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Personal Projects / Re: Super Mario All-Stars Redrawn ( SMB2 Demo now available in OP )

« on: November 16, 2020, 05:27:44 am »

Sorry for the long silence, i'm still trying to avoid bumping this thread when I've got nothing to update. I'm still waiting on Darksamus99's build script and MetalWario's SMB1 sprites so I've still nothing to share. But I did want to talk about something. As you know, this project was originally conceived with the goal simply to make the game more accurate to the artwork.
Well, some brand new artwork for SMB1 was recently made for the new Super Mario Bros. Game & Watch, and rather than being the usual red overalls with a blue shirt, Mario and Luigi's color pallets were actually based on their sprites in the game.



Obviously this is a retcon or just a nod to the sprite's color scheme, but it did remind me of something I had been thinking about even before these new images came to light.

The secondary goal of this hack was also to make things a bit closer to the NES game, at least in ways that I don't personally find to be a downgrade like the flat color backgrounds of SMB3 just for the sake of adding the shadows. So, while I want to avoid making too many "alternate" versions of this hack, I did consider an alt using the colors based on the art. This is just a mockup, but Mario and Luigi in SMB1 would look something like this:

I suppose NES color pallet for Luigi is basically this game's "Fire Luigi", so the solution there would be to just make both Fire Mario and Fire Luigi both red and white... or if we're going with NES color scheme, that super pale orange color.   
If I do this, I don't think i'd be satisfied just stopping at Mario and Luigi, I'd make Peach a Brunette again, give the Bros. their Black overalls in SMB3, make Bowser bald again in SMB1+TLL, and revert Koopaling colors back to the default.  This is, of course, just a theoretical alternate version of the hack that I wouldn't even think of working on until the regular version is finished.

On a side note, this post gives away just what's left to do on my Lost Levels sprites for the Bros. Super Mario and Super Luigi are finished. But there's still some small sprites that I need to work on, and i'm really not sure if i'm satisfied with the direction i've taken them. They look so much like Super Mario World sprites and I've always hated SMW's sprites.

Have you condisered the posibility of use the Luigi's sprite of Super Mario Bros DX version of Game Boy Color? I think that the original color of Luigi in the Nes version was a mistake of design or programming; so then Nintendo fixed this in the original planning of colors in the Game Boy Color version.

Here one pic of Luigi color:



PD: Excuse mi english

[Spoiler:]

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Personal Projects / Re: Project Castlevania: Choir of Redemption (CV DoS & PoR portraits hack)

« on: May 22, 2020, 04:39:49 am »

And a name for each one of the games separately, why not?

(Dawn of Dignity & Portrait of Elegace)

This project is finished!
You can check the releases for both Dawn of Dignity and Portrait of Elegance here:

Dawn of Dignity:
http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/3356/

Portrait of Elegance:
https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/4839/

Good day, RH Community!

I had this for a long time in my head, and I wanted to finally post it here.

So, this is the deal:

From almost all Castlevania titles, there have been a pair of entries that I always had a grudge against due to being really off in artstyle...
Those two being Dawn of Sorrow and Portrait of Ruin.
For some idiotic reason, Konami decided to ditch Ayami Kojima's gorgeous art design/style and instead use that ugly af anime "art".

Old post:

Spoiler:

And here's a comparison of the portraits used in the final hack:


Right now the next on the list is Portrait of Ruin, it's in early stages of planning, but we already have all of the data and the base portraits to work with:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ok26y9y2n1ibxl6/PoR%20Portraits.rar?dl=0

You can download that RAR, and inside you will find PNG files with the portraits for Portrait of Ruin already ready for editing!
Just remember to use an image editor which supports indexed palettes. The indexed palette number for most of the portraits is 256 colours, only two-three of them are 16 colours.

If any of you guys have any mockups or ideas, feel free to post them here!

Original post:

Spoiler:

That was the main reason I never really enjoyed neither DoS nor PoR.
I mean, just try to compare this:


There's no comparison! And yeah, as you might have guessed, I despise the anime "artstyle", I find it overdone and really... REALLY overrated. Everytime I see those portraits in both games, I think to myself: "What the heck is this anime doing in my Castlevania?!"

