Topic: Castlevania level 1 made in unreal

[Claimh Solais]

dunno, i'm hearing all these people saying konami is satan, and eats fanprojects for lunch, yet i've been hammering away for a year at this, even had a small article in kotaku, and still nothing from konami.
the KS is obviously going to fail, but i'm kinda wanting to keep that kickstarter up just to see if people are wrong about konami.

I don't know where you're getting this. Belmontoya even said Konami gave them their blessing on Lecarde Chronicles 2 so they can continue making it without a hitch.

well, i have 11 years of experience as a 3d modeler for a company called esim games, which has released 4 versions of a tank simulator called steel beasts.
dunno if that'll count for anything.

Doesn't really count for anything when you don't provide those background details for anyone to see. If you have experience, that's definitely something you should've brought up the last ten or so times I brought up the zero track record. 11 years as a 3D modeler doesn't mean your fan-game will be successful though (though it does show your prowess at modeling, especially when watching your modeling videos. I was really impressed with that stuff).

i've released the game for free, and going to keep the first 3 levels free. 
if i get  the license, i'll sell the full game with all levels for maybe 5-10$
if i don't(which seems very likely, given how the kickstarter is failing) i'll finish up level 2 and 3, and then work on my own IP.

I don't... what? So now your plan is to sell the game if you get the license? This is the kind of lack of communication that I've been talking about. You don't even have a plan laid out for what you want to do with the game. As a fan-game, it's expected you'll release the whole thing for free. Obviously, as it's not your IP to sell. And yeah, you're keeping the levels free. But only the first three? So the last three are going to be paid downloads? So why go nuts on zangetsu for the "cash grab" comments? I'm really not understanding here.

people were making comments on my video such as "konami, take note, this is what you should have been doing all along"
i believe that is a fairly strong indicator that what i'm doing is in no way damaging the brand, but rather strengthening it and giving people back a little faith in it.

This is gonna be the bit that absolutely no fan, let alone a fan-game developer wants to hear: Views from fans on fan-games is horribly skewed.[/i] Let me use an example of a fan-game: Castlevania The Lecarde Chronicles 1. I never played this fan-game until recently, even though it's been out for a long time. But I heard all the hype surrounding it, many calling it the best CV fan-game ever created, some even touting it as better than most official CV games. And with how awesome the second one is looking, I decided to try it. The end result? Most of the hype was bullshit.

Lecarde Chronicles was definitely a quality fan-game, and emulated the CV style pretty well. But there were design flaws everywhere that people are seemingly overlooking. Too many traps that blend in with the background too much. Poor enemy placement that results in unfair damage. Non-adjustable controls making custom controls an absolute hassle. The existence of being able to travel downward by jumping down, making it confusing if a downward drop will lead into a death or another area, or possibly another area that results in death.

Is Lecarde Chronicles bad? Hell no. It's definitely a really good fan-game. But it goes to show that views over fan-games are incredibly skewed. Now while I know your game isn't finished yet, if I were to judge it the same way I judge LC1, these are the things I'd point out (Disclaimer: I have kept critique of your work to a minimum previously simply because I'm aware it's still a work-in-progress. This critique is purely for the sake of my argument):

-Animations are wonky and look really silly, which completely goes against the atmosphere.
-It's too dark. WAAAAY too dark. Some areas it's nearly impossible to see and there are light sources coming from everywhere. Half the time Simon is impossible to see, but you mended this by making his whip glow, but that makes it look even worse cuz now Simon's shadow is spinning around every which way. The panthers in Stage 1 are especially cheap because you can't see them at all.
-Candle placement is out of whack. In the original CV1, they were simple to whip. Either straight on the ground, or at the peak of your jump, making it simple for you to keep moving while collecting hearts. In your demo, I've noticed several times where you've missed candles because of their strange placement, and even saw you stop and have to time your whip strike to get it. This terribly breaks up the pace of the game.
-The platform where you get the double-shot during the first boss fight is too high up. I saw in your videos when you'd struggle to jump over it.

