Castlevania LOD Hi-res Texture Pack WIP

[gitech]

Thanks man! The brick texture worked great there. I tried the rock/block texture first and settled on the brick. Thanks. Sure, I would appreciate any new textures. Your work is second to none.

The Castle Center is DONE! Over 480 textures. More like 500+. I haven't counted them again but there was more than my initial count.

I have made some character associations within the game to flesh out some holes in the story. Mary Oldrey is now the victim of her vampire husband Lord Oldrey in the Villa's Crypt when playing through with Reinhardt or Carrie. Sypha Belnades (Carrie's step mother) is now the woman ruining through the forest in the opening and is the sacrifice that brings back Dracula. Carrie says she is from a village in the forest and that her step mother sacrificed herself the save her. Both also appear later as vampires.

Just a taste of of what's to come....

Here are a few more pics:

1. Last Castle Center pic. (original)
2. Hi-res
3. Sypha Belnades
4. That's gotta hurt!

[Triggerhappy]

Wow! The transformation is simply amazing. It looks almost too well done for an N64 game! Why didn't the guys who made the original textures do a better job? They made LOD as a clean up of the original, but I always thought the textures weren't that much of an improvement over the original.

I really like the colors as well. They seem much more accurate than the originals by far. Keep up the great work, I hope I get to play the game someday with these new textures.

[PsyMan]

N64 had many hardware limitations that among others, resulted in ugly textures. Retexturing is a workaround when it comes to this.

[gitech]

Yep, I would like to take this opportunity to thank Rice, Mudlord and any others who have made re-texturing possible. Forever changing how our favorite N64 games will be enjoyed and enriching all our lives. Thank you!

Triggerhappy,

Thank you! The day is near. This Sunday, my birthday will be release day. My gift to all. May everyone have a great 4/20!

Mode7,

Thank you for the additional 10 picture textures! (20 total) I have included where 2 have been used in the pics below.






Super huge SPOILER picture post:

Below are pics of Dracula's servant, Dracula Ultimate and True Dracula!


Those researching this thread for employment or sponsoring,

I have posted these next pics for your reference. Thank you.












Warning: Spoilers ahead! Look away and scroll to the bottom for more posts if you don't like spoilers!


















2nd WARNING. Close your eyes and scroll past them now if you so choose.
















Castle Keep: (older pics taken 2/26, updated since)






Dracula Ultimate: (older pics taken 2/26, updated since)












True Dracula: (taken 4/15, brownish collar bone tendon courtesy of Mode7)














Ending Field: (taken 4/15, grass courtesy of Mode7)

[Driscol]

is the game 100% now?

[mode7]

Congratulations, you almost made it!
Can't wait to play this game. This is the best pack I've seen in years, I can honestly say!

Thanks for crediting me,but I really only provided some tiling photos - what you have done with it is your achievment!

[gitech]

This Sunday is its first release. It will be 99.9% complete and fully playable. It will have all of my "first time through" textures. Nearly every texture in the game including .all textures for fire, dust, blood ect...

This will be a version 1.0. A chance for you to play through my learning curve from my very first texture to the present.

In a few weeks a second pack will be released with every texture redone that does not live up to my current skill level and fixes for the 3 or 4 areas left of unnecessary slowdown. This includes the areas with simple filtered textures and areas that could be higher resolution once I clean up the unnecessary slowdown instances that I will describe below.

*For educational purposes only:

I have already fixed several of them. I have figured out that certain textures (about .01%) are updated/checked every frame. If these textures are increased in size it will cause slowdown.

For example, the roof top above the room of clocks/staircase to the castle keep area had severe slowdown after I retextured them a month ago. Good thing is... 3 out of 5 of these textures are not visible unless you jump off of the roof and fall all the way to the ground below. Yes, they effect the area even when they are not drawn. Does anyone know what these type of textures are called and if there is another solution for this other than returning them to their original size? Please let me know ASAP!

I have been helping Sirbrownie begin retexturing Body Harvest through PM.

Below are excerpts taken from these PM's to help others identify if this is happening to them in their retexturing projects:

"... I have learned that You can use almost any texture size you want and not slow a game down as long as you identify what texture it is that is slowing it down if it does. I have found I can make an entire room out of 1024x1024 textures but if ONE of them is the type that updates every frame, then that one tile will slow everything down. Last week I spent 2 days finding ONE texture that was slowing down a whole level. Once I found that ONE texture and returned it to it's original size everything returned to full speed. Just a tip to not be scared to use huge texture sizes whenever possible. Also, do one texture update at a time and if the game slows upon loading the new texture...then you have probably found one of these stupid textures. These textures will also instantly freeze (or f-up the graphics) the emulator if you un-pause before reloading textures.

