Castlevania II (Simon's Quest) - Multilingual enhancement

[Bisqwit]

I've been meaning to ask, what's the difference between VRC6a & VRC6b?

VRC6a is for the board of Akumajou Densetsu, and VRC6b is for the boards of Madara and Esper Dream 2.
The differences are explained here: http://wiki.nesdev.com/w/index.php/VRC6

[Vanya]

One last thing. Even if I have the VRC6 version of the patch as my base the sound system is still the same as the original, right? So if I wanted to upgrade to VRC6 style music I'd have to give the sound code an overhaul, no?

[Bisqwit]

One last thing. Even if I have the VRC6 version of the patch as my base the sound system is still the same as the original, right? So if I wanted to upgrade to VRC6 style music I'd have to give the sound code an overhaul, no?

The sound engine in the game would still be the same. To utilize the VRC6 channels you would have to insert code that writes into the VRC6 soundchip's I/O ports. Upgrading the sound engine to do that is an infeasible undertaking, I'm afraid.
You could consider it in custom cutscenes or such, where you might skip the game's sound engine alltogether and use a homebrew one instead.

EDIT: I found the Berkeley Mansion! ;-)

[Turambar]

It would be cool if the other two NES Castlevania games could be disassembled and the boss code copied over to Castlevania 2 and the mansions altered slightly so that there were bosses in each mansion. To put the question out there, what bosses from 1 and 3 would be the best to bring over if it were possible?

[Vanya]

To be honest, I'd prefer new bosses for the mansions. If the boss code from the other two games could be used I'd only use them as a base for the most part. And actually what I'd be more interested in is porting over some of the regular enemies.

The first thing I'd do, though, is begin by improving the existing bosses. Each boss should be hidden somewhere in their mansion and defeating them should be required to access the room with the body part. I'd separate the Orb object from the body part and create a door object that is impassable until you get the orb from the boss. This promotes exploration and frees the Oak stake to be an actual weapon. So now when you clear the boss you can enter the part room and it'll just be there on the pedestal.

Individual improvements: Carmila needs a couple more attacks and maybe a more varied flight path. I'd port Death from CV1, keep his sickle throw attack, and make sure he can't be stunned by 'sacred' attacks. Also, I'd move him to the room right before the last boss. Which brings me to Dracula. He's just as pathetic as the rest of them. He needs a new sprite, looks too much like Death. Hell this Dracula should be Death's second form. Dracula's Ghost should be a lot harder to hit and more over you should have to do something special to take him out in order to lift the curse. As a matter of fact, I think the 13 clues should be a riddle that tells you what you need to do instead of being tips. And if you don't do this thing to lift the curse you always get the bad ending. (On a side note an interesting hack would be to start Simon off with the max amount of health and the longer you take to beat the game the smaller your meter becomes.) Now as to the last boss, what would be cool is if he has a different form based on each body part and you have to beat them all to win.

Now to fill in the roster of mansions that are left over...

Berkeley Mansion - This is almost always the first mansion players tackle so it needs a fairly easy boss. How about a Ghul? You hardly ever see those and never as a boss. And if you notice the spelling, I do mean the original Arabic version of it. It should be fast and have a simple clawing attack

Rover Mansion - A merman boss. The Creature from the Black Lagoon should have been in CV1, so let's put him here. He should be based on the basic AI of the normal mermen, but with more attacks and able to jump in and out of the water or even attack from the water. Make him a fireball spitter with different attacks depending on whether he's on land or in the water. Add a close quarters claw swipe and you're done.

Bram Mansion - Need a new boss to replace Death. Let's see... The White Wurm! A white snake-like dragon boss. Maybe do it like the dragon boss in Belmont's Revenge and have it shoot through holes in the room and occasionally pop out and attack. Bram Mansion - Lair of the White Worm... see what I did there.

Bodley/Bathory Mansion - Elizabeth Bartley/ Erzebeth Bathory should be this stage's boss hands down. Just the name of the place demands it have it's vampire master present. She could have a human form to start and then a second form based on the Leviathan/Lesser Demon from CV3.

[Turambar]

This promotes exploration and frees the Oak stake to be an actual weapon.

It could be used for the finishing blow against Dracula. You get Dracula into a stunned position and finish him off with the oak stake Ganon style.

[Vanya]

It could be used for the finishing blow against Dracula. You get Dracula into a stunned position and finish him off with the oak stake Ganon style.

Exactly, and I was thinking a little while ago, that part of the procedure should be figuring out which specific sub-weapons you need to finish off each of Drac's forms. And to make it more interesting, during the fight instead of fighting the forms in sequence he'll switch forms to a random one based on two factors. Normally he'll switch forms after a certain amount of time passes during the battle, but if you take 1/5th of his HP it removes the current form from the random choice and forces a random form change. Also, maybe require the player to take out the different forms in a specific order. This could lead to a very long and epic battle.

