Shining Cartography - Shining in the Darkness - Part 3

Another week, another update to my journey with mapping the Shining games. This session went a lot smoother and I was enjoying myself greatly as I listened to some great podcasts. For those wondering, the podcasts I listened to were Axe of the Blood God, which is about RPGs, and Retronauts, which is about retro video games. Unfortunately, I was not able to work on this project very long, but I do plan to work on this throughout the week so I could make more significant progress. Goal right now is to finish Shining in the Darkness in about 3 months and move on to Shining Force. This might be wishful thinking, but we'll see.

I've also been thinking about how to layout all the maps. One version would be to create individual maps to view separately and the other version would bunch them up together to create a poster. Regardless, the goal here is to create a digital version of my maps so that people can print them out to use as they play the game. I'll probably end up creating both versions.

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Coming along nicely.

So empty...

Here is the almost completion of the Level 1 map. Not much to say about it, except that I'm still deciding how I would note which stairs lead to which trial. I'll come up with something on the final revision. Probably just color code it to be honest.

With the notation page I've decided to wait to fill it out because I wanted to complete the map first and I also needed to find out what the treasures contain since I did not note them down on my initial play through. Looks lonely, but I promise to find them some friends soon enough.

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Making progress.

Turn table go round and round and round...

Not quite half way there, but this trial is coming along smoothly as well. This trial is pretty though with some annoying enemies that can debuff the party with paralysis. I have some pretty decent gear, so it's not that bad, but it's just somewhat annoying because characters can't act in battle or on the field when they are paralyzed. To make matters worse, inventory is so limited and is already filled with gear and keys that carrying healing items becomes a nuisance, especially when finding treasure in the dungeon and I am forced to drop something to retrieve them.

Introduced on this floor is the turn table which spins the character and points them to another direction. Don't know why they are even there since they don't do a very good job at attempting to confuse the player and get them lost. Also, on the notation sheet, the icons may be in a jumble at the moment, but in the final revision I do plan on categorizing them.

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Like I mentioned, I do hope to spend more time with these throughout the week and provide a bigger update next week. I really do enjoy working on these and is a great way for me to relax. Shining games are awesome. Until then, see you in the next one.

Don't forget to check out the previous parts to Shining Cartography.

Shining Cartography - Shining in the Darkness - Part 1
Shining Cartography - Shining in the Darkness - Part 2