Castlevania II (Simon's Quest) - Multilingual enhancement

[Vanya]

Doing that would allow for some, hum, creative shortcuts.

Make spikes kill?

[TheZunar123]

Doing that would allow for some, hum, creative shortcuts.

I fail to see how climbing up those spikes is a shortcut.

[Turambar]

I made a map from the in-game map.

I fail to see how climbing up those spikes is a shortcut.

It's a TAS style shortcut that saves a few seconds. Not the kind of thing you do in real time.

[Bisqwit]

I made a map from the in-game map.

Only wish you used the correct palette...
The map is designed to be rendered with NTSC filtering on. This will make its color look right.
With the FCEU palette it looks bleh, yellowish and all.

I fail to see how climbing up those spikes is a shortcut.

If Simon was able to jump through the ceiling as suggested by Vanya, he could shortcut to the upper right corner of the image several seconds faster than by climbing slowly the stairs that even go to the opposite direction. The reason it doesn't work now is, as shown in the picture, because he can't jump through a ceiling.

[TheZunar123]

If Simon was able to jump through the ceiling as suggested by Vanya, he could shortcut to the upper right corner of the image several seconds faster than by climbing slowly the stairs that even go to the opposite direction. The reason it doesn't work now is, as shown in the picture, because he can't jump through a ceiling.

Oh, my bad. I thought that coding was already implemented in that slideshow (I guess that's what you'd call it? it's like an animated GIF or something, right?). I see what you mean.

[Turambar]

Only wish you used the correct palette...
The map is designed to be rendered with NTSC filtering on. This will make its color look right.
With the FCEU palette it looks bleh, yellowish and all.

I can't tell much difference in the palette and the NTSC filtering just makes it look blurry. I prefer pixelated or hqx.
If people don't like the different colors for the branching lines I can try something else, like white lines with black strokes.

If you fix the palette of this image..

or this image..

to your liking I will put the other stuff on top of it.

[MathUser2929]

RHDN doesn't allow filtered game screenshots, so if you submitted that map to the site with the filtering on, then it would probably be rejected if the staff notice the filter on it.

[Turambar]

It's not a screenshot, it's a composited image and I didn't know that this site even accepted that sort of thing.
I also have no interest in filtering it and said so.
So I don't understand any of your points.

[Bisqwit]

I just released version 2.6.2. Grab it at: http://bisqwit.iki.fi/cv2fin/#now

The changes include:
-- [Palette fader feature] The HP bar no longer disappears during the night/day transition.
-- [SRAM feature] Cancelling the in-game Save screen with A button will no longer cause Simon to jump.
-- Using Up+B will no longer initiate chat with NPCs the way that simply pressing B does.

[Turambar]

Excellent fixes!

[Vanya]

Sweet! No a can screw around with my sub-weapons all I want in towns!

EDIT:

The fluid day/night transition is looking awesome! A massive improvement over the original. Very neat and trim.

More Observations:
*On the subject of making Ferryman stop at the shore's edge and immediately switch to the corresponding Ferryman object for the current screen. I noticed something. As soon as you reach the edge of the screen he reappears. So maybe he wasn't supposed to keep moving? It does look kinda sloppy on Konami's part. Maybe it was a loose end they didn't get to before deadline? Just sayin'.

*In merchant dialogues, Have the 'A' button do two things. 1) If cursor is on "Buy" move it to "Refuse". 2) If cursor is on "Refuse" cancel out of the dialogue.

*NPC's seem to be ignorant of some of the laws of physics. In Ondol, I just witnessed a man walk right through a platform. Maybe augment the NPC AI with horizontal collision detection like most of the other objects in the game.

*Would it drastically change game play to implement pressing Down+'B' to jump down off stairs?  I can imaging if it were implemented it might have some issues with Simon's head being inside a block when you switch to a falling state.

