WIP - Castlevania Demo!

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D3thAdd3r
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Re: Castlevania Demo!

Post by D3thAdd3r »

Ok I have been messing around some more and have enough understanding of the CV level format to draw this, straight from data ripped by the previously mentioned tool. The graphics which were a screen grab of emulator NameTable for now, which is why colors are off(too frantic of pace to correct "luxuries" right now). This hex has most all tables for the entire game in it, plus a 144 count tileset. We could get away with a 144 tileset per level(9216 bytes each!) and be exactly like original with some creativity. Sitting at 29142 flash usage with the single tileset so this test makes this feel more realistic to me :)

All these tables + 6tilesets would be around 75222, and thats besides code and music. But 3 level episodes seems possible :)

edit* press up and down to change screens

edit 2* I guess games need sprites... :lol: Well this is definitely possible space wise to do something of similar quality 2-3 level episodes perhaps.
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cv_table_test.hex
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DaveyPocket
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Re: Castlevania Demo!

Post by DaveyPocket »

I tried this on my Uzebox, great work! Plays really well, sound amazing! I attached a .uze file made with Packrom GUI, it's so nice having an application that makes .uze files quickly! Someone makes sure the one I uploaded works, the one I played on my Uzebox I did from a different machine :lol:
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Castlevania.uze
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greenpower
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Re: Castlevania Demo!

Post by greenpower »

Well, just dreaming; but, we could even make a community based project to make the REAL succesor game to the original Castlevania.
Just dreaming, but hey, dreaming it's free! :D

BTW, the attached .UZE doesn't work. Anyway, Packrom is AWESOME!
I know i'm too young, but it doesn't matters. Maybe i'm a newbie, but i can learn very fastly
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DaveyPocket
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Re: Castlevania Demo!

Post by DaveyPocket »

Odd... Try the on attached to this post.

I had it working perfectly fine on my Uzebox earlier today, is your SD card fragmented? Maybe some others could provide feedback. This well help in the development of the final application. Sorry if I'm thread-hijacking
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castlevania2.uze
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D3thAdd3r
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Re: Castlevania Demo!

Post by D3thAdd3r »

Well I have refined things quite a bit and should be easy to integrate this into a renderer now, it will render every screen of each level in CV. This is an update that has almost al the level tile graphics for the first 3 levels of CV1 and sitting at about 47200 bytes, of course you can view the last 3 levels of the game also but the tile sets aren't there so not very recognizable.

I verified the screens versus the level editor Stake and everything, besides a couple (pallete/mirror table?) bytes I dont understand yet causing 2 screen artifacts, is drawing like the original. More hex searching and comparing and I don't have the stomach for it for a while. Because the colors are off in the gfx bitmap and I dont feel like manually coloring right now, things looks a little weird in a couple areas. Sure could use an artist :lol:

Alec I will send you this code for rendering the compressed original map data and the table ripper. I got a little obsessed today so I hope it turns out some how useful :? Now to drink!

=pad=
up - screen++
down - screen--
left - level--
right - level++

when you change levels it sets screen back to 0; when you go past the 3rd level the graphics aren't there to represent it but the data is right. Some screens looks like nothing seen in game, that's because there were a couple unused screens in the original data.
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3levels.hex
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uze6666
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Re: Castlevania Demo!

Post by uze6666 »

Sorry for thelate reply, just back from the long weekend. Nice level ripping Lee, very cool to see on the Uzebox! I'm curious to see the compression scheme using for Castlevania and if we can't do better. For sure we won't be able to replicate the game as-is and will need to use some tiles to simulate the candle sprites (for instance). Just that may mean some different map format. Btw,In my map editor, I implemented a "reverse ripper" using full level map made by folks on the internet as big bitmaps and extracting the tiles, supertiles and map data.

Do you have some links on the Castlevania level format? Not so obvious looking at Stake editor help file. However, I can believe I didn't notice the maps uses 32x32 supertiles instead of 16x16! For sure that would cut my current maps size by 4 right away!
Wow, it looks so good! Everything works very smoothly. Do you think you have enough space remaining to do most of what you want to do?
Not now, but by cutting some corners, good map compression and Lee's 2bit blitter, I have a gut feeling we *may* be able to get 4 levels...
Odd... Try the on attached to this post.
Doesn't work here either. It hangs the emulator and resets my Uzebox...
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D3thAdd3r
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Re: Castlevania Demo!

Post by D3thAdd3r »

uze6666 wrote:Do you have some links on the Castlevania level format?
Unfortunately none. I changed parts of interest in stake, saved, and compared to original in hex editor to discover format of patterns and screen. Everything I know so far,besides enemy/object placement which I am working on, is shown in the source code for ripper+renderer. All game data offsets for everything are in Stake data folder. If your editor can already take those large maps and make patterns from that , and the engine is already working with that data; Well you got a very good thing going I wouldn't think about changing! I will continue because now I want to understand all the inner workings of a 25 year old game for some reason :lol:
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CV rip+render.zip
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mapes
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Re: Castlevania Demo!

Post by mapes »

Great work on the Castlevania demo Uze! Castlevania is my by far my favorite game series from Konami. I think it is their longest running franchises as well.
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uze6666
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Re: Castlevania Demo!

Post by uze6666 »

If your editor can already take those large maps and make patterns from that , and the engine is already working with that data; Well you got a very good thing going I wouldn't think about changing! I will continue because now I want to understand all the inner workings of a 25 year old game for some reason
Well, now that I somewhat know how maps are made in CV (rooms+32x32 tiles) I'd rather go with an editor that already work fine (like Stake) since it more efficient than what I have now. I'm very interested in knowing how attributes are stored (candle, enemies, doors locations etc) since I was at that point in the current demo. If you figure it out, let me know! :)
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D3thAdd3r
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Re: Castlevania Demo!

Post by D3thAdd3r »

Cool, I'll get that figured out as soon as I can.

It would be very neat to have multiple members working in parallel. Probably difficult to do and organize right now, until data formats are totally decided, but at some point maybe you could put out a "To Do" list so people can start moving. I'm sure some artists would be very useful for graphics refactoring for a new look and lowering ram tile requirements for sprites.
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