Dragon Quest V for the last few months, pretty much ever since I finished the game. I think I have roughly 80% of the areas mapped so far. I don't think I will bother labeling them in English though, so if there is anyone interested in doing that, please let me know and we can work out an arrangement.

And as a little aside, I'm just about finished with playing God Medicine for the Game Boy, and wouldn't mind mapping that game some time in the future too.

152

VGMaps Social Board / Re: New to forum Introduscions

« on: January 30, 2013, 02:58:57 pm »

Hello and welcome, George!

It was great to see Alundra maps when they first came on the site. It'd be great to see the entire world map done if at all possible. I tried my hand at one section of it a long time ago, but never managed to finish it off.

I'd be able to help you with Japanese names and such if you ever need it. でも・・・韓国語はムリ・・・ (However Korean is out of the question for me. ^^;)

153

Gaming / Re: What Games Are We Playing

« on: August 05, 2012, 09:03:04 pm »

A little bit ago, I finished playing Brain Lord in Japanese. It was strange to see kanji compound words written in half kanji and half hiragana, like 生そく rather than 生息, 石ひ rather than 石碑, and かい道 instead of 街道 to name a few instances. It made things a little more difficult to read, more so I think than if it were all in kana.

I've made it to the fiery underground area in Aretha (the one for the SNES), on the quest to retrieve the final Dragon Source (hahah, 竜の源 sounds a little strange when put in English XD). The battles are definitely different from what you'd normally expect. When you attack an enemy, there is no indication of how much damage you dealt, so you have really no way of knowing how you're doing against an enemy until you deal the final blow. Also, there can often be multiple enemy groups surrounding the players, so when you defeat one group, you turn to the next. Battles drag out far too much though because of this, so although it's an interesting feature, it does have its drawbacks. But aside from that, it's been a fairly interesting game to play through!

In God Medicine, I think I'm getting close to the last dungeon; the Sandman people are ready to transport me to the Demon King's Castle (魔王城)! I'm definitely considering mapping this game in the future, since it　has been so much fun playing through the amount I have so far.

And from time to time I return to Ultima VI: The False Prophet (in Japanese, of course ). I'm at the part where I meet up with the gargoyles in the underworld and have to go fix the Gargoyle lens and get someone in Britannia to make the Britannian lens to view the Codex that will eventually end up in the void once again by the end of the game. It's been a little frustrating playing through this game lately, since I'm coming across a lot of unfamiliar vocabulary, and with all the game text being in kana, it makes things that much more difficult, since contrary to what people may presume, kanji actually makes things easier to read.

154

Maps Of The Month / Re: 2012/08: Final Fantasy VI (Super NES) - FlyingArmor

« on: August 05, 2012, 12:59:46 am »

I sort of had a feeling this was going to happen when you had contacted me about the progress of the remaining maps last month. It is an honour to have my work acknowledged, especially on such a momentous milestone as the 100th!

As for arranging the maps with care, that's probably the artist in me, wanting things to look balanced, clear, and aesthetically pleasing. Working on this game has solidified the style I take with mapping RPGs, I think.

Although it took quite a long time to complete this project, I'm happy and relieved to have it behind me now!

155

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

« on: July 29, 2012, 01:36:26 pm »

I finally got around to adding all the labels to the Kefka's Tower map yesterday, so the final dungeon is at last complete!

https://www.vgmaps.com/Atlas/SuperNES/FinalFantasyVI-WorldOfRuin-Kefka%27sTower.png

The Lete River's all that needs to be tackled before this map set can be considered truly complete.
I managed to finish it off just now. XD I finally figured an effective way of viewing all the inaccessible areas you wouldn't normally see while traveling on the raft. I will probably revise it to include the caverns with the save points at some point, but for now I'll leave it as it is.

https://www.vgmaps.com/Atlas/SuperNES/FinalFantasyVI-WorldOfBalance-LeteRiver.png

Yay, this project finally comes to a close! \(^o^)/

156

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

« on: June 24, 2012, 06:00:23 pm »

I did do a little work on Spike McFang a while back, but kinda lost interest in it due to doorways and other things not lining up perfectly from scene to scene, so I couldn't make the continuously flowing maps that I wanted.

The way I was capturing it was with BGMapper, and because every scene is in its entirety in memory (512 x 512 per scene), there was no need to stitch screen shots together, which was really great.

Trop, if you're up to it, be my guest!

157

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

« on: June 23, 2012, 07:21:35 pm »

The Britannia map for Ultima VI is now up on the website! Special thanks to Troy Lundin for helping me shrink it down (managed to squeeze out 1.1 MB). Phew, such a gigantic mapping project finally behind me, heheh. I've thought about mapping all the dungeons as well while I'm at it (now that the mammoth world map is out of the way), but that isn't set in stone just yet.


