VGMaps.com Atlas Project: Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night (PSX)

[Revned]

Eh, I've been busy. I have a large section of the map that's about 80% done, not counting the backgrounds. I'll try to finish it and post it sometime this week.

[mephea]

ill prolly do a section this week if i can get some time.  I just got engaged this weekend so im gonna be kind of busy 0-o

[TerraEsperZ]

Engaged O-o? Wow, congratulations!



---

"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



B*tch, meet reality. Reality, meet b*tch. - Me

[mephea]

yeah, engaged...been very busy..i miss mapping, but fuck am i happy.

[JonLeung]

Oh, congratulations, mephea!  (I thought I said that already but apparently not.)  Awesome.



For those of you keeping track, this week I received Vampire Killer from ReyVGM (acyually, I'm not sure if it's from him yet) and Rondo Of Blood from Zeric.  The Castlevania series is really being done.



'Cept for this project.  Haven't heard much in here for almost another couple weeks again...

[Revned]

Blame Phoenix Wright. If it weren't for him, I'd be done with Dracula's Curse and back working on this.

[mephea]

blame school/work/tmnt3.  I will come back to this game when i get some some free alone time (i dont like to map while my fiance is here, ive ignored him enoughin the past )

[TerraEsperZ]

Blame Harmony Of Dissonance in my case, though to be honest, once I'm done with it I'd like to get started on Aria Of Sorrow



---

"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



B*tch, meet reality. Reality, meet b*tch. - Me

[Revned]

*meep*



http://img243.imageshack.us/img243/7958/catacombspreviewjk1.png">http://img243.imageshack.us/img243/7958/catacombspreviewjk1.th.png" width="150" height="51" alt="User posted image" />



I still have some work left to do, but it's nearly finished. I just got sick of laboring over minute details in the castle keep area. I'll post a preview for that sometime soon, too.



I separated and completed the background for the vertical shaft in the middle. I still need to fill in a few little details elsewhere, too. Those lava rooms are going to be very tricky. Tomorrow I'll post a nice little save state that has the health bar edited out. It makes mapping a lot quicker

[JonLeung]

As I promised on the November MotM description, there will be a page on the site focussing on our projects!  



I had to mention it somewhere as a promise to people otherwise I'd never get around to doing it.

[TerraEsperZ]

O-O Wow Revned, that looks amazing! Amazingly, those rooms with lava at the bottom look really good the way they are, which I was afraid they wouldn't because of the 3D effects. Looks like you've been busy man!



I confess that I haven't touched the Chapel Tower at all. What little free time I've had the last few weeks have all gone into Harmony Of Dissonance.



---

"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



B*tch, meet reality. Reality, meet b*tch. - Me

[Revned]

Thanks, Terra. Yeah, I suppose if we have trouble reproducing the 3D distortion, we could always do something like I have now. It doesn't look bad at all. This section actually only took me 3 or 4 days to do. It felt great to make so much progress so quickly.



Speaking of Harmony, I finally played it. You were certainly right about the backtracking. I liked the graphics and some of the bosses, but a lot of the game felt like it was just an attempt to recreate Symphony. I can't decide if I liked it as a whole more than I disliked it. I still haven't finished Circle, though. It feels really repetitive. I liked it at first, but it got to be too much work and not enough fun.

[Revned]

Hmm, I tried to upload that savestate I mentioned before to my Google page, but it didn't work. It might be too big (1.1 MB). So, since only a handful of people actually need it, I'll just email it out to anyone who asks. I'll send it to mephea and Terra right now since they seem to be the only people who have expressed interest in seeing this project through to the end.



Here's what it looks like in-game:

http://img49.imageshack.us/img49/3938/psogl134ok5.png" width="256" height="240" alt="User posted image" />



Not having that health bar makes mapping much easier. I kept getting corrupted graphics when I tried to get rid of the special weapon, so that was the only thing I had to leave in. I've played around quite a bit, and the graphics never seem to come back. I guess they only load once, which is good for us.



Now this is all fine and dandy, but I must tell you how I did it. First I used Tile Molester on individual files in the ISO. I found some very interesting stuff, including one file with single frames of the animations of all the enemies, and better yet, it was in 32 bit color. Everything else I found had its own special palette that showed up weirdly. After much searching, I found the health bar. I edited it and several other sprites out, but upon inserting it into the ISO with a hex editor, I got really, really glitched graphics. I spent an hour or two (or three) tinkering with it until I managed to get rid of everything but the blue bar and the weapon. Then, I realized that I couldn't easily give anyone this edit since IPS patches don't work on files this huge. I made a savestate, and it looked like that would work. Then it struck me that editing the savestate from the beginning would have been much easier. I was able to get rid of the blue bar, but again, I experienced corruption when messing with the weapons. Oh well, I had fun doing it and it will be very helpful.

[mephea]

oh wow, i would love that...that would make mapping the game so much more enjoyable, one of the reasons ive not mapped on it in a while is because i fear the top left corner of every area

[mephea]

hey rev, is there anyway you can give me the same save file, except from the beginning of the game?  I wanted to collect screenshots of the bosses and whatnot, along with all the relics and stuff too.