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

[Inccubus]

I have very fond memories of the simple layered fog effect from the intro of SCV4.

[Esco]

I agree. You have the water below, the fog flowing over it at different transparencies and the clouds at the top. I think I'd look swell 

That sounds like a great idea; I already have water below, and mountains in the background now. I am now messing with the D3D capabilities in GM, and the top clouds look like they will be easy using it and depth adjustment to make it appear to be coming at the screen.

But what fog could I use for something that is going over the water that would fit into sotn?

EDIT: here is a screenshot of what I have done. I do however still need to make the upper part of the water a bit darker so it blends in more with the bottom of the mountains. If anyone can do better feel free to show me an example of what you have as I am not an artist and I am sure that some of ya'll could make it look prettier than I did. 

[X]

That pic looks cool! But what's the blue energy bar for??

[Pemburu Vampir]

It's his MP bar.

Richter has new hair color. Cool.

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

Esco:
The water... is it just one graphic?
Send it, and I can probably take a look at it.

It looks like you're gonna just make it steadily scroll to the side, am I correct?

Send me the mountain, too.  I think I can add some kind of shoreline to that mountain and you can overlap it over the water effect for maximum creamyness.
Then, it would look like this, a little:


...if you want.

Actually, the mountains in the CV4 shot are probably a tad nicer in that they would blend with the water better than the purple ones you're using.  Just an opinion though.

[KaZudra]

That sounds like a great idea; I already have water below, and mountains in the background now. I am now messing with the D3D capabilities in GM, and the top clouds look like they will be easy using it and depth adjustment to make it appear to be coming at the screen.

But what fog could I use for something that is going over the water that would fit into sotn?

EDIT: here is a screenshot of what I have done. I do however still need to make the upper part of the water a bit darker so it blends in more with the bottom of the mountains. If anyone can do better feel free to show me an example of what you have as I am not an artist and I am sure that some of ya'll could make it look prettier than I did. 

Give the water a purple tint as well as the fog since it'll reflect off of the sky

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

You can also create a slender mirror inverted image of the mountains and put an effect on it as if the water were in front of it, with a slight translucency.

[Esco]

Esco:
The water... is it just one graphic?
Send it, and I can probably take a look at it.

It looks like you're gonna just make it steadily scroll to the side, am I correct?

Yup you got it

Send me the mountain, too.  I think I can add some kind of shoreline to that mountain and you can overlap it over the water effect for maximum creamyness.

That sounds like a great idea. Thanks for the help. Here you go:




For the water the only animation I have going is that I alternate between 2 images to give it a slightly chaotic look in the game. Here is the 2nd image for it (it is just a skewed version of the first):



If you can find a way to better animate it, please be my guest. But since I have to basically keep creating these water textures over and over to make the water scroll, keep in mind that the edges have to match up too. In order to pull that off so far, all I did was make it so that every other water texture created is a HORIZONTAL MIRROR image of the previous one. This way they link seamlessly.

But again, you can be as creative as you want here and if I have to add more frames I will. Your artistic skills are obviously FAAAAAAAR superior to mine so I am curious to see what you will come up with.

You can also create a slender mirror inverted image of the mountains and put an effect on it as if the water were in front of it, with a slight translucency.

Now you see peoples, this is the type of BRILLIANT, detailed, and realistic suggestions I need! I am definitely going to use that idea Jorge. Great work.

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

Alright, here's what I whipped up for a little while after I woke up.

-I took your mountain background and edited it.  With a flat lake-like area under the mountains, there should not be so much 'background mountain' and more 'foreground mountain.
1. I made the front mountains taller.
2. I added hill zones.
3. I added a treeline at the horizon point.
4. I added a reflected mountain area under the mountain.
The result is this:


-I took a look at your water texture.  I did not edit it.  BTW, it's HUGE!  But that shouldn't be a problem for you, hehe.

-What I did do, however, is create a new gradient.  You can probably just have GameMaker make a translucent alpha-blend, but here's the gist of it:


You place this gradient over the lake texture, as well as over the empty area at the bottom of the screen and in front of the mountain area that is reflected (I think I made it 16 pixels up - it's well-marked on the mountain graphic as the treeline is quite darker).

Now here's where things get interesting, because depending on how you set up your transparencies with the lake and the gradient, you can have multiple effects.

If you set the water texture to 50% transparency (which you should do 'cuz it looks pretty great),
AND
if you set the gradient to overlay mode (I don't know if GameMaker can do blending modes, but I'm assuming it can) and 50% transparency, you get this:

Pretty neat, huh?

However, if you do the same thing with the water texture
BUT
you set the blending mode of the gradient to "Normal" instead of "Overlay" and again set it to 50%...

Shazam!  You now have Misty Water.

[Inccubus]

That looks pretty damn good! This definitely a huge improvement over the original.

[Pemburu Vampir]

If this game is released before Konami release another remake of SotN, it'll put Konami to shame.

[Esco]

Wow Jorge.... that looks amazing! I can't wait to put it into the game and see how it looks! Thanks a lot!!!!! I'll make sure to put up a screenshot as soon as it is implemented in the game (that will be sometime in the next 2-3 days; I am messing with the 3d camera right now).

If this game is released before Konami release another remake of SotN, it'll put Konami to shame.

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.... don't jinx us. 

[Pemburu Vampir]

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.... don't jinx us. 

What?

[Kale]

He's talking about an SOTN ps3/360 remake! I'd so buy that in a heart beat. That or an SotN2.

Well, sort of in a heartbeat, I mean... a franchise can fail pretty bad from one to another, after all.

[Esco]

What?

If another remake comes out it might have more stuff that I will then want to add which means even MORE stuff that I will have to do.... which might drive me to hang myself outside on my neighbor's back porch. lol