All in all, just from those, your demo has: wonky animations, awful lighting, poor placement of candles, wonky platform placement. But most of the people I've seen give you praise have left out all this, and simply given you a "This looks great!" or a "Konami, take note!", completely ignoring things that are wrong with it.

The official CV titles don't have lighting problems, or problems with things blending in too much (okay, some do, but there's a reason those are called the bad games). In the popular ones, like Aria of Sorrow, or Symphony of the Night, all enemies, all characters, all items and hazards, they can all be seen clearly. This makes the challenge fair, and fun.

The popular official CVs have great placement of candles, and enemies, and such. Attacking candles in nearly every CV game feels fluid because of the fact that they're put in such simple spots so you can attack the candle, pick up the item, and keep moving, all without stopping.

The official CVs aren't without their problems, but people criticize them for their problems. Fan-games often have their problems completely over-looked. And that's my point here. Fan-view on fan-games is extremely skewed.[/i]

Disclaimer again: The point of the critique above was, again, simply for the sake of my argument. It's not meant to be taken super seriously because I know it's a work-in-progress and you're in the process of ironing things out.

i believe that is a fairly strong indicator that what i'm doing is in no way damaging the brand

As for this, well... You've got quite a few comments doing the opposite of the comments you've shown. Which you've neglected to mention.

http://www.siliconera.com/2016/10/17/demo-now-castlevania-remade-unreal-engine/
"I don't get the appeal of this, honestly."
"Me neither, part of appeal of the original Castlevania was the fact it looked retro. Remaking anything in the Unreal Engine doesn't make it better."

"3D makes me realize how silly it is that you hit lanterns, candelabras and other things that would obviously be way off to the side of the road or on the wall. [...] Overall, this isn't the most terrible thing I've seen for some fan's home project, but he won't get far like this."

"Isn't that... Kinda uncanny ? I don't know i don't think the mix between very realistic graphics and that kind of music and gameplay really work"

"Congrats on managing to look even more drab than the original NES game, I guess?"

"It's honestly awful. It's too dark and controls suck. Hitchy as hell."
"So, basically it's an NES Castlevania?"
"Wrong. That's playable. This is straight shit."

The point of showing those comments off is that you can't be selective with what comments you pull out, and from where. Just going down the Siliconera articles about this remake, you'll see a significantly high amount of people that are against it. Even on your YouTube videos there are quite a few people that don't like what they see. Having the Konami license on your fan-game will make Konami look better to a lot of people, but when you've got numerous comments like this, it can only damage the brand, about as much as the LoS trilogy did.

a "proper quota?" what, if i fail to make them enough money? that's usually only is a problem if the game has a budget.
e.g we spent 50k on this game, so we'll need to earn at least 70k for this project to be worth it.
in this case konami spent 0, so the "proper quota" would also be 0.
well, that'd be my problem, given how Konami would have to pay me nothing for development.

Using your Kickstarter as a base, you've only managed to get $193 USD off of it. To a company like Konami, that's worthless, and giving the license out for only that wouldn't mean anything to them. Remember: even Konami's free-to-play games make them money.

sure there's other games that have been made into 3d sidescroller platformers, like mega man x, which got slammed pretty hard by critics.
and mega man powered up: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e0/Mega_man_powered_up.jpg
myself i got the idea of doing it in unreal engine from watching a guy who did mario and zelda in unreal:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zW4L9CuZ3Ak
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgbGgtq-NMc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9I-aTPwda0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65JEfWpy7N0

...I don't... what? What is the point of the Mega Man remakes? Those were officially-developed-and-licensed Capcom games, and are completely irrelevant to this conversation. That wasn't the point of what I was saying. I was stating that I'm sure you aren't the only person who has ever tried to do the whole "I'll buy the license!" thing, and presented them with a game.

I get why you posted the Unreal videos, but the bottom three are just tech demos being used for practice. The first one looks pretty decent though, as a fan-game.

i could dig up their phone number here and give them a call:
https://konami.com/jobs/en/

...Okay? So basically what you're saying is you don't know how to get the license, but calling them is a good start? Cuz if you do know how, you're still not showing anyone.