*The Vampire Killer is supposed to be this awesome alchemically enhanced magical artifact, right? So what's the deal with buying all these other presumably also magical whips? Why the hell do so many people have alchemy whips? Maybe it would make more sense if what the merchants are selling is 'alchemy crests'? They could look like the standard CV3 power up. And if you wanted to take it a step further, have them all sell the same item and instead of basing which whips you can use based on the ones you've bought, make it based on the number of crests you have. That way you can't skip any, but also don't have to buy them in a specific order.

*Ha! I found you!

*How about giving the merchants that sell unique items an alternate text saying they already sold you the item? And the merchants that sell consumables only have the text if you inventory is maxed. Actually, the simplest thing would be to give them all the condition of full inventory. Just, all the unique items count as having a max inventory of 1.

*Any way to let the merchants that sell consumables allow you to buy more than one pair at a time?

*I think there should be a secret way to go from Denis Marsh Pit to Berkeley Mansion. Maybe give the stupid whirlwind another use?

*Addressing one of the fundamental issues with the game: tediousness. One of the problems is that fighting monsters becomes really boring once you get stronger weapons and they die in one hit. What's worse is that the sub-weapons don't get any stronger so they have the opposite issue, most monsters still take a bunch of hits to kill with most sub-weapons so you can't even offset the tediousness with an alternate way to attack. To solve the problem with the whip maybe have alternate AI for the enemies that makes them more interesting to fight once they can be killed in one hit. For example, the medusa heads home right in on you normally. But once their alternate AI trigger, have them use their old sine wave schtick. Or How about actually having the mermen ait *AT* you? As for the sub-weapons, maybe their damage should increase with level up?

*This is nothing new, but... the bosses all suck balls!. Their AI is pathetic, they get stunned by everything, they have no invincibility time, and there are only 3. Boo!

*The game's palette suck, too. There is already a palette hack for the base game, but it could be better. If this were done as an optional patch it would have the double benefit of both improving the game's visuals without moving a single pixel and they could be optimized to play nicer with the day/night transition.

*An optional palette for Simon might not be such a bad idea, but instead of using his CV1 colors, like has been suggested, just swap his black color with the darkest grey which would have minimal impact on his appearance, but still make him pop out from the backgrounds better.

*Even if they are not interactive, having animated lanterns in the towns at night would be pretty cool. If you could make it happen I'd be happy to provide some matching graphics to go along with it.

*And if you ever figure out the background animation thing for the Open doors and lanterns in towns, consider an animation for the waterfalls in the Uta Lower Road.

*Speaking of which, why Uta Wasteland? Isn't it an underground mountain pass? Also, Why "Larubs's Mansion" and not just "Laruba Mansion"?

[Turambar]

Map version 2.



Anybody know the rom address for starting hearts?
I think the game would be better without the initial grind, maybe start with 100 hearts.
Also, has anybody timed how long it is until the first night in real time?
How long is a full day/night in real time?
Hmm, doesn't the game gimp you the first day?
It would be cool to start the game at morning instead of noon.
Anybody know the address for starting time?

[Vanya]

Nice map.

*Bodley Mansion =  バドリーの館 = Badorī no yakata = Mansion of Bathory, as in Elizabeth Bathory, the Blood Countess. Who, BTW, should be the boss of this stage.

[MathUser2929]

Down + B to get off stairs is a good suggestion. Many later CV games allow that.

Mortal Kombat II for SNES has a trigger that makes the AI ridiculously hard when you enter a button code to increase damage. I don't think that is really a good feature cause it kinda beats the point of using the code. That's pretty much what you are suggesting by making the game harder as you gain more whips. If the game isn't hard enough for you, simply equip another whip. The hack allows you to keep all the whips you've acquired thus far. Just use a weaker whip when you want more of a challenge, then switch back to the more powerful whip if you need it.

[Carnivol]

Why down + B? Isn't that Crouch + Attack (Yeah, yeah, you can't crouch on stairs), wouldn't crouch + A (Jump) be the norm for "drop" commands like this?

[Bisqwit]

*Bodley Mansion =  バドリーの館 = Badorī no yakata = Mansion of Bathory, as in Elizabeth Bathory, the Blood Countess. Who, BTW, should be the boss of this stage.

