Any advice on how to get started?

[Kayato]

Hello everyone!
After years of admiring the beautiful works collected here, I thought I'd start and try to contribute.
I tried to look at the pinned topic about it but I saw that it is very old with some dead links.

So I'm asking for some advice and programs to get started with. I was thinking of starting with something simple like map editors from games like "Warcraft" or "C&C" just to practice.
How can I do this? Do I take screenshots, perhaps using macros to automatically move the images to the right distance, and then recompose them using a graphics program? I already use OBS Studio and GIMP.

Thanks in advance everyone!

[mechaskrom]

Welcome!

It sounds like you're on the right track. Most maps are made by basically taking many screenshots with an emulator and then stitching them together in an image editor.

My normal process for mapping a game look like this (in broad strokes):
-Thoroughly familiarize myself with the game, play it, read guides, and so on.  Create many emulator save states while playing, so I can quickly "jump" to different parts of the game.

-Search for memory addresses/codes useful for mapping the game. For example codes for the camera position, freezing animations/sprites, etc. Emulators often have memory/code search functions and hex editors. Otherwise I use the Cheat Engine program.

-Write a script or an external bot to automate the screenshot+stitch process using the addresses I found in the previous step. Sadly, very few emulators have script-support. BizHawk is one of the few that does, which is why it's my goto emulator for mapping games. Plus it has many other excellent features/tools. Creating a bot for emulators that lack scripting is more work and has other drawbacks. Still better than manually screenshot+stitch everything though. I made a post here with a link to a BizHawk script that you can look at as an example:
https://www.vgmaps.com/forums/index.php?topic=4211.msg23860#msg23860

-Put together the final map using a custom program I made and the Paint.NET image editor. Here I add text, icons, arrows and other annotations to the map.


But to get started, I suggest you choose a simple 2D game you like and just start taking screenshots and stitching them together into a map. You'll learn the more advanced stuff later. You probably want to look into memory/code search first as that is very useful and often needed for screenshotting parts of a map that you normally cannot reach.