Megaman: Super - 16-bit Graphics Pack for Mesen

[AxlRocks]

Megaman/Mega Man/Rockman as a franchise and game is copyright Capcom. This project is entirely fan work and has no intention of claiming ownership of the franchise or game and has no original Capcom assets, including Capcom game data, Capcom graphics/sound/music, within it, only remixed, fan-made graphics. No copyright infringement is intended whatsoever, nor is copyright being infringed, whether intentionally or accidentally.

Megaman: Super

Trailer by NES Game Fan:
https://youtu.be/NF132cqW25w

Install Tutorial:
https://youtu.be/xLMfjvgwfl0

Gameplay:
https://youtu.be/FAx1bksBA24

Longplay by Tom Lyman/casualtom82:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkyPmGK_yuE






Customization

This project aims to bring Mega Man into 16-bit. 95% of the graphics are straight adaptations of the NES originals. The 2.0 release is here! It adds multi parallax backgrounds, animations, retouched graphics, remixed music, customization options like skins, and more! Download and enjoy, instructions are in the zip but feel free to ask any questions, give feedback, or report bugs in this thread!

First, be sure to grab the latest version of Mesen, found here: https://github.com/mkwong98/Mesen/releases
Then grab the graphics pack here: v2.1.5
Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/file/d/15IJjZ1JXUKJVAnoiYFmC-7Lfd8_Y-5St/view?usp=sharing

And music packs here (ONLY fan made remixes, no original Capcom music):
Mega Man Revised by bsolmaz13: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pTXaQU0TOKn3m1jvQatnORgIfN9lqzQq/view?usp=sharing
Mega Man Remade by RushJet1: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bQ14Q0Hdsf6WUSzo-p2aG5RqxREb2U06/view?usp=sharing
ACC:XESS, CosmicGem, and TwelveDust tracks: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GyGjVTa1jchCnHnCyaLksu0t645ggdmb/view?usp=sharing

Place music files into a folder named BGM in the main directory for the pack, replace the NES music patch with the remixed music patch and you should be good to go.

For HD Pack developers or anyone wanting to mod this, here is the Notepad++ Mesen HD Pack language definition file:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XqJhqDy56wvosjnwXS_1aHN3Shjm1Qw1/view?usp=sharing

For modders or collaborators, here is the Github: https://github.com/AxlRocks/Megaman-Super

I highly recommend playing with an overclock as well.

Changelog:
Sept 20th, 2021 - 2.1.5 - Final release.
June 2nd, 2021 - 2.1.4 - fixed some issues with hires not being updated for customization options, removed BGM because of "copyright claim" bullshit
May 31st, 2021 - 2.1.3 - more revamps to portaits, added defeated versions if using sprites instead of portraits
May 31st, 2021 - 2.1.2 - fixed the defeated portraits not displaying for Cutman or Bombman due to them using a different tile/palette combo sometimes. Added secondary conditions to other Robot Masters (except Gutsman, due to his tiles being different and not appearing to have this problem) to hopefully cover all bases.
May 30th, 2021 - 2.1.1 - fixed the overlapping text in the stage select
May 30th, 2021 - 2.1 - fixed the Game Over stage select BG bug, then added it as an intentional customization option. Added Robot Master defeated portraits, revamped all mugshots.
May 29th, 2021 - 2.0.1 - various minor fixes to a few graphics

Spoiler screenshots for those who haven't played the game before (most of you probably have, but still)

Spoiler

[close]

[Zynk]

Thanks for releasing this 

Any recommended audio settings? I'm experiencing static sounds out of Mesen.

[AxlRocks]

That's related to performance it seems. I've gotten it during development too, while having a lot of applications open or swapping a lot between save states to test stuff. bogaabogaa also mentioned a way more extreme case here, while testing 10x scale graphics: http://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php?topic=24125.msg345402#msg345402

The other night when I finished the Japanese title screen, I did a full playthrough to make sure all the graphics loaded properly and had no static. (I built this pack for the US version first, then adapted it to JP.) But I was only running Mesen. HDPacks seem to put a fair bit more strain on things, since I don't get such issues with normal emulation.

Anyway, the best way I've found to fix it is increasing the audio latency value in Mesen's audio settings. For me, just a small increase is enough for audio to keep up and not crackle. The other solution, oddly enough, is just quickly tapping whatever you've assigned "Fast Forward" to whenever audio begins crackling, which I think defaults to the Tab key. Otherwise, you may try also disabling overclocking if it is enabled.

Edit: And you're welcome! I just hope that fixes the static issue for you!

[Zynk]

I'm playing the US version. Seems the Tab or any key assigned to Fast Forward does not work on Mesen.

The fix I found so far is lowering the Speed to 50%. No crackling sound, but the game's so slow. 

An issue for Mesen, assigning Input keys have binding issues. I can't reassign or disable those binded keys.

[SCD]

This looks awesome, you did a great on it.

I really wish Wily Wars look like this.

[Midna]

Giving the classic 8-bit graphics a Wily Wars-style makeover (except better, it the case of the sprite artwork) is a neat idea, and this looks super charming! I might give this a whirl.

[SourMesen]

I said this to you a few months ago already, but this looks amazing, in my opinion!

About the sound crackling or performance issues, this is likely an indicator of performance issues. HDPacks do require quite a bit more performance than normal emulation. The pack runs at around 160fps on my desktop, but barely gets 63-65fps and some static on my (much slower) laptop. Adding some overclocking drops it to ~58fps, which makes the sound distort constantly.

To see if it's a performance issue on your end, show the FPS counter (F10 by default) and speed up the emulation to the maximum speed (F9) - if you don't get 60fps, or barely above 60fps, that explains the sound issues.  If you get just a bit above 60fps, increasing the audio latency setting may help fix the sound issues.