Bathory? I did not know that. Maybe I should change the name.

① Anybody know the rom address for starting hearts?
I think the game would be better without the initial grind, maybe start with 100 hearts.
② Also, has anybody timed how long it is until the first night in real time?
③ How long is a full day/night in real time?
Hmm, doesn't the game gimp you the first day?
It would be cool to start the game at morning instead of noon.
④ Anybody know the address for starting time?

① $C55A (ROM file offset $1C56A) (note: this is BCD, and thus the maximum is 99)
You also have $C283 (ROM file offset $1C293), which sets the number of hearts you are given if you die in the ruins.

③ The clock increments by 1 minute every 15 frames. At 60.0988 FPS, this translates to one hour of game-time passing in 14.97534 seconds. 12 hours (i.e. the length of a day or the length of a night) is 179.704 seconds, or 2.995 minutes.

④ The starting hour of the game is defined at $C56F (ROM file offset $1C57F). This is also the hour that you are given when decoding a password. The value defaults to 12 (in BCD). Note that if you set this to a night hour, the game will still begin at daytime, and a morning will actually bring forth a night.

② It follows from these that the first day is 6 hours long (18-12). From the player's perspective, this is 89.852 seconds.

Down + B to get off stairs is a good suggestion. Many later CV games allow that.

I think down+A would make more sense. However, one of the games that allows that is not Akumajou Densetsu, i.e. Castlevania III.

The fluid day/night transition is looking awesome! A massive improvement over the original. Very neat and trim.

Thanks!

> On the subject of making Ferryman stop at the shore's edge and immediately switch to the
> corresponding Ferryman object for the current screen. I noticed something.
> As soon as you reach the edge of the screen he reappears. So maybe he wasn't supposed to
> keep moving? It does look kinda sloppy on Konami's part.

Maybe.


> In merchant dialogues, Have the 'A' button do two things. 1) If cursor is on "Buy" move
> it to "Refuse". 2) If cursor is on "Refuse" cancel out of the dialogue.

This would give the A button two different meanings depending on type of dialog box. I am rejecting this suggestion.


> NPC's seem to be ignorant of some of the laws of physics. In Ondol, I just witnessed a man
> walk right through a platform. Maybe augment the NPC AI with horizontal collision detection
> like most of the other objects in the game.

The boy, right? Hmm. Seems minor enough. Also, adding collision checking into them for the upper part of their body would increase the lagginess of the game for no practical benefit.


> The Vampire Killer is supposed to be this awesome alchemically enhanced magical artifact, right?
> So what's the deal with buying all these other presumably also magical whips? Why the hell
> do so many people have alchemy whips? Maybe it would make more sense if what the
> merchants are selling is 'alchemy crests'? They could look like the standard CV3 power up.
> And if you wanted to take it a step further, have them all sell the same item and instead of
> basing which whips you can use based on the ones you've bought, make it based on the
> number of crests you have. That way you can't skip any, but also don't have to buy them
> in a specific order.

What "Vampire Killer"? I have no idea what you are talking about. I thought these are just normal whips. Makes perfect sense for people to have and make whips of ordinary materials.


> Any way to let the merchants that sell consumables allow you to buy more than one pair at a time?

That would be nice, I agree.


> I think there should be a secret way to go from Denis Marsh Pit to Berkeley Mansion.

I agree. And the secret staircase in that map looks like an accident from the designers.


> What's worse is that the sub-weapons don't get any stronger[...]
> As for the sub-weapons, maybe their damage should increase with level up?

It could be reasonable to powerup the weaker subweapons, like the bottle or the diamond, as Simon levels up. Maybe the others as well.


> How about actually having the mermen ait *AT* you?

They actually do aim at you... They just miscalculate your position a bit :-)


> The game's palette suck, too. There is already a palette hack for the base game, but it could be better.

For the most part, I like the game's palette.


> Even if they are not interactive, having animated lanterns in the towns at night would be pretty cool.