Spoiler:

NOTE: Please restrain yourself from shitposting about why you like anime or why I'm an asshole due to my opinion, I do not care nor will I reply to any post with those kind of comments.
Any post like that will be reported immediately to a mod. If you won't help with the project, don't derail it with that shit, I made this for the purpose of having the whole series (well, except Rondo of Blood, but that one already has it's Kojima art style in the remake for the PSP) with the Kojima art style as it should have been if it weren't for the stupid demograhics cattering to otakus.

So, with that said, that's why I decided to take it upon myself to give these two games the art style they deserve, and how they should have been back in the day.
I decided to ditch that horrible and overrated anime style and instead try to implement Kojima-like artstyle for the character portraits, giving both games the redemption that they both deserve.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Let's get straight to the point, here's what I have so far:

I have found the starting offset for BOTH ROMs in which the character portraits start appearing.

Here's the portraits as I found them with Tile Molester using 8bpp Linear (using TM 0.19):

Dawn of Sorrow, starting point for the portraits located at 0x011D6000


Portrait of Ruin, starting point for the portraits located at 0x01BF2000


It's worth noting that all the portraits are all next to each other in the ROM's data, so that's a huge relief.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

All of this is a huge task for such a humble hacker, so I want to push the community to try to help with this project.
Now here's what I need help with:

• I need a recommendation.
  I know DS ROMs can be extracted.
  
  I already extracted Dawn of Sorrow's files, but it seems like all the sprites and backgrounds (palettes too apparently) are inside .DAT files, and I do not know how to view those DAT files so that I can simply export the portraits themselves and edit them as mere images, that would save me the issue of getting the palette too. Portrait of Ruin might have the same DAT files for almost everything.
• I need to find fanart of any kind that closely resembles the Kojima style for the characters.
  Dawn of Sorrow might be the easiest, since we already have Aria of Sorrow's character portraits, we could port those with a higher resolution if available.
  
  Dawn of Sorrow's portraits:
  
  
  Portrait of Ruin's portraits (excuse the redundancy):
  
  NOTE: Portrait of Ruin has additional Ending portraits too.
  
  Don't hesitate to post any fan art for a Castlevania character related to DoS or PoR that closely resembles the Kojima style!
  For example, here you have a mockup I did some years ago of Dracula Soma:
  
  
  Here are a few others that have been posted in the thread I mentioned at the start of this post:
  
  
  
  Some of the art released for Harmony of Despair will be of great help for this project!
  
• The last thing I wanted to get help with, it's in case extracting, viewing and editing the DAT files for the portraits directly from the ROM is not possible.
  If we cannot get the DAT files to be viewable/editable, I will have to modify the portraits via Tile Molester.
  The images I posted previously along with the portrait's offsets are the ones with the palette provided by Tile Molester, so I need to find a way to use some sort of save state from Desmume or NO$GBA and import it into Tile Molester, that way we could go through the palettes of the save state until we reach the one we want for a specific character.
  
  Anyone knows how to import palettes into Tile Molester by using a save state from No$GBA or Desmume (or any other DS emu)?

So, that's what I have so far!
If you have any constructive criticism or want to contribute to the project, please do so!
Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Would it be possible to translate both projects to the European regions? In my case I am Spanish and I would like to be able to have these roms in my native language with the improvements that you have added. I think it is a great job that you have done and that is why I would like to make this request to you. I would be very grateful to you and I think I would not be the only one. Greetings and thank you. I hope some response from you.

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Personal Projects / Re: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - Quality hack [PSX]

« on: August 20, 2017, 09:28:57 am »

It is a great hack, you have corrected bugs and you have improved the experience .. I would like to make a suggestion to improve this work even more.

I've never liked the original font for ingame texts and menus. I have seen that in some hacks already have improved this subject adding another source.

Here are the links for you to review:

http://www.romhacking.net/?page=translations&action=images&id=1171&imageid=3&orig=0

http://www.romhacking.net/?page=translations&action=images&id=1427&imageid=3

I do not know what it's called the letter font of these hacks but it would fit very well with yours. Do you think it would be possible to add the letter font to the game's menus?

I think it's just what this hack needs to make it perfect.

In short it is just a suggestion, I leave it in your hands.

Otherwise thanks for the hack!