I'll try to profile the HDpack code using this pack to see if there are any obvious performance bottlenecks that I can fix, but I've already spent a decent amount of time optimizing hdpacks in the past, so I can't promise anything.

For key bindings, you can remove by clicking to bind a key and then clicking "X" on the popup window to close it.

[AxlRocks]

Thanks for the feedback everyone! I hate to bump my own thread, but I wanted to mention that Sour deserves massive kudos: Mesen has updated to 0.9.4 and it has really great improvements to HDPack performance. The performance is basically double that of 0.9.3, so if you were experiencing audio crackling/static, it's very likely you won't with 0.9.4, even at default audio latency.

I have also updated the pack to 1.1, which isn't a huge update, but I've moved to one pack that supports all 3 versions of the game (just rename the folder to whatever ROM you're using) and updated the Game Over screen. I have some possible future plans for this, but for a while this will be the last update unless there are bugs.

[Zynk]

Confirmed to be working fine. A very few cracking sounds can be heard but not distracting and the game runs smoothly with the Mesen update.

A small nitpick. At the end of the game, the sky transition has the mountains with the edgy tiles appear.

[NiO]

Thanks for sharing this

[PresidentLeever]

Looks pretty good.

WIly Wars has some improvements over the NES version though and you can fix some issues with codes from gamehacking.org (shot speed, movement delay) as well as remove all slowdown by overclocking in Regen.

Edit: Is there a general tutorial on how to do this? I might try it for some other game.

[SourMesen]

There is no tutorial as of yet - the process is essentially playing through the game while recording the tiles, and then editing the PNG files to draw "HD" tiles on top of them instead. (Docs: https://www.mesen.ca/docs/hdpacks/).

Also, AxlRocks briefly mentions it in his opening post, but you can also overclock MM1 in Mesen to remove all the game's slowdowns.

[PresidentLeever]

Interesting, thanks.

Yes I saw.

[AxlRocks]

Confirmed to be working fine. A very few cracking sounds can be heard but not distracting and the game runs smoothly with the Mesen update.

A small nitpick. At the end of the game, the sky transition has the mountains with the edgy tiles appear.

Thanks for letting me know! Can you grab a screenshot of it for me? Here's a savestate right at the ending: http://www.mediafire.com/file/89mtf8ewik4i4e4/Mega+Man+1+%28USA%29_7.mst

Looks pretty good.

WIly Wars has some improvements over the NES version though and you can fix some issues with codes from gamehacking.org (shot speed, movement delay) as well as remove all slowdown by overclocking in Regen.

Edit: Is there a general tutorial on how to do this? I might try it for some other game.

I wasn't aware of those codes, sounds like they'd help tighten up the gameplay to be closer to NES. I'll have to check those out next time I play WW!

Yeah, as Sour said, no tutorials yet. On one hand, it's simple to do the actual graphic replacement, but on the other, actually working with the 8x8 tiles which may not be lined up in any order and how some graphics will be split across different sheets is what takes a lot of time. And palette swaps, one of the best "shortcuts" for 2D graphics, can be anything but a shortcut because of how they'll dump on different sheets.

I find it easiest to draw over sprite sheets and screenshots and then transfer that to the HDPack. I also recommend dumping each level, editing all the background tiles and sprites for it, then continuing with the next level. Same thing for menus.

[mkwong98]

Excellent work! How about posting a video of this on Youtube?
Also will you consider posting on the News Submissions?

[Zynk]

Thanks for letting me know! Can you grab a screenshot of it for me? Here's a savestate right at the ending: http://www.mediafire.com/file/89mtf8ewik4i4e4/Mega+Man+1+%28USA%29_7.mst

Gonna play again as Rock 

[AxlRocks]

Gonna play again as Rock 

Oops! Thanks for that! I figured out the issue. During development I must've set the sky color manually to test something or whatever and forgot to properly set all relevant graphics back to transparent. I had been using the FCEUX palette, which meant the colors matched and the issue was invisible to me.


I'll upload the fix in a bit! 1.2 is uploaded with this fix in place! Also hope you enjoy playing as Rock! I always wanted to play with that skin since you often see helmetless Megaman in hacks and stuff, but never Rock. (I think, I've never seen one.)

Excellent work! How about posting a video of this on Youtube?
Also will you consider posting on the News Submissions?

Thanks! I'd love to do a Youtube video for it, I just need to get some simple editing software and hope my PC doesn't give me problems. I might do a news submission for it, I didn't even know you could do that actually

[mkwong98]

You can do it here:
http://www.romhacking.net/submitnews/

[RichterSnipes]

This is an awesome graphics pack! You've done some really impressive work with the graphics. More colorful and detailed, yet still faithful to the original sprites and tiles. More aesthetically consistent than The Wily Wars, too. It feels like what you'd get if you ported Mega Man to the PC Engine.

This should be the ideal model for other HDNES/Mesen graphics packs to follow. There's only so many NES games where you can port graphics from other versions of them, and trying to make pseudo-realistic HD packs with the limited detail that NES games provide can backfire heavily.

[AxlRocks]

Many thanks for your kind words! I'm glad you enjoyed it! In some ways, it was necessary since WW had larger tilesets and changed sprite sizes, but I wanted to use the original NES graphics overwhelmingly because I think both the sprites and tilesets are more iconic and charming in their designs, and I also wanted a much brighter, more saturated look than WW, so anything I did port over almost always ended up with a new palette. I hoped it would still feel like Megaman 1 rather than an actual remake, if that makes sense, or like you said a Megaman 1 port to PC Engine or another console, but more than anything I hoped that the charm would still be there despite the graphical boost.