Or indeed those chandeliers.

See the lanterns above or in the vicinity of most doors? I think it could be reasonable to add a fire into them at nights.


> And if you ever figure out the background animation thing for the Open doors and lanterns
> in towns, consider an animation for the waterfalls in the Uta Lower Road.

That would pretty much have to be done as an MMC3 exclusive feature. You can only practically do such waterfall tricks by VROM bank switches. On MMC1, the VROM swap granularity is too high, and the cost would be too great (you would need to double the VROM size, and that's not something I am willing to do very lightly). On MMC3 it would actually be possible to swap much smaller regions of the VROM at time.

The open door thing is by far the most difficult of these suggestions, by the way. It is not the matter of just swapping some VROM banks. The open doors literally contain just a blank tile repeated several times. You cannot make it look like a closed door by just swapping the blank tile (which is also used in windows and many other things) for something else. You would need level editing. And there is the issue that the background tile bank contains absolutely no free space for ~8 unique tiles that would be look like blank tiles at day and closed-door-tiles at night.


> Speaking of which, why Uta Wasteland? Isn't it an underground mountain pass?

Hmm, it should actually be called Uta Lower Road. I am not sure why I called it like that. Any suggestions for the new name? I am willing to change it.


> Also, Why "Laruba's Mansion" and not just "Laruba Mansion"?

Why Brahm's Mansion?

What is the rationale behind sometimes using 's and sometimes not? This boggles me. Could someone explain it?

[MathUser2929]

Well, I meant Down + Jump, I forgot that B was attack.

The vampire killer is the name of the  Belmonts starting whip I think. It gains strength as powerups are collected in the old school games. I don't know if the vampire killer is in CV II or not. I don't remember when the name was first mentioned.

[Vanya]

Mortal Kombat II for SNES has a trigger that makes the AI ridiculously hard when you enter a button code to increase damage. I don't think that is really a good feature cause it kinda beats the point of using the code. That's pretty much what you are suggesting by making the game harder as you gain more whips. If the game isn't hard enough for you, simply equip another whip. The hack allows you to keep all the whips you've acquired thus far. Just use a weaker whip when you want more of a challenge, then switch back to the more powerful whip if you need it.

It's not the difficulty or challenge I'm addressing with this suggestion, it's the boring and repetitive nature of just walking around whacking enemies with one hit. They wouldn't even need a drastic change in AI, just some variety to make things a little more interesting as you progress.

Why down + B? Isn't that Crouch + Attack (Yeah, yeah, you can't crouch on stairs), wouldn't crouch + A (Jump) be the norm for "drop" commands like this?

Typo, I meant 'Down + A', too.

> In merchant dialogues, Have the 'A' button do two things. 1) If cursor is on "Buy" move
> it to "Refuse". 2) If cursor is on "Refuse" cancel out of the dialogue.

This would give the A button two different meanings depending on type of dialog box. I am rejecting this suggestion.

Didn't I suggest 'A' for cancelling regular dialogues too? Aren't the two kinds of dialogues already handles differently? The reason for this suggestion is for consistency with the shop menus in most other games. You could always go the simpler route and have 'A' cancel out of the shop dialogue regardless of the cursor position which many games do as well.

> NPC's seem to be ignorant of some of the laws of physics. In Ondol, I just witnessed a man
> walk right through a platform. Maybe augment the NPC AI with horizontal collision detection
> like most of the other objects in the game.

The boy, right? Hmm. Seems minor enough. Also, adding collision checking into them for the upper part of their body would increase the lagginess of the game for no practical benefit.

True. You could always just remove the blocs from underneath the platform. It wouldn't affect game play at all, and it would a trivial solution for a trivial problem.

> The Vampire Killer is supposed to be this awesome alchemically enhanced magical artifact, right?
> So what's the deal with buying all these other presumably also magical whips? Why the hell
> do so many people have alchemy whips? Maybe it would make more sense if what the
> merchants are selling is 'alchemy crests'? They could look like the standard CV3 power up.
> And if you wanted to take it a step further, have them all sell the same item and instead of
> basing which whips you can use based on the ones you've bought, make it based on the
> number of crests you have. That way you can't skip any, but also don't have to buy them
> in a specific order.

