English Amiga Board - Maptapper Tutorial Part 2

This is the second part of a tutorial about using Codetapper's Maptapper tool. If you are a beginner you may want to read Maptapper Tutorial 1 - Introduction & The Basics first. Corrections and comments are welcome!

Finding Map Tiles

Now that we know some of the basics it's time to find the tiles for a game. Most of our work will be done using Codetapper's Maptapper program which was developed to rip maps for the Hall of Light database.

For the purposes of this tutorial we will rip tiles from the jolly platform game Kid Gloves II (http://hol.abime.net/2570). The first thing we need to do is get a savestate from WinUAE.

Load the game using WinUAE. Set up the virtual Amiga with as little memory as possible. If a game will run with 512K then don't use any more memory because it reduces the amount of data we have to search through.

Once the first level has loaded save the state as "Kid Gloves 2 Ice Island Section 1.uss". Here is the savestate that has been used for this tutorial: [link]

Hint - Maptapper can handle compressed WinUAE savestates so it's not necessary to save the state uncompressed.

http://www.abime.net/img/files/mappi...ESavestate.png

Download and install Maptapper. See the following EAB thread for details: http://eab.abime.net/project-maptapp...-released.html

Load Maptapper. We are in the "Tile Ripper" tab. Look for the "SaveState:" button with the ellipsis (three dots) and click it. Locate your Kid Gloves II savestate and load it.

Hint - if you are planning to do a lot of map ripping it's a good idea to create a sub-directory for each game in the same location as Maptapper.

In the middle of the window you should see an area filled with what looks like television interference. This is a graphical representation of the savestate.

http://www.abime.net/img/files/mappi...es2_Tiles1.png

Located on the left hand side of the window is a column of different settings. Our challenge is to apply the same settings that the game uses so that the tileset magically appears in the central window!

Hint - finding all the settings can be a frustrating process. It's something that you just have to practice. Eventually it becomes easier to "see" the tile set and to swiftly home in on them.

There are five main areas to consider; tile location, tile size, number of bitplanes, bitplane mode and colour palette.

Location (Address)

The tiles are located somewhere in the savestate. Use the following keys for navigation:

Cursor Left/Right -> Move picture left/right by 2 bytes
Cursor Left/Right + Shift -> Move picture left/right by 1 tile
Cursor Up/Down -> Move picture up/down by 1 pixel
Cursor Up/Down + Shift -> Move picture up/down by 1 tile
Page Up/Down -> Move picture up/down by a larger amount

Use the Page Up/Down keys to quickly move through the savestate and then use the cursor keys for more precise positioning.

The "Address" field shows the current position in the savestate. This value is in hexadecimal and can be edited directly to change position without scrolling.

Tile Size

For the purposes of this tutorial we will use the default tile size which is 16 pixels wide and 16 pixels high. 16x16 is the most common tile size on the Amiga. The tiles in Kid Gloves II are 16x16 but other games might be different. Examining a screenshot from a game can be a good method to determine tile size.

To change the tile size use the following keys:

Q/A -> Adjust bitplane width by 8/16 pixels
Q/A + Shift -> Double or half the bitplane width
W/S -> Adjust bitplane height by 1 pixels
W/S + Shift -> Adjust bitplane height by 8 pixels

However, stick with 16x16 for now.

Number of Bitplanes

We know from general experience that Amiga games aren't likely to use only 2 or 4 colours and that 8, 16 or 32 colours are more common. So the bitplane value is probably going to be 3, 4 or 5. Use the following keys to change the bitplane setting:

E/D -> Adjust number of bitplanes

Bitplane Mode

Four modes are available but let's consider the two common ones for tiles:

The "Amiga ACBM" (Amiga Contiguous Bitmap) mode is when the bitplanes are stored after each other in sequence.

The "Amiga ILBM" (Amiga Interleaved Bitmap) mode is when the same row for each bitplanes are stored together. Thus after the row across all bitplanes is stored, the next row begins again for the first bitplane.

Change the bitplane mode using the M key:

M -> Change the ripping mode used to convert memory into graphics

Colour Palette

Use the ECS, AGA and Copperlist buttons to search for the colour palette. For Kid Gloves II the palette should already be located so this step shouldn't be required.

Locating the Tiles

Start by changing the address location. Scroll through the savestate until you can see something that looks like a tileset. With the current settings we will not see the tiles as they look in-game. We are viewing a single bitplane at the moment - the "Biplanes" setting is at 1. Instead look for something that approximately looks like a tileset. It's hard to describe what it will look like but the tiles will most commonly look like blocks of corrupted graphics around 16x16 in size.

If you have trouble finding them here is a picture which shows what they look like with 1 bitplane:

http://www.abime.net/img/files/mappi...es2_Tiles2.png

One we are confident that we have the correct general tile location we can start to use the cursor keys for precise positioning. We can also start to increase the number of bitplanes and to try the different mode settings.