[zangetsu468]

well, the undertone you gave me was that my work has no value.

No it wasn't. In the article Kazudra posted up you stressed that remaking CV was a learning curve, learning being for example someone playing with something in their spare time.

This is why I asked point blank why you believed your work on this project should be paid for.
As I stated it wasn't an insult, you could have said a number of things such as
"I'd like to make video games for a living and this is my starting point"
"I'm trying to rejuvenate old IP's that are neglected to hone my skills and bring something new to the oldschool gamers" etc.

Instead you took it personally and answered a question with a question.

I never said your work was rubbish or non-valuable, if you reread the thread comments I put my two cents in and was actually impressed when I'd first seen this project.

My opinions about the financing of this project are similar to what Lelygax's last message comprised.

it works differently in Norway. you are actually paid for educating yourself, and working as a trainee at a company, you also get paid.
because students need to live, and you want them to be educated.

That's a good system, I should've studied in Norway, education is through the roof here.

given that scenario, i'd have to reimburse people, and start working on my own project instead. i can't have money that's not legally my own lying around, no matter how hard i worked for it.

I think this is the part where a lot of potential investors may get scared off, no matter how good your intentions are.

[dejawolf]

I don't... what? So now your plan is to sell the game if you get the license? This is the kind of lack of communication that I've been talking about. You don't even have a plan laid out for what you want to do with the game. As a fan-game, it's expected you'll release the whole thing for free. Obviously, as it's not your IP to sell. And yeah, you're keeping the levels free. But only the first three? So the last three are going to be paid downloads? So why go nuts on zangetsu for the "cash grab" comments? I'm really not understanding here.

because a cash grab is getting a lot of money for no effort, which i find insulting, given the amount of time and effort i have put into this.

This is gonna be the bit that absolutely no fan, let alone a fan-game developer wants to hear: Views from fans on fan-games is horribly skewed.[/i] Let me use an example of a fan-game: Castlevania The Lecarde Chronicles 1. I never played this fan-game until recently, even though it's been out for a long time. But I heard all the hype surrounding it, many calling it the best CV fan-game ever created, some even touting it as better than most official CV games. And with how awesome the second one is looking, I decided to try it. The end result? Most of the hype was bullshit.

Lecarde Chronicles was definitely a quality fan-game, and emulated the CV style pretty well. But there were design flaws everywhere that people are seemingly overlooking. Too many traps that blend in with the background too much. Poor enemy placement that results in unfair damage. Non-adjustable controls making custom controls an absolute hassle. The existence of being able to travel downward by jumping down, making it confusing if a downward drop will lead into a death or another area, or possibly another area that results in death. Is Lecarde Chronicles bad? Hell no. It's definitely a really good fan-game. But it goes to show that views over fan-games are incredibly skewed.

yes, but i've seen similar things in commercial games praised into the sky that are sold for 45€. the absolutely worst example of this
is Xcom 2 which received an 83% on metacritic. the whole game is pretty much unfairly surprising the player in one way or the other.
maybe you wouldn't pay for lecarde chronicles, but a lot of CV fans would.

Now while I know your game isn't finished yet, if I were to judge it the same way I judge LC1, these are the things I'd point out (Disclaimer: I have kept critique of your work to a minimum previously simply because I'm aware it's still a work-in-progress. This critique is purely for the sake of my argument):

-Animations are wonky and look really silly, which completely goes against the atmosphere.
-It's too dark. WAAAAY too dark. Some areas it's nearly impossible to see and there are light sources coming from everywhere. Half the time Simon is impossible to see, but you mended this by making his whip glow, but that makes it look even worse cuz now Simon's shadow is spinning around every which way. The panthers in Stage 1 are especially cheap because you can't see them at all.
-Candle placement is out of whack. In the original CV1, they were simple to whip. Either straight on the ground, or at the peak of your jump, making it simple for you to keep moving while collecting hearts. In your demo, I've noticed several times where you've missed candles because of their strange placement, and even saw you stop and have to time your whip strike to get it. This terribly breaks up the pace of the game.
-The platform where you get the double-shot during the first boss fight is too high up. I saw in your videos when you'd struggle to jump over it.

