Topic: eishiya's Maps.

[eishiya]

It's a nightmare scenario for me too. Of course it happened to the biggest and most difficult game I've mapped =_=
Fortunately, some of the areas have had only minor changes (e.g. highlights added to the edges of platforms), those don't require a lot of work and make for a nice respite from the difficult areas. Blasphemous has rays of light from most doors and some ceiling holes and those are hard to reconstruct because the game blends them differently from how my image editor does it, so I have to try to get clean screenshots of those and align the parallax backgrounds to those screenshots somehow. In some cases, getting clean screenshots is impossible because of the HUD* :/

I've also decided to add the various projectile environmental hazards to the maps instead of leaving them out, I think they form part of the identity of those rooms.
I'm also wondering if I should include the enemies that control other hazards (the Cistern bell-ringers that summon exploding lads, the Convent cauldron chain-pullers) - they're not so important for each room's identity, but it's useful to know where the are. On the other hand: it's more spoilery, and I don't want to include enemies in general.

The part I'm looking forward to the least is replaying the entire game from the beginning to screenshot the items and locked gates; I'm currently mapping on my old save, which has everything collected and all the gates open. I'm terrible at Blasphemous, some of the bosses are bullshit, and I doubt they made them any easier.

* ...I just did some googling and apparently it's possible to enable a developer console with a mod and turn off the HUD. If I can manage to get that to work, that would save me so much work! Thanks for accidentally causing me to look this up.
Edit: It works! This is great.

[eishiya]

Update on the Blasphemous remap: I've got the first pass maps done. However, as some content is locked behind NG+, and since I need a plain new game to double-check all the items, it'll require two more playthroughs (well, more like 1.5 - I don't have to 100% or even finish NG+) to finish the maps, not just one. This is going to take time.

Before I tackle that, I've been detouring and mapping the Miriam challenge rooms. I have three of the five done. I'm not actually sure they're worth mapping, considering that they're isolated rooms and just how miserable the process is. I guess since regular platformers have single-level maps, these sort of make sense to include. Here's one I did today:

If it wasn't for the developer console mod, I'd not even entertain the idea of doing these. Dying in these timed challenges while invincible stops the timer, so at least I don't have to start over every 1-2 minutes or every time I have to jump into spikes to screenshot a distant corner.

Edit: I've given up on doing the Miriam rooms. I did the first four and hated them, but the fifth broke me completely. I mapped up to the big fireball descent (like 3 mini-rooms away from the end?), but then then the game decided it was done being nice, and invincible mode now makes spike deaths lock the game, and I simply do not have the patience to map this room if I have to redo the entire thing for every 3rd screenshot (I don't even want to play it normally, nevermind mapping it). I considered reconstructing it based on videos, but those don't visit every part of the room, and it's just not worth the effort IMO.

Edit2: Blinkey finished the fifth challenge room map for me I've incorporated their map into mine and submitted the set.

[VGCartography]

Thank you for all your work on this one... found the game really difficult but I love studying the spritework.

[eishiya]

Same! The difficulty is rather inconsistent.
The main reason I map games is so I can have a way to look at the pretties without having to play the game again.


Progress update: Doing my New Game playthrough now to check/update all the item locations, I've just finished the first half of the game and crossed the Bridge. Doing my best to do the new ending route, which I hope/fear will reveal some new rooms to map. Playing the game almost normally has been more enjoyable than I anticipated!
Apparently the dried flowers from Gemino's quest no longer spawn in the Convent, so I guess you have to get his quest done "in time" to get those directly from him. I'll have to give it a look in NG+ and update my map accordingly. For now I've just removed the dried flowers item location.

Have another teaser, the updated Wasteland of the Buried Churches:

This one isn't as drastically different as some of the others, but still needed to be redone almost entirely because so many different bits were touched up. I also accidentally forgot to screenshot two of the upright logs on my new game run, but fortunately Blinkey from my Discord server saved the day by screenshotting them for me.
I've been adding labels for the different area transitions, similar to the ones on my Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight maps, I think they help. Also similar to my Momo maps, I'm adding the shop contents.

[eishiya]

All the non-NG+ stuff is done\o/ Maps updated, labels verified, area transition labels added. Just the NG+ parts left now. As far as I can tell, it's just three areas: top of the Ferrous Tree, behind the rosary spirit, and Petrous interior, and that one is through a door, so I probably don't even need to map it.

Unfortunately all the Blaspheming has taken a toll on my hands (I did the true ending on my NG run to screenshot the relevant item locations, had to fight a few tough bosses), so I should take a few days to rest before I continue on to grab the NG+ areas. Bleh, I want to get this done!

Edit: The rocks behind the rosary spirit are apparently decorative. The interior of Petrous is indeed one room behind a door, so I won't be mapping it. This means I only need to map the Ferrous Tree area, but I'm not sure it's worth the trouble to map it, as it's not so much an area as a boss arena with a save point attached. Thoughts? I've started adding the NG+ content (Jibrael and Amanecida locations) to the map, but maybe I should remove those and keep the map strictly non-NG+ so as not to distract from the main part of the game.

Edit 2: Done and submitted! Ended up including the NG+ stuff.

Edit 3: And they're up! https://vgmaps.com/Atlas/PC/index.htm#Blasphemous