What "Vampire Killer"? I have no idea what you are talking about. I thought these are just normal whips. Makes perfect sense for people to have and make whips of ordinary materials.

Are you being facetious?

> The game's palette suck, too. There is already a palette hack for the base game, but it could be better.

For the most part, I like the game's palette.

o_O
http://vgmaps.com/Atlas/NES/CastlevaniaII-Simon%27sQuest-TownOfYomi.png

And this one hurts my vision:
http://vgmaps.com/Atlas/NES/CastlevaniaII-Simon%27sQuest-LarubaMansion.png

The open door thing is by far the most difficult of these suggestions, by the way. It is not the matter of just swapping some VROM banks. The open doors literally contain just a blank tile repeated several times. You cannot make it look like a closed door by just swapping the blank tile (which is also used in windows and many other things) for something else. You would need level editing. And there is the issue that the background tile bank contains absolutely no free space for ~8 unique tiles that would be look like blank tiles at day and closed-door-tiles at night.

What about simply changing those specific TSA blocks with the ones for the closed doors? The system already rewrites tiles to execute the menu and dialogue boxes, right?

> Speaking of which, why Uta Wasteland? Isn't it an underground mountain pass?

Hmm, it should actually be called Uta Lower Road. I am not sure why I called it like that. Any suggestions for the new name? I am willing to change it.

I never had any issues with "Uta Lower Road".

> Also, Why "Laruba's Mansion" and not just "Laruba Mansion"?

Why Brahm's Mansion?

What is the rationale behind sometimes using 's and sometimes not? This boggles me. Could someone explain it?

Well, that's a good question. First let me get this out of the way. Brahm's Mansion is supposed to be named for Bram Stoker, the author of the novel, "Dracula". So you can throw out that wierd 'h' right there. Now, the mansion names are "X no yakata" which in Japanese signifies ownership so I could understand the 's as it's common to use it when you are stating a thing belongs to a specific person. However, in English when an estate carries a family name the ownership is implicitly understood normally. So all the 's are superfluous. Although, I have to admit Brams Mansion has a better ring to it than Bram Mansion.
[/quote]

[Bisqwit]

Are you being facetious?

Let me google this word...

No, I am being entirely serious. There is nothing in the game to suggest that those whips are in any manner special. They are simply functional objects capable of delivering devastating physical force.
Even if the hero has nicknamed a whip by some particular name -- a concept which I do not see references to in the game.

o_O  And this one hurts my vision:

I see no problem here whatsoever.


Except of course if you use horrific emulator palettes.

What about simply changing those specific TSA blocks with the ones for the closed doors? The system already rewrites tiles to execute the menu and dialogue boxes, right?

Reverse-mapping the on-PPU graphics into in-game level data, or selectively doing vice versa, is a really complex undertaking that I don't think I am wiling to take.

[Vanya]

Let me google this word...

No, I am being entirely serious. There is nothing in the game to suggest that those whips are in any manner special. They are simply functional objects capable of delivering devastating physical force.
Even if the hero has nicknamed a whip by some particular name -- a concept which I do not see references to in the game.

I don't know if the vampire killer is in CV II or not. I don't remember when the name was first mentioned.

The earliest game I can think of that actually calls it "Vampire Killer" is Bloodlines, but from the very first game it was always described as a magical family heirloom. I don't know what crack they were smoking when they were making CV2, but CV1 is pretty clear that not just any old whip can take out Dracula and the one Simon has isn't ordinary. Not to mention it just seems wierd to go around killing supernatural monsters with just a normal whip which is most definitely not an effective combat weapon.

EDIT: This one is just a personal preference of mine. Could you add an optional patch to disable access to the password feature and remove it from the start menu? I just think it would look neater especially since I don't intend to ever use the god-awful password system ever again.