Over the past year or so, I've toyed around with mapping various areas in Final Fantasy IV and Final Fantasy V, and I thought I'd post some examples of what I've come up with. If I were to map these games in their entirety, I would be mapping it in Japanese.

It's interesting the changes that were made to various towns in FF4, like the Town of Baron for instance, with how the southwestern section was completely rearranged when it was released over here as FF2.

I have labeled all the chests and hidden items individually in the FF4 maps, but I think if I were to release them "officially", I'd use a legend like I have with my FF6 maps, just so they wouldn't be as cluttered.

This isn't a sign that I'll be taking up mapping these games in earnest, it's just that these maps have been on my hard drive for so long that I thought it high time for other people to see them.

158

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

« on: June 12, 2012, 05:52:24 pm »

@Paco: I actually played The Black Gate to completion last year with Exult. I didn't enable all the extra features, but did like the character status bar at the bottom of the screen; really handy to say the least. For Serpent Isle, it's just a matter of actually finding my Ultima Collection CD and installing it, but I think I went looking for it one time and couldn't find it. It should be around somewhere though...

@Troy: Oh yeah, that's a mistake alright. Thanks for pointing it out! I have been meaning to revise that map anyway for another reason: the 14th chest hidden in the swamp/mud stuff should be replaced with a white border to indicate it's there.

When I first started mapping that game, I used half transparent chests for the items in swamps, but later switched to using white borders to keep things consistent across all maps (since in towns there'd be hidden items in plants, bookcases, etc, so a half transparent chest wouldn't make sense there).

159

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

« on: June 12, 2012, 01:15:39 pm »

It doesn't look all too different from the PC version. One stark difference is the colour of the dirt; it's actually brown rather than the really reddish stuff found in the PC version (guess it's really rich in iron there huh?). It's one of the very few console ports of Ultima that was pretty faithful to the original (another one would be Ultima IV for the Master System).

Heheh, what can I say? It's only natural to work on these games that I grew up playing. It's definitely an interesting way of revisiting them.

By the way, I'm just about finished with capturing all the areas of Kefka's Tower. I'm so happy that I was able to capture the entire outside area. The walk through walls code was pretty stubborn in that area, but there was just one tiny column where I could walk up and down through obstacles, so that really helped me out a ton. Next will be to organize all the pieces into something that makes at least a little more sense.

I think I would agree with that as well. VI and VII for both of those series are my favourites (still have yet to play U7 Part 2 though... something to look forward to!).

160

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

« on: June 10, 2012, 05:17:23 pm »

Ah, thanks so much, Troy. I'll send it your way once I'm done checking it over.

So yesterday I managed to finish off the Dragon Quest V overworld map. It's a bit bigger than the typical 4096 x 4096 world map, and would probably look better at that size, but I was going by what the Wayfarer's Map in the game indicated for finding the edges of the world, so I decided to go with accuracy rather than siding with aesthetics in this particular case.

161

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

« on: June 07, 2012, 08:38:19 pm »

Final Fantasy VI (SNES)

All that's left is the Lete River and Kefka's Tower. Now that Anime North is over with, I've got a lot more time on my hands so I can get back to working on these. Maybe I can get them both finished by the end of June?


Ultima VI: The False Prophet (SNES) - Britannia

I have all the mapping done for this. The final size ended up being 16272 x 16416 pixels! I still need to go over it one more time just to make sure I included all the rafts that are scattered everywhere. I'm not sure if I want to include all the reagents that can be found in the wilderness though... it may be more work than it's worth. Plus they tend to appear and disappear from time to time (the Blood Moss near Iolo's Hut does this for instance) so it may be better to leave them off.

One problem I have though is that because the map is so big, I can't run PNGOUT on it to shrink the file size (currently at 14 MB as a PNG). I'd need a whole lot more RAM than I've got at the moment (1 GB). Plus with the Photoshop I use, whenever I save a file as PNG, it applies gamma corrections to the colours, so they end up being much darker than they're supposed to be. If that wasn't a problem, I'd have no problem sending in the map at 14 MB.

So I was wondering if anyone would be generous enough to try and shrink it down on their computer?


Dragon Quest V (SFC) - World Map

I'm only planning on mapping the overworld (mainly because I haven't played this game all the way to the end). It's about 80% complete so far.


Star Trek: The Next Generation: Future's Past (SNES)

This isn't an active project, just something I like to work on from time to time. I mainly started it because I was having trouble finding all the trapped miners on Orientis Gamma IIIB. I have the Derelict Ship level almost finished, so that'll be part of the updates for this weekend.


Lufia: The Legend Returns (GBC)

This is what I will be working on in earnest after Final Fantasy VI. The randomized dungeons will definitely help cut down on the amount of mapping I will need to do. Plus I really like the look of the graphics, so it will definitely be a lot of fun to work on!

