Topic: Anyone want to help stitch a map together?

[tetris42]

I wanted to see if there was anyone interested in helping me map areas of the game "Revenant" for Windows, released back in 1999.  While it has 3D elements, it doesn't use perspective and most of the background is 2D, so it should be able to be fit together from screenshots.  I already did something like this for Doctor Who And The Mines of Terror a while back (only recently submitted it), by taking screenshots and pasting them in Photoshop on top of one another.  I'm not planning on mapping the entire game since that would be huge, but just a couple of the more interesting areas.  Here's a screenshot from the game:



Anyway, my proposal for anyone who is interested is I could take all the screenshots and someone else could lay them on top of each other, preferably in a way to blot out the main character.  I've already started this, but have only stitched about a dozen screenshots so far.  My method was to crop the edges and overlay the images over the character so he won't be seen.  So in short, if you're obsessive-compulsive and have basic Photoshop skills, go ahead and let me know.

Alternately if there's software that would make this process easier feel free to mention that too.

[ozzy88]

Sounds exactly like how I've made my map...it takes a lot of time.

You who have already done this before should know. I mean, if you really want this map you could do it on your own. There are some programs here: https://www.vgmaps.com/forums/index.php?topic=102.0 that could be of use. I haven't tried them out but I will if I decide to make another map.

[Troy Lundin]

Send me a link to the images and I'll take a look at them.

[tetris42]

There are some programs here: https://www.vgmaps.com/forums/index.php?topic=102.0 that could be of use.  

Well I already have photoshop and irfanview.  Really the programs listed don't really offer me advantages due to how the map is (except png gauntlet, but that's a later thing).  The single most advantageous feature would be to have software "guess" where to snap images to based on the amount of overlapping pixels in between the content.

Send me a link to the images and I'll take a look at them.

It's still a work in progress, I've it patched together the latest batch of images.  You can take a look here:

map in progress

It's still pretty thrown together as you can see and I haven't gotten to filling in all the areas and blotting out every instance of the main character.  The game actually has a debug mode that will let me fly around to any area of the map, but it's better to take most of the shots normally because in debug mode characters are shown via odd symbols representing spawners that will look worse than just having the characters themselves.  The main use of the debug function will be for areas that can't be accessed normally, like the ocean.  

Anyway, the screenshots will be exactly like the one shown up above, just pre-cropped.  It will just be a medley of me taking a bunch of screenshots, then finding out which ones I need to take again as someone stitches them.  If you're interested in that, I can start posting a bunch up somewhere.  If not, I'd rather save the hassle of uploading a bunch of them.  Keep in mind what I have so far is a SMALL minority of the map, it's a very large one that will mostly be wilderness.

[Troy Lundin]

Throw together ten or so in a zip file and put em up here. I'll take a look and see what kind of time is involved in it.

[tetris42]

Here's a batch of screenshots to try out.  In the middle I start from another direction, but they end up to where the first ones connect:

download shots

A few notes:

-Doors, characters, and monsters are all in 3D and tend to "float" a bit when the camera is moving.  Don't use them to line up your shots, the background is better and is totally static

-While I'm sure it won't be possible with these shots, try to blot out the player character and monsters if the shots allow the overlap.  If you can't overlap them, don't worry about it for now.

-Don't try to connect this to the main map I've started, it's already been change.  I'll work on different areas and just use your file to add to it once you're done.

-You may already know this, but I recommend working with the layers in partial transparency when lining them up as it makes it MUCH easier to see whether they line up exactly or not.  Afterwards you can change the opacity back.

Thanks for the help!  The map should look pretty neat once it's done.

[Troy Lundin]

Using my terrible, unquestionable broken stitching program I was able to produce this in about 5 minutes. I got lost when I got to the beach. The very left side is a bit messed up as well as I force stitched an image but it ended up being wrong.

It seems like these maps are ridiculously huge. The one linked here is 1.5MB after running it through PNGGauntlet with full compression options! And it's only a tiny bit of the map! OMG!

[Maxim]

If you can capture losslessly at a high frame rate (e.g. using Fraps with a lossless codec and a fast computer), my autostitcher will probably work well. Else, doing it manually is the fallback option.

[tetris42]

Troy: Thanks a bunch, though see if you can upload it somewhere as a .png so it doesn't have compression artifacts from being a .jpg.  Since you used an autostitcher I can doublecheck this against the castle wall I did the other side of manually to check out the accuracy.  And yeah, this map might get pretty large, although if the PNG compression is good it might get easier as it might repeat some patterns in the wilderness such as the trees and paths, even if it's arranged in a pretty diverse way.  Is there a limit to filesizes vgmaps.com will take?

Maxim: I could probably do fraps, although the framerate of the game is actually hard limited at around 24fps.  It's one of those stupid ones that made the game CPU bound, so either it runs at completely too fast speeds, or else has an in-game option to cap it.  Also I don't know how your program works, but this might confuse it since the 3D elements tend to "float" around some when the camera is moved.  Also I could only move for stretches at a time since the game actually has a full day / night cycle, so I only get a few minutes to record screenshots from a saved game in the full daylight before the lighting changes.

[Troy Lundin]

The filesize limit for the forums is 1024KB. I uploaded it to my MediaFire account. No idea why Imgur converted it to a jpg. I didn't even notice it.

http://www.mediafire.com/i/?l60d1z4fhtqegka

[avalanch]

Ah moving it to mediafire helped ton's as well.  Instead of

1.5MB after running it through PNGGauntlet with full compression options!

It's only 75KB as a jpeg... although I do realize that the preferred image by the admin here is png.

The filesize limit for the forums is 1024KB. I uploaded it to my MediaFire account. No idea why Imgur converted it to a jpg. I didn't even notice it.

http://www.mediafire.com/i/?l60d1z4fhtqegka

[tetris42]

Hey, I checked the PNG and unfortunately your image doesn't align with the rest of the map, I had to go in and do it over again manually.  I think whatever automation technique you use probably won't well for this particular map.  Thanks anyway.

[Troy Lundin]

Not sure why it wouldn't fit. Only the far left edge was messed up. Good luck with the map.

[Trop]

Good luck on this.  I tried the same thing with Divine Divinity and after some calculations I discovered the main map was going to be about 45000 by 45000 pixels.  Not even photoshop can open an image that size on my computer without crashing.

[Troy Lundin]

Good luck on this.  I tried the same thing with Divine Divinity and after some calculations I discovered the main map was going to be about 45000 by 45000 pixels.  Not even photoshop can open an image that size on my computer without crashing.

That's ridiculous. If it loads it as a 24-bit bitmap into memory it would require  ~5.7 GB of memory (if my math is correct). Outrageous.