Making GFX for Castlevania VBXE?

[Thelen]

Hi, Since I'm working on a Castlevania VBXE game for some months now, I've merely used the original Nes version sprites, and created the level-tiles by myself. That is a lot of fun and takes a lot of time, and because I'm not a very skilled grapical designer (also not a programmer ;-)) maybe there is someone with better graphical skils who can take the sprites(and level-tiles) to a more VBXE level (instead of the less colored NES ones)...

 

If you're interested you can sent me a PM...And could you please sent me some references of your work for games? Sorry, I'm not used to hand over work 🙂 or probably you can make a sample..

 

Basically the task will be:

 

-Design level tiles(max 64) until the first boss, the bat (forest outside the castle, and in the castle)
-Level design must follow the original NES level layout - the whole game must follow the NES original game, but with better GFX. Level design has to be done in the free 'Tiled' app.
-Design/edit the player sprites / objects - this also as upgraded Nes GFX
-Designing enemy sprites which are in the levels until the first boss, which also follow the original NES ones, but upgraded GFX, and there is room for some more animation (up to 150 blocks of 16x16 pixels) - but this depends on loading or not loading between the levels.

-Evrything fits in a 256 color palette. (or the enemy,player and level tiles have their own palette - up to 3 or 4 different palettes can be used with VBXE)

- React in a reasenable amout of time (so I don't have to wait for weeks on a answer)

The idea so far is to finish the game until the first boss, the bat. but can't promise anything...never worked this long on a game... 🙂 - Also, the demo/game will be distributed free of $$$.

 

What do you get? You will be at least be credited at the load screen (because there is no Title screen yes )

 

I don't believe a lot of people will react, but if there are a lot of volunteers I can split up the works on Sprite / Tile / enemy / level design...

Feel free to ask any questions in this topic 🙂

[Hrivis]

Hello, I am watching you at youtube and I am really big fan of you. I am VFX 3D designer and I bought ATARI800XE two months ago. I am interesting in VBXE. Waiting to version 3 bcs of hdmi. I would like to start my own game, but I am not a programmer. I just want to do some graphics for VBXE. 

I am starting new VFX studio, website is :https://dualtimemaniacs.com/ It is not visible for google right now, we are finishing the website.

 

I would like to do some sprites like did RARE studio with donkey kong on SNES. I know it is more advanced system, bigger sprites and so on.

But this aproach is really interesting. I dont know how fast VBXE can really be. But I would like to start some tests with sprites. Problem is that I dont know where to start. Today I finally found, how to configure Alltira for VBXE and start some VBXE software on it.

 

I would like to have some enviroment where I can test some sprite animations. Is there some documentation or some demo how to convert individual sprites and test animations?

 

 

[Thelen]

2 hours ago, Hrivis said:

I would like to do some sprites like did RARE studio with donkey kong on SNES

Thanks for your reply. Rare did indeed an amazing job with Donkey kong country on the snes. Would be great if you want to do some work on the sprites.

 

The sprites are loaded into VBXE from a bmp file, with the header removed. I made a spritesheet which I load into VBXE like the following image, with the animations for going right and left. Unfortunatly there is not an enviroment to easily test them quickly - I need to change variables to implemend it... For the enemy animations I have reserved a 80Kb.

[Hrivis]

2 minutes ago, Thelen said:

The BMP?  so you have some conversion tool for that? How many cycles is possible to do for example walk animation? can I do for example 4 walk cycles? You know I mean to switch left and right leg in walk sequence?

 

 

[Thelen]

Yes, you can use more or less cycles if you want to, it's flexible- only for the enemy sprites- not for the Simon sprites it is fixed to 3 frames, can post the spritesheet which is used.

for the first enemy, the ghost with the hands up has now 2 cycles - but it can be extended to, lets say for more smooth animation, to 6 or 8 cycles. This ghost is 32x16 pixels, so one cycle costs 2 blocks of 16x16 pixels. if we are making a animation of 8 cycles it will cost 16 (16x16pixel ) blocks for the leftgoing sprite and another 16  blocks for the rightgoing images. There will be 300 blocks total aivailable for enemy sprite data.

