Castlevania LOD Hi-res Texture Pack WIP

[MasterPhW]

So, finally uploaded! =)
It's nearly 350MB, because I removed all thumbs.db, you should do that next time aswell gitech. I've also fixed one typo in your readme, because it's 1964 0.99 not 9.9...
Here are the links, had to split it into 4 parts, because rapidshare only allows 100MB per file. Just download all parts and unpack part1 and the others will be unpacked aswell.
Have fun.
Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4

 

[PsyMan]

Sweet.

/me gets

 

[gitech]

MasterPhW,

Thank you. Awesome! I will make those changes and re-upload my pack latter today so it will be 350MB saving download time.


PsyMan,

Sweet! Hard mode is crazy hard and is quite different! Also, for those who try it...the second fight with the Giant Ape Skeleton slows down in hard mode when he summons the blue exploding skeletons along with the yellow ones. The fix for this if you do not want it to slow down here is turn automatic frame skip on (but drops frames making it jumpy) or return all of the yellow and blue skeletons textures to 64x64. There are extra yellow skeleton textures in this pack so you would have to downsize all the yellow ones to 64x64 along with the blue ones. The extra yellow textures (bad duplicates) will be gone in the next release, cleaning up that file. Anyway, it would suck to change them for the whole game just for one instance of slowdown. If you like you could make copies of the yellow and blue skeleton texture at 64x64 somewhere else on your PC and swap them out just for that boss fight. Just make sure to make a back-up of the original texture sizes so you can return them to normal after the fight. I don't really mind the slowdown because it can be so brief, just kill the skeletons quickly so they are not there to slow it down. =]


Datadayne,

Sure! A movie trailer would be great! Would you like to chat through PM about it? PM me about the first steps so I have a better idea of your process. I have a couple of ideas for it. Also, I plan to redo the Konami and KCEK screens soon and would like them to appear in the vid. But you could start to get some stock footage ready in the meantime.

Do you have the sound tracks for the game for sound over?

They can be found at: http://castlevania.classicgaming.gamespy.com/Media/cv64.html

I've made videos of my own for my hydroplane a few years back and timed events on screen to the music. It's something I would like to see in a trailer for this.

You can see my old videos of my flying Hydroplane on my website GITaHobby.com


To everyone who has downloaded the pack,

Thank you for all your support and have fun!

Please post your experiences with the pack so far or questions if you are having any problems!!!

Potential employers can contact me for my resume through my website at GITaHobby.com

 

[mode7]

Thanks for your great Castelvania Pack!
Some textures are still filtered, which is okay for the huge amount of textures and the short amount of time, but there are textures that are really unbelievable good.
Judging by the screenshots the quality will further improve as the game progresses.
I really wish I had time to play this thing at the moment.

 

[Triggerhappy]

Yeah, great pack! Everything looks way better! :evil: I thought that was a nice touch at the beginning when you select which resolution (LOW or HIGH) and you put "choose HIGH" on the rotating expansion pack, very good idea BTW!

Also, I have to say I really liked in the Castle Keep where the doors have Dracula hovering over the woman, that really added a more realistic feel to the game. Reminded me a little of Bram Stoker's Dracula with Gary Oldman. Great movie BTW!

It would be perfect if I could just have some sound! I don't know why, but the 1964 people didn't find it in their hearts to include an RSP plugin with the package for some reason, so I either get great performance with no sound, or a weird speed up slow down performance with really crappy sound. If anyone knows where I could get this plugin or if they could upload it somewhere so I can get it, I would be forever grateful!

P.S. If I ever get this emulator to run smoothly I plan on making a little commentary video while playing through it a ways. You'll see me play it with the new textures and hear my comments for fun! So please, help with the sound!

 

[gitech]

Thanks for the compliments. Many more updates to come. I am working on the two opening screens and the Memory Expansion PAK agian right now to make the whole thing hires. Then the rest of the words in the game select screen, then the rest of the characters and the last level to be done- the Tunnel.

