Topic: New 100% fresh artwork for Castlevania: The Rise of Nosferatu.. Need programmer!

[Belmontoya]

Las, you killed my father.... Prepare to die! Hahaha, great movie.

I'm glad you guys like the logo. I whipped it up the other night. I wanted to make the logo include the Order of the Dragon emblem in it. It makes a lot of sense for a game centered around Vlad the Impaler.

Another thing I've created completely from scratch for this game is music and sound effects. I essentially have a recording studio in my apartment, so it's all studio quality made stuff. I'm on the fence about using live actor voices or text for cinemas.. I want the cinema's of the game to flow partially animated (like the Dracula X Rondo of Blood scenes).

I'm trying to give the score old school elements like using dry lo-fi drum sounds. It's a very moody and eclectic mix of ambient, upbeat and sometimes jazzy music. Again I must cite CV4 as the main influence. This, like the graphics is a hard thing to balance.. I'm going for a retro "theme" with all of this. "Theme" being the operative word.

[Corpsecrank]

Yeah I hear you with that retro theme thing. I been trying to mix old style elements with more modern stuff. My title screen follows the original games title in almost every way but I did update a couple things like the text using the more modern style while still retaining the old colors. I actually sampled the color in the brightest parts of the gradient from the original games title. I added a cloudy background behind the castle rather than a plain black background as the original had. The original game also used those lame film strip edges which made no sense in the original game at all like it does in cv3 where the story rolls out like an old film. In the original game the film strips on the title screen are so vague you might not have even realized at the time what they really were or meant. So I did away with that element.

Still gotta get me a bad animation made up for the title screen though. That's all that is really missing from it now.

I have a lot of classic stuff going in that mostly plays on the original nes game. There will be plenty of other elements both original and from the more modern games but I want to really focus on drawing a lot of attention towards the classic themed content in the process.

For audio I am using remixes mostly. probably no voice as I prefer text it feels more natural to me and effects probably recycled from other cv games not sure. If I found a good source though that could change but for now that is the plan.

I will go original the next time around probably Right now I want to get something that works and perfect that.

[Belmontoya]

I'm curious if this is a metroidvania game that you are making or not. I'm wondering what the differences of our concepts are. You are clearly as passionate about this as am.

I'm telling ya man.. We should join forces.

[Corpsecrank]

I'm curious if this is a metroidvania game that you are making or not. I'm wondering what the differences of our concepts are. You are clearly as passionate about this as am.

I'm telling ya man.. We should join forces.

Yeah metroidvania style. I love the old games but sotn changed the way I play castlevania forever lol. I keep finding myself torn between stage by stage style and free roam but I want to do free roam with this game. I keep coming up with things that could go into this game without even trying really. I feel like by the end of this I may have to go on a mad feature pruning session just to cut the game back down to something that makes sense. It is possible to have to much stuff in a game. Well most times. There are a few exceptions to that but not with this type of game.

I keep wanting a castlevania online lol. Who was that guy that made that castlevania online flash movie? I want to kick his ass for making me want a castlevania online game now.

[Belmontoya]

What do you mean? Harmony of Dissonance is 6 player online co-op. I personally wasn't very impressed with it though. Didn't seem to have any sense of purpose.

Yeah sounds like our projects are pretty opposite in that regard. I am going for an evolved stage by stage action game. I want to get a really solid engine down for this first title and then do a sequel that is open world in the style of Simon's Quest.

I'm avoiding the metriodvania thing though, I feel like that horse has been more than beaten into the ground for the last decade. If you can bring something fresh to that genre though, more power to ya!

[Corpsecrank]

I tell you what then since you and I are starting on opposite ends and finishing on opposite ends when both engines are solid maybe we should trade up.

That harmony 6 player co-op doesn't qualify as online multiplayer to me. It lacks the kind of depth and purpose needed and is really just multiplayer using an internet connection. I know that whole line sounds all contradictory but it's hard to explain. I mean just because the other players CAN be states apart doesn't really make it much different than 6 players all in the same room all wired together with the devices playing a copy of hod together. So it sucks.

No my idea of a castlevania online would be more like hundreds or thousands of players can connect to a sever where they access a rich online castlevania world. You login and select one of your characters then it takes you back to the last town you logged out in or whatever. From there you can party up with anyone else logged in and go from there. Maybe go on quests to complete certain tasks or go hunting for better gear or experience to level up and get tougher. Maybe have some open areas full of enemies where all players can be traveling through killing stuff and some areas that a party can enter and clear like a stage. A lot of cool stuff could be done.

That was kind of what I meant with castlevania online.

When both of these projects are complete we should get together and trade off some of what we did so that you can make the type I am making and I can do a stage by stage game. I think that would be a great way to move forward from that point because it would save us both a lot of time. What did you decide to use to make your game with?