When I started out I reloaded before I un-paused because I didn't like the emu freezing or f-ing up, but now I have found that it's better to un-pause first when you return to the emulator. That way if the game f-s up, you instantly know you got one of these type of textures if you check them in game one at a time. I had let a few of these textures by by reloading first. Causing slowdown because I didn't know it was just one texture slowing it down or freezing the emulator. I would just restart the emulator and it worked again but I had slowdown. I didn't know why it was happening. Now I have a few to go back and find now that I know it's probably just one or a few textures (in each place slowdown occurs) that is slowing down (a few) portions of my game.

You should be able to identify if you have one of these textures with a little experience. According to if you reload and it slows down, or if you unpause and the entire emu crashes, you will know. It took me until only about 2 weeks ago to realize WTF was going on in LOD. After my last PM I decided to not ignore the places in LOD that slowed down any more and I found 8 new "trouble textures". Not fun as I have to return every texture in an area to it's original size, one at a time checking in game for each one methodically to see if the I get back some or all of the frame rate, and continue until full frame rate is returned. I do not reload textures while doing this. What happens if I happen to downsize the correct texture (trouble texture) it instantly updates (disappears/shrinks) when I return to the emu without reloading. Then I know I have found one. I also create a new folder in that levels folder called TROUBLE TEXTURES # and place the "TT" in it as I find them. Once I go through all textures in an area or regain full frame rate I can return all the other textures back to "my" size and every thing is fine. I found 4 textures in one room the other day. The clock tower room with the death cut-scene that I posted a pic of and mentioned it slowed down. No more slowdown now! You don't want to have to do all this latter. ..."



Anyway, don't be afraid this first release of LOD will be messed up or incomplete. It runs at full frame rate 99.9% of the time with hires textures loaded. No important areas contain slowdown! The second release will be nothing more than an update.

Are you ready?

[Driscol]

i know i am

[Datadayne]

"... I have learned that You can use almost any texture size you want and not slow a game down as long as you identify what texture it is that is slowing it down if it does. I have found I can make an entire room out of 1024x1024 textures but if ONE of them is the type that updates every frame, then that one tile will slow everything down. Last week I spent 2 days finding ONE texture that was slowing down a whole level. Once I found that ONE texture and returned it to it's original size everything returned to full speed. Just a tip to not be scared to use huge texture sizes whenever possible. Also, do one texture update at a time and if the game slows upon loading the new texture...then you have probably found one of these stupid textures. These textures will also instantly freeze (or f-up the graphics) the emulator if you un-pause before reloading textures.

When I started out I reloaded before I un-paused because I didn't like the emu freezing or f-ing up, but now I have found that it's better to un-pause first when you return to the emulator. That way if the game f-s up, you instantly know you got one of these type of textures if you check them in game one at a time. I had let a few of these textures by by reloading first. Causing slowdown because I didn't know it was just one texture slowing it down or freezing the emulator. I would just restart the emulator and it worked again but I had slowdown. I didn't know why it was happening. Now I have a few to go back and find now that I know it's probably just one or a few textures (in each place slowdown occurs) that is slowing down (a few) portions of my game.

You should be able to identify if you have one of these textures with a little experience. According to if you reload and it slows down, or if you unpause and the entire emu crashes, you will know. It took me until only about 2 weeks ago to realize WTF was going on in LOD. After my last PM I decided to not ignore the places in LOD that slowed down any more and I found 8 new "trouble textures". Not fun as I have to return every texture in an area to it's original size, one at a time checking in game for each one methodically to see if the I get back some or all of the frame rate, and continue until full frame rate is returned. I do not reload textures while doing this. What happens if I happen to downsize the correct texture (trouble texture) it instantly updates (disappears/shrinks) when I return to the emu without reloading. Then I know I have found one. I also create a new folder in that levels folder called TROUBLE TEXTURES # and place the "TT" in it as I find them. Once I go through all textures in an area or regain full frame rate I can return all the other textures back to "my" size and every thing is fine. I found 4 textures in one room the other day. The clock tower room with the death cut-scene that I posted a pic of and mentioned it slowed down. No more slowdown now! You don't want to have to do all this latter. ..."



Anyway, don't be afraid this first release of LOD will be messed up or incomplete. It runs at full frame rate 99.9% of the time with hires textures loaded. No important areas contain slowdown! The second release will be nothing more than an update.

Are you ready?

seriously? So your telling me that there are textures that slow the game down? If so, I would definitely use 8x texture resolution for my packs. Is this just for LOD or does this apply to every game?

Anyways, looking forward to the release tomorow gitech. Really glad you completed this pack.

[Cyberman]

*For educational purposes only:

I have already fixed several of them. I have figured out that certain textures (about .01%) are updated/checked every frame. If these textures are increased in size it will cause slowdown.

gitech LET mudlord know these specific textures. This may fix bugs in the plugin that weren't known before. Some bugs are hard to find because they are obscured by other code so letting him know a specific texture causes issues might point out something that needs fixed.

Cyb