Topic: Castlevania UE4 (Metroidvania)

[Corpsecrank]

Yeah I don't like the Simon chronicles look either. It's just not Simon, especially with that over-the-top pretty boy look he was given--A travesty to one of the most manliest Belmonts of the entire series.

This is exactly how I felt. Like what have you done to our badass hero? Now he looks like he is going to start crying and run off to the bathroom to fix his fkn eyeliner...

If you're expanding the areas, are you adding more bosses?  If so, are you taking ones from the other NES Castlevania or trying to come up with some new stuff?

I do intend to add additional bosses. I almost have to if I want to expand this the way I do. I will probably use as much nes cv stuff that I can for this. I don't want to use custom stuff or things from other games any more than I would need too. And really I will probably only use custom stuff as need if I can help it.

Er, hate to be the bearer of ill news, but it's literally just an edit with only a few pixels' difference in general outlining and shaping.

Ah no I am sorry I should have been more clear perhaps. I mean yes they are very similar and that should  be obvious but with cv2 simon the black solid areas make working with the sprite much harder. This is most apparent in the arms and legs where the original simon has more detail. You also lose the "sword" on simon's belt that is clear in the cv1 simon but only really noticed on the death frame of the cv2 simon. Also the color on cv1 simon is better in general which I know may be opinion but the cv2 sprite has white and red for the face which is disturbing as it looks like a clown to me lol.

Artistic interpretation aside they are very similar with only slight actual changes in pixel arrangement. The big changes happened due to the color choices etc.


So hopefully tonight is the last night of suffering in photoshop. I found that the key to staying motivated and getting shit done is to just put swinglevania on a 24/7 loop crank the volume up and drink gallons of coffee. Jokes aside this is worth the effort. I'm actually just getting started today as I just got up about an hour ago. I might post a couple mock ups or something later on so you can get a little bit better idea where I am going with this one.

[Dracula9]

Damn, I love the serious masculinity problems some of y'all have.

Last I checked being a badass had more to do with being a badass, not looking like 80s Schwarzenegger.

[Corpsecrank]

Damn, I love the serious masculinity problems some of y'all have.

Last I checked being a badass had more to do with being a badass, not looking like 80s Schwarzenegger.

Well I think it has less to do with that than the fact that we already had an idea of what simon was supposed to be about. I mean the fact that they changed him from being all he-man style to some gothic sissy look. Once you have an idea of something in your mind it is hard to accept a change that drastic so yeah it disappoints us. I mean alucard he was already a pretty boy and I still think he is awesome because I never pictured him any other way really. If you suddenly tried to make alucard something else I would probably feel the same way about the change.

I should point out though that this is primarily a problem for people who already knew simon from before the change. If you asked someone who never had a pre-conceived idea about him they might actually prefer the newer look to the old so much like the way I felt about the cv1 vs cv2 sprite it is a bit subjective.

[Dracula9]

That's fair, and that's fine.

Shit like "I bet he cries and has to fix his eyeliner" is not an admission of a variance of opinion, and suggests that some people have more deep-seated problems with effeminate men doing the same badass shit as macho-man previous incarnations.

We say what we mean, after all. I like macho rugged Simon as much as the next guy, but I don't fabricate bullshit reasons to dislike more effeminate (or really, not even more effeminate, just less Schwarzenegger) designs on face value alone.

Having a difference of opinion doesn't indicate masculinity problems. Flipping shit and dishing out stereotyped insults towards effeminate male characters as if only burly rugged macho men are capable of enacting baddass feats of strength and power does.

So either some of y'all do a really shitty job of explaining your preferences, or what I said previously stands. Given the outlandish levels of unjustified hatred for certain elements the fanbase has produced and the levels some fans will go to to rationalize, justify, and otherwise enact said unjustified hatreds over the decade I've been in it (cough cough waah I hate IGA he ruined the franchise cough cough), I'm inclined to lean towards the latter.

Hopefully you can understand why.

[Corpsecrank]

That's fair, and that's fine.

Shit like "I bet he cries and has to fix his eyeliner" is not an admission of a variance of opinion, and suggests that some people have more deep-seated problems with effeminate men doing the same badass shit as macho-man previous incarnations.

We say what we mean, after all. I like macho rugged Simon as much as the next guy, but I don't fabricate bullshit reasons to dislike more effeminate (or really, not even more effeminate, just less Schwarzenegger) designs on face value alone.

Having a difference of opinion doesn't indicate masculinity problems. Flipping shit and dishing out stereotyped insults towards effeminate male characters as if only burly rugged macho men are capable of enacting baddass feats of strength and power does.

So either some of y'all do a really shitty job of explaining your preferences, or what I said previously stands. Given the outlandish levels of unjustified hatred for certain elements the fanbase has produced and the levels some fans will go to to rationalize, justify, and otherwise enact said unjustified hatreds over the decade I've been in it (cough cough waah I hate IGA he ruined the franchise cough cough), I'm inclined to lean towards the latter.

Hopefully you can understand why.

You shouldn't read into things so heavily. By the way I think Iga was a genius personally. I don't understand why people think he ruined a series konami was never going to continue doing the same way ever again anyhow lol. I mean they were never making another 2d game with the same style as previous ones that should be pretty obvious. Hell some people think scv4 was garbage and well I have to disagree there also. But as always this is all subjective so to each their own I guess.


