Castlevania LOD Hi-res Texture Pack WIP

[gitech]

You must be referring to the "Big Door"...yeah, but...well who wants to make the whole door from scratch and the lighting in game makes it much darker so it's really even hard to see anyway. That's why I think it's ok that way.

If you mean the "Skeleton Boss Ground" texture, I think the original textures are great for adding light and Shadow highlights, depth, color and shape.

If you look closely, Gears of War 2 uses the same technique! Low-res shapes with high res layers that instead simply appear underneath as you get closer and the low-res layer is kept for the basic shape and depth of the illusion. And it can get ugly close up too. Check it out for yourself.

I think I still have the tree as a .psd. I will take a look at it. Thanks! Keep it comin'!

I think 3 of the textures you see up there were made with the textures Mode7 made for me for my birthday last year. Cool. Thanks man!

OT: A group has been started on Facebook to encourage the TV show "Extreme Makeover Home Edition" to re-build the Wielinski family's house in Clarence NY. You know...the house that Continental Flight 3407 crashed into.

Check it out guys, it won't cost you anything but your time : http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=51026313449#

Let me know if the link works for you.

Take care,
Jay

 

[microdev]

The two main reasons are, I would like to go through the whole game again and redo or touch up a great deal of v1.1's textures, and I still have the texture related slowdown problem with Rice Video that prevents me from redoing/enlarging certain textures because they cause severe slowdown as they are reloaded with every frame. WE NEED A TEXTURE CACHING OPTION!

Now, in addition to the texture name duplicate related slowdown in certain parts of the game, I am getting a frame "stuttering" due to the textures being loaded in real time. I mean, the textures in the castle wall stage are almost all 1024x1024 or more! This causes a stutter while the textures have to load in real time, like when entering a new area.

CRC-problem is fixed, so go on finishing your great pack. Do you have a savestate showing the stuttering for big textures?

microdev

 

[gitech]

Amazing!!! Thank you! I can't wait to try it!

You will need my: CLOD PACK AS OF 12-30-08 FOR AMRV PLUGIN TESTING

There are 3 save states in the download you can use for testing but the stuttering can be seen anytime such large textures need to load as those that are in my "as is" pack. One way to see the game pause and stutter any time is pause in game to go into the items menu and then back out of it to go back to the game.

The stuttering from large texture loading can be easily noticed in the Castle Wall stage by exploring it. The long time it takes to load up the textures when you go through the doors to either of the side towers is also evidence that the game has to wait while the textures are loading.

Are you looking into the texture caching option to eliminate the loading of textures in real time during game play?

Again, Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Later,
Jay

PS: As I add more large textures in the castle wall stage I am getting some slowdown. I do not know yet what the cause is exactly, I would like to see if it persists with your new ARV update, but I think it might just be my GFX card is just maxing out... anyway, here is the texture for the floor in the castle wall that when added to the "as is" pack causes slowdown when in the area. If you get no slowdown in the castle wall stage when all these large textures are present, then I guess it's just my PC maxing out and there is no real problem, but if you do maybe you can take a look for the cause.

To add it to the game: Save it to your PC, rename it, then add it to the "new castle wall" folder to replace the old one. (It's the the texture that is the brightly colored floor of the second level of the center of the castle wall in the pack download above.)

The textures name is: CASTLEVANIA2#940E8A35#2#0#6319AAB4_ciByRGBA.png

 

[cerebus5]

Where can I d/l the updated plugin? I've been having some troubles with my N64 emus since upgrading to vista 64.

 

[gitech]

Here: http://www.emutalk.net/showthread.php?t=46949&page=28

But it's not released quite yet...more info can be found there as well.

I am starting up on CLOD again today. I hope to finish up the Castle Wall and start on a whole new Villa by the end of today! Wish me luck!

Microdev, any idea when you will be able to upload it? The Villa is a stage that will really benefit from this fix and a re-re-do of the textures I have planned for it.

Jay

 

[Yogi]

Work continues on this project!

Here is a quick "AS IS" pack. It's still not done but it is the most recent work up to this point.

Download: CLOD PACK AS OF 12-30-08

The HUD, the first three levels and some other additions such as the "Tunnel" level are the biggest change.

Give it a try and please post comments!

TTYL,
Jay

Wow wow...500mb+ !!!

 

[cerebus5]

Thanks I posted about my error message on that thread gitech.

 

[gitech]

Hey guys,

I just finished my first texture of the day!

2 hours and 45 minutes = 1 texture done!

It includes over 30 layers. ,

 

[cerebus5]

I prefer the original :king: :king:

j/k great work.

 

[gitech]

Thanks!

Any one else see it? It's on the bottom of the previous page.

,
Jay

 

[mode7]

Absolutely awesome, it isn't the same material as the original but it is a plausible interpretation.
Some of your textures, like this one, are among the best pieces of work around here and there are a lot of commerical games with worse textures (Anybody played GTA Vice City and Andreas - some great, but also some really shitty textures)

2:45 is a long time for one texture - how come?

 

[peessittingdown]

i just signed up to say gitech that your texures are absolutely amazing and that you must finish this project!

 

[Shin_Gouki]

thats so sweeeeeeeeeet stuff

 

[Remote]

A lot of hard work behind those textures. I haven't played any N64 games with updated/high-res but Castlevania on the N64 is a great game and from what I've seen in this thread it should be a threat to play when the pack is done.

Keep up the good work gitech!

 

[gitech]

cerebus5, mode7, peessittingdown, Shin_Gouki, and Remote,

Thank you!

Now that I work at a game company (ICE) I finally have the opportunity to have my talent for creating game graphics help my carrier, and with Aristotle and Microdev's work on the video plugin I now have the ability to finish this project!

I am now starting on the Villa. It's a huge level so keep an eye out for screenshots!

Thanks for the support guys! I really appreciate it!

Thanks,
Jay

 

[peessittingdown]

ah gitech I tried to use the as is pack you had. The gameplays all stuttery and the sound sounds bad for some reason. I am admittedly running it on directx which I know I shouldnt be but I cant get it to run with open gl for some reason. am I just screwed at playing this?

 

[mode7]

you need a lot of vram for running these kind of packs.

 

[gitech]

There may be some settings and such that can help you get better performance.

Can you take screen shots of all of your "screens" for emu and plugin settings and I can help you set it up?

Also, can you tell me about the system your running it on?

Why can't you use OGL?

Thanks,
Jay

 

[peessittingdown]

not sure why i cant use open gl seems strange to me.

I'm on the 64 bit version of vista which may not help

the systems a dual core 2 ghz processer
2 gb ram
the graphics card has 780 mb

the graphics in game are fine they just flicker during texture loading times.

 

[MasterPhW]

not sure why i cant use open gl seems strange to me.

I'm on the 64 bit version of vista which may not help

the systems a dual core 2 ghz processer
2 gb ram
the graphics card has 780 mb

the graphics in game are fine they just flicker during texture loading times.

I think it's a driver related problem. Do you play in fullscreen? If so, I probably know how to fix it.