(NES) Total Conversion Hack Castlevania 3: Aperture of Corruption

[Alkali Man OG]

Hoo boy those graphics are getting even better.

so how does those asm subweapon stuff work?

[Supergamerguy]

December's come folks! Were getting close to the end of year 2.
This month I'm happy to report a lot of progress, more holiday off time means more time for development.
Currently we have some stage remodels, a new enemy type and a new stage.

Starting things off strong we have a round of small quality of life updates to stage tiles in area's including the botanical garden, circus, and port town. As the projects progressed and new graphical techniques were uncovered many of the older stage layouts became somewhat outdated. Currently the games oldest stage, the CV2 port town Aljiba has been getting some serious upgrades due to the voidspace bank expansion, so expect some new info on it soon.




ENEMY ALERT
Out from the infected ship flows dozens of hornet's. They're extremely durable and can survive harsh winds and cold winters with help from their hibernating queens. Once temperatures rise they can emerge from their cocoons to fight any would be intruders.


On the hive front new tiles have been crafted for the ships infected underbelly. With this the airship stage is getting close to completion, more work is being put into boss designs. Keep an eye out for more info soon.




REPLY SECTION
It's actually the skeleton knight Alkali Man OG. Were able to add fit a bit more curve into the animation thanks to the original uncompressed sprite graphics.

Currently we've gotten somewhere with the concept Arcade-Elite, code has been developed that lets the game know which character a player died with. All that's left is to lock the players swap wheel back to 1 character. How that might effect the stability of the game or cutscene's? Like the multi-swap that's currently unknown.

Thanks for the encouraging words Flaviogames. Currently were on track to release a demo build sometime in 2024 however the date has not been set in stone yet. Progress updates will continue monthly with more content coming soon.

This is just insane. I'm not sure there's much more I can say beyond offering some encouragement. Yoy all should be proud of yourselves. As always, keep up the good work!

[Googie]

I'm digging the recent screens, really cool eye candy. 

[sics]

It's one of the most beautiful visuals I've ever seen, I've never played a full Castlevania on NES, but with your hack it makes me want to reverse this situation!

[Arcade-Elite]

Happy holidays, can't wait wait for this game keep it up.

[Toffi]

Happy new years guys!
As 2023 revs up it's time for the yearly end post.
Let's start by sharing the level completion stats, were just about halfway through the games stages and have rough outlines for WIP sections ready to go.
Stage 1: Unfinished
Stage 2: Completed
Stage 3: Completed
Stage 4: Completed
Stage 5: WIP
Stage 6X: WIP
Stage 6Y: Completed
Stage 7: Start screen done
Stage 4A: Near completion
Stage 5A: Start screen done
Stage 6A: Start screen done
Stage 7A: WIP
Stage 8: Completed
Stage 9: WIP
Stage 10: WIP

Next up is some amazing progress into pre-rendering. We've currently unlocked some extra space between the games regular and void banks that allows us to pull off some impressive 3d effects. Coupling this with how the MMC5 handles banks and we can pull off semi capable 3d animation. The end goal of this 3D simulation would be to fully render Castlevania in a 3D environment and use it during the final fight against Dracula. New semi stable parallax routines are being looked into so 1 layered background effects like those seen on the SNES might soon become a reality. Below is a 3d model running on real hardware in ROM. As more progress is made updates will be posted.



Were still looking for music implementation help, currently the MMC5 chipset has provided a unique set of challenges that classic 2a03 sound modification doesn't. If you have any experience with assembly 6502 or want to help us get the game out faster feel free to PM me here or DM me at ToffiRola#6064.

Things are getting better and better graphically and over the course of this projects lifetime and lot's of new advancements have been made. Thank you all for posting and replying here and keeping up with the development blog. It means a lot to see just how much support's out there.
Thank you all and have a happy new year.

-END YEAR 2-
REPLY SECTION

The sub-weapon dropping works similarly to SOTN Alkali Man OG. When a new weapon is chosen the old one pops out of the back and can be regained, however all modifiers will be lost when picked back up. So if you even mistakenly pick up a weapon you don't wan you can reclaim your previous one.

Thanks for the kind words Supergamerguy, Googie, sics and Arcade-Elite. Hopefully we'll have more to show soon.

[Googie]

The recent pics look really smooth, I hope you get the help you need in the music department. 👊😎

[Flaviogames]

Very impressive, I would have a demo for me to test and publicize on YouTube

[drax01]

Hello, this project is great, every month I enter to see each progress you make. Could you give us a gif of what the 3D effect looks like? Congratulations and a big hug!   

[Toffi]

January's here again!
There's been a lot of big quality of life updates to one of the games oldest stages, the Port Town Aljiba as well as a brand new enemy and player sprite.

Firstly we have greatly expanded and improved the original level graphics due to the innovations in void space banks and highjacked stair routines. This entire level was in need of some extra graphical work and more updates were provided to help it better match the latest improvements in our development process.




Sonia's sprite has also received some smaller updates to increase player visibility in low light level stages now with increased brightness added to her leggings and hands.


ENEMY ALERT
It's been a while but Dracula's castle has begun to spew out night terrors once again! The Lussiferda are demons that take the form of Lucia of Syracuse; who was a martyr that had her eyes gauged out. She was known for hiding Christians in catacombs and kept both hands free by wearing candles upon her head. However this demonic mockery has left the candle wax drip over their eyeless face and into their long flowing hair. On the night before Saint Lucy's day the Lussiferda lurks. Wielding a withered and rusty cross of Lorraine this entity hobbles innocently towards their prey then lunges toward to strike unsuspecting victims.





