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

[TerraEsperZ]

Thanks Revned (but you already knew that from when I answered your email).



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"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]

Mephea, I'l see what I can do. With bosses, though, try to capture them separately from the rooms. I'm worried that some of the larger bosses will obscure too much of the graphics, but I'd have to see to make a decision.

[mephea]

i want to separate the bosses from the rooms.  0-o

[Zeric]

I am still interested in mapping this game, just taking a little break after finished Akumajo Dracula X and doing a little of Akumajo Dracula for X6800. and Super Mario World.

[Revned]

Didn't you say you had lost interest in mapping? Well, either way, it's great to see you involved again. I'll send you that save state later today.

[JonLeung]

Now that Zeric's back (yay!) I'll have to load him up with the MotM award items he deserves.  And the Gold.  (Not that anyone really cares.)

[Revned]

Okay, here's the castle keep area. It's been mostly done for weeks. I still have several little things to take care of, like the lone lion's glow, the status bar fragment, and the alignment. This area does not adhere to the grid. I'm not entirely sure what to do right now, but just cropping it is not really an option. Without further ado:





Tonight I did a few rooms that go right on top of the map I posted on Halloween. I've already posted a couple of these, but I just had to show of my fancy torch work. I got found the torch, the flame, and the glow in GLIntercept's log files. After a bit of tinkering, I found that I could perfectly reproduce the transparency effect of the flame and the glow by using the "linear dodge" layer style in Photoshop. When I say perfect, I mean perfect. All of the colors are exactly like a real screenshot. I bet other transparency effects in the game work the same way.

[JonLeung]

(I always wondered if the hallways with the "CD" on them meant that it was doing some streaming loading from the CD or if it was supposed to mean "Count Dracula".  Probably the former.)



That's awesome, Revned.  Isn't that the point in the castle where you transport to the Upside-Down Castle?  To think, there are TWO of these.  o_0

[Revned]

CD as in loading. Yeah, that's the place. Luckily, it looks like the palette is the same in the upside-down version of this area. That means I can just flip the image. I wonder how much of the second castle is like that. Hopefully more than I recall :/

[JonLeung]

You can't just flip the whole image because aren't the candle flames affected?  Though I suppose you could flip the static background without any dynamic elements.



Is it flipped or rotated?  I can't remember, but I thought it was rotated...

[Revned]

Rotated. Yes, but candles are trivial to fix compared to remapping the entire area.

[TerraEsperZ]

I'm also not sure if the inverted rooms are centered the same way on screen. By that, I mean that some pixel rows visible in the normal castle might not be in the inverted one, forcing at least a bit of mapping for every room in the inverted castle, not to mention all the areas with different color palettes.



As for the grid, I wouldn't say it doesn't fit it; rather, I think it's caused more by the way that rooms are shown in-game. By that, I mean that a room might appear to be quite irregularily-shaped on the minimap, but when you're actually inside, the game seems to adjust the actual boundaries of said room (the point at which it stops scrolling) at least at the farthest limits in every direction, essentially becoming the smallest rectangle inside which the room can fit. That's why I *think* there seems to be more room beyond a wall or roof even though the minimap says it shouldn't be.



Personally, for Harmony Of Dissonance I just extended the borders by an integer number of screens to make them look good. For example, the Chapel Of Dissonance shows a lot of open sky with moving clouds outside its walls, but if I followed  the grid of the minimap to the letter, then the room borders would stop right next to the walls and roofs of the Chapel and the sky is mostly left "off-screen".



And again, amazing work! Sorry I haven't had any time to spend on this; I hope you're not feeling too let down since the project has lost the steam it had when it was first started.



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"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]

I think the biggest thing about the keep is that it's all one continuous room, but it isn't rectangular on the map. The game must store all areas as rectangles, so extra space is added on the edges where you can't normally reach. I did extend it on the left, but I don't know what to do on the top of Dracula's chamber since the graphics are incomplete. There's also the problem of the gap between the hidden rooms above the chamber entrance and the staircase room. I don't know, I guess we can figure it all out later.



Don't worry about helping, I wasn't expecting people to map it constantly.

[Revned]

c32:





I've separated all three of the parallax backgrounds, but I'm not quite satisfied with the vertical water streams. The transparency is a bit off, but it might just have to do. I also need to synchronize the surfaces of the rightmost three pools.

[Revned]

I'm still working on the waterfall. It's going to take awhile, but I haven't encountered anything I can't solve. I've also mapped a few smaller rooms near the entrance to fill in the blanks. Everything I've marked on the map is pretty much done, except the long room under the entrance hallways, the waterfall, and the four screen wide room to the right of the waterfall. Yes, that means the Colosseum I recently marked is finished. I mapped it all last night and polished it tonight. Except for the items which I'll add in later, it should be done: