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

[Revned]

I did a bunch of rooms in the middle last week. I've updated the map on the first page to show them. I might post some here later.

[marioman]

FYI, someone just submitted a lot of SotN level sprites to The Spriter's Resource  They look like they were extracted using Symphotile or a similar program.

[Revned]

What's this? Progress? This is done except for the background and items. I'll post some more details and an overall progress update tomorrow.

[JonLeung]

Yay, it's not dead!  



Does this mean you think it will eventually be completed?  Glancing at your progress in the first post, you have a lot more than I thought you did, and it doesn't look like there's much left if you made it that far already.



(And thanks for posting also because I saw marioman's old post just before that which pointed me to The Spriter's Resource which came in handy...)



A shame if you're still sure an upside-down castle wouldn't be possible.  I would think that if it was "almost identical" then you would have the techniques down that it shouldn't take as long to map as the first, main, right-side-up (or rather, "up-side-up") castle.



I can't remember if I asked before, but what would the estimated size of the image be if both castles were included?  o_0

[Revned]

I guess I never got around to posting more details. Yes, I plan on finishing it. I haven't even updated the map on my first post in awhile, so I have more than that finished.



I don't think it's worth the effort. I wouldn't be able to just flip my original image and adjust palettes, either, because there's those pesky tiles on the top and bottom that are incomplete an an asymmetric way.



The main castle will weigh in at about 16,000 x 12,000.

[Revned]

The waterfall has been by far the hardest room I've worked on. And now it's pretty much done:







I had to pull out all the stops on this one to get the graphics behind the glow and the waterfall. I can give more details if anyone wants.



The transparency I used on the waterfall itself is very close to the game's, but not quite perfect. The glow's transparency and shape are off by a bit too, but it looks close enough.

[Revned]

And here is the complete Alchemy Lab.

[alucard]

did you guys give up on this?

[Revned]

No, still working. Just not actively. Right now I have screenshots for every single room, I just need to assemble them. Then it will be on to the backgrounds phase, and then adding in the items. Someday...

[Revned]

All that's left is the 3D backgrounds in the Royal Chapel, the Castle Keep, Olrox's Quarters, and the lava room in the Catacombs. The only one I'm really worried about is Olrox. Hopefully I can figure something out, but I might end up leaving out the buildings for now. It's looking very nice, if I do say so myself 

[TerraEsperZ]

I remember, way back when I used to actually work on this, looking into the possibility of using an OpenGL plugin with the emulator and finding some way to intercept the OpenGL data. Afterwards, you would hopefully be able to do something like what Peardian did with Paper Mario 64, and use that data to rebuild the 3D models and fill in those backgrounds. The most I managed to do with the plugin I was using is get the textures loaded in the video memory.

The problem is that I never really found out if it was even feasible, let alone offer any actual help.

[Revned]

I didn't need to go that far. I did a reasonable job with just Photoshop's skew and perspective tools. The models were pretty simple.

Yes, past tense. It's done. All that's left is some "proofreading" of the whole map and adding the header.

[TerraEsperZ]

Oh, you know me and my obsession with accuracy... I can't wait to see the final result.

Such an incredible project should earn you more than a simple "Map Of The Month" award.

"Map Of The Year"?

Or "Map Of The Decade" perhaps?

[JonLeung]

It's worthy of something...

Sure would be nice if the upside-down castle will be mapped too...I know we discussed that already, though...

Regardless, even if it isn't this year's October MotM, consider that there's another Hallowe'en-based game that I really felt should be honoured that would be a certain first for something and long overdue...

[Revned]

Honestly, I'm not completely satisfied with the aforementioned backgrounds. They are passable, and probably as good as I can do right now, but they aren't perfect. I could spend months trying to make them "perfect", but I don't think I'd get there. Even if I managed to rip the models, it would be extremely difficult to get the lighting and rendering just right. It's not like Peardian's maps where the models are presented by themselves and can be rendered however he pleases, but rather they are right next to pixel-perfect graphics and need to be rendered exactly.

And speaking of headers, I'm kind of torn over how to credit everyone who helped out. On the one hand, this started as an Atlas project with several contributors, but on the other hand, I did all but 9 rooms by myself (I redid all of Edsword's maps, as well as a few others for consistency). I think I will say something on the lines of "Mapped by Revned, thanks to TerraEsperZ, Mephea, Zeric, Wileee and Edsword". Does this sound okay?

And Jon, I know you want it, but it's really not just a matter of flipping the map. The game renders the top and bottom unevenly, such that I would be missing a row of pixels if I did that. And since this game uses so many colors, palette-swapping isn't even trivial. If I end up doing it (no time soon), it will be mostly from scratch.