Topic: Willow (NES) Warp Map completed!

[FirebrandX]

After many hours of screenchot splicing, I've finally finished the Willow Warp Map! This map illustrates how the entire game is laid out in ROM memory. There's a password that allows you to press the select button to bring up a hexadecimal coordinate system upn which you would choose a coordinate and then press select again to warp to that location.



When this password was first leaked to the public 20 years ago, it generally seemed random and confusing as to where the warp coordinates would take you. I remember solving how the warp system worked and began hand-drawing a map as a guide (which I never finished as it was too much work). Now with the advent of emulators, I was finally able to realize that goal from 20 years ago!



The warp map consists of hex locations 00 - 00 (upper-left corner) to 1C - 1F (lower-right corner). Although you can warp to areas further down below the 1C horizontal row, those areas are reserved for non-traversable graphics like portaits and dialog cut-scenes. I've omitted those last few rows in the map as a result.



On to the stats:



Pallete used: fbx2.pal (NTSC Composite signal)

http://www.firebrandx.com/downloads/fbx2pal.zip



Total traversable screens: 921



Mini-sized preview: http://www.firebrandx.com/downloads/willowmemmappreview.jpg



Full-sized PNG image: http://www.firebrandx.com/downloads/willowwarpmap.png

[JonLeung]

It seems pretty cool!  That certainly looks handy!



But if this is a submission, may I make a suggestion?  As a "Warp Map" it may not be clear as to what the map is about.



Maybe you could put the warp code somewhere - and screen coordinates along the left and top of the map?  Well, as it's a large image, maybe on all sides?



(And should I have credited you as Wolff on your Phantasy Star II map?  I think I credited you as FirebrandX...)



It's kind of neat to see how things fit together in memory.  It shows a kind of neatness and efficiency of space.  I took down my brother's Blaster Master maps when a full set came along from sonyball, but maybe I could ask my brother to do the rest of his set and resubmit them.  It's really neat how each Area in Blaster Master is a perfect 2048 x 2048 square, that wraps around on itself (if you go right, you end up on the left, if you go up, you end up on the bottom, etc.), and this interesting geography/geometry explains some of the shotcuts back.  (The instruction manual even strongly suggests that is how the maps are laid out, which I didn't understand at first.)  Maybe it's not initially intuitive, but once you get it, it makes so much sense and it's just plain neat.



I'm not sure if it was how it was laid out in memory, but the way I assembled the Edison Mansion map for the NES version of Maniac Mansion came out to be a neat rectangle.  I tried to do that with the Village map for Simon The Sorcerer, too.  But hey - there are no image size limitations on VGMaps.com, so if it makes more sense to sprawl things out, those would be preferred...

[FirebrandX]

I had thought about doing a version with the warp coordinates. The main thing is I wanted an unmodified BG image map, which was the goal of this project. The full-size version would make a great poster if you take it to a printing shop and have them print it out on a large poster.



At any rate, I will make separate image with the coordinates attached as well as the wapr password itself.



Oh just use FirebrandX for credit like before. Thanks!