Topic: NES-Style Castlevania Belmont Engine for GameMaker! (Version 0.3 UPDATE!)

[uzo]

With MM8FC its not just technicalities, its blatantly obvious that it cant be done by an NES. Even casual gamers who have had some experience with the NES can notice the differences or at least feel something is off about it. That and the blatant changes because the programmers had no skill to duplicate it in any fashion, not just conversion to NES style difficulties. It's a terrible port all the way around.

MM7FC had a few small technicalities against it but did a really awesome job of porting all the features to near perfect standards. MM8FC didn't even come close.

MM9 and MM10 did a great job as well. Right up there with MM7FC.

If they really wanted to mimic the NES, they should've made it a NES ROM instead of a PC game.

For what? To make it LESS accessible? Force use of an emulator? Create emulation dependent issues? To make it lower compatibility? Exclude tons of standard PC options? To make it way harder to code, using a dead obscure language?

That makes no sense.

[TheouAegis]

Well I'm just thinking a lot of people, in fact most people, consider the NES incapable of parallax or incapable of handling tons of sprites on the screen at the same time. Then you show them games like Crisis Force (lots of sprites and vertical parallax), Sword Master (gorgeous horizontal parallax), or Gradius 2 (so many freaking sprites on the screen at once and not a mess like Capcom's Commando) and they're like "wow I didn't know the NES could do that." And I remember when I first played Moon Crystal I was like, "O_O NO EFFING WAY! This is an NES game?!" Later games proved the NES was capable of a lot of things that people didn't think it capable of. And yes, they did port Commando to the NES... and no, the system couldn't handle it but that doesn't mean it was impossible for the NES, just needed some extra editing that Capcom didn't want to waste time with.

The later in a console's life a game comes out, the more likely it will have done something with the system most people didn't think possible. Take Tales Of Phantasia on the SFC for example. It had a freaking JPOP intro! The sound samples were a little coarse, sure, but my god man it sounded nearly as good as an actual recording! And then they still made a decent-sized game on top of that with EVEN MORE audio samples (every spell was vocalized by one of 4 different voice actors). Of course, it was really not much different than Vocaloid, but it was still an eye-opener.

Hell, just look at the Genesis. In the epic battle between Sega and Nintendo, what the Genesis lacked in audio samples it more than made up for graphically. Ecco The Dolphin, Vectorman, Pulseman, Virtua Racing, and anything made by Treasure. Hell, even Bloodlines did more than what many people considered the Genesis capable of. And Comix Zone was eye-candy. All this with a very limited palette.

And since I'm a fan of the Sega Saturn, which most gamers of my generation and of the younger generation seem to typically diss on, I'm inclined to mistrust any criticism of a game console or of games that try to simulate games on an older console unless hard examples are given. In defense of the FC, the NES sucked in comparison to the FC. And in defense of the Saturn, I liked its games more than any game on the Dreamcast.

Don't misunderstand -- I believe that there are things in MM8FC that wouldn't work on an NES and i have read a few things about it, such as it being made by different programmers than the ones who made MM7FC and how there are a lot of bugs in it. And I remember all the comments in its early days about getting rid of the intro and Duo's interlude and all that. But when people just say, "You can't do B because anyone who's done A can see not B," I take it with a grain of salt.

[uzo]

Preaching to choir. San Sidera and myself were a leading force for debunking "NES CANT DO THAT!!11" against MM9. There's a lot of things the NES can do, and I have a good understanding of what and why. MM8FC tips the scales way too far though. They break even the most rudimentary rules, like the 4x4 palette limit.

There's a lot of things that are excusable in NES mimicking, such as the 64 sprite limit, flickering, etc. But there comes a point where you break these rules outright and it's very noticeable and ruins the illusion.

It all comes down to the developer. If they want to do a good job, they will.

MM7FC was made by a different team. A team that cared. MM8FC was a lazy team, riding off of the fame of MM7FC, and were unable to live up at even the slightest expectation of them.

[TheouAegis]

Fair enough. ... And we're still not talking about game intros, right?

