Topic: This is interesting... to me only, probably

[TheouAegis]

I decided to tweak some variables in my Castlevania engine and remembered that Trevor's HP isn't really 16. He has 16 health bars, so logically he has 16 HP, right? Wrong! He actually has 64 HP. Now, the whip deals more damage when it's upgraded. Based on that, I calculated the HP of all the enemies in CV3 (except the bosses, whom I assumed had 16 HP and took reduced damage from some weapons, possibly using some bit or a whole byte to keep track of resistances). Then it occurred to me: if Trevor actually has 64 HP and an enemy taking off 2 bars is really dealing 8 damage to Trevor, then in all likelihood the bosses have 64 HP as well, so it would make sense if the enemies had more HP than I had calculated.

So I opened reVamp, placed an Axe Knight in the first stage, then ran the emulator. After a quick hash, I located the Axe Knight's HP location ($0000067X). Turns out the Axe Knight has 16 HP. Previously I had calculated it had 8 HP. How did I come up with that number originally? I assumed the whip did 1 damage per hit at level 1, assumed no change at level 2 (just a longer range), and did 2 damage per hit at level 3. The measurements I got at the time seemed to confirm that. Well, going back, I see now that the whip does 2 damage per hit at level 1, 3 damage per hit at level 2, and 4 damage per hit at level 3 (which makes a lot more sense but I guess at the time I wanted to keep numbers small).

So that's all fine and dandy, but what's so interesting about that? Nothing, really. But the point of this post is what I discovered after the Axe Knight.  Hunchbacks (or gremlins or hell bunnies or whatever you wanna call them in the Jap version), Fishmen, Owls, and some other enemies have 2 HP, so they die in one hit. You're thinking, "So what? You already said they have double the HP you would think." Here's the thing: Crows and Zombies have 1 HP! What the hell, Konami?!

... I'm a little tired and my brain is moving slowly. The reason for this is obvious if you think about the game's mechanics. But it blew me away when I first saw it so I posted about it here.

If you are slow like me and still haven't figured out why Crows have 1 HP and Fishmen have 2 HP, I'll clear things up for you: Crows and Zombies can be defeated by any weapon (whip, cross, knife, etc.) in one hit, whereas Fishmen and Owls have resistances.


In case you're interested, resistances are pretty lame in CV3. Subweapons have fixed damage. The Holy Water and Cross have the highest damage potential (the trick will be to see if I can program the Holy Water to actually hit the right number of times). The cross deals 3 damage both ways, so it can potentially deal 6 damage. The Holy Water deals 1 damage when the bottle hits an enemy and an additional 1 damage for every quarter of a second or so that the enemy is in contact with the flame. So far I've counted 7 damage total (including the bottle hitting the enemy). The Axe deals 3 damage per hit like the Cross, but obviously it's harder to hit twice with the axe. The Dagger deals 2 damage per hit. Sypha's Fire deals 6 damage in one hit. Sypha's Ice deals no damage but frozen enemies shatter in one hit, so I guess that makes it the strongest attack. Sypha's Lightning is arguably the strongest attack in the game, though, dealing 6 damage per hit with potential for 18 damage to each enemy it passes through!!!! The only non-boss enemies with that kind of HP are the Axe Knight and Bone Dragon. I think the Bone Dragon might be able to survive it, though.

Also, the Bone Dragon (that sticks out of walls) is actually 8 units. Each rib counts as a separate entity, so with 7 ribs and the head, that's 8 total. Each part has 32 HP. Destroying any of the parts will destroy the Bone Dragon itself.

Also, those little fuzzy things that zip around ledges that you can't kill CAN BE KILLED. It's just that they have 127 HP, so it takes a while.

[TheouAegis]

While further playing around with CV3, I found something fun!

Set byte $000000082 to determine your subweapon. Here's the thing: ALL subweapons have a unique value. If that didn't sink it right away, I'll say it again.

