Topic: FlyingArmor's Map Projects Present and Future

[VGCartography]

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!

[Cyartog959]

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).

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.

[FlyingArmor]

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?

[FlyingArmor]

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.

[Cyartog959]

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?

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.

[FlyingArmor]

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.

[Cyartog959]

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.

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.

[FlyingArmor]

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... 🤔

[Cyartog959]

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... 🤔

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

[FlyingArmor]

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. 😆

[Cyartog959]

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. 😆

Yeah. I laughed a bit now that you mentioned it. Thanks, though.

Was the singular demand for whatever Looney Tunes games that guy wanted that high to warrant pushback for the mappers? Sorry you went through that trouble.

[FlyingArmor]

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.

[YelseyKing]

Your maps never cease to amaze me. Now a(n admittedly modern homebrew) game from a computer older than I am! And I'm honestly surprised at how *good* it looks for something on such an old machine. What kind of game is it, anyway? It actually looks pretty neat.

Anyway, great work, as always!

(Also, yeah, I know I rarely post... but I do check the site every day for new maps, at least!)

[FlyingArmor]

Thanks for the kind words, YelseyKing!

I suppose it can be categorized as an action puzzle game. The "story" can be summarized in the following two sentences (taken from the manual): "Sometime in the future, robots attempt to take over human settlements on various planets. Your goal is to infiltrate these settlements and destroy all of the robots." So it's up to you to find various items scattered throughout each settlement and use them along with objects like chairs and crates to figure out ways of destroying the malicious robots without getting yourself killed in the process.

David Murray did a fantastic job of using the text characters from the PET to create such cool looking environments. You can more or less tell what everything's meant to be from just a glance. While the later ports pretty up the graphics to various extents, the original PET version still can hold its own.

If you'd like to know more about it, you can check out David's channel on Youtube: The 8-Bit Guy. He put out a number of videos dedicated to the development of this game.