see i actually need feedback like this, so please don't hold back, get the whip out and start cracking.
-it's too dark, yes, but is it too dark everywhere? or is it just specific sections? i think this might be monitor settings actually, because i have no problems seeing the dogs(panthers) on my screen.
really, i'm trying to catch the 80s night movie lighting feel like this:

and this:

-the annoying whip shadows, yes, i'll be looking into that, i think unreal has some tools to fix this.
-yes, i noticed there was something terribly wrong with the candle placement on the holywater dropper on the panther section. so i'll go over this and fix it.
-the platform is actually the exact height of the original, 200cm tall, the problem is in the original game, when you jumped up, you could "climb" platforms.
so if you stand next to a ledge, and press left while jumping, you'd move forward when reaching the top even if jumping straight.
i've tried getting a similar "climb" functionality working, but haven't figured it out yet.
one thing i tried seemed to work, the only problem was that it allowed you to cancel a straight up jump, and jump forward at any time.

All in all, just from those, your demo has: wonky animations, awful lighting, poor placement of candles, wonky platform placement. But most of the people I've seen give you praise have left out all this, and simply given you a "This looks great!" or a "Konami, take note!", completely ignoring things that are wrong with it.

The official CV titles don't have lighting problems, or problems with things blending in too much (okay, some do, but there's a reason those are called the bad games). In the popular ones, like Aria of Sorrow, or Symphony of the Night, all enemies, all characters, all items and hazards, they can all be seen clearly. This makes the challenge fair, and fun.

so your complaint isn't that the environments are too dark, but that some of the enemies are too hard to see.
that's a completely different issue, see some areas in symphony had completely black backgrounds.

The popular official CVs have great placement of candles, and enemies, and such. Attacking candles in nearly every CV game feels fluid because of the fact that they're put in such simple spots so you can attack the candle, pick up the item, and keep moving, all without stopping.

The official CVs aren't without their problems, but people criticize them for their problems. Fan-games often have their problems completely over-looked. And that's my point here. Fan-view on fan-games is extremely skewed.[/i]

Disclaimer again: The point of the critique above was, again, simply for the sake of my argument. It's not meant to be taken super seriously because I know it's a work-in-progress and you're in the process of ironing things out.

i believe this is  a simple matter of paying vs not paying. as soon as i put up the KS, the complaints started rolling in.
still, there's 100 dislikes to 1200 likes, so the people who dislike are in the minority.
on itch.io i have 13 000 downloads and 4 out of 5 star rating.
and that's despite the issues.

As for this, well... You've got quite a few comments doing the opposite of the comments you've shown. Which you've neglected to mention.

http://www.siliconera.com/2016/10/17/demo-now-castlevania-remade-unreal-engine/
"I don't get the appeal of this, honestly."
"Me neither, part of appeal of the original Castlevania was the fact it looked retro. Remaking anything in the Unreal Engine doesn't make it better."

"3D makes me realize how silly it is that you hit lanterns, candelabras and other things that would obviously be way off to the side of the road or on the wall. [...] Overall, this isn't the most terrible thing I've seen for some fan's home project, but he won't get far like this."

"Isn't that... Kinda uncanny ? I don't know i don't think the mix between very realistic graphics and that kind of music and gameplay really work"

"Congrats on managing to look even more drab than the original NES game, I guess?"

"It's honestly awful. It's too dark and controls suck. Hitchy as hell."
"So, basically it's an NES Castlevania?"
"Wrong. That's playable. This is straight shit."