162

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

« on: June 07, 2012, 08:31:29 pm »

Inspired by Peardian's thread, here is where my current and future mapping projects will be organized from now on. Also, I plan on this thread being a dumping ground of sorts for various maps I've done where I don't plan on mapping the rest of the game.

Current Projects:
Dragon Quest VI (SFC)
Dragon Slayer: The Legend of Heroes (PC-98)
Exodus: Ultima III (PC)
Final Fantasy VII (PSX) -- World Map
Ultima: Quest of the Avatar (NES)

Completed Projects:
Paladin's Quest (SNES)
Lufia & The Fortress of Doom (SNES)
Ultima VI: The False Prophet (SNES)
Final Fantasy VI (SNES)
Lennus II (SFC)
Dragon Quest V (SFC)
Dragon Quest I & II (SFC)
Final Fantasy IV (SFC) - Japanese Version
Final Fantasy IV (SNES) - North American Version
Final Fantasy V (SFC)
Aretha (SFC) - Overworld
Mr. Chin's Gourmet Paradise (GB)
GD Leen/Gadyurin (SFC)
Silva Saga II (SFC)
Brain Lord (SNES) - Collaboration with Tropicon
Final Fantasy III (FC)
Final Fantasy VII (PSX)
Daedalian Opus (GB)
Bouken! Puzzle Road (GB)
Light Fantasy (SFC)
Aighina no Yogen (FC)
Legend of the Ghost Lion (NES)
Star Trek: The Next Generation: Future's Past (SNES)
Clue (SNES)
Ganbare Goemon Gaiden: Kieta Ougon Kiseru (FC) - Overworld
Snow Bros. (NES)
Golf (NES)
Shinseiki Odysselya (SFC)
Dragon Warrior II (NES)
Q*Bert (NES)
Legacy of the Wizard (NES)
Popeye (NES)
Phantasy Star II (GEN)
Ultima VI: The False Prophet (PC)
Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar (PC)
Nox Archaist (Apple II) - Overworld
Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar (C64)
The Addams Family: Pugsley's Scavenger Hunt (SNES)
Hydlide (NES)
Lufia: The Legend Returns (GBC)

Future Projects:
Deathlord (C64)
Ihatovo Monogatari (SFC)
Light Fantasy II (SFC)
Otaku no Seiza: An Adventure In The Otaku Galaxy (FC)
Questron (C64)
The Screamer (PC-88)
Secret of Mana (SNES)
Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness (PC)
Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny (PC)

More detailed information for each project will follow soon.

163

Maps Of The Month / Re: 2012/06: Lufia & The Fortress Of Doom (Super NES) - FlyingArmor

« on: June 06, 2012, 09:47:47 pm »

It sure was a pleasant surprise to see this while unwinding after Anime North last week. Thanks very much!

This sort of makes me want to do charts for finding the Dragon Eggs the second and third times around. I had planned on doing that before, but never got around to it. It would certainly make the map set that much more complete.

164

VGMaps Social Board / Re: Did Flip Industries Really Create "Super Kid Icarus"?

« on: May 11, 2012, 08:07:39 pm »

Funnily enough, it seems someone responded to the latest question on Yahoo Answers... >_>;

It's really funny the person who responded should relate making screen shot maps to stealing a car; the analogy simply isn't valid. If someone steals your car, you no longer have it. If someone takes screen shots of a game and assembles them into a map, the creator of the game still has the game, and even so, you're not copying the entire game anyway by making maps from it (and even copying the entire game wouldn't be stealing either). So to call mapping a form of stealing is pretty ridiculous and goes to show they don't really know what the word "steal" means. Copying isn't synonymous with stealing.

165

Gaming / Re: Sent in my 3DS to Nintendo for repairs...

« on: March 22, 2012, 05:18:05 pm »

The thing that bugs me is simply replacing something without a second thought. What happens to the broken unit afterwards? Is it recycled? Or is it simply thrown into the trash?

The mentality these days is that if something breaks, don't bother trying to fix it, just buy another one (or in the case of a Wii, get a replacement). This can apply to pretty much everything. At home, if a piece of clothing gets a tear in it, I'm told to just throw it out and get a new one, even though it wouldn't take much work to mend it. This is the mindset that I'm objecting to. The complexity of the object in question shouldn't sway our judgment just because we don't have to deal with the consequences of mindlessly throwing things away, even if we don't do it directly.

This is where money becomes such a dangerous thing. Cutting down on expenses is favoured over protecting the planet from further defilement. Why should something as ephemeral as money (something that doesn't actually exist) dictate that we trash our planet just to save on expenses in the short term (this being from the perspective of a corporation)?

This is probably getting a little off topic, but it's some food for thought nonetheless.