Question about Map/Tileset Rips

[Mooshry]

So something that's been bothering me ever since I've started visiting this site is, I always see rips for character sprites, portraits, enemies, and so on. But I barely see any rips for full maps or tilesets, which is what I mostly come here for. Of course, a lot of games like Metal Max 2, Secret of Mana, and Astonishia Story have LOTS of maps and tilesets available, but games like Dragon Quest 5 and the FF Pixel Remasters don't.

The overworlds are ripped for all FF Pixel Remasters, but for some reason no other maps have been ripped. And for Dragon Quest 5, almost every map has been ripped and posted on other sites, but not here. Is there a particular reason maps and tileset rips don't get posted as often?

[Dazz]

Because they are typically far more intensive to rip, and a complete nightmare to organise.

The only reason things aren't ripped though is mostly because people don't want to rip them; the solution is to be the solution, rip them, and contribute them to the site!

[Petie]

Dazz hit the nail on the head as far as why you don't see them here. To add slightly to it though, I'd personally love to see more full map rips - I've always thought they were great to look at but yes, they're not easy to rip or organize and even when you have them, there's then debate as to what to include (just raw maps, enemy and item locations, etc.?). By all means though, if you have some you'd like to submit, please do so!

[Barack Obama]

You can expect some Trials of Mana tilesets in the future, since the game has an easy-to-use editor for that (MapJester).

But in general, there is always stuff missing from games and it depends on the fanbase how many love it receives. Look at Super Mario World, Angelique, Chrono Trigger or Donkey Kong Country, there is almost everything there. But for Dragon Quest, we even miss IV and VI as an entry, so there is a lot of work to do.
And even the big games who received substantial rips in the past are not automatically "done", since some of these sheets are very old and outdated (missing frames, faulty palette, mash-ups of random sprites and tiles, etc.).

If you want to participate and do some Dragon Quest V, I reccommend a walk through walls code, in this case DD6D-6FDD
https://www.almarsguides.com/retro/walkt...GameGenie/
https://www.almarsguides.com/retro/walkt...ionReplay/
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/588...e/56181328
If you already know the game, you can use codes to progress faster, make quicksaves all over the place and sort them into folders to quickly access every map or dungeon in the game. Of course it's easier if you have a worldmap and convenient transportation / teleportation mechanics.

As for other sites like vgmaps:
https://vgmaps.com/Atlas/SuperNES/index....agonQuestV
Since the rippers write on the map, like item or enemy locations or even door connections, their content wouldn't be accepted here. Sprites like npcs, items or enemies have to be deleted too since they belong on other sheets and are not map-specific.

[Yawackhary]

Is there a particular reason maps and tileset rips don't get posted as often?

Dazz covered the basics very well with Obama going to detail on Dragon Quest V and if you know the game, you can give it a try for yourself but for more detailed reasons why:

From the NES/SG-1000 up to the PS1/Saturn era, there is at least a background viewer on some emulators to help a bit and the more popular games have their own tools however from the PS1/Saturn onwards (with the exception of handhelds up to the PSP), there isn't a background viewer due to the way graphics are drawn meaning that you would have to do quite a lot of work. The same also applies on computers where it doesn't have a tile based system. You might get lucky with a tool, debug mode or a walk through walls cheat but for many cases, those options aren't there...

Other things to consider:
*Animations especially when it comes to water or lava.
*Palettes especially if it has a day and night cycle, season based or even the lights in an area.
*Any effects e.g. weather, flashing, scanline based, scaling & rotation (Mode 7 on SNES), filters (modern games)
*Unreachable areas
*Whether the NPC/item sprites are part of the map or not (sometimes they are baked in but usually not)
*Possible graphical/palette glitches especially when it comes to scrolling
*Regional variations in case of signs or content
*Language barrier (for RPGs/strategy games that don't have a translation)

Ripping RPG maps can be tough but sports games are worse especially when it comes to scrolling fields. Unlike RPGs where the scrolling in most cases outside of unused areas or cornered off boundaries can be controlled to a certain extent, the scrolling cannot be controlled very easily and getting towards the furthest edge of the boundaries where the crowds usually are is a bit of a nightmare. There are other examples too: Ultra Golf for the Game Boy, there is one water animation that only triggers once and if you miss that (which is VERY easy to do on the scrolling courses), that's it because it is the first animation that loads and never reloads. I had to abandon or put on hold many golf course maps, baseball/soccer fields and because the only way to get them ripped completely would be to hack into the game and find the co-ordinates. Hard to do when there's no research on a game. It also applies to backgrounds in general too because map ripping is similar to background ripping and much of it is the same process.

Tilesets are a bit easier because even for PS1/Saturn games onwards, they are loaded in assuming that the emulator has support for a VRAM viewer. Even if they don't, it might use files that can be viewed at best on a default image viewer (if it uses pngs for a PC game, best case scenario!), use a convertor/special tool, see if TileGDD shows anything or at worst baked into the exe in the case of PC. They still need sorting out and some tilesets are shared with other areas in the game. At worst, an animation can be dynamically loaded into the tile viewer/VRAM/VDP and the ROM/files are compressed with no decompressor. Also they maybe in a format that is hard to understand.

Another reason is probably because the people who do rip maps either don't come here, used to come here but don't anymore (Davias was a huge contributor regarding RPGs) or do rip the maps but are very busy. Many rippers here also don't focus on maps/backgrounds and/or not into RPGs/strategy games. As already mentioned, some of it is down to a dedicated fanbase where Pokémon has a higher chance of nearly everything being ripped, have a good chunk like Fire Emblem/Advance Wars/Final Fantasy/Mario & Luigi but other fanbases are smaller especially when you move away from the Nintendo/Square-Enix games. Wouldn't be surprised if there were maps that were on here that got rejected because they were stolen from somewhere else (unless said ripper is the same).