Topic: Castlevania: Umbral Genesis (CV1 ROM Hack)

[Sinis]

If double threading is against the rules then please merge this to my Legends NES thread




Figured I'd post up a new project aside from the others (still cursing reVamp for that fiasco.)












Redid my Hanz sprite to closely resemble his appearance shown in screenshots and sprite sheets that people made of him.



One music track for it.  Sought permission from Dr Jacquio to use this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FI7h2vN3WU&t=17s



The rest will be custom made by me and a friend of mine, Sxion, as he will make the music and I'll turn it into the proper tunes in FamiTracker.  I'm beginning to learn how FamiTracker works along with taking steps into ASM programming to understand how everything on the NES and Famicom works.  Its going to be a long road but I finally found some extremely good references to help me understand it.



Going to use this project as a testing ground to see on what can be done.  It will be a long road but definitely a good one.  I will share all notes that I  make for Castlevania 1 and eventually Castlevania 3.  I'm tired of waiting around for people to post more info that others are needing so I'm gonna study this stuff and crack shit open for full documentation 



Again, a long road but I'm going to do it.  I'll post up more as I'm working on other stuff to finish up there, just starting this thread

[Corpsecrank]

I got an insane 8bit richter sheet I could toss you if you wanted to use it as a template for the frames of your character. I took the best existing 8bit richter sheets combined them and made everything uniform then added a bunch of custom stuff as well. It might be useful since the 2 characters shared similar sprites in their higher res counter parts. Plus if you really wanted you could also make a richter variation pretty easily.

[Sinis]

I appreciate the offer though I got these sprites to how I need them without anything being off.  Castlevania has the attack animations places out differently compared to Castlevania 3 though Castlevania 2 shares the same layout.  The first attack relies on an odd counter to where the second is 8 pixels wide so not much room for anything

[BLOOD MONKEY]

but

will you ever finish one of these?

[Sinis]

Unlike some people, I will be finishing all of my projects.  Legends NES and VoH 2 I will be bringing them back to the U.S version since no one seems to be interested in making a level editor for Akumajou Densetsu.  Got really sore thumbed about reVamp not being 100% compatible with the Famicom version so taking a long break from working on those.  I did thought about cancelling them or handing them off to someone else but was talked out of it by quite a few people so I will be keeping and finishing them.  However long it may take they will be completed.



Got any other questions?

[Holy Diver]

Unlike some people, I will be finishing all of my projects.  Legends NES and VoH 2 I will be bringing them back to the U.S version since no one seems to be interested in making a level editor for Akumajou Densetsu.  Got really sore thumbed about reVamp not being 100% compatible with the Famicom version so taking a long break from working on those.  I did thought about cancelling them or handing them off to someone else but was talked out of it by quite a few people so I will be keeping and finishing them.  However long it may take they will be completed.



Got any other questions?

He's probably referring to the fact that you are doing about 3 of your projects, along with being a collaborator in 2 or 3 more projects.
And you also wan't to do some pretty extensive things in your hacks too.
Honestly I'm a bit suprised no one asked you this before.
But, back to the project.

What are your plans with this one, other than level design, graphics and music?
I assume you'll change some enemy behavior, but I'd like to know if you plan to do anything about the way character or game plays?
For instance changes to subweapons, selectable levels or the like.

Graphics shown seem nice and I really dig the song.
Also don't know if you know about these, but I figured it's useful to know about them: https://www.romhacking.net/?page=documents&game=739

[Sinis]

Sometimes its hard to tell in text so wasn't sure on the way he was asking

I'm part of 14 projects right now and 8 of them are close to being completed though they are just sprite work.  Sadly those I cannot show nor tell on what they are as they are to be announced elsewhere online by the project leads.  All NES hack projects.  The only open ones, outside of my own, are MetroidVania, Metroid: Space Complex, Castlevania 3: Prelude of Light and Cadence of Agony Linear Reboot, these are not completed yet.  My personal projects are slow though will be picking up pace shortly.


Umbral Genesis is going to be a testing ground to help me understand assembly more when I begin studying it later this year however only once all of the levels and sprite work is complete, just in case something goofs up and the Stake editor doesn't recognize the ROM anymore (along with making several copies of the game when successful steps are made so nothing is lost.)  I want to change the behavior of certain enemies so they can be new encounters while also adding a few new ones.  I'll only do this once I am confident enough in  my knowledge of assembly as I'll be messing around with Arkanoid on the NES for a guinea pig as well since its very simple from what I was told by KingMike over at RHDN a few years back.  For selecting the levels, I really don't wanna go that route and make it look like an exact copy of The Holy Relics as that's Optomon's thing and not mine as that format has a reason for its feature within that project as mine will be linear.  I did look at The Holy Relics in Stake and figured out how he did it all which is quite clever on utilizing the original space of the ROM instead of expanding it, along with the new enemies.  I'll share that info in a detailed document when I write down a DIY sheet in Notepad since every PC has that program so it can be easily accessed.


