Commercial Critique Challenge - Tilevania: pixel's quest

[Pix.Ed.]

Awesome. Thanks Kasumi for the clarification and quick response. Much appreciated.

[inkajoo]

This is actually my first post here ... so, hi

The proper way to make NES-true mockups is a nifty little program called NES Screen Tool.  http://www.romhacking.net/utilities/802/

It enforces all of the NES's limitations with the added bonus of exporting data that can be used by an actual NES ROM.

You may still want to start in Photoshop or your favorite editor - as the editing capabilities are limited - and then import them into NESST.

[Prism]

Hello! First post in the forum, I hope I'm not breaking any rules.

Phoenix849 brought this challenge to my attention, so I decided to take part in it by remaking Dracula's room. Here it is (without sprites and with sprites):



I tried to keep the overall idea of the original intact (coffin in the center, pillars by the sides) but I went a bit crazy. Here is the tileset.:



I managed to save 13 tiles, and if I sacrifice one of the floor brick tiles, I get one more

Also, thanks to Phoenix849's input, I also fixed some issues that had escaped me. So, kudos to him there.

EDIT: OK so I went back for those tiles. Turns out I saved three more. At this rate I'll end up saving enough tiles to rebuild the entire scene starting from the staircase

Stellar! You got nicely creative with the room composition. Love the coffin in the center, the inclusion of the organ and angled windows, et cetera.

[TOMOYA]

Hello! Another new user here! Have been interested on joining Pixelation for a while and this challenge was exactly the motivation I was looking for, so I took the chance to take part on it.
Here is my take on the castle's gardens at the start of the game. Took big liberties with it and reimagined a lot of stuff, having a more dark and realistic look in mind, but still keeping the picture recognizable. Hope my work is good enought, since everyone has done amazing stuff so far.

WITH SPRITES


WITHOUT SPRITES


TILES AND PALETTES



Used a total of 125 tiles. There probably are a few tiles that could be reused here and there to get more free space (specially since I totally forgot about the castle at the end of this screen), but I wanted to post this already or I will keep working on it forever.
As an aditional challenge, I used only 3 palettes on the background itself, and saved the last one just for the UI.
I went a little bit crazier with the sprites. Changed everything in the way the torches work, the base is now made out of backgrounds tiles, and only the fire is made out of sprites. I use the same 6 sprite tiles the original torch used, but in a total different way to get a 4 frame animation cycle instead of 2, like the original one has.
Didn't change Simon's sprite, but maybe, I'll get to work on him someday, since I had a lot of fun getting creative with this game I like so much.

[Cherno]

Absolutely beautiful, especialy the flame animation and the light on the statue. I also like how the scene gets progressively darker in the background, just like it should.

[Arne]

I ended up with a noisy turd.

Reasons:
I wanted a different brick size for the background (smaller to suggest distance), but this added extra noise. Could probably throw in more blank/flat tiles.

I didn't want to do leaf blobs for the plants, so I started dithering, thinking it might work on a TV.

Tried to keep the tile count and 4*4 layouts somewhat low, but sort of creeped away doing a few decorative tiles.

Tried to keep the original 3 palettes to the end, but had to lighten the sky to reduce noise and replace GUI palette red with brown as I used that for the lit ground tiles.



*Edited in some more flats. Plant dither still a mess.

[mobichan]

I've been lurking in here for a while now and man are these impressive.  Sorry to nitpick, but I just wanted to point out to Phoenix that the castle gate/entrance can be jumped past to reveal a hidden item.  So you need to continue the floor past the entrance instead of stopping it at a bush wall.

[moket]

Inspiring thread 

Gave a try at it, the lack of a saturated bright red in the NTSC palette makes it quite hard.
Went a bit overboard with the tile count...can't draw stairs and props anymore.

[Probo]

Wow some great edits in here. that ntsc palette that kasumi provided really lends itself to some grungy, dark visuals. I love that shit. However one of my favourite things about the pal nes I grew up with is bright, weird and sometimes garish palettes so I leant into that

I chose Death's level, looked like it could do with a lick of paint:



I had a go at the existing metasprites in the room too, trying to stick to their existing real estate in terms of 8x8 or 8x16 sprites.

I wanted to keep the HUD palette the same as its iconic to me, but I also used the HUD palette on the fire in the top left, which I assume could be animated by switching out tiles? maybe not in the cv1 engine? Kasumi help me XD. in a perfect world it'd be whippable too, like a candle.

enjoyed making the upgrade 'III' in the HUD a bit more readable, after so many years playing this game haha

I haven't checked for errors or tile count :S

[Kasumi]

About Castlevania's Engine: I learned that Castlevania (at least appears to) hardcode which 8x8 tiles are collision enabled. (Most games tie it to larger structures.) So (quite laughably), what makes a lot of these not work is too many unique tiles that are meant to be collision enabled.

I wouldn't consider adding that restriction to this challenge, since it's conceivably a thing they'd have changed if they had art like this. But it's the main thing that made hacking art in no fun.

Probo: You've got 134 non unique tiles, and no palette errors. Getting under tile count would be pretty easy for you. You've got three unique floor brick structures. Could use just one.

As far as animating the fire (assuming its background), it's possible with CHR RAM (which Castlevania uses), but easier with CHR ROM. And I don't remember Castlevania updating tiles that way mid level anywhere. (Could be wrong. I should note it'd be a bit of a different thing than the breakable walls that exist in the game.)