I did see a MM8 intro that looked pretty NES-capable a while back, but wasn't by those guys. I also remember thinking while looking through the sprites for MM8FC on their site that there seemed to be too many people working on it and I do remember thinking "they're just trying to recreate the sprites, I don't see anything that shows they have a set palette anywhere".

And that's what I"m trying to avoide in my game. Like I said, when I started working on recoloring sprites, I went through it with the mindset that I would have a palette for the Belmont, a palette for hearts and blood skeletons, then two palettes per room to mess with for my enemies. I had completely forgotten about Items (0Fx0Dx22x36) ... which just happens to also be the same palette for bony enemies. Watching the PPU, it looks like Konami planned on more enemies in some areas than there were. I made a list of each palette used and so far I have 3 that I haven't pinpointed. One I could have sworn I saw used with ghouls/zombies. But anyway, I went back through to see what I had to work with and now I realize I have to recolor my sprites, especially my 6-color ones. Items having the same palette as skeletons is good news for my brass armored skeleton swordsman, but like I said, my plant girl will need a palette overhaul because I don't think I colored her in a way that would work with 1 default palette and 1 enemy palette. I don't think I even colored her for use with a background (or at least any background I was intending on using).

By the way, is the underlying background in an NES game from a specific palette range or can you specify any color from the NES palette? Need to figure out what stages I can use foregrounds with. Nighttime scenes are obviously feasible because I know black is a usable BGC. I remember reading specs on NES graphics and tile functions a while back, but forgot where.

[uzo]

NES palettes:

Sprites:
4, 4 color palettes
Color 1 is ALWAYS invisible. It is your mask.

Backgrounds:
4, 4 color palettes
Color 1 is ALWAYS invisible. It is your mask.

Flush:
1 color

Each color in these palettes can be different. Each is selected from the standard NES palette. You have 25 color slots with all the palettes (not counting masks) and flush color combined.

---------------------------
How it works:

At the beginning of each frame, the ENTIRE screen is wiped to the FLUSH color. Typically the flush color is set to black.

Then the tiles and sprites are drawn on top of that solid color screen. Typically sprites are drawn above background tiles, but it doesn't have to be.

---------------------------
A common trick:
The flush color is black, and the invisible color of the tiles is what the black would have been if it was not invisible.




Now, go forth and make me proud.

[TheouAegis]

Was gonna work on my program some more today but work tuckered me out. ... Oh my god I sound old.

I gotta figure out which tiles and sprites need to be mirrored. The ROM is freaking annoying to work with. Most everything in it needs to be mirrored before use, but some things need to be flipped as well (the Dagger, for example) and some things don't need to be edited at all (mostly the labels they threw in, like "blood" and "old mansion" or something... just guessing on what they actually said). Some of the things in there (talking CV3) made me think they recycled parts of Simon's Quest. I'll go back through the game a little more carefully some day and see if I can pinpoint what the "blood" label actually goes to. But yeah. Gotta play the game. Look at the ROM. Rip a sprite/tile. Find said sprite/tile in the game. Mirror sprite/tile accordingly. 

[TheouAegis]

Before I get too far along with candles in my engine (have small hearts coming out of busted candles so far), I'm looking for some feedback on what people think might be the best way to handle candles. I posted this on GMC but figured I'd also ask the guys that actually know what I'm talking about and would understand the quandary.

Room creation control: Have the Room Creation event dictate what each candle will drop
Separate Candles Per Drop: Each item has its on candle object, such as obj_candle_smheart or obj_candle_axe
Controller Object: Similar to Room Creation control but with an object in the room guiding the candles
All-Call Script: Each candle calls a single script that has all the candle drops pre-ordained

[X]

The only thing you'll have to really work to figure out is the whip upgrade that you receive from candles. They aren't prefixed like hearts, weapons or moneybags. I've found that depending on how many hearts you collect after the first upgrade, it will determine when the next upgrade will appear. The same can be said with the double and triple shots. Depending on how many candles or enemies you kill with the sub-weapon will determine when you receive the next shot upgrade. I could be wrong but it seem the most likely scenario.