[Belmontoya]

Your idea sounds awesome to me. That would be way funner than HOD for sure. I also hated how far zoomed out everything was. It was cool that you could view the whole map at once but it just didn't seem right. It sucked all of the mystery out of the game.

I gotta say though, don't you think it seems a little backwards to try to make the huge open world online multi-player game first, and then make a linear stage by stage action game second? Seems to me that it makes a lot more sense to do the simpler game first. This would give you more time to focus on making the engine solid and fun. Then after you have that finished and all in place you can release the game. This gives you a chance to create a buzz about the sequel with the first game(which you will need for a multi-player).

I have the beginnings of the engine made in gamemaker. It is very solid feeling. But it's not so far along that it couldn't be switched to a different program. You can basically walk around the level with Enthu, climb ropes, and get a feel for what the speed of the game would be.

Think about it! I still think we should join forces. I've got a couple other guys on board already. I like your charisma. You seem like you're serious enough to follow through with a project like this.

[Corpsecrank]

Well it would make sense to you I suppose to make a stage based game first. The thing is I already have experience with server based online games and building a client that runs on that server. I prefer that to building simple stage based single player games actually. But I am trying to find a better way to build this. The thread I started has a video showing issues I started running into with MMF2 so I am looking for an alternative at the moment.

As I mentioned in the other thread if I were using flash I could simply learn action script as I built this and I would at least have the advantage of being familiar with the environment of the application and knowing action script is a plus since I animate in flash. But I didn't want a flash based game so I decided to try MMF2.

I may very well just code this from scratch. I already started learning C# a couple weeks ago and I may just use this project as a way to continue learning it and go from there. I haven't decided yet. What I do know is that there are much better ways to build a game than using MMF2 or some other canned engine. If I go from scratch I would be able to fine tune everything and tailor it specifically to my needs while still allowing me to add anything I want later on in development.

[Belmontoya]

You do know that gamemaker 8 can do all of that right? And for anything you run into walls with on it you can use GML which can do anything java or C++ could. It's just a more user friendly interface for the simple stuff.

They made huge expansions with gamemaker 8. But I'm sure that you know that already, so this is probably old news to you.

[Belmontoya]

Plus you talked about doing a stage by stage game after this. I'm wondering what your reasoning is for wanting to do that secondly?

[Corpsecrank]

Plus you talked about doing a stage by stage game after this. I'm wondering what your reasoning is for wanting to do that secondly?

Well I don't want a stage based game primarily. So I would rather hammer one of those out after I get the game I want done.

I found 2 new game engines to try out tonight. Both look like possibilities but I will have to get into them and see how they handle before I know. I actually looked up a list of game engines on wiki and went through it to find what I have. Both allow free use and alteration. One of the engines actually allows C# integration so if the engine had a limitation I would be able to code in the parts i need using C# and I like that idea a lot. That engine is technically 2.5d but you can use all 2d is you want. It even supports blend modes like photoshop uses which is a big plus.

But like I said I need to check these out and see what they look like before I move forward.

[Belmontoya]

Damn... And here I was building one from scratch!

[Corpsecrank]

Damn... And here I was building one from scratch!

Well technically that really is the best way. I mean you have the best control over everything programming from scratch. I would much rather do that but I would first need to program. I am learning but I don't have what it takes to go from nothing to a game engine yet.

I found 2 options that are pretty good. One is similar to MMF2 in the fact that it is an object based conditional builder so you place objects and set a condition and response. It is however far more capable than MMF2. Let me just attach a screen of that one so you can see how similar yet different it is. It allows event handling by creating event sheets for objects and those sheets can be included in other sheets as well so it is a real time saver.

But the other option is ORX and that looks like the best way to go. You can make shit happen with only a couple lines of code. It is however all data driven. There is no fancy GUI so you are stuck looking at a lot of code and nothing more. It allows you to work really fast though. The one guy said with artwork prepared he was able to create a side scroller in as little as 20 hours with it! This actually looks like the best option to me since it allows me to program in things I need that are not there. It pulls all graphics from a sheet unlike some of the other tools I used. That makes managing the sprites a lot easier. You could for example have your psd with your sprites in it on layers where you can easily manipulate and adjust the entire sheet for a character. Then you save it out as a png or whatever and then include that in the game and call your frames of animation from the sheet. I think a lot of games do that but most of those crappy object based editors force you to bust up graphics into a lot of little files blah.

Anyways making progress again so that is good. I want to at least try that constructclassic before I start learning the other one since that is going to take up a lot of time lol. I want to see just what that can do though it looks to good to just ditch without trying anyways.

[uzo]

GML which can do anything java or C++ could.

Hahahahaha.

[Belmontoya]

I'm sorry Uzo is something funny? If you have some actual information on how gamemaker 8 can not do a 2D side scrolling game effectively and efficiently, please dig up the maturity to actually explain yourself rather than mocking other posts.