Opera of the Red Moon (my Castlevania game)

[Kronus_Arm]

So he's in the game and an unlockable character, yes?

I hope you get an exciting trailer or at least a teaser on either here or on your site soon, good luck with the project. Looking mighty well mate.

 

[I.S.T.]

I'd say

I was planning to have him in game at first, along with Jonathan Morris, but then I scrapped the idea in favor of a better cast of unlockables.

answers that question.

[Garoth Moulinoski]

Tell me Soma is in the game! Tell me!!!

I was planning to have him in game at first, along with Jonathan Morris, but then I scrapped the idea in favor of a better cast of unlockables.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!

I liked Soma so much.

It would cool if the player can get a Samus-cannon arm. Want Metroid on PSP that runs well.

[Dragonsbrethren]

I don't know, provided the extra modes will be the same as/similar to the official CV games, Soma would suffer from the same problem as Alucard did in DoS. You're taking a customizable character and stripping them down to a few core abilities. All of the other extra characters, except for Richter and Maria, were planned as extras, so this was a non-issue. Richter actually kept all of his abilities in SotN and gained new ones, so he worked out really well.

[Dashman]

it would be awesome if someone made a castlevania game in which the extras worked in a similar way to the main character (having access to a menu, equipment, items, etc.)

*walks away whistling*

[Gemini]

Yeah, that's really who you think he is. Guess what I'm gonna use him for.

it would be awesome if someone made a castlevania game in which the extras worked in a similar way to the main character (having access to a menu, equipment, items, etc.)

Nice, yeah, but way too much work than necessary.

[Gemini]

Ouch, it's been way too long since my last update here. I've been writing during the last year a news so long I probably won't even post it on my blog because it's incredibly boring to read. <.<

A few new things:

Toying around with geometric transformation is really nice, too bad there are still a few issues with rotation of segmented sprites. I've still got to find a way to fix the transposition matrix or whatever I'm gonna need to make all the pieces rotate correctly around the same point. Still, works just fine with player entities, since they are only one big chunk.


A couple new menus and some redesigned ones. I can't remember if I mentioned that I developed a tool to import SOTN enemies from the PSX build. But anyway, the good news is that this tool has also been expanded to export stuff from the Saturn port as well. While this is generally considered a bad thing (most of the Saturn additions were just horrid), I feel that a few elements should be exported so that they can be edited and turned into something decent enough for the "IGA standard". And yes, that tree is my sentimental favorite.


I've also been working on special move combinations. Still not working as expected, but I'm really close.


Here you can see a 3D model on the background (it rotates as the map scrolls) and item drops.


Minimap! Depth layers not implemented yet, got to plan a decent visual solution.

[justin3009]

Holy wow.  I'm absolutely loving this Gemini.  Totally making this worthwhile

[odditude]

bunch o' stuff

looks fantastic!

Minimap! Depth layers not implemented yet, got to plan a decent visual solution.

"near" depth could show on the map as blue, "far" depth could show as green, and both (or single depth) could be shown as cyan.  obviously, color choice is trivial, although using logical additive/subtractive colors would help.

[Dashman]

...I think I'm in love

[Azkadellia]

Gemini, you rock! This game is going to be epic. Keep up the great work!

[Gemini]

Item drops now work:

I need to re-elaborate the name tag a bit (it's ripped straight from Ecclesia, no good), but sin will probably take care of it as soon as we start redoing the HUD.

On a related matter, did you guys notice the black bands at the top and bottom of the screen? The current resolution is 320x240 for the whole screen area, while the drawing area (bands aren't included there) is 320x208. I was thinking about having some sort of 16:9 mode where the bands wouldn't appear at all, even though it would translate into vertical distortion. Still, this shouldn't be very noticeable as a real 16:9 resolution would be 320x180 (only 28 pixels, barely a problem). Maybe HD TV owners will be happy about this little feature, or maybe not. Thoughts?

[justin3009]

If it's not too much of a hassle, I don't see why not but it's certainly not the most important feature.

[Dashman]

If it's not too much of a hassle, I don't see why not but it's certainly not the most important feature.

seconded. it would be nice considering there's a big bunch of people with HD TV and all that, but it's basically an extra detail. if it proves too complicated to do, you can leave it for v2.0

[Gemini]

It's actually a fairly easy feature to implement. This is the field function to change resolution:

Code: [Select]

static void SetResolution()
{
    // remove flickering
    ClearFBuffer(0,0,FRAME2_W*2,FRAME2_H);
    DrawSync(0);
    // set resolution to 320x240
    GsInitGraph2(FRAME_X,SCREEN_H,GsOFSGPU|GsNONINTER, 1, 0);
    GsDefDispBuff(0,SCREEN_Y,FRAME_X,SCREEN_Y);
    // lower resolution to 320x208
    GsDISPENV.screen.y=user_data.screeny;
    GsDISPENV.screen.h=SCREEN_H;
    GsDISPENV.disp.y=0;
    GsDISPENV.disp.h=FRAME_Y;
}SCREEN_Y is 16 and SCREEN_H is 208. All I need to do is replacing those two macros with variables that change depending on some bit flag. Resulting routine:

Code: [Select]

static void SetResolution()
{
    int h, dh, y;
    extern DRAWENV GsDRAWENV;

    if(user_data.flags&FLAG_PANSCREEN)
    {
        // 16:9 mode, no black bands
        h=SCREEN_H;
        dh=SCREEN_H;
        y=0;
    }
    else
    {
        // 4:3, retain black bands
        h=SCREEN_H;
        dh=FRAME_Y;
        y=SCREEN_Y;
    }
    // remove flickering
    ClearFBuffer(0,0,FRAME2_W*2,FRAME2_H);
    DrawSync(0);
    // set resolution to 320x208
    GsInitGraph2(FRAME_X,h,GsOFSGPU|GsNONINTER, 1, 0);
    GsDefDispBuff(0,y,FRAME_X,y);
    // lower resolution to 320x208
    GsDISPENV.screen.y=user_data.screeny;
    GsDISPENV.screen.h=h;
    GsDISPENV.disp.y=0;
    GsDISPENV.disp.h=dh;
}
By the way, this change affects only the in-game mode. No menus or other screens are adapted to the 16:9-ish resolution, but considering most are just text and boring stuff you probably won't mind.

[Dashman]

this reminds me so much of OpenGL and the glViewport thingy... (currently working on a 3D game for a course at University) what libraries/toolkit are you working with? (if it's not too much asking)

[Azkadellia]

He's making this game for the PSX.

It's on the first page.

[Gemini]

Everything is based on Sony/SN's official SDK, which takes care of most low-level access such as DMA and other stuff. However the framework I've built is flexible enough to allow me to also build a limited version of the engine for Windows.

[Dashman]

whoa, I didn't even know those were available for non-developers (or at least non-official), except (maybe) those who had one of those black playstations supposedly meant for allowing users to make games (which name I can't remember). I guess it's not that surprising since the PSOne has been dead since... ok, now I feel old

[Rocket Science]

whoa, I didn't even know those were available for non-developers (or at least non-official), except (maybe) those who had one of those black playstations supposedly meant for allowing users to make games (which name I can't remember). I guess it's not that surprising since the PSOne has been dead since... ok, now I feel old

What you're referring to is the Net Yaroze, which had an entirely different SDK. The "official" SDK is floating around on the internet, and while you're unlikely to ever find any of the hardware components, debugging stations (basically region-free PS1 consoles that can run CD-Rs and the like) tend to pop up on eBay from time to time.