In Progress Night Stalkers by danno

The project is currently under development.
I've been working on re-painting the sprites and adding smart palettes to even more entities, I'm going for a more art Fresco style which is the removal of heavy blacks and absolute white pixels with a hint of 80's neon, I've also removed about 1000 junk files, I'm aiming for the final completed game size to be around 60 MB.

 
danno said:
I've been working on re-painting the sprites and adding smart palettes to even more entities, I'm going for a more art Fresco style which is the removal of heavy blacks and absolute white pixels with a hint of 80's neon, I've also removed about 1000 junk files, I'm aiming for the final completed game size to be around 60 MB.

Click to expand...
Glad to see this project is still alive @danno
One of the projects I can't wait for ^^
 

5 hours of my life condensed into 2 minutes.

This character was hard to do as the sprites relied heavily on black and white, re-painting all the sprites to give the game a new overall look is mind numbing but in the end it should be worth the effort, More colour gradient and less contrasty art style looks really good inside the engine.
 
PvGegXk.png


The actual sprites BonusJZ ripped are awful and he used a global palette in engine too, a palette trick was used to make them appear like TOmisaurus's rips do. I've had to repair 100's of BonusJZ's sprite rips because they are the only ones available so it's even more work.

I'll show something in engine once I've re-painted a stage correctly.
 
danno said:
PvGegXk.png


The actual sprites BonusJZ ripped are awful and he used a global palette in engine too, a palette trick was used to make them appear like TOmisaurus's rips do. I've had to repair 100's of BonusJZ's sprite rips because they are the only ones available so it's even more work.

I'll show something in engine once I've re-painted a stage correctly.
Click to expand...

That looks tons better. Not sure why BonusJZ used a global palette back then, we'd had model palettes for quite some time. Maybe he was hoping it would be more portable? In any case, keep up the good work sir!

DC
 
danno said:
I've had to repair 100's of BonusJZ's sprite rips because they are the only ones available so it's even more work.
Click to expand...
Nice work! they are way better now.

And I think there is a mame cheat available to rip those sprites (or even the sprites alone), let me check.

edit: yes, there is a mame cheat for that
1705504432351.png

Edit 2: we should port that topic here, since all the downloads are located on the Mediafire and they can be gone in no time.
I've started to backup the topic here MAME Cheats for Sprite Ripping
 
Last edited:
O Ilusionista said:
Edit 2: we should port that topic here, since all the downloads are located on the Mediafire and they can be gone in no time.
Click to expand...

I'm not where I can do that today. If you have access to them, feel free to upload, that would be a big help.
 
@danno

i have noticed some smart palette stuff on the original module, wolves have green hair, and some other characters too.

that video reminds me of pain i have to go back to soon....
 
@oldyz

It's a shame we didn't have the .spk version as a base, I spent about a year fixing all the bugs in the open version before I even started on changing anything.
 
The copy here of Night Slashers X is the SPK version (secure packed) the version that's open to edit is an older version of Night Slashers X that BonusJZ released before the spk version. the final spk version doesn't have any bugs compared to the version that's open to edit.

I thought the final version was the open version but it was actually the spk version that was final. the open version doesn't even run certain levels without some fixes and even with older versions of the engine the bugs remain, some bugs were game breaking like the binding in throws and traveling to space after special 3.
 
danno said:
PvGegXk.png


The actual sprites BonusJZ ripped are awful and he used a global palette in engine too, a palette trick was used to make them appear like TOmisaurus's rips do. I've had to repair 100's of BonusJZ's sprite rips because they are the only ones available so it's even more work.

I'll show something in engine once I've re-painted a stage correctly.
Click to expand...
Love it but those red areas in the torso and arms i thought it was blood.
 
I was thinking with re-painting and more palettes I should also redo the gore, seems silly not to really the whole idea is to provide more colour in game and provide a different viewing experience.


Managed to get the ram usage down to 99 mb from 180 mb with all models loaded for faster loading between levels, there was a bunch of junk that was loaded into game that doesn't even get used.

I've also optimised the scripts by removing ones that don't get used and clones and importing them through other files. the overall size of the game now is 60 mb, with the extra characters, stages and music I'm adding I'm expecting that to go up to 80 mb and I'm also allocating myself another 50 mb of ram too.

I know the average player doesn't really care about this but I wanted to make sure everything was fully optimised to the best of my ability before adding my own take to everything, I've had to redo the entire game and go over everything several times and although it seems like not a lot hopefully it will make a bigger difference in the overall playing experience.

Initially I was annoyed I only had a demo version to work from but it's also allowed me abit more room for creativity and to improve my skills.
 
I hope you will set the difficulty level so that it can be balanced
as much as I like NS rebalance the difficulty level makes me avoid playing the game, also the controls are very complicated for me.
And adding custom stages for Night Slasher would be a jackpot
 
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You'll be able to complete this one at least, from start to finish, The gameplay is much faster now and I don't mean speed I mean mechanics, for example simply grabbing the enemy on approach like in the arcade version instead of the enemy having to be in pain anim so they can be grabbed, that simple change has made the game much more faster and less convoluted.

I've also added a dodge button with extra maneuver ability so you can get out of tight spaces when you need to, this speeds up the gameplay too.

They'll also be a hard mode too for people that like a challenge and I'll change the enemy A.I for that and remove health items.
 
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