REPLY SECTION
Thanks Googie, sound's been one heck of a journey to get prepped but hopefully we can get more out about it soon.

We've discussed putting some footage of the game running up onto YouTube before, but there's still a lot left to finish (specifically in the sound and music department) before then. Thanks for the offer though!

Here's a demo showing the engine can handle damage and sprite routines as well as the prerendered image without breaking a sweat Drax01. It actually works!!

[Flaviogames]

Toffi: this effect of the floor seen from sima is very good, but please note that the character is at the bottom of the platform and that makes it a bit strange, leave him lower than the impression that he is in the middle of the floor and that makes it more perfect

[Toffi]

Hi Flavio, thanks for the reply.
Player collision in CV3 is built on a 16x16 pixel grid which makes pho 2.5D stage work difficult. In other stages (like the airship hive) we were able to get away with it by blending the stage into the background however in this section doing so would be difficult as there are too many unique assets. Lowering the stage to fix the issue would break stairs and adding in more tiles into the background would compromise other stage elements. We could remove the effect entirely or dull it but cannot put the players collision any lower without some hefty programming. Do any of these look better?

[Flaviogames]

Toffi thanks for the feedback, I don't know if you understood what I wanted to say, note that the character is at the bottom of the floor, is it not possible to leave him lower to give the impression that he will walk in the middle of the floor? if it's not possible, that's fine, that was just a suggestion, about the 4 images, I think the number 1 is better when it comes to the depth effect, note that the character is in the background where there are the dark codes on the floor, the correct one if possible it would leave it between the light color and the beginning of the dark of the floor

[Toffi]

It would be hard to adjust the player collision as the upper tiles would need to have collision removed and the lower ones would need collision added. Below shows the current stage collision (right) and an adjusted stage collision (left) the X's are background objects and the squares are collision tiles. Since collision works on a 16x16 grid shifting the stage tiles down or up a tile you could theoretically make it work.

However adjusting everything down by 1 tile means other stage attributes like stairs, doors, and buffer zones will be broken. Adjusting everything up one tile would mean removing other stage assets to get the whole thing to fit. It's not impossible, just extremely difficult and would require an entire stage re-write to fix, which is why the original CV3 team never used it.

[doublebass1985]

Hi Flavio, thanks for the reply.
Player collision in CV3 is built on a 16x16 pixel grid which makes pho 2.5D stage work difficult. In other stages (like the airship hive) we were able to get away with it by blending the stage into the background however in this section doing so would be difficult as there are too many unique assets. Lowering the stage to fix the issue would break stairs and adding in more tiles into the background would compromise other stage elements. We could remove the effect entirely or dull it but cannot put the players collision any lower without some hefty programming. Do any of these look better?

No it looks worse imo I would go back to original design

[Creature667]

Toffi, after scrutinizing the new Sonya sprites, I only sort of agree with the others who don't like the new alterations. I think, me personally, I like the darker old version from her torso up but like the details on her legs like the new shin guards, etc... Maybe try a mixture of the two. New legs with old torso? And then a version with and without the added ponytail because you know you're gonna get some pushback on that too...

As far as the floor tiles go, I see what Flavio is trying to say and maybe in designing future stages that have the 3D look to it you can design the artwork for the flooring metatiles to have Sonya walking in the middle of the two tiles, if you understand my meaning. I think it would look better as well, but I don't know if the engine will make it easy since Castlevania Characters and collision tiles are designed to have the sprites walk on the very top of them. Though if what I'm thinking is correct then creating that illusion would require creating background tiles whose design synchs perfectly with the design on the collision tiles. It might eat up too much bank space just to create a novel 3D effect.

[Toffi]

Hi Creature!
I haven't any backlash on the quality of life sprite updates just yet. I made a few mixed options based on your requests just in case though. Here is a mixture of light an dark sprite with the upper torso past he belt being dark and the leggings/ boots being lit, the other version is the prior sprites head on the more visible torso. The main reason hair was added was for recognizabilities sake. I had a few inquiries if AoC starred Nathan Graves due to the short cut. The original game sprites had longer hair (along with a few other cut features like a flopping whip in their belt) however it was cut due to sprite limitations at the time. With recent updates in CHR compression and sprite compatibility some of those older ideas might make a comeback.

[doublebass1985]

the new lighting on just one of the legs looks odd and doesn't fit it you had it perfect in the beginning.  also how is there suppose to be lighting on one of the legs if your in a dark room? trust me once your start changing stuff you had finished perfect before half the time it winds up being in a worse direction.

[Flaviogames]

Toff I understand, go ahead anyway it's very good

[Toffi]

Hi doublebass1985,
Thank you for your concern. The leg lighting was done in an attempt to make the character more visible in green environments, which has been an issue since the sprites conception. In order to prevent visual blending shading on 1 leg was added, from a logical perspective the torso in this case would be blocking the light, causing the shadow in between the inner thighs.

This feature was actually a staple of other characters in the cast long before it was added to Sonia's sprite; so for a while Sonia was the odd one out. This stylistic choice was inspired by later NES titles like Shatterhand which uses the darker back leg to ensure the characters legs don't blend together in high color scenario's.

Over the two years the projects been going every sprite in this project has recived lots of changes added to them as new techniques and patches were added to better suit gameplay. Often times older designs and stages are updated to fit the restrictions of the engine or to better suit players. Whenever new updates are provided in engine more progress is made with sprites.

Hopefully with the advent of new CV3 sprite editors we can continue to update sprites making them more visually unique and stylistically distinctive.