The point of showing those comments off is that you can't be selective with what comments you pull out, and from where. Just going down the Siliconera articles about this remake, you'll see a significantly high amount of people that are against it. Even on your YouTube videos there are quite a few people that don't like what they see. Having the Konami license on your fan-game will make Konami look better to a lot of people, but when you've got numerous comments like this, it can only damage the brand, about as much as the LoS trilogy did.

meh, that's the vocal minority of haters who just want to have something to hate. they're everywhere and you can't please them.
i looked up one of the guys, and pretty much every single comment he made, he was hating something.
Some people are just jealous, and wants to find something to hate to make themselves feel better.
One of the main complaints of the original i've heard from many people, is that the controls were bad.
in this case i simply cannot please everyone. if i modernize the controls, i'll disappoint the diehards.
if i don't i'll disappoint the newcomers.
it's actually a challenge to make the controls as unresponsive as the original.
i had to fight unreal to remove the smooth transition from standing to walking.
i spent a whole weekend removing the ability to control your jump height and control your jump in mid-air.
and some complaints are completely ridicolous, like "there are things in the foreground! lucky there are no enemies there"
well DUH, i put things in the foreground there BECAUSE there was no enemies there to be hidden by those statues.
i had a ton of trouble translating the crushers into 3d, because they are inbetween pillars in the original.

Using your Kickstarter as a base, you've only managed to get $193 USD off of it. To a company like Konami, that's worthless, and giving the license out for only that wouldn't mean anything to them. Remember: even Konami's free-to-play games make them money.

i know 193$ is not enough, that's why the goal was 60k.

...Okay? So basically what you're saying is you don't know how to get the license, but calling them is a good start? Cuz if you do know how, you're still not showing anyone.

to put it like this, the way i got my current job, is i found the contact information of the company i worked for, i sent them an email and some pictures of my work,
and voila, i've now worked for 11 years for them. it isn't rocket science.
you seem to be making it out like this is some sort of black magic where i have to draw a pentagram on the ground, light candles and do dark unknown incantations to summon konami.

[Claimh Solais]

yes, but i've seen similar things in commercial games praised into the sky that are sold for 45€. the absolutely worst example of this
is Xcom 2 which received an 83% on metacritic. the whole game is pretty much unfairly surprising the player in one way or the other.
maybe you wouldn't pay for lecarde chronicles, but a lot of CV fans would.

Fans might. But if it was a game they had to pay for, the complaints would be more vocal. Not to mention if Lecarde Chronicles were a officially-licensed and sold game, it'd no doubt receive critic reviews, and most of them would rate it down for the same stuff I complained about. Those weren't minor one-time things either. They were present the entire time I played.

See, the reason that fan-games can get away with things like that is because people don't pay for them. People are more willing to forgive mistakes in a game if none of their money went toward it.

see i actually need feedback like this, so please don't hold back, get the whip out and start cracking.
-it's too dark, yes, but is it too dark everywhere? or is it just specific sections? i think this might be monitor settings actually, because i have no problems seeing the dogs(panthers) on my screen.

You weren't done with the stage yet. I was waiting to see what changes you were making first before I threw some feedback your way, since I didn't know if any of my complaints would still hold water by the time you were done.

so your complaint isn't that the environments are too dark, but that some of the enemies are too hard to see.
that's a completely different issue, see some areas in symphony had completely black backgrounds.

Both, actually. Symphony's black area backgrounds are terrible examples, because they were only used for less than 30 seconds of the game as a way to build up tension. Right afterward, they were lit up, and stayed lit up like that. On top of that, you can clearly see everything even though it's dark. Alucard is clearly visible, the wargs are clearly visible, and the candles are clearly visible.

i believe this is  a simple matter of paying vs not paying. as soon as i put up the KS, the complaints started rolling in.
still, there's 100 dislikes to 1200 likes, so the people who dislike are in the minority.
on itch.io i have 13 000 downloads and 4 out of 5 star rating.
and that's despite the issues.
meh, that's the vocal minority of haters who just want to have something to hate. they're everywhere and you can't please them.
i looked up one of the guys, and pretty much every single comment he made, he was hating something.
Some people are just jealous, and wants to find something to hate to make themselves feel better.
One of the main complaints of the original i've heard from many people, is that the controls were bad.
in this case i simply cannot please everyone. if i modernize the controls, i'll disappoint the diehards.
if i don't i'll disappoint the newcomers.
it's actually a challenge to make the controls as unresponsive as the original.
i had to fight unreal to remove the smooth transition from standing to walking.
i spent a whole weekend removing the ability to control your jump height and control your jump in mid-air.
and some complaints are completely ridicolous, like "there are things in the foreground! lucky there are no enemies there"
well DUH, i put things in the foreground there BECAUSE there was no enemies there to be hidden by those statues.
i had a ton of trouble translating the crushers into 3d, because they are inbetween pillars in the original.