-X

[TheouAegis]

Upgrades are hierarchical and guaranteed in some places, but yeah I noticed that candle thing once wihle playing through CV3. It was weird, don't know how it worked -- I went up the stairs in Clocktower, then backtracked downstairs. If I broke the candle at the bottom of the stairs with my whip, i got a heart. But if I threw a relic at it, I got a multiplier. I'm baffled on that one.

[Aridale]

the way i did candle drops is i made constants for each drop then in the creation code in the room i assign a droptype var to the constant i want that candle to drop then when its destroyed i use that var to work out whatever code needs to happen based on the constant and spawn that item at the candles location

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

In CV4, it's 10 enemies/candles destroyed with the subweapon means the next small heart candle or the next random drop from an enemy becomes a DoubleShot.  Same with the Triple Shot.

For the whip upgrades, if you're just starting (or recently died), then the first small heart candle becomes your first Whip Upgrade, and afterwards, you have to kill either three or five enemies/candles and then the next enemy drop or the next small heart candle becomes the second Whip Upgrade.

This is exactly the same rule for Alucard's Ball of Destruction magic upgrades.

EDIT:
Also, in the later games, if a candle is supposed to have a subweapon you already have, that candle instead has a large heart.
However, in CV1 and 3, it has a small heart instead (ripoff!).

This is also true if a breakable wall is supposed to have a double/triple shot but you already have your double/triple shot (cv1 has a small heart, cv3 has a large heart).
Similarly, there are some breakable walls that are only supposed to have large hearts, don't know why (just to be cool?).

You also have to calculate the alternate subweapon if you have a partner.

Trevor: Dagger, Axe, HolyWater, CrossBoomerang, PocketWatch
Grant:  Dagger, Axe, Dagger, Axe, Pocketwatch
Sypha: Flames Book, Flames Book, Ice Book, Thunder Book, Pocketwatch
Alucard: small heart, small heart, small heart, small heart, Pocketwatch (ripoff!)

[TheouAegis]

Thanks Jorges. I'm not doing partners in my game, but I was trying to remember that pairing when I played as Sypha. So if someone wants to do partners, they can program that in themselves. .... Or I'll do it for them since now that I've thought about it, it won't be hard to do at all.
And yeah some walls were just hearts, I know. Like the first wall in the clocktower, the first wall right after the pendulums in the clcoktower. .... Dunno where else. I'm sure I haven't found ALL the walls. I don't use guides.

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

You don't need to use guides.  There's a program called "ReVamp" that will load up the Castlevania III ROM and give you what each candle in the game has.  It also tells you enemy locations/fields, etc.

[TheouAegis]

Status Update:

I threw in a skeleton. He's comprised of two sprites: legs and head. The legs are the object, the head is drawn on top of the legs. Why? Because I was thinking it would be less memory-intensive that way. Sure, I have two sprites instead of 1, but those two sprites would require fewer pixels. ... That and the skeleton's icons line up in the GUI, so its mini-icon looks bigger when you expand the sprite directory.  

The skeleton paces 196 steps, turning around when at a wall or edge of a ledge just like in CV3. Yes, I counted. ... Okay, I used a video editor and just looked at the frame indexes.

The skeleton is destroyed upon contact with the whip or a relic.

The Belmont takes damage when coming in contact with the skeleton. If standing, ducking or jumping, he gets knocked back and starts flashing 2 frames into being knocked back. If he's on stairs, he flashes and pauses for 32 steps before progressing to the next step, also preventing his attacking in the process.

The Belmont dies if health drops below 1.


To Do Eventually: Adjust my stair-climbing code so the Belmont is at the correct sprite upon starting ascending stairs. I think I'm executing the sprite change too early.

Tomorrow is Easter, so I won't be programming much. Now that I work 40 hours a week and don't get to bring my laptop to work, this is going slowly. ... That and I keep getting distracted, making it take even longer. But I have you all in mind, which encourages me to keep pushing myself. I told some of my customers I'm programming a game and that there are people already waiting for my program so I need to get it done.

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

I got some of your Leon Belmont frames done.
They're in that other thread.