Castlevania 1 NES vs. Harmony of Despair R. 10

[Ridureyu]

So, I was looking at the new Harmony of Despair's Round 10, which essentially mashes together all of the original Castlevania for the NES into one big Metroidvania stage:
The Castlevania Wiki's image of the Round 10 map

Now, I noticed that they took a few liberties, namely flipping 4-2 around or adding a few transition elements where there were none, or just generally filling in blank space. So I said to myself, "Why not see how good their map was?"

The sprites for this came from this site, thanks to Badbatman3's rips. I absolutely give him credit for the original rips, and when I make a finalized version of this image, I'll stick his name on it. This is kind of a work in progress, though:

9928x1908, 852 KB

So, there it is. I barely had to fudge anything to make it fit. In fact, the only "iffy" segments are:

-Stage 2's stairways do not line up properly. All of the background, floor, ceiling, and wall tiles do line up flawlessly from vertical screen to vertical screen, but not the stairs. I fixed this, but that is a flaw.

-The stairways in every other stage lined up perfectly.

-The pit between stages 3 and 4 does not line up with the pit in the boss room. I gave it a little step down, but I think the idea is that the whole floor collapsed and dropped SImon. More on that below.

-I had to estimate the drop between stages 3 and 4. I chose to line up the water level, which ultimately made the ground level between 4-2's courtyard and 1-1's front gate ALMOST equal. There's something like a tile difference in elevation, but not much.

-The stairs don't actually continue from 4-1 to 4-2. I added them to line things up, and you do see Simon "stair-walking" up out of the background, so they are there, just not in the foreground like in this pic.

-Stage-ending doors are double doorways, as there is a distinct change in tile patterns between them.

-There is no stage-ending door for 4, nor a stage-opening door for 5. I put them in just so the transition doesn't seem as strange and sudden.

-I had to estimate the length of Dracula's stairway to his keep. I lengthened it, with the result being that it doesn't brush up too closely with the Mummy room (the ONLY TIME rooms threatened to clip into each other), and also so that it matches the between-stages map.

-Likewise, the background clocktower face by Dracula's Keep does not line up unless you shorten the staircase below what it is in-game. tzherefore, I manually lined it up with the wall.

Other than that? Wow. Just... wow. The stages do not clip (exception: mummy room and Dracula's keep MIGHT), the whole game matches that between-stages map, and it's even laid out like a Metroidvania, sort of. I love tiny details like the clocktower and keep being visible in the background of stage 3 (why had I never noticed that before?). It even shows a little bit of continuity for why Simon jumps down a pit to get to Stage 4. He had made it almost to Dracula's doorstel (just needed a ladder! Or, if I kept the stairway short, all he had to do was knock a hole in the wall), but the floor collapsed as a trap, and dumped him in the caves. Iiiinteresting.

To-do:

-Add in tiles where there are obvious walls, ceilings, and floors that simply were not on-screen (Dracula's chamber, Stage 2's roof, etc.)

-Make the "sky" midnight blue replace the empty white space.

-Add Badbatman3's logo, so people can give credit.

-MAYBE add in sprites of the enemies where they all were in-game.

-MAYBE do the same with candles, if I'm not insane by then.


So, there you go! Special thanks to TSR and Badbatman3, and I just wanted to show off how well the CV1 map meshed.

[Proton]

So you rearranged a map and didn't sprite anything?

[Ridureyu]

(03-31-2011 01:20 AM)Proton Wrote:  So you rearranged a map and didn't sprite anything?

That's why I'm profusely giving the guy credit for ripping them. I just arranged it to get a look at how the map actually lays out, and will probably sprite thigns to complete it later. This isn't a submission for the site, it's just for peopel to look at and go "Wow, Konami's programmers had really good attention to detail." I used the sprites on Spriter's Resource as a resource.

[Cobalt Blue]

this sounds more like something you'd really appreciate in gamefaqs.com

its a significant piece of work, yes, but i dont know what to say about it. guess sometimes people's determination and free time does produce useful resources for others.

[Ridureyu]

(03-31-2011 01:37 AM)Fuchikoma Wrote:  this sounds more like something you'd really appreciate in gamefaqs.com

its a significant piece of work, yes, but i dont know what to say about it. guess sometimes people's determination and free time does produce useful resources for others.

