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.

[Cyartog959]

A nice lowdown on doing maps for any newcomer to mapping, mechaskrom, but there are loads of 2D PC games not ran on an emulator, and that's slightly a different story.

For one, I've had quite a couple of difficult times getting through some confusing sections in the whole Blaster Master Zero trilogy, such as Nora Satellite's confusing wormhole warp path in BMZ3 and the final labyrinthine enemy filled room-to-room path to Goez(the villain's actual name from Metafight, according to Kane Gardner) in BMZ1's Area 8, and I still don't know how large their areas' sizes are, because they all haven't been mapped yet.

Seriously, people. In BMZ3's 4th Area, it's very hard to tell which goes where, because all the wormholes look the same; no differentiation of which path is correct and which paths are wrong, even on the minimap, and no green straight lines to tell. Fortunately, I was able to unlock a shortcut warp to avoid that after going through the first time.

It is still hard to remember where to go or how long/large they are when such games aren't mapped.

For such when recreating them, even with screenshots at their pixel perfect native resolutions, there's Tiled, the map editor for placing tiles and creating maps. The Mummy: Demastered's maps were made that way, and it was rather quite swift. Eishiya used that to smooth the process, as I recall, and I was impressed with how that mapper did it. Surely, the same can be done for already released numerous pixel art made games.

Of course, Kayato, if you want some more details in them for additional guidance, yes, an image editor does the job, but ripping sprites, which also uses emulators and tools, for many things are needed to put them in their boundaries, like items, bosses' put together big screen-filling bodies that are oftentimes tough for using emulators, but you can place the bosses themselves out of the maps' boundaries, a bit close to their arenas they're fought in, and make unmarked maps for those just wanting to see them clear and clean.

Kayato, remember one thing. Just make sure you clear out the frontmost layers that obscure the foregrounds and backgrounds when mapping out certain areas that occupy the viewing field.

[Kayato]

Thanks to both of you for the advice; I'll look into it further.

[dark_lord_zagato]

I have a small bit of advice for anyone who tries Paint.net

There is a way to save your tool preferences after you get started.

Open paint.net and put all the tool settings where you like them. Don't forget to select the bucket and turn anti-alias off, this is very important. The icon will be in the middle of the tool bar while the bucket is selected. Make sure it says "aliased rendering."

Next, click the settings button. It's the gear icon in the upper right of the window. Go to tools. Click on the option that says "Load From Toobar."

Settings/Tools
Load From Toolbar

These are now your default settings when you open Paint.net and you never have to worry about it again.

[mechaskrom]

Cyartog959 is right that there are many games that do not run in an emulator. They can still be mapped, but it's harder. The problem with games like Blaster Master Zero is rather that they use many graphical effects and scrolling layers which is difficult to map.

It's easier to map old 8- and 16-bit games using an emulator, which is why I suggest that beginners start there.

Regarding paint.net settings, in addition to "aliased rendering", I also like to set the "tolerance" level to 0% so that only identical pixels are bucket filled or magic wand selected.

[Cyartog959]

Yes, those games are quite harder to map, mechaskrom, but with select tools for whichever engines they use, it can be a bit easier.

I also nearly forgot to bring up some additional info centering on the BMZ trilogy's different handling of Inti Creates' 2D games.

Upon reading and visiting a bit, one of Spriters Resources' rippers, Deathbringer, who did sprite ripping from BMZ1, and apparently stopped for quite a long while now, so you know, used NinjaRipper, a tool to gather these sheets as textures, but it did a lot of palette DDS dumping(which that ripper, to speak, was able to follow the texture its meant to be used for) and they looked like they were mostly black and/or with one color used in them, and the color indexing is rather different than others' handling of palettes and sprite sheets by hand before converting them into PNGs.

For that, whatever sprites ripped in the process had to be manually retextured to get their colors right by taking screenshots to figure out which colors are right and what goes where. Another ripper, Random Talking Bush, did well on figuring that game's different file structure out, including understanding the OSB files and using a script that output palettes to .PAL format(but the palette swaps, such as the Albino and King Dig-Rawlers from BMZ3, for instance, may need to be manually extracted). Its all a bit technical, but can be learned from experience.

I'd do some consulting with these rippers for some better understanding on it, Kayato.

I think you'll be quite stunned to see the actual large bodies of Venom Master and Dig-Rawler themselves when you get to them. I saw them in the soundtrack booklets that holds all enemies' names, though its in Japanese language and needs to be translated.

That may be needed if you're up to adding in miniature bestiaries to your maps to identify which enemies are unique in each Area and which are shared across them. Honestly, I'm a bit surprised these games doesn't have bestiaries in-game, compared to many that do.