Here you go, I hope: RSP plugin .dll for N64 Emulators

Put it in your plugin folder.

Let me know how it goes.

 

[gitech]

The first post has been updated!

 

[gitech]

Updates will be regular now and v1.2 at a greater % of completion will be up very soon. Here are some pics of v1.2 in progress:

Pic #:
1. Konami screen
2. KCEK screen
3. Memory Expansion Pak screen
4. "Game Start" screen
5. "DATA" screen
6&7. NEW Lake Dragon
8. NEW Skeledragon skulls
9. Young "Henry's View" screen

(I have also redone the Guardian Skeledragon Boss, Young Henry, Ada, Cornell's flesh/skin in his second costume and many others so far)

 

[MasterPhW]

Updates will be regular now and v1.2 at a greater % of completion will be up very soon. Here are some pics of v1.2 in progress:

Pic #:
1. Konami screen
2. KCEK screen
3. Memory Expansion Pak screen
4. "Game Start" screen
5. "DATA" screen
6&7. NEW Lake Dragon
8. NEW Skeledragon skulls
9. Young "Henry's View" screen

(I have also redone the Guardian Skeledragon Boss, Young Henry, Ada, Cornell's flesh/skin in his second costume and many others so far)

Looking great, but I don't need to state that everytime I think.
But there's still some low res in your screen, because if you look at the writings in your resolution screen, all the letters appear low res. The Konami Screen looks out of place aswell...
But I really like the anime art! Keep it coming. Like before, I will upload your pack to my RS.com account, when it's updated!

 

[gitech]

Thanks!

The "Konami screen" is the retail box art for the PAL version of the game. I like it better than the US box art and seems like a good retro introduction. It still has the Konami symbol in the corner. Mode7 made me a hi-res Konami screen for me but I did mine first. I am going to keep the box art in the pack but you could ask him to upload his and replace the files for yourself if you like.

Yes, the letters and numbers are not redone. I don't think I can redo them! I have never seen them in a dump. All I get for text and # dumps are as they appear in game such as the time, number of red crystals, and complete/partially complete words and sentences.

Help: Is there a way to get the #'s and letters dumped individually so I can retexture them like people do for mario and zelda?

 

[M[u]ddy]

Usually the letters are white with transparent background and therefore hard to identify at first look.

 

[gitech]

Yeah, I have seen this in packs for M64 and OOT. The text in LOD has a black out line and is easily found in the dumps. That the problem is is that I have never seen them dump as individual letters and #'s.

Here is 4 of my dumped .png's. This is how they dump, it will dump as it is being displayed on screen:

1.

2.

3.

4.

Has anyone seen this before? Do letters and numbers just dump nicely for other games or is there a setting I need?

 

[Cyberman]

I've seen this before as well, I think it might be how they game loads the data for the fonts that does it. I remember twiddling with a TP for CASTLEVANIA a while back and well it dumped LOTS of these textures. Been a long time though since then. I can't say much about it other than that.

Cyb

 

[gitech]

Yes, it has dumped 20-30,000+ of these textures because of the way it dumps several times for one sentence and for every minute of the day. My dump folder got to 17,000 during Cornell's first time through before I went through and deleted all of them up to that point. Since then I have been deleting them as I go along. I can't even imagine how many have really dumped in total.

Ah-well, with my settings at least the text looks smooth...ie...not pixelated.

 

[Xenobond]

Looks like it is a form of render to texture effects that aren't really being read in/dumped by the gfx plugin. The letters are probably stored separately or on one larger letter atlas that the game will pull from as it needs to write information.

 

[gitech]

Thanks Xenobond,

So is there any chance something can be done or do we resign to "it's fine the way it is"?

Hey, I wanted to ask you about your packs progress. Have you stopped? I haven't seen any updates for some time. If you have, I would like to propose an offer because I know people like your work on your Castlevania 64 pack too. So far (I think) you have done the forest of silence. Would you like to add you textures to my pack for that stage. I will be going back to redo the earlier stages (ie...my simply "filtered" textures) soon. I think a lot of people would enjoy playing through that stage with the work you have done on it. Of coarse full credit for your texture contribution would be given to you. Let me know.