I already have copies of those documents to help in this though thank you as someone else that reads this will find those helpful in their endeavors

[Corpsecrank]

Lol I got at least 4 projects all going on at once just in unreal. The thing most people probably don't realize is that you really aren't always making 4 completely different projects. Like in my case I am building 3 out of the 4 using basically the same stuff. Whatever I code for one that works in another can just be reused. Really with mine I may discard more than anything since some of the projects require less than others even. And only one of the projects is completely different but that's a much smaller project more heavy in code than anything else.

The other issue we some times face is having to back-burner a project for any number of random reasons. I had mine on hold for like 3 or 4 weeks waiting for an update to something I needed for it. I had to stall just to figure out a better way to do certain things before too. When this happens the last thing guys like us want to do is sit and twiddle our thumbs so we tend to work on something different for a minute.

So yeah multiple projects it's just a thing lol.

[Sinis]

People asked me to help out and I do.  Its natural for me to be part of quite a few things as it keeps me busy during the cold months.  The only project I want to be part of only here in about 3 weeks is this one so I can work on it to take my mind off of my reVamp issue.  I'm still very sore thumbed about letting go of VRC6 as that did bring all of the  music to life.  In the RHDN community there is no one taking interest in making an editor for Akumajou Densetsu.  I'm not sure if anyone here on these forums has experience for the NES programming as all I do see is people with the newer stuff so not sure on who to actually ask.  Most people want money for volunteer work so I don't bother to ask anyone.



Though in the future I really would like to team up with someone from these forums and do a Simon's Quest 8 bit remake.  I know, it would be another remake however the plans that I do have for it aren't used by anyone else so it would be its own type of thing among the rest.  I've been keeping track of them all after all these years and no one hasn't utilized quite a few things for their remake so I'll take that opportunity with someone that can mimic the NES's style in visuals instead of the wide screen and zoomed out stuff.  If I can't find anyone then when that NES maker arrives I'll do a  homebrew remake of it, freeware of course

[Corpsecrank]

I can get the visual accurate in unreal but for my own stuff I usually extend the sides of the screen to fir 16:9 since sticking strictly to 4:3 would result in the black bars that no one seems to like. I actually spent a ton of time figuring out how to get the scale of the viewport to be exact since I wanted the actual sprites and tiles to be their original size while the camera does the scaling to being everything up to fit 1920x1080 without any filtering etc. I even made an accurate set of scanlines to overlay that can be toggled on or off in the options but I personally prefer the clean unfiltered scaling with nothing else applied to it.

Duplicating the 8bit cv games in unreal is actually pretty easy so if you end up wanting to work with that engine let me know and I might be able to help out with that at some point.

[Sinis]

Aight.  Sometime later this year I'll go over stuff with you on my ideas for the SQ 8 bit remake.  Might be in September or October when I can free up stuff for myself as I'm going to be quite busy this summer not only doing this hack but also trying to pick up ASM programming to learn that.




On a side note as I'm going to post it up here.  If anyone is interested in dedicating information towards Castlevania ROM hacking I  have started a discord server for this such thing along with Castlevania ROM hacks altogether.  Trying to get people together to tear apart the Castlevania ROM's and have that info posted up online of  how things function since no one else seems to be doing this.  This also includes FamiTracker music and the likes if anyone wishes to do collaboration projects or just show up their stuff in general.  I will mainly be active on there more than anywhere else besides over at RHDN and YouTube.


https://discord.gg/eXDzAyg

[Sinis]

Necro-bumping my own thread 


Long time no post.  Been busy with a lot of things which lead to me forgetting to update this thread.


Umbral Genesis is still alive and well.  I started working on it again today after dealing with stuff in real life and helping others with their projects

I asked Optomon if he could lend a helping hand with all of the programming and converting the game itself over to MMC5 with RetroRain's patch and in which he agreed though it will be around his schedule and plans which I'm perfectly fine with.  With that being said, this will get a modified Snake's Revenge sound engine placed into the game which will make this (or hopefully make it) the world's first Castlevania MMC5 sound engine swap though if its not the first then X number in line 



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0CQ0svMSDo

Howling Hybrid done in Snake's Revenge sound engine with MMC5 module added for reference music.  The sound quality is a tad lower as it was done on a temporary PC when my other one went down.




I shall keep things updated in this thread until the game is 100% complete

[Inccubus]

Sweet tune!
Are the graphics a mock-up or are you considering using them.
I dig the colors, gives off a Circle of the Moon vibe that works pretty well in 8-bit.

[Sinis]

Are the graphics a mock-up or are you considering using them.

Those are in game graphics for Stage 2.