World Map

[BlaXpirit]

UPD: The maps are done.

• Maps Index[pryp.in]
  
• Overworld Map[pryp.in]

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=325495361 ________

I've been considering making a complete map of Super Win the Game.
I don't see any other way to find all the gems; I can't memorize where I've been and where I haven't been, making it tedious and nearly impossible to find the few remaining gems.

To start with, here is the resolution the game uses:
Each tile is 16×16 pixels. There are 16×14 tiles on the screen. But the pixels are not square when displayed. Tiles are 16x16 pixels but are scaled and displayed with 16:14 ratio, and it is impossible to resize the game in a way to make the pixels square.
Anyhow, I chose to run the game at the following resolution: 4·16·16×4·14·14 = 1024×784, and then scale the image using a fast (non-blurry) transformation and get a 16·16×14·16 = 256×224 pixel-perfect image.
Obviously, CRT must be disabled.

Now, making such a map is uncomparably more difficult than the map I made for You Have to Win the Game.
You probably realize how difficult/tedious it is to glue all the parts of a scrolling screen together. That's why I will attempt to make a program that does this automatically. No guarantees that it will succeed, but I'm gonna try anyway.


Or... someone could look through the game's files and try to decode the whole word from them.
There is that "content dump" thingy...


Or... the developer could be so nice to release the map himself

[Morsk]

I also thought of doing this. There's a ton of software that merges images into a big image; it's called "image stitching". I've never worked with any of it. But I googled some yesterday, and http://enblend.sourceforge.net/index.htm looks like it might be able to do it. So basically take 200 screenshots of Subterranean Waterways, throw it in the software, and a mostly-complete map comes out. I'm hoping. That totally was 100x harder than I made it sound, and not worth it. The existing software is for photos, and didn't like pixel art at all. And it requires a lot of manual fussing.

[BlaXpirit]

So here is my realtime merging idea in action. http://i.imgur.com/G4XcIOc.png
Unfortunately, I think it is not very viable. Animated stuff, such as the water that I had to avoid, throws it off way too much. That was the biggest area I could cover without it resetting.
Besides, the CPU strain is huge...

[Morsk]

Wow, that was fast. What did you use to write that? We could probably stop the animation by editing the art assets.

Are you excited about mapping, or is it about the gems? I ... sort of have a full list of all 128 locations that I was holding out on because it wasn't "perfect" yet and needs editing.

[BlaXpirit]

Originally posted by Morsk:

stop the animation by editing the art assets

Such a great idea.
May be good to also make enemies invisible... or dedicate a special color key for them.
But I'm not sure how to edit assets...

Originally posted by Morsk:

What did you use to write that?

C++, Qt.

[Morsk]

We were able to stop animations by changing the art, but BlaXpirit said the side-scrolling parts are a lot harder to automap than the overworld. I'm totally burned out and it will be 2-3 days before I can think about this again.

I believe a map-based guide is important. Checklist-based guides encourage spoilered play, but maps are friendly to people who want to play through blind, then only come to the map later to clean up what they missed. Plus maps look awesome.

[Stovich]

for the overworld, why not just delete the water tiles from the image, and pattern-fill with 1 frame from the water animation?

Also, whats the point of an over-world map? It is so small to begin with... Side-scrolling maps would be much more useful, but that would be a big task obviously.

[BlaXpirit]

We read the game's files and generate maps automatically.

Simple maps of the whole game world are almost done. Only tweaks and details remain.

[Jazzy Waffles]

Well an overworld map already sorta exists if you get it after completing a SWTG badge. But dungeon maps and stuff would be nice.

[petruzanautico]

Oh, I already started by hand. Well, here it is if anybody needs it.
http://i.imgur.com/sfmrdsT.jpg

I'm about to start mapping the side-view levels.

[BlaXpirit]

Please, no :p

We are about to finish mapping the side-view levels.
Actually, the images themselves are done, just that I want to make an iteractive map.
But may release just the images before I finish that.

[Morsk]

Side levels are what was so painful that we resorted to reading game files.

Something interesting is that everything is made of rooms exactly 1 screen in size. When regions scroll, they're a bunch of rooms joined together.

[BlaXpirit]

The maps are done.

• Maps Index[blaxpirit.pythonanywhere.com]
  
• Overworld Map[blaxpirit.pythonanywhere.com]

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=325495361

[madsen]

Holy crap, that's an amazing piece of work! Great job, and thanks a ton!

[Morsk]

My favorite part is finally understanding why I couldn't grapple walls at the top of this place in Desert Temple[blaxpirit.pythonanywhere.com]. There are invisible boundaries under them.

[flesk]

Yeah, I tried to get up there to. Same with the upper right corner of Sky Pillars.