Author Topic: Rockman & Forte: Mirai Kara no Chousen Sha!  (Read 25421 times)

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Offline Raccoon Sam

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Rockman & Forte: Mirai Kara no Chousen Sha!
« on: February 28, 2008, 06:50:37 am »
Roughly translated 'Megaman & Bass: The Challenger from the Future!'

It's a wonderful Megaman game that got released on the Bandai WonderSwan, which is notable for being a Gameboy-esque handheld but with Three Layers instead of the Gameboy's normal two, one for sprites, one for foreground. Another interesting feature of the system is the feature of turning the system 90 degrees to play some levels in a 'vertical mode'. WonderSwan Color was released soon after, and instead of being a slight evolution of the WonderSwan like Gameboy Color was to Gameboy, WonderSwan Color possessed the same graphical capabilities as SNES, which was quite advanced for the time.



Enough of that, though.. I bring you maps from the game; behold the introduction level. It is optimized as much as possible and is very small, as seen in the attachment.

I also ripped the icon to be displayed on the WonderSwan page:

http://xs224.xs.to/xs224/08094/chousensha908.gif



More to come.


Offline Maxim

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RE: Rockman & Forte: Mirai Kara no Chousen Sha!
« Reply #1 on: February 28, 2008, 07:43:31 am »
The optimised PNG is only 33KB. There's no real reason to use GIF these days.

Offline Raccoon Sam

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RE: Rockman & Forte: Mirai Kara no Chousen Sha!
« Reply #2 on: February 28, 2008, 09:56:14 am »
Whaa?

That's crazy..! I've always had the impression that GIFs are better no matter how you optimize a low-colored image.. Guess times have changed or I've just been wrong all the time.

Thanks for pointing that out, though.. Saves a bunch of space and is friendly for all the 56k people out there.

Think you could elaborate on the Optimizing, though..? Do I need special software?

Thanks.

Offline Maxim

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RE: Rockman & Forte: Mirai Kara no Chousen Sha!
« Reply #3 on: February 28, 2008, 10:40:19 am »
Some people use PNGGauntlet which gives you a nice UI. I just use PNGOUT - which is what underlies PNGGauntlet - directly. Its default settings are usually close to perfect anyway, so you can drag/drop onto it or set up a shortcut or a file association, etc.



JonLeung puts submitted images through there anyway, I believe, so you can skip it if you want to save some CPU time in exchange for some more network time to send maps. It's worth noting that it can be extraordinarily slow (like, multiple hours on a very large map, your image took 16 seconds).



Image editors have always output poorly compressed GIFs and PNGs, hence the need for specialised optimisers.

Offline Raccoon Sam

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RE: Rockman & Forte: Mirai Kara no Chousen Sha!
« Reply #4 on: February 28, 2008, 10:57:19 am »
Makes sense.. Thanks for the info, I'll be sure to optimize my maps from now on if possible.

Offline JonLeung

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RE: Rockman & Forte: Mirai Kara no Chousen Sha!
« Reply #5 on: February 28, 2008, 12:52:59 pm »
Three things:



1. Hmmm, I remember noticing the attachment option for posts but never actually used it.  Thanks for trying that out...I could be wrong, but I really don't remember anyone else ever doing so.



2. Yes, I use PNGGauntlet on all submissions (except on JPEGs, but I can't remember the last time I accepted one of those) and most of the time they will make them smaller.  Unless the submitter already optimized it, it can be considerably smaller - it's not uncommon to shrink images down to 25%-50% of the original filesize.  PNGs can have as many colours as BMPs (though the GIF format's 256-colour limit would rarely be exceeded in properly-made screenshot maps) while still being smaller in filesize.  GIFs can be animated, and I do see some small monochrome GIFs being smaller than the same image as PNGs, but other than those cases, PNGs will always be preferred.



3. This is awkward...we were talking about this very game in the Mega Man maps topic and we found that Zeric has mapped this but didn't yet submit them here.  I was going to ask Zeric about them...  So you might want to hold off on doing these until we find out if he'll let us host his...not that his are any different, it's just that if they're already complete, why duplicate the effort?



There must be some other good WonderSwan games to map...aren't there?

Offline DarkWolf

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RE: Rockman & Forte: Mirai Kara no Chousen Sha!
« Reply #6 on: February 28, 2008, 02:26:46 pm »
I was going to map Langrisser Millennium for WonderSwan, but never got around to it.

