In Progress Night Stalkers by danno

[crimefighters3]

Loos great so far.

Any chance of a new stage or enemies? Just pushing my luck. 

 

[afhc2x17]

I saw this after I got back here. And I'm glad that this gem is going back in development. It was always a great OpenBOR continuation to the only one horror beat'em up that exists for me. Good luck with the development.

 

[danno]

Any chance of a new stage or enemies? Just pushing my luck. 

crimefighters3
keep pushing me maaaaan hahaha the answer is yes, new stages and enemies, stages are still in concept though because I can't quite figure out how I want to do them yet

I'm going to remove some enemies too like these guys, I felt a disconnect when these enemies were in game and I don't like how they animate or look.

I also want to create a new boss like Vehelits from streets of rage 2

but with more of a demon/monster gore vibe, but that's still in concept phase also.

afhc2x17

thanks for your kind words, they are greatly appreciated.

 

[Miru]

I do agree that Chainsaw Bull (Ninja Warriors) needs to be bigger, and the DM2 enemy could use a pallete swap, but I wonder what other enemies got the boot?

 

[oldyz]

I want to redraw them - the chainsaw  enemy would look better if he had more Dwarf proportions & the big mutant needs to drip ooze.

 

[Miru]

I want to redraw them - the chainsaw  enemy would look better if he had more Dwarf proportions & the big mutant needs to drip ooze.

The main enemies I wanted to see redrawn are Red Arremer (though replacing him could be even better) and that purple gremlin thing near the midpoint of the game, both of which have a very different shading from the rest of the game, especially the gremlin.

 

[danno]

we think alike Miru, these guys are also getting the boot

The thing I don't like about the mutant from dm2 and chainsaw guy is the hoppy boppy and choppy animations

even a reshade doesn't really work for me either, I could redraw the sprites and add extra frames like oldyz wants to do but I'd rather just replace them with new monsters/demons. They just stand out a little too much for my liking and it kinda ruins the flow of the game for me especially the alternate route.

 

[danno]

Couple of things I've been working on, I wanted to change how the story is told, I didn't like how the arcade kinda lacked continuity and doesn't flow well, one of the changes I made is the boss fight with Frankenstein, In my version you'll interrupt the doctor working on him and you'll fight them both together.

I also started work on Rou but there's not much to show yet, I've been studying the only gif online of him and again emulating BonusJz's style, I think the air special is from castlevania so I'll have to grab the sprites for that.

finally as much as I'd like to re colour the entire cast I'm going to have to put it on a back burner for now

Many of the characters share the same colour on multiple parts of the sprite, some characters are over 400 sprites in volume and it will literally take me months to do on my own so I'm pushing it to the back of the list of things to do.

 

[NED]

Great palette upgrade.
And I like what you did with Frankenstein scene. Yes, it's a good thing if you can give the story a better flow!

 

[danno]

Thanks Ned, I wish there was a quicker way to recolour the characters, some are clean and easy but others are all muddled up

 

[oldyz]

danno

since you are using photoshop, when i was able to use it i found it easier to select by color & thus it was easier to change a bunch of colors at once.
Also i have found information about the palettes & there are ways to not have them & you can even have different colorations without limiting