ALL
SUBWEAPONS
HAVE
A
UNIQUE
VALUE

The Axe is $01.
The Cross is $02.
The Knife is $03.
The Holy Water is $04.
Sypha's Fire is $05. Yup, you read that right. Trevor can use Sypha's fire!
Sypha's Ice is $06. Yup, he can use her Ice too!
Sypha's Lightning is $07. Yup, yup!
Grant's Dagger is $08. Pfft.
Grant's Axe is $09. Nothing special.
Alucard's Fireball is $0A. It's even cooler when Trevor uses it.
The Stopwatch is $0B.

Ok, so a couple issues. First off, the sprites won't be right. Each character has a certain sprite set and their special powers are included in that sprite set. So since Sypha's sprite set isn't loaded when playing as Trevor, the sprites will be wrong. For the Fire, it's not a big issue, since the sprites used look pretty cool, I think. The Ice symbol in the status bar is drawn in red and I'm not too sure what sprites are actually used for the glitched spell effect. The Lightning uses the Double Item sprite both as the symbol in the status bar and as the spell effect. As for Alucard's fireball, it has the Holy Water symbol in the status bar and uses some weird half-circle sprite I've seen while looking through the ROM file while sprite ripping. It makes it look like a crappy Sonic Boom.

Guile's Theme goes with everything.

[Flame]

Im really not sure how to reply to this, so ill just give you a +1 for an interesting read.

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

Yeah you get a +1 for Interesting Post.

[TheouAegis]

Yay respect points!

Anyway, on an added note but inconsequential: The ugly floating head thing that Dracula turns into for the second fight in CV3 consists of 5 heads each with 13 HP. Of course this totals up to 65 HP, more than the usual boss HP. I don't know what the HP bar shows if you leave the last head with 1 HP. But yeah, usually boss battles with multiple parts (like Mummy/Cyclops/Leviathan) will have a 64 HP controller (probably Leviathan in that battle and Dracula's 3rd form in the final battle). Boss enemies with multiple sections, like the Mummies or the floating heads thingy, will have 64 HP (or 65) divided equally between them. Obviously unlike the Wall Bone Dragon, you need to reduce each entity to 0 HP (or less).

Watching the RAM is kinda fun sometimes.

[uzo]

While nothing I didn't already know, it is a great post. Informative, and no errors in it that I can see.

I would like to add though that player characters being able to use different moves from other characters isn't uncommon. In fact it is a testament to how well CV3's coding is. They consolidated the player character code into a reusable object, which is the most ideal way to do this. You can also see this in the later games as well. For example, modifying Portrait of Ruin's save game inventory data, you can get Charlotte with Maria's birds, and Richter using the Alucard spear.

As to why the graphics are not 'correct' while using them (you may know but others don't); the sub weapons are coded to point to a specific address of video ram for the graphic that is linked to it. The reason its not the right one, is the sub weapon graphics are loaded with the character and only ones that character can use are loaded when they are to save space from having to load them all. When you swap characters, the graphic information for the character is erased, and overwritten with the character you switched to. Now, it's worth noting that Grant's knife and Trevor's knife would be in different locations, because Grant and Trevor have a different amount of sprite data.

[TheouAegis]

I lost two respect points in just under 6 hours. WTF? Screw you guys, I'm goin' home!

...

Anyway, tonight I'll check the US version. The enemy health values I got were from the Japanese version. There are some minor differences from what I can tell. For one, the Bone Pillars (the fire breathing dragon heads that don't move) have a lot more HP, or so it seemed on my last test. The other enemies seemed to be the same, but I"ll  have to load each enemy up and verify that. And if the weapons still do the same damage.

[Inccubus]

Very interesting read. I always suspected the HP in CV3 was more complex than it seemed on the surface, but I never checked. Thanks for all the info.

[TheouAegis]

Okay, this went into this thread because it was related loosely insofar as it has to do with me cracking CV3's mechanics.

Trevor's duck/jump sprite is offset differently than his standing sprite. This is most obvious when you watch his feet -- ducking makes him dip down into the ground 1 pixel. This also affects his hitbox. The hitbox shifts down 1 pixel, so while Trevor can be hit at eyebrow level while standing, the attack has to pass below his eyebrows when he's ducking. However, the hitbox also extends lower when he ducks, so when he's standing up, attacks can pass through his feet (he has about 4 pixels give), but when he ducks he has 1 less pixel of dodging power, so attacks from below hit him more easily.