Except that even if it is a vocal minority, it still doesn't look good if most of the people speaking up about it are people that don't like it. Aside from your YouTube videos, most of the places I look are filled with mostly negative comments. I admit, it appears that a lot of them don't know what "work-in-progress" means, but that's still a good argument.

If you're using purely numbers as a way to gauge interest, then let's use Lords of Shadow as an argument. The game sold pretty damn well, and was the highest selling Castlevania game of all time at its release (I'm not using MoF or LoS2 as an example since I don't know its sales figures). But pretty much anywhere you look, there's nothing but droves of fans hating on it. They're technically the vocal minority, aren't they? I mean, you can't argue with the game's sales.

But the fact is: anyone talking about LoS online doesn't have much good to say about it (generally). And that makes it look not-so-good. It's an issue with pretty much any game that doesn't have much said about it that is good. If people don't have much good to say about something, it turns away potential buyers. You ever go onto Steam, and look at the user reviews and see that they're at "Mostly Negative", so you decide not to buy what you're looking at? It's the same kind of thing.

i know 193$ is not enough, that's why the goal was 60k.

Exactly. Your goal was 60k, but you only made 193.

to put it like this, the way i got my current job, is i found the contact information of the company i worked for, i sent them an email and some pictures of my work,
and voila, i've now worked for 11 years for them. it isn't rocket science.
you seem to be making it out like this is some sort of black magic where i have to draw a pentagram on the ground, light candles and do dark unknown incantations to summon konami.

You're still dodging the question. Do you or do you not know how to obtain the license? Because as it looks, you clearly don't.

I'm not expecting some magical spectacle, buddy. There's no reason to be a condescending jerk about it. Rather than constantly skirting around the question and making comments like "unknown incantations to summon Konami", just say how to plan to do it. Saying "well, I got their number" and "well, this is how I got my job" doesn't mean anything. Having Konami's number means nothing. I have Konami's number. "this is how I got my job" means nothing. You're not applying for a job. You're trying to purchase a video game license from a major video game company.

So again: Do you or do you not know how to obtain the license? If yes, how? If no, then just say "no".

[Belmontoya]

Give the guy a fucking break already!

[Chernabogue]

Give the guy a fucking break already!

This. We all should be supporting someone doing a fan game.

[zangetsu468]

Give the guy a fucking break already!

Claimh's points and question about licencing are legit though, since there's no project without it. This is an open forum, he's allowed to have his say just as you're allowed to have yours.

[Gaawa-chan]

I like the light effects in theory (moon, flare effects), but you want to be careful to not make it too distracting; it is a combat/platformer after all.

[zangetsu468]

I like the light effects in theory (moon, flare effects), but you want to be careful to not make it too distracting; it is a combat/platformer after all.

I thought the moonlighting was cool and I like the idea of candles giving off more ambient lighting.

[dejawolf]

Fans might. But if it was a game they had to pay for, the complaints would be more vocal. Not to mention if Lecarde Chronicles were a officially-licensed and sold game, it'd no doubt receive critic reviews, and most of them would rate it down for the same stuff I complained about. Those weren't minor one-time things either. They were present the entire time I played.
See, the reason that fan-games can get away with things like that is because people don't pay for them. People are more willing to forgive mistakes in a game if none of their money went toward it.

well, there's plenty of paid games that get away with things like that, simply because people love the franchise, and it's feeding on their nostalgia. 
as long as the game isn't horrible people will give it favourable reviews.

