Topic: Castlevania: Symphony of the night HACKED! I bet you thought I had quit? ;)

[Inccubus]

Considering that he specifically said to post ideas on the blog it would make sense that Sonic_Reaper's post might get ignored.

Personally I don't think I agree with poison causing damage, not from a design perspective, but from a story perspective. Alucard is half vampire and as such should have 2 features the Human characters don't have, a light HP regen, and negation of poison damage. While Poisoned I think it would make sense for Alucard to not take damage and not be able to regenerate HP on top of halved stats. Human's should take damage slowly and have severely reduced stats. The amount of damage would be reduced by their stamina stat or whatever the hell helps determine defense. And I mean this for all CV games, not just for Esco's project.

[markyjoe1990]

I think Portrait of Ruin handled the "Drain HP" version of poison best, since being poisoned would encourage you to switch characters to avoid extra damage, which at least added a little challenge. But in a game like SoTN, Drain HP poison is technically the same as being damaged normally, except it's like you're being hit repeatedly with weak, but unavoidable attacks that don't make you flinch.

If the drain HP version of poison is to be used in SoTN, it has to be designed in a way that adds challenge. Traditional drain hp poison won't do such.

Either that, or you could stick with the original poison effect in SoTN, which, I agree, does a much better job.

[Inccubus]

Yeah. At best poison should be more of an annoyance than a threat. I still think it would be cool to have 2 poison effects for Alucard & the humans to make their game play more varied. Not to mention people occasionally like it when things in a game make sense over making game play more "fair". I mean seriously, poison damage being unavoidable is really such a bad thing? I mean common, it's poison it's supposed to kill you over time. That's what poison does... to non-supernatural beings anyway.

[Esco]

UPDATE: a new blog post has been put up; this one is about item text and dialogue text. It's nothing major, but it does give some insight into how much goes into something like this. 

http://sotnhacked.wordpress.com/2012/02/07/update-2712-item-and-dialogue-text/

[Corpsecrank]

Is there really no other way to hack this type of game other than using memhack? I would think you could change and patch the game and then run it like a normal rom that is how all the other hacks I have seen work for other emulators. What makes this one different?

[Esco]

UPDATE: I have put up a new post on my blog. This is one is about my progress thus far on Alucard's engine.

http://sotnhacked.wordpress.com/2012/02/18/progress-log-for-alucard-last-updated-on-21812/

[Gemini]

Moar screenshots, please. :p But nevertheless, interesting stuff as always!

[Esco]

Sorry about the lack of updates on here peoples. I have updated the blog a few times since my last post, but I figured I would just put this info up on here for now. I have as of late been playing multiple castlevania fan games, as well as beaten Castlevania HD inside out, and the same for LOS. I have received several inspirations from these games, as well as realized some of SOTN's shortcomings control wise. As of now the following changes have been implemented:

• Going up a hill no longer slows you down (this was just plain annoying)
• All characters now walk quicker (or dash constantly however you want to view it)
• The MANUAL dash (tapping forward twice) has been removed due to #2
• If you walk off the edge of a ledge you no longer move less horizontally then a normal jump (another VERY annoying thing in SOTN)
• The magic meter restores faster than in the original game; but after using certain POWERFUL magic based moves, there is a delay before MP will start to restore (I.e. soul steal, tetra spirit)

These small movement changes will make for faster paced gameplay, and remove some of the "annoyance factors" found in SOTN.

I also plan to update the controller setup a bit too. So that the player has the option of using the keyboard and pad together, or hotkeys for certain things (I.e. changing weapons in either hand; I probably won't setup hotkeys for changing subs as it would be too much).

As for the demo, I will probably come out with another release soon that fixes a few VERY minor bugs (mostly stuff that a normal user will never see, but that I know exists) as well as make some of these updates to it too.

[VladCT]

How about adding an on/off option for the auto-dash? Sometimes people just wanna pimpwalk (especially as Richter) through the hallways, y'know?
(Posting here because there's no blog post regarding this. )

[Las]

Yeah it might even be cool if you add relics that must be obtained for each player to run faster after tapping the dpad twice for either direction(you can turn them on or off). Kinda like the lightning boots in nitm for alucard. I thought that that update was pretty cool in general for nitm.

[Inccubus]

I agree with Vlad about the dash. Sometimes it's just fun to walk around eating shit, so making an option like, say, in Final Fantasy I & II Dawn of Souls where a simple option decides whether walking or running is the default movement mode would be nice. It isn't a really important thing, and definitely most people will choose to have run be default, but by now you know I'm always for giving the player options.

[Esco]

You know......... I have to say that it's amazing how much people wanted Alucard to have a dash for YEARS now. And for years I objected. Yet, now that people are getting what they want, the # of responses asking me to enable a "walking" mode in this thread is just....... mind boggling. Sorry guys, but the answer is no.

[VladCT]

Y'know, it was really more about letting Richter keep his pimpwalk.

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

I'm all about options, myself.  I'd like the choice rather than it being imposed.
For the record, I never had an issue with running/walking back in SotN days, so I'm more on the impartial side.

It's not like it's too difficult to add one more option on the menu, right under "Cloak color" and "Window color" or something. 

[Esco]

I'm all about options, myself.  I'd like the choice rather than it being imposed.
For the record, I never had an issue with running/walking back in SotN days, so I'm more on the impartial side.

It's not like it's too difficult to add one more option on the menu, right under "Cloak color" and "Window color" or something.

It is way more involved than that... which is part of the reason I believe that most people make as many requests for things as they do. While something like this SEEMS like a tiny request, from a programming and game design stand point it is not. If people truly knew what was involved in many of the "simple" requests I receive, they would have a stroke. 

Also keep in mind, adding extra options, takes time away from actually developing the game, and my time is already very limited peoples. 

P.S. Richter's "pimp walk" will still be used at some point in the game.