Topic: Castlevania (NES) map vs. Harmony of Despair R. 10

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

I was gonna include side rooms that you can access by pressing UP just like regular doors from Simon's Quest, that way you increase the CV1 playability and add more 'castle' while still keeping it a sidescroller in 2.5D.

Sort of the way Valkyrie Profile did the chambers in its dungeons.  The map would be in 3D but you'd traverse in 2D and would just 'head' into the background via doors or doorways at times.

[X]

Or in CV64's Villa.

-X

[Renonsgoods]

I was gonna include side rooms that you can access by pressing UP just like regular doors from Simon's Quest, that way you increase the CV1 playability and add more 'castle' while still keeping it a sidescroller in 2.5D.

Sort of the way Valkyrie Profile did the chambers in its dungeons.  The map would be in 3D but you'd traverse in 2D and would just 'head' into the background via doors or doorways at times.

This is the direction I'd like to see future 2D Vanias move in.  Have the game played in the 2D plane, but with the actual map expanding in 3 dimensions. It'd make fleshing out Drac's castle much more effective than just piling up tons of rooms on top of one another.

[VeteranVk]

I've gone and done that, ask and ye shall receive.



Because I've been tinkering with 3D as of late, I've envisioned and mapped out Dracula's Castle from CV1 as if it were a 3D object.  That is, all the hallways (and they are indeed hallways for the most part) have been aligned.  I've taken a few liberties, though:

1. The door at the end of stage 2 (the Entrance Hall) that leads into the Merman's Lair (Stage 3) is now a door that branches into the lair at a 90 degree angle, rather than straight into it.  If you were to make an adventure game out of this (which is one of my plans eventually), then you could add an area at the Entrance Hall where you could jump out a window and into the outer garden.  In the Merman's Lair you come 'from the background', essentially.

2. The door after the Giant Bat room (the first pink room after the white section) comes into the background of the stairs of Stage 5 (The Chapel).

3. You don't see it from the pic's angle, but Medusa's Room (Pink room in the red section) now opens into the Upper Courtyard also at a 90 degree angle.

With all of the changes I've made, the Castle Keep and the Mummies' Tower end up somewhat Adjacent yet still far apart, while still maintaining the structural integrity of the Castlevania layout.  Plus the whole thing looks like a nice neat Castle now, instead of one hilariously long and wide romp.

I would have made the entrance yard curve forward  in a similar direction to how the keep is lined up but opposite obviously. It would appear even more like the layout of the Abandoned Castle in CoD... but its not my model and I couldn't even begin to do a 3D model.  Other than that, it looks spot on. Though if you want to look at it from HoD perspective it works fine the way it is.

[Tanatra]

Have you considered doing what you did in this topic with the castle in CV3 to see how well the levels fit together, Ridureyu? It's only a few levels, and it would be interesting to see if the levels in that game mesh together as effortlessly as they do in CV1.