You weren't done with the stage yet. I was waiting to see what changes you were making first before I threw some feedback your way, since I didn't know if any of my complaints would still hold water by the time you were done.

i'm usually doing 2-3 things at once, so even if i know about an issue, it might end up on the backburner and be forgotten.
so it's always nice to have some reminders.

Both, actually. Symphony's black area backgrounds are terrible examples, because they were only used for less than 30 seconds of the game as a way to build up tension. Right afterward, they were lit up, and stayed lit up like that. On top of that, you can clearly see everything even though it's dark. Alucard is clearly visible, the wargs are clearly visible, and the candles are clearly visible.

Except that even if it is a vocal minority, it still doesn't look good if most of the people speaking up about it are people that don't like it. Aside from your YouTube videos, most of the places I look are filled with mostly negative comments. I admit, it appears that a lot of them don't know what "work-in-progress" means, but that's still a good argument.

well sure, "too dark, too dark, too dark, controls suck, 3D sucks"
on the flipside you have people saying wow this is fun despite the issues.

If you're using purely numbers as a way to gauge interest, then let's use Lords of Shadow as an argument. The game sold pretty damn well, and was the highest selling Castlevania game of all time at its release (I'm not using MoF or LoS2 as an example since I don't know its sales figures). But pretty much anywhere you look, there's nothing but droves of fans hating on it. They're technically the vocal minority, aren't they? I mean, you can't argue with the game's sales.
But the fact is: anyone talking about LoS online doesn't have much good to say about it (generally). And that makes it look not-so-good. It's an issue with pretty much any game that doesn't have much said about it that is good. If people don't have much good to say about something, it turns away potential buyers. You ever go onto Steam, and look at the user reviews and see that they're at "Mostly Negative", so you decide not to buy what you're looking at? It's the same kind of thing.

sure, i bought LOS myself, and have a total of 115 minutes on it.
it just didn't feel like castlevania at all, you had to wail on enemies, there was like 500 different whip moves, and there was no gradual increase in difficulty.
after that giant frost monster i was thoroughly bored and quit.

but the critical difference here is, LOS tried something new with an old franchise.
if people buy an apple, they expect it to taste like an apple. they will be very unhappy if it suddenly tastes like a tomato. 
with a remake, you don't have that problem. there might be some brown spots, but it tastes like an apple.

So again: Do you or do you not know how to obtain the license? If yes, how? If no, then just say "no".

yes i do know how to obtain a license. i talked to a lawyer, and he pretty much said to do what i already said.
call konami, show them your work, work out license terms. and if there are any questions, call me.

[eryson]

well, I hope this hot-blooded discussion does not prevent you to finish your project. It is surprising so far. 

[MooMilk]

There are fan games that became official releases before. The latest Kings quest started off as a fan game. Megaman x street fighter was a fan game too. Kings Quest actually made money tho. MM x SF was given away for free. The latest sonic cd port was pitched by a fan as a demonstration of his fan engine. He was then commissioned to do not only sonic cd, but sonic 1 and 2, and now sonic mania.

Mrs pacman was oriiginally a fan hack of pacman that became a top selling official release.

[C Belmont]

yes i do know how to obtain a license. i talked to a lawyer, and he pretty much said to do what i already said.
call konami, show them your work, work out license terms. and if there are any questions, call me.

Have you contacted Konami yet? I'm kind of curious to know what they said.

[dejawolf]

well, I hope this hot-blooded discussion does not prevent you to finish your project. It is surprising so far. 

it put a temporary damper on my enthusiasm.
spent the weekend fixing up a bunch of stuff that was broken due to some changes i made,
and did some tweaking on level 1.
begin area was too long and has been shortened by quite a bit:

tweaked lighting of the boss room, and made the bossbat look at the player

tweaked the brick area in level1, did a ton of lightmap improvements,
and hopefully managed to clear up some performance bottlenecks too. chandeliers had a bunch of dynamic lights thanks to particle flames, so i swapped those
with simpler sprite flames and made the lights static.
now considering doing something similar for all of the candles.

[eryson]

The entrance is better than before.
I particulary liked how the bat shows "expressive"