[Slime]

Great improvement hack! One of the best! The great thing about your hack is the choice for the changes to be optional.

Pretty much all NES games have design flaws; comes with territory, but Castlevania II's are many.

One of my least favorite things about CII is having to wait for day to speak with the citizens of the town. Can you make it optional to have them still there during the night? Warping among towns would be a nice feature, as well.

There's probably more changes I'd like to see with the game, but that's all that comes to mind at the moment.

[Da_GPer]

Great improvement hack! One of the best! The great thing about your hack is the choice for the changes to be optional.

Pretty much all NES games have design flaws; comes with territory, but Castlevania II's are many.

One of my least favorite things about CII is having to wait for day to speak with the citizens of the town. Can you make it optional to have them still there during the night? Warping among towns would be a nice feature, as well.

There's probably more changes I'd like to see with the game, but that's all that comes to mind at the moment.

Having the people around in towns during the night would make the game too easy. Same for warping around in towns.

[Bisqwit]

Having the people around in towns during the night would make the game too easy. Same for warping around in towns.

Respectfully I have to agree with this sentiment.
The latter would be useful for debugging though. (But still not a difficulty on emulators where you can fastforward and have savestates to all select few locations in the game, like I do.)

It would be cool if the other two NES Castlevania games could be disassembled and the boss code copied over to Castlevania 2 <...>

I have disassemblies of both games in progress from 2006-2012. So far they are very rudimentary though; not much effort is spent in them. I did reverse engineer a bit of Dracula's AI in Castlevania though, and the bonus drop mechanisms, for TAS purposes.
http://bisqwit.iki.fi/jutut/castleva_disasm.zip You can download them here.

April 25, 2013, 06:30:51 AM - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)

Teaser screenshots of an upcoming feature:



Still lots of work to do, and bugs to kill. Also, I may eventually need someone else to contribute a music score. The intro is cinematic and consistently timed, so a music score would and should match the events presented in theme and mood, like a movie soundtrack.

[Da_GPer]

Teaser screenshots of an upcoming feature:



Still lots of work to do, and bugs to kill. Also, I may eventually need someone else to contribute a music score. The intro is cinematic and consistently timed, so a music score would and should match the events presented in theme and mood, like a movie soundtrack.

The message you have written in the new prologue makes it sound less like a story being told to you and more like a movie script. Yes, Im aware that its suppose to look like a movie due to the film reel, but wouldnt it look better if its written like someone, maybe Simon himself, is telling you the story as if you were there in person?

[Morinis]

It is looking so beautiful, sir!  I honestly cannot wait to see on what comes next!   


Will there be any 'extra' rooms added or anything new added to Dracula's Castle ruins?

[Vanya]

Woohoo! That looks fantastic already. And I hope you keep the graphics from the CV1 ending for the prologue. That alone will go very far in creating a sense of cohesion between the two games.

[Neil]

Teaser screenshots of an upcoming feature:

Still lots of work to do, and bugs to kill. Also, I may eventually need someone else to contribute a music score. The intro is cinematic and consistently timed, so a music score would and should match the events presented in theme and mood, like a movie soundtrack.

I too would echo the concerns of Da_GPer. While it's an interesting concept, the text should probably be more like the prologue to a tome or a 1930s news film than a cinematic intro. I would also avoid using phrasing like "the stage is set." Best, in my opinion, to lay it out like real events. It's been seven years since the events that occurred in Castlevania....

[Turambar]

Yeah, the feature is pretty neat, but I don't really like it referring to "ending scenes" and talking about it like it's a movie.

[Bisqwit]

Yeah, the feature is pretty neat, but I don't really like it referring to "ending scenes" and talking about it like it's a movie.

That's what the Japanese manual did, though.
Additionally, the whole series on NES has had this cinematic theme to it going on, what with the filmroll motifs in the intro of each game and arguably in the endings, as well (with e.g. the player characters in Akumajou Densetsu presented as playing a role with a title).
This also extends into the narrative dialogs in Castlevania II ("and thus descended the horrible night").

I appreciate these concerns, but I'm not sure what to do about it.

As for actual progress with this, this is quite a daunting amount of work, and it seems I'm going to nearly run out of free ROM space, as well. Most of the work indeed seems to go into compressing the data... But I'd say I'm 70 % done.

[Turambar]

Well, you can keep working on it and maybe we'll think differently when we see it in action.

[Vanya]

I for one am always on the side of accuracy over localization unless absolutely necessary.

[Thanatos-Zero]

Evil Demonking? Are you kidding me? Dark Lord is used for Dracula.

[TheZunar123]

I thought the Dark Lord was Voldemort.