I wouldn't post it at gamefaqs. Castlevania Dungeon, maybe, but not until I fill in the empty space and put Badbatman3's logo on there so he gets the correct credit for it. Just out of curiosity, does anybody have any opinion on how well Konami's team laid out their game? It really does match that intra-stage map.


And since I can kind of see where this conversation is going: Feel free to use any of the sprites I've ripped (something like 1/3 of the Order of Ecclesia section, IIRC) for anything if you want. I'd be happy to see them used in a project of any kind. That, and I dunno where else I could post the map here. General gaming, maybe?

[SKELTON S. SKELETON]

The problem with making the first castlevania game's progress nonlinear is the fact that the game was planned to be traversed in one direction

[Ridureyu]

Yeah, you can see all the empty space that wouldbe there if they didn't flip 4-2 around in Harmony of Despair.

Anyway, looks like if I want to fill in the blank parts here/add necessary walls, I'll probably have to do some custom art. OPINION: for the ground "behind" 4-2, should it just be another expanse of flat land, or rocks, castle walls, what? It's a lot of ground to cover in that courtyard.

[Gorsalami]

I still don't get the whole idea on this

what's the point on showing a fan-made map with ripped graphics on a original pixelart-based forum? As met said, it's a considerable work, but that's it.

[Ridureyu]

I had no idea where to post it in the first place. I think I got it wrong! (Regular gaming forum, maybe? Somebody help me out, here). The whole idea was praising Konami's attention to detail, so that's probably the best idea. General gaming.

Anyway, i filled in the blank spaces, rounded out buildings, and generally tried to make it look 'complete." It's amazing how the original graphic style for this game is both very detailed and very, very messy. It made it easy to do things like finish the clocktower or add some crumbled under-archways, or move the Dracula's Keep horizon treeline down to ground level.

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y185/Ri...nemies.png


So, should this thread just go into General Gaming? It's mostly just a little "Wow, that's something" thing. I'll probably link to it on Castlevania DUngeon's forum, although I'm not sure how to do that with the appropriate amounts of credit (I've made sure his logo is on there. Since now I custom-made some of it, should I stick mine in, or leave it out since he did 90% of the work for this site?)

And also: Should I take the time to insert all of the candles and enemies in their proper locations?

[Cobalt Blue]

basically its a purely functional image, and it does its job. there isnt much to comment on this unless you actually could develop an study of konami's early level layout desings, in wich you should also add another entries such as Contra and Gradius(for example).

we can make a comment on the artwork of the sprites used in the game(although like most of the graphics used in the nes, they are more geared towards functional readbility over stylish decisions). in fact, castlevania 3 is far superior in this aspect.

the candles are up to you. although they are completely irrelevant, if you want to waste your time on them, go ahead.

[Ridureyu]

(04-01-2011 04:23 AM)Fuchikoma Wrote:  basically its a purely functional image, and it does its job. there isnt much to comment on this unless you actually could develop an study of konami's early level layout desings, in wich you should also add another entries such as Contra and Gradius(for example).

we can make a comment on the artwork of the sprites used in the game(although like most of the graphics used in the nes, they are more geared towards functional readbility over stylish decisions). in fact, castlevania 3 is far superior in this aspect.

the candles are up to you. although they are completely irrelevant, if you want to waste your time on them, go ahead.

After staring at the graphics zoomed-in for a while, I was surprised at how stylized it actually is despite usually being about as ugly as a bunch of gray slugs. Castlevania 3 is utterly superior, but I doubt if that entire game was designed around creating one (well, two) fully-designed buildings. There are other little thigns that I hadn't realized before, but I should have - such as the fact that you fight the Frankenstein monster right before reaching the dungeons where he's kept, and then the lab where he was built. The blenk portraits near ther Death fight are weird, since you'd expect at least something to be there. Also, the statues in the intro courtyard have to be the absolute ugliest things in the whole game. I mean, come on!


I'm not sure how COntra and GRadius would work, as they are more one-direction oriented than Castlevania, which lets you move up or left in a few stages. Also yeah, general gaming was where this should have gone.