Guess I'll repost this from the previous forum here:
Hi all! I decided it was time to start documenting this idea to organize my thoughts and get some feedback and advise.
Concept
A stage expansion for the original 8-bit Casltevania that extends the game and adds some new content.
Intended Changes
- Split Block 4 (Stages 10 thru 12) into separate levels and pad them with some new stages.
- Split Block 6 (Stages 16 thru 18) into separate levels and pad them with some new stages.
- Add 2 extra bosses for the new blocks.
It would end up looking something like this:
- Block 1 (Stages 1/2/3) Phantom Bat, "Vampire Killer"
- Block 2 (Stages 4/5/6) Queen Medusa, "Stalker"
- Block 3 (Stages 7/8/9) The Mummies, "Wicked Child"
- Block 4 (Stages 10/A/B) Gillman, "Walking on the Edge"
- Block 5 (Stages C/11/12) The Wolfman, (if I can get permission) "Howling Hybrid"
- Block 6 (Stages 13/14/15) The Creature & Hunchback, "Heart of Fire"
- Block 7 (Stages 16/17/D) Death, "Out of Time"
- Block 8 (Stages E/F/18) Dracula, "Nothing to Lose"
So stages A thru F would be brand new ones.
As far as game play, I would like to consider making some alterations based on some of the early design documents found in the "History of Castlevania" digital book that came with the Castlevania Anniversary Collection.
I think this would mostly consist of adding new power-ups and sub-weapons and switching around how some of them work.
If I wanted to get really crazy, I'd want to try adding in the diagonal whip attacks, but just expanding the stages and adding 2 bosses seems like a huge endeavor.
Bogaa gave me some good input already that I'm going to look into info to start things off.
But if anyone has any other suggestions, feel free to post!
EDIT:
From GoldenArc:
This looks promising.
I know there are a couple of docs about music and enemy data (archived by RHDN). And you might be able to learn a thing or two from the hacks of Optomon, Dr. Mario, et al. Chorus of Mysteries and Holy Relics have a lot of changes.
Also, Castlevania Modding is a good resource. But you might want to check NesDev for technical info.
As far as game play, I would like to consider making some alterations based on some of the early design documents found in the "History of Castlevania" digital book that came with the Castlevania Anniversary Collection.
Sounds interesting. What kind of ideas did they have?
Never answered this directly, but the first thing that stood out was that early planning seems to have included both a diagonally-upward whip lash and a diagonally-downward whip lash. These were possible because the original controller layout was rather different. There was no jump button,but like Vampire Killer, you would have pressed up to jump. And it seems like attacking involved pressing 'A' + a direction for the whip and 'B' + a direction for sub-weapons. Some of this remains in Vampire Killer in the way that the Holy Water and Time Freeze are used.
A lot of the power-ups were different or entirely unused.
The wall meat was originally a speed up item dropped by monsters (similar to the Boots in Vampire Killer).
The "Cross (small)" is basically the rosary, but as a sub-weapon and it specifically doesn't work on bosses.
The classic POW item from many previous Konami games was an enemy drop that restored health (similar to the Red Crystal Ball in Vampire Killer, may have been mixed up by the wall meat item above).
Garlic was a "Limited Item" (instantly used upon pick up) that "Keeps enemies away" (similar to the Silver Cross in Vampire Killer).
Pistol with Silver Bullets was a sub-weapon specifically for werewolves (which didn't even end up being in the game).
The stake (which ended up being used in CV2) was a sub-weapon required to defeat Dracula.
The Transformation item allowed you to turn into a werewolf for a few seconds.
Guardian Spirit (bird) pretty much worked like the falcon in 8 Eyes but with limited uses.
The "Pocket Watch" was an enemy drop that "Adds time to the game timer (or stops it for a period of time)".
The "Bible" sub-weapon would make the player "invincible" as opposed to making you invisible like the "Limited Item", "Invisibility Potion".
And lastly, "Excalibur" is the same as the "Cross (small), but it is effective against bosses, too.
From Bogaa:
Here are the responses from the previous forum...
Since I was mentioned I had like to make my inputs more clear on the idea. It is possible to add new entry for doors, checkpoints, secrets and entities.. (What would make a new block)
You could do that in the
disassembly where it should also be no issue to move things to make the space for it.
Since the tables you like to address are all editable in
staks it would make the tool unusable for the new block. In the game.ini file of steak you can address the location of existing tables but adding new entry like you suggest did never work for me.
You said you would feel comfortable to work on a new editor with game-maker to overcome the tool problem. A new editor will give a lot of opportunity for many things.
Making this changes as your first take in assembly seems too much. Would not recommend that at all for learning! Making a new editor for a new game seems more reasonable since you just look for the data to edit and you would not need to worry about all the things you can break while adding new things. Better focus to make a boss or item to see how that goes.
Instead of making all this changes in the last bank. I would just work on bank 5 and give the scenes and blocks more space to make larger areas. Then you will just have to update the enemy tracker data, cam-lock table and the stake game.ini for the new locations of the level data. In this scenario you could keep using stakes what will be a big help making changes to the levels.
In case you need inspiration how to edit enemies and bosses I share my
hacks with the src files. You can ignore the music and MMC5 stuff.. in case you had like to use FamiStudio-Engine. This would not be possible in the vanilla game since I needed to add SRAM. You would at last need to convert to a mapper that supports SRAM. Or work with the original music engine. A other option is to just use my hack as a starting point. It is easy to remove all the code for the bosses and use a vanilla ROM to start fresh. Then making music is as easy as exporting from famiStudio and assemble along a new project.