Offline marioman

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RE: Rockman & Forte: Mirai Kara no Chousen Sha!
« Reply #7 on: February 28, 2008, 03:49:11 pm »
3. This is awkward...we were talking about this very game in the Mega Man maps topic and we found that Zeric has mapped this but didn't yet submit them here. I was going to ask Zeric about them... So you might want to hold off on doing these until we find out if he'll let us host his...not that his are any different, it's just that if they're already complete, why duplicate the effort?



There must be some other good WonderSwan games to map...aren't there?


I was just about to bring this up.  Zeric hasn't gotten back with us about that yet.  I find it kind of funny that there is suddenly a surplus of maps for this game.  Seeing as it is find of obscure.



An alternative would be Rockman EXE WS.  It is a platformer, and only has around 11 maps...

Offline Raccoon Sam

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RE: Rockman & Forte: Mirai Kara no Chousen Sha!
« Reply #8 on: February 28, 2008, 10:24:12 pm »
Oh..! Beaten to it yet again. It's alright, saves me lots of work :D

I love Zeric's maps so they must be as good or better than mine, can't wait..!

And I've tried Rockman EXE WS, but Oswan doesn't seem to emulate it well enough.

WonderSwan game library isn't too big anyway, so I'm sure there are other excellent games out there. I'll be sure to check them out.

Offline JonLeung

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RE: Rockman & Forte: Mirai Kara no Chousen Sha!
« Reply #9 on: February 29, 2008, 08:45:06 pm »
There was some confusion earlier that's now been cleared up - so Zeric's sent in his Rockman & Forte: Mirai Kara no Chousen Sha! maps, as well as his remaining Super Mario All-Stars maps, as official submissions!  :D



You can already see them at the link TerraEsperZ provided, but soon they'll be a part of VGMaps.com as well.

Offline marioman

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RE: Rockman & Forte: Mirai Kara no Chousen Sha!
« Reply #10 on: March 01, 2008, 07:33:24 am »
RacconSam Said:

And I've tried Rockman EXE WS, but Oswan doesn't seem to emulate it well enough.




This may be a dumb question, but have you tried other emulators?  I know that one Mega Man site (I can't remember which one) had taken lots of screenshots from the game at one point.  So maybe there is one out there that can play it properly.



That is great about Zeric's maps!  I can't wait for them to be put up.  I've been wondering how long it would be before someone finished Super Mario All-Stars.

Offline Raccoon Sam

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RE: Rockman & Forte: Mirai Kara no Chousen Sha!
« Reply #11 on: March 01, 2008, 10:44:10 am »
marioman Said:
RacconSam Said:

And I've tried Rockman EXE WS, but Oswan doesn't seem to emulate it well enough.


This may be a dumb question, but have you tried other emulators?  I know that one Mega Man site (I can't remember which one) had taken lots of screenshots from the game at one point.  So maybe there is one emulator out there that can play it properly.



That is great about Zeric's maps!  I can't wait for them to be put up.  I've been wondering how long it would be before someone finished Super Mario All-Stars.

Sorry, I'm a Mac user. The only WonderSwan emulator for Mac is Oswan.

Should've probably mentioned that earlier but yeah.

Offline JonLeung

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RE: Rockman & Forte: Mirai Kara no Chousen Sha!
« Reply #12 on: March 02, 2008, 07:34:49 am »
Well, it's up.  Finally the WS/WSC section gets updated for the first time in years.  Technically, it's the first WonderSwan non-Color game, since the only other map is from the WSC version of Final Fantasy.

Offline Raccoon Sam

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RE: Rockman & Forte: Mirai Kara no Chousen Sha!
« Reply #13 on: March 02, 2008, 09:55:31 am »
The Clock Men page is broken.

Offline marioman

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RE: Rockman & Forte: Mirai Kara no Chousen Sha!
« Reply #14 on: March 02, 2008, 11:24:53 am »
Raccoon Sam Said:
marioman Said:
RacconSam Said:

And I've tried Rockman EXE WS, but Oswan doesn't seem to emulate it well enough.


This may be a dumb question, but have you tried other emulators?  I know that one Mega Man site (I can't remember which one) had taken lots of screenshots from the game at one point.  So maybe there is one emulator out there that can play it properly.



That is great about Zeric's maps!  I can't wait for them to be put up.  I've been wondering how long it would be before someone finished Super Mario All-Stars.

Sorry, I'm a Mac user. The only WonderSwan emulator for Mac is Oswan.

Should've probably mentioned that earlier but yeah.

Have you tired Wine?  It allows you to run Windows programs on a Mac.  I have heard that it works very well.