What map-making feature would you like emulators to have?

[ReyVGM]

Like the title says, what features helpful to map-making you wish emulators would have?

I'm working with the author of SuperSNES9X (who has already added a ton of improvements over the regular snes9x) and I can push to get new stuff added to it.

So, what would your dream emulator be like for map-making? What helpful features would you like to have?

It could be tiny things obscure emulators already do, but more popular ones don't; or even features from external programs that could realistically be implemented in an emulator.

I think there's a tool that takes screenshots of games and auto stitches them together? It would be awesome if something like that could be implemented natively.

[dark_lord_zagato]

Emulator features that are helpful to video game mappers:

1. A hex editor/access to the game's memory. Good hex editors show you what's going on live and let you change/freeze values right there.

2. A pop out map viewer that can take screenshots. For SNES games, a toggle that controls which BG layers are used in the screenshot.

3. The ability to change a game's background color. (Some games have map tiles with pixels that are the same color as the background. Black on black is a problem when you need to rip background layers separately.)

4. The ability to screenshot Mode7 data as a 2D image. It is impossible to map some SNES games without this. ZSNES had a special tool called vSNES. It was a stand alone program that could load ZSNES savestates and display Mode7 data in a flat plane. It would let you screenshot this data all at once. As an example, the Human Cannonball map from American Gladiators is something I took with just ONE screenshot in vSNES.


Also, the Super FX chip...

Games like Stunt Race FX use this chip. It generates 3D objects and environments. As far as I know, no one has ever figured out a way to extract any maps from these games. It's not the same thing as Mode7 so vSNES can't do anything with it either.

[ReyVGM]

Emulator features that are helpful to video game mappers:

1. A hex editor/access to the game's memory. Good hex editors show you what's going on live and let you change/freeze values right there.

2. A pop out map viewer that can take screenshots. For SNES games, a toggle that controls which BG layers are used in the screenshot.

3. The ability to change a game's background color. (Some games have map tiles with pixels that are the same color as the background. Black on black is a problem when you need to rip background layers separately.)

4. The ability to screenshot Mode7 data as a 2D image. It is impossible to map some SNES games without this. ZSNES had a special tool called vSNES. It was a stand alone program that could load ZSNES savestates and display Mode7 data in a flat plane. It would let you screenshot this data all at once. As an example, the Human Cannonball map from American Gladiators is something I took with just ONE screenshot in vSNES.


Also, the Super FX chip...

Games like Stunt Race FX use this chip. It generates 3D objects and environments. As far as I know, no one has ever figured out a way to extract any maps from these games. It's not the same thing as Mode7 so vSNES can't do anything with it either.

Thanks for the reply.

1) A Mesen styled debugger is planned for SuperSNES9X, so that should cover that.

2) ss9x already has a titlemap viewer and you can right click to save the image. There's also hotkeys to disable layers (but that's in regular snes9x too).

3) That's already in snes9x as a hotkey.

4) That's doable in ss9x through the titlemap viewer. Verified the Human Cannonball event, and yes, you can save a picture of the entire image.

5) Will add it to the requests. Let see what the author can come up with. So basically you want a way to view polygonal characters and the 3d map as a flat image or as a 3d image?
I don't know if that's possible, but I'll add it anyway.

[dark_lord_zagato]

5) Will add it to the requests. Let see what the author can come up with. So basically you want a way to view polygonal characters and the 3d map as a flat image or as a 3d image?
I don't know if that's possible, but I'll add it anyway.

Yes, i'm thinking maybe we can make maps that depict what these race tracks look like from above if there were a way to rip data directly from the Super FX chip.

This might be too much to ask. If they say it's impossible i'll understand.

[Guard Master]

Some features I'd like to have in an emulator in use for map-making are:

-Not only having the ability to control displaying of individual layers in the tilemap viewer but also the ability to control the priorities.

-The ability to set watches to draw directly on the emulation screen.