[Ecernosoft]

 

I'm super excited for your castlevania game @Thelen, even if I sadly won't be able to play it on real hardware.

[Hrivis]

5 hours ago, Thelen said:

There will be 300 blocks total aivailable for enemy sprite data.

So the 300 is some hardware limit? Where did this number come from? Memmory limitation? VBXE total sprites limitation? I would like to ask. Can we do some Boss character with 16x16p block, lets say 3x5blocks@8fps? Other question, VBXE cant handle flipping sprites horizontaly and vertically?

[Thelen]

4 hours ago, Hrivis said:

So the 300 is some hardware limit? Where did this number come from? Memmory limitation? VBXE total sprites limitation?

It's a memory limitation, the VBXE has 512Kb of ram which can be accessed in banks. I'm using a 4K window to acces these banks, and I reserverd 19 banks for all of the enemy sprite data. These 19 banks of 4Kb each has a total of 77824 bytes - and one byte is one pixel 🙂 Why only use 77824 bytes of the 512K? There also need to be 5 banks of player sprite data, banks for tiledata, leveldata,objectdata etc.

 

4 hours ago, Hrivis said:

Can we do some Boss character with 16x16p block, lets say 3x5blocks@8fps?

Yes, that could be done. Each animation frame will exist of 15 pixelblocks. If there needs to be 8 animation frames a second, it will cost 120 blocks of 16x16 pixels in total - unfortunately that is too much(if the boss needs to walk left/right it has to be doubled)

Probably it's better not to make the boss that big(although it would be cool). let's say the first boss, the bat - the sprite( from the NES) is 3 blocks wide and has when flying two animation frames. It cycles threw those 2 frames 2 or 3 times a second. We could probably give this a few more animations to make the flying animation somewhat smoother- so that it cycles threw the fly animation with 5 frames (then we use for 5 animation frames 15 blocks of pixel data)

 

5 hours ago, Hrivis said:

Other question, VBXE cant handle flipping sprites horizontaly and vertically

Indeed it can't... would be a great feature!

[Thelen]

Timing is a bit disappointing now i've asked for help here in this topic, but for the coming next months I don't have (enough) spare/free time to do any further developing of Castlevania VBXE.

 

So, I'm putting this on a hold- and I don't want that other people put their efforts/precious time in this game while I can't and won't update it...  (and out of expercience it will be even the question if I will pick this up again, staying motivated is difficult 🙂 )

I want to thank everybody for their motivating replies, and especially

 

@Synthpopalooza who did a great job on the level 1 soundtrack!

and @Hrivis for being interested to do sprites and the motivation!

[+Stephen]

7 hours ago, Thelen said:

12 hours ago, Hrivis said:

Other question, VBXE cant handle flipping sprites horizontaly and vertically

Indeed it can't... would be a great feature!

That's not true - the blitter has source step for x and y and it can be a negative number.  Using negative value for x gives a horizontal flip, and negative number for y gives a vertical flip.

[Thelen]

1 hour ago, Stephen said:

That's not true - the blitter has source step for x and y and it can be a negative number.  Using negative value for x gives a horizontal flip, and negative number for y gives a vertical flip.

Didn't know that- but that is a memory saver! Thanks.

[+Stephen]

2 hours ago, Thelen said:

Didn't know that- but that is a memory saver! Thanks.

I meant to say destination step.  But - I think you can get the desired effect by using either.

[Hrivis]

2 hours ago, Thelen said:

Didn't know that- but that is a memory saver! Thanks.

A lot of sprites half of the space 👌👌👌 if it is true.

[Thelen]

1 hour ago, Stephen said:

I meant to say destination step.  But - I think you can get the desired effect by using either.

I couln't resist a quick try out, setting the destination step from 1 to 255....and yes its mirrored...probably I should better read the VBXE manual better..or twice😂

 

1 hour ago, Hrivis said:

half of the space 👌👌👌 if it is true.

Yes! 🙂

 

Edited January 5, 2023 by Thelen
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