Hint - the exact tile start location can usually be pinpointed by noting where the graphical corruption ends and what looks like tiles begins. The first tile is often a blank or background tile so it may be black or another single colour, such as blue for the sky.

If the correct settings are selected the tiles will magically appear, like so:

http://www.abime.net/img/files/mappi...es2_Tiles3.png

The correct settings for Kid Gloves II are:

Address: $52862
Bpl Width: 16
Bpl Height: 16
Bitplanes: 3
Mode: Amiga ILBM

There is some graphical junk where the tiles end so you can use the following keys to adjust the canvas size.

T/G -> Adjust the destination ripping width by 16 pixels
T/G + Shift -> Double or half the destination ripping width
Y/H -> Adjust the destination ripping height by 1 pixel
Y/H + Shift -> Double or half the destination ripping height

The canvas size is reflected in the "Rip Width" and "Rip Height" settings:

Rip Width: 320
Rip Height: 80

The tiles will look like this:

http://www.abime.net/img/files/mappi...es2_Tiles4.png

Locating the Map Data

Now that we have found the tiles we need to find the level data that shows how the level should be constructed.

The "Map Ripper" tab is used to construct the map from the tiles. However, before we do that let's try the map search function. Go to the "Map Search" tab which looks like this:

http://www.abime.net/img/files/mappi...MapSearch1.png

The map search attempts to find the map data by analysing a screenshot from the game and trying to find a match for the tiles in the savestate. In order for it to work it requires a screenshot with a reasonably unique combination of tiles that will produce a decent match. Try to capture a screenshot free of extra items which don't appear on the map such as player or enemy sprites.

The "Kid Gloves II Screenshot.png" image has been provided as an example.

http://www.abime.net/img/files/mappi...Screenshot.png

In step "1. Load an image from the game" click the ellipsis (three dots) and load the "Kid Gloves II Screenshot.png". Click "Half Size" to reduce the screenshot to the same size as the tiles.

Drag the dotted square selector over the image and highlight the trunk of the tree and part of the ground.

In step "2. Select a region containing non-animated background tiles" click Match Tiles. A matrix of numbers appears in the box:

19, 20, 21
19, 20, 45
19, 20, 21
44, 20, 21
19, 20, 21
19, 20, 21
19, 20, 21
68, 67, 68

Maptapper has matched tiles in the highlighted section in the screenshot to the tileset that we have ripped. The numbers in decimal refer to the tile numbers in the "Tile Ripper" tab.

Now in step "3. Select a region containing only background tiles" click "Search for map". Maptapper comes up with the following results:

Checking for horizontal byte data...
Jackpot! $4E19 with 1 bytes per tile, map width 73
Jackpot! $6E6F9 with 1 bytes per tile, map width 75
Finished!

This tells us that the highlighted configuration of tiles has been found in two locations: $4E19 and $6E6F9.

http://www.abime.net/img/files/mappi...MapSearch2.png

Let's move to the "Map Ripper" tab.

The map ripper works in a similar way to the tile ripper except that it displays a map built with the tiles found in the tile ripper.

The Page Up/Down and cursor keys are used to navigate through the savestate. The Q/A and W/S keys adjust the width and height of the map.

http://www.abime.net/img/files/mappi...MapRipper1.png

In the Address box enter the first of the two values that the map search located ($4E19) and click the Create Map button. You can also use the "v" key to change the map view zoom to get a closer look (remember to use the scrollbars if you zoom in).

http://www.abime.net/img/files/mappi...MapRipper2.png

It should be evident that the map is displaying parts of a level but it's not quite right yet. The diagonal stripes indicate that the map width isn't correct and indeed the map search suggested a map width of 73. Use the Q/A keys to adjust the width manually. As the width increases the map will slowly appear in its correct form. Alternatively, enter 73 in the "Width" box to set the value directly.

Use the cursor keys to change the start position of the map. The map begins at $4D04. In order to find this location have a look at the tiles above and to the left. For example, the tiles above and to the left of the first tile looks random.

Adjust the height of the map with W/S. The height should be 25.

http://www.abime.net/img/files/mappi...MapRipper3.png

Click "Save Map" and save it a PNG file. Congratulations, you have created a map!

Click for larger version:

http://www.abime.net/img/files/mappi...on_1_small.png

One important setting to note on the "Map Ripper" tab is the "Type". This sets the size of the map tile slots. The options are:

Byte
Word
Longword
Pointers
Word Pointers

For Kid Gloves 2 this option remained at the default of "Byte". If you look at the tiles in the "Tile Ripper" you can see that they number 100. A byte can be used to hold values from 0 to 255 (hex FF) so a byte is sufficient to hold references to 100 tiles. If there are more than 256 tiles then the game will store values in Words (two bytes). The two most common options for this setting are Byte and Word.