-The ability to directly copy to clipboard, whether the emulation screen, the tilemap viewer, sprite viewer, or tile viewer.

-The ability to select a portion within any of the viewers for copying to clipboard or saving as image.

-The option to automatically save program settings to file after changing them. How many emulators I've experienced that don't do this but tend to crash every so often especially while modifying values.

-Not necessarily a "feature", but accurate palette colors to true hardware.

[ReyVGM]

Some features I'd like to have in an emulator in use for map-making are:

-Not only having the ability to control displaying of individual layers in the tilemap viewer but also the ability to control the priorities.

-The ability to set watches to draw directly on the emulation screen.

-The ability to directly copy to clipboard, whether the emulation screen, the tilemap viewer, sprite viewer, or tile viewer.

-The ability to select a portion within any of the viewers for copying to clipboard or saving as image.

-The option to automatically save program settings to file after changing them. How many emulators I've experienced that don't do this but tend to crash every so often especially while modifying values.

-Not necessarily a "feature", but accurate palette colors to true hardware.

1) Explain, post an example

2) You can do that with supersnes9x

3) Copy to clipboard meaning ctrl+c? You can already right click and save the entire image, that's not better?

4) Sort of like how you can do in windows paint?

5) I'll add it to the request page.

6) ss9x only emulates SNES and GB. For snes it already emulates the real colors. Now, if you mean how colors look on a TV, then it does haven an option for NTSC colors or something along those lines. Never tried it though.

[Cyartog959]

Some features I'd like to have in an emulator in use for map-making are:

-Not only having the ability to control displaying of individual layers in the tilemap viewer but also the ability to control the priorities.

1) Explain, post an example

I think priorities are referred to render priorities for tilesets and foregrounds, like "FG High" and "FG Low", sprites, and so on.

Remember the bushes in many levels that characters go through, or hide in? The cave corridor walls for indoors?

Yeah. They're the basic examples of render priorities; foliage top, characters and enemies lower, et cetera.

I've been watching Strafefox's YouTube videos about how games were made from time to time. They're really informative, and interesting to learn about how our past games were made. Give them a watch sometime, if you haven't yet. You'll like them.

Other than that, there are other emulators that may need familiar features added, such as MelonDS, VisualBoyAdvance, to make mapping games quite easier. Can't forget them.

[Guard Master]

1) Explain, post an example

2) You can do that with supersnes9x

3) Copy to clipboard meaning ctrl+c? You can already right click and save the entire image, that's not better?

4) Sort of like how you can do in windows paint?

5) I'll add it to the request page.

6) ss9x only emulates SNES and GB. For snes it already emulates the real colors. Now, if you mean how colors look on a TV, then it does haven an option for NTSC colors or something along those lines. Never tried it though.

1. All layers have priority in SNES games. You can think of priorities as "layers" themselves. Even though order layer is technically BG1 then BG2, with priorities, the order is actually BG1 priority 1, BG2 priority 1, BG1 priority 0, BG2 priority 0. Thus, if the game very effectively used priorities for the background, simply putting BG1 over BG2 may not have an accurate result. This seems especially true in later developed games. In BSNES, you can turn priorities on and off in the emulation screen but not in any of the viewers.

https://nesdoug.com/2020/05/22/layers-priority/
https://snes.nesdev.org/wiki/Backgrounds#Priority

3. Managing image files isn't always ideal for all situations. When you want to do something at the moment, quickly, and only once, copying to clipboard is the approach. Using print screen is one approach, but why not implement a feature that captures just exactly what you want? Having a hotkey (especially one you can manually set) would be even more useful than right clicking. BizHawk effectively does this.

4. Rather than capturing the full view, you may just want a specific portion of tiles or sprites, especially to patch any mistakes or grabbing specific sprites. This saves the effort to have to take extra steps in the paint software. BSNES sprite viewer already allows multiple objects to be selected (but not copied/saved).

6. Palettes for SNES emulation should be more aligned with BSNES. The original SNES9x appears to be inaccurate.