So back to the project at hand here. I need some opinions at this point. I want to throw this sample sheet up for feedback on it. I think it looks great for the most part. I mean I wouldn't say I am unhappy with it as is. I do need to know if the flail is to over-sized or if it looks alright the way I have it. I wanted the flail to command some authority I guess but I may have taken it just a little to far? Not sure so I need more eyes on it just to see what someone else thinks. Aside from the flail feel free to critique this all you want I mean now is the time I guess. If the colors look wrong/bad let me know etc.

[BLOOD MONKEY]

That reminds me of a sheet I started working on a while ago and never finished.

[X]

The Flail is a bit over-sized. If you could reduce by half it should work out better.

That reminds me of a sheet I started working on a while ago and never finished.

Awesome!

[FeRcHuLeS]

Not sure so I need more eyes on it just to see what someone else thinks. Aside from the flail feel free to critique this all you want I mean now is the time I guess. If the colors look wrong/bad let me know etc.

Are you talking about my work?? The other pixel is a combination of eyebrow and shadow lol, one pixel and Simon got personality and it's based on Richter Belmont, on the other hand I don't like the shiny forehead of yours.

[Corpsecrank]

Are you talking about my work?? The other pixel is a combination of eyebrow and shadow lol, one pixel and Simon got personality and it's based on Richter Belmont, on the other hand I don't like the shiny forehead of yours.

I'm not quite sure what you are talking about.

The Flail is a bit over-sized. If you could reduce by half it should work out better.

Yeah I think it might be to much but at the same time I still want it to be kind of big compared to the normal size used. I think I will go back and rework it some since it seems to be the only thing I really question at the moment. Once I get the flail taken care of maybe I can finally get back over to ue and start making actual progress.

I got set back by deciding to change this sprite set and I also got side tracked on another journey for the better part of a day or so. It is amazing how much time you can lose to such seemingly small things.


On a completely different note. I keep thinking a whip system similar to the arm cannon in super metroid would be a cool thing. Basically a way to turn different upgrades to the whip off and on to create various combinations. I don't know if I will do that for this game but I like that idea a lot. You would need some well thought out enhancements for players to be able to make some viable combinations from. If I remember right there was very few reasons to change up the arm cannon in super metroid so making the system a lot more important might compel players to tinker with it more. Maybe create weaknesses/resistances to different combinations so players actually need to change up the combination from time to time. You would need to be careful though since it could be come a pain if you have to change often and it isn't fast and easy to change it up. I don't think going into a menu to change it would be a great idea for that reason alone.

[FeRcHuLeS]

I'm not quite sure what you are talking about.

Sorry, That's just a misunderstanding, I'm working on something similar and basing my work on the style of RoB onwards, not sure what are you based on?, my work here: http://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/index.php/topic,8963.0.html.

[Corpsecrank]

Sorry, That's just a misunderstanding, I'm working on something similar and basing my work on the style of RoB onwards, not sure what are you based on?, my work here: http://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/index.php/topic,8963.0.html.

Ah yeah I did see that work of yours. Some nice looking sprites if you ask me. I was basing this one of mine loosely off of the classic artwork where simon had blond hair and the red/gold armor. Basically the same general idea you had I think. The difference is I am trying really hard not to add to much extra detail or stray to far from the original sprite. I mostly just wanted to recolor it and touch it up a bit. I did run into trouble with the hair because I want to keep a black outline on the character and I also wanted to add hair color so it isn't quite as good as I want I guess but it works alright so I went with it. I added a little extra shine to the boots and gauntlets to make them look more metallic. They didn't look quite right without adding it. And the pants and arms etc are all a really dark almost black shade of grey with lighter grey where there was white before. It helps make the whole sprite look better because it had so much large sections of solid black.

Mostly just cleaning up the look since the raw nes sprite was pretty rough on the eyes.

I plan to use tiles from the nes games with the same thing done to them. I think simply changing the colors adds enough to them to make everything look pretty good. Just trying to maintain some balance between staying true to the original art and making that art look better at the same time. It is a little tricky since I don't do a lot of sprite work.

[chainsawmidget]

The boots being mostly gray throws me a bit.  I'm so used to seeing them being white that it looks weird. 

[X]

Simon had dark gray armored boots in SCV4 so it looks fine from here.

[Corpsecrank]

The boots being mostly gray throws me a bit.  I'm so used to seeing them being white that it looks weird.

Yeah not just the boots look weird either because the original sprite had such poor color. Once you start adding color to it things really look different.

Basically the character I posted is only a general idea what I want to do at this point. I have a new sheet I am working on now that will be the final design I use. The new sheet will be pretty similar but some changes I am making should help eliminate some of the weirdness.

When I post the final character sheet I think it is going to be pretty surprising. It won't be for a little while though because I still have an awful lot of work left to do on it. There are a ton of frames in the final sheet some of which I haven't even finished making. When I get this done the character should play as smooth as sotn does. I think if I had tried to go with as few frames as the nes games used it might be kind of rough at least compared to how I wanted it to be. So I had to kind of go back and rethink things some and that caused me to kind of scrap the initial sheet I started. Worth it in the end though.

When I get the new one finished I will post the entire thing and it will make a lot more sense where I am going with this.

[Corpsecrank]

Updated main post with a sample of random bits I just thought I would throw up there. Catch me on the bloodstained discord if you want. There is a link to the post for the discord in the first post of this thread.