 

[MasterPhW]

I will contact mudlord about this issues and probably we will found the problem and fix it... just retexture the other stuff and we'll see, what can be done with this problem.

 

[martpov]

Playing Gitech Castlevania

With Project64 Rice video

play very good but next "scene" run slow

With Glide64 Napalm plugin,the game run perfect but we will see some
graphics errors in The Forest of Silence:

How to avoid or modify these errors?
Is my first texture pack that not work fine with Glide64(Open GL render)!
However,Gitech will have my donation soon.

 

[gitech]

I will contact mudlord about this issues and probably we will found the problem and fix it... just retexture the other stuff and we'll see, what can be done with this problem.

Great! Awesome.

I'm back! I took a few days off from my PC to play with my Birthday present. My fiancé Pam got me GTA IV! Yay! Though my 19" TV is too old and small I can't read the text like on the cell phone and since I can't adjust the TV's color settings I can't see what's going on when it's dark in the game. Hey, did anybody see G4TV's X-Play special for GTA IV on monday? I thought it was cool that they talked about DMA and Body Harvest, and it was awesome when they "morphed" a screenshot of BH into a screenshot from GTA 3! But enough play for now, back to work.

Keep me up to date. Thank you!

With Project64 Rice video
(Image removed for space)
play very good but next "scene" run slow
(Image removed for space)
With Glide64 Napalm plugin,the game run perfect but we will see some
graphics errors in The Forest of Silence:
(Image removed for space)
How to avoid or modify these errors?
Is my first texture pack that not work fine with Glide64(Open GL render)!
However,Gitech will have my donation soon.

1. Thank you martpov, nice pic! Aren't you missing a few sound channels though with PJ64 and rice video? I use that setup (with directX) for doing the retexture work because it is stable, BUT for best play-back you should use 1964 and mudlords rice video 6.1.4 with the settings in the read me. It is much more enjoyable with all the sound channels.

2. Does it run slow during the entire battle or just when you damage one of the Skeledragon so it drops a ton of items? Slowdown is mostly because of the speed of your PC. I have built the pack so that with my "average" PC (see my PC specs in my profile) the game will run smoothly "most" of the time so if your experiencing slow down more than ~1% of the game it's got to be your PC, or your settings. Try playing it with the settings/setup outlined in the read me and let me know how it goes. (In 1964 there is an "automatic frame skip". Use this option in places/areas that contain severe slowdown for you.)

*There is one situation that will always cause slowdown. That is anywhere there are two "gold" Armor Knights and two "lightning" Armor Knights in the same room. This happens in the Art Tower and once in the Castle Center. In the case of this in the art tower you can completely avoid the slowdown if you do not turn the camera after entering through the door and only walk forward enough so that the armor knights come to life and let them come to you. For the Castle Center, just turn on the "automatic frame skip" in 1964. In these cases, the armor knights themselves become what I call "trouble textures" and update with every frame causing the slowdown.

Maybe MasterPhW and Mudlord can take a look at this as well.

3. Yeah, I know about the problem with Glide64. It's just is not compatible with the game or my pack. Sorry.

Thank you for the post. It helps bring light to the remaining issues. Let me know how it goes and if you have anymore questions. I will do my best to help.

 

[jadeanderson]

Hi gitech, those screencaps look fantastic. You must dearly love LOD, eh?

I downloaded the texture pack, installed 1964, found the requisite versions of the plugins and put them in the correct folder, followed your setup instructions to the letter, double checked I had followed all of the setup instructions to the letter, launched the game... and none of your textures loaded. Bummer.

I also tried them with Project64 using the Glide64 Napalm plugin. That one loaded the Super Mario high-rez textures with just its default configuration (and that looks pretty cool by the way,) but LOD it simply ignored and gave me the default textures.

Someone please ask me what you need to know about my system or how I have the emulators and plugins set up so I can see gitech's gorgeous textures.

Thanks.