Topic: Castlevania: Seal of the Eclipse

[EstebanT]

So you're telling me Aeon the Chef went on to create a food delivery company? Amazing.

[Kamirine]

Quick question: will this game have a demo of some sort before it releases?

[EstebanT]

Also that Requiem for the Nameless Victims outro was pure nostalgia. ?

[SecretWeapon]

Rooting for Bloodless Carmilla mode since today

[yamabigdog]

Looks spectacular!! Keep up the fantastic work, and Godspeed

[Kingshango]

Looks amazing.

One small little nitpick though, Young Julius’s strut looks casual, more like “Going out for a night stroll” and less like “This is it, im gonna kill Chao.. I mean I’m gonna kill Dracula, for real this time!” Other than that, amazing stuff, keep up the good work.

[theplottwist]

Looks amazing.

One small little nitpick though, Young Julius’s strut looks casual, more like “Going out for a night stroll” and less like “This is it, im gonna kill Chao.. I mean I’m gonna kill Dracula, for real this time!” Other than that, amazing stuff, keep up the good work.

Hello! That sprite was not final by the time the teaser was recorded. You can find the final one (or the closest thing, since development only ends when it ends) on our twitter post. Trust me, we know very well the importance of the Belmont strut.

Lenora is also not final, btw.

[Riggles]

Looks absolutely fantastic! Couldn't help but to join this forum and follow the progress posts.

I have a question regarding resolution. So it seems the game 1x res would be 400x256p. 32px being HUD and the graphics themselves being 224p.
Thing is that I'm a big fan of the look of retro games on CRT's and use CRTEmudriver a lot of times for the few 240p pixel art modern games there are (not alone doing that).
Recently made a tutorial on how to do that kind of setup as well, sharing display modelines and scaling scripts for various games.
I'd absolutely love for that to be possible with this project once it's ready for a release, or testing.

The "problem" is that it's 256p. (aspect ratio being a bit wider than 4:3 doesn't matter, as you can adjust vertical size of the CRT to get the right aspect ratio)

Would it be possible to have an HUD overlay option rather than the black bar? Like Castlevania IV for example. Or maybe a slimmer 16px HUD bar as an option.
Another solution would be to have the game be able to play a tiny bit slower, down to 57-58Hz 256p, to squeeze out those extra lines, but not every TV can display that kind of thing.

I know, really weird request, and totally understandable to not implement this, as us doing this on CRT's aren't too many. The slim HUD or overlay would be the best solution for this. I would love to share pictures and videos of that.

Hopefully this question doesn't come off as an obnoxious request or anything. Totally Looking forward to this either way!

Here's a mockup of the game in a 4:3 window with a potential 16px slim HUD:

[Dracula9]

Hello, friend! Welcome to the Dungeon, glad to have ya!

No, I'm not partial in the least to the reduced HUD as it was structured the way it is with specific purposes in mind (e.g. horizontal bars for other characters is structurally impossible without ridiculous crowding), and the option of an overlaid one is a no-go since a solid black behind it ensures the information on it will never be confused or hard-to-see against anything under it.

However, adding an option to toggle letterboxing to increase the vertical dims to something more CRT or 4:3-friendly MAY be a viable option. Won't be as ideal, but the current resolution was set specifically to cater to the fact that a lot standard monitors on the market today are likely built to 16:9 specs (or that's what a majority of PC gamers, as far as I'm aware at least, are probably using).

I also considered the possibility of an also-toggleable CRT filter. But in either case, these aren't immediately-pressing priorities, so final decision(s) on these won't come until further down the line, which means there's at least a solid chunk of time to brainstorm solutions for things like this.

[Riggles]

Ah okay, well the resolution is the issue, since the max a CRT TV can do is 240 visible lines, to go up to 256p you'll have to start reducing game speed and output 57-58Hz instead. Aspect ratio isn't an issue as you can adjust that on the CRT itself. Not sure how difficult it is to have adjustable game speed (like a hidden .ini option to specify what refreshrate the game should run at). But that affects the speed of the game, 2-3Hz makes for slightly slower gameplay/animation, so it's a weird compromise and I don't expect such a weird option to be included.

Totally understandable not wanting to put in additional work for an alternative sacrificed HUD for such a niche audience.
As for scanline shaders, I think it would be possible for users to use reshade to accomplish that.
(I can not wait until modern displays can compare to CRT in motion clarity with new strobing tech, because looks wise, shaders can get pretty darn close nowdays)

Put the 240p mockup on a 4:3 CRT for fun. (Standard def 16:9 CRT's are common in Europe, but the game would look great on either)

(click to show/hide)

[Dracula9]

It MIGHT be doable to drop 16px off the vertical at the bottom and turn gameplay reso to 208 instead of 224, which would give 240px maximum and not sacrifice the HUD at all.

I have no idea how this will look in terms of what's already been built, but I can play around with it and see if it affects anything poorly.

If it does mess the resolution "look" in a way i don't like but doesn't hinder anything gameplay wise I can definitely just include a "CRT friendly" option that forces this reduction, probably able to be set before anything else loads in the runner so there's not any cutoff in title/menus.

It SEEMS like a simple enough thing to try and include for, so while I won't promise anything solid (least of all make promises this early on) I'll at least fiddle with it and see what sticks.

[Riggles]

Oh that sounds awesome, as said, it's not important at all in the grand scheme of things and doesn't really affect anyone, we're all looking forward to how this game is shaping up either way! Just a cool extra if there's not too much effort involved of course.

[Jop]

I hope im not late for this :v

https://imgur.com/rZMETyP

and by the way nice work, this looks so cool :3

[The Puritan]

*squints harder at that silhouette beside Quincey Morris*

[EstebanT]

*squints harder at that silhouette beside Quincey Morris*

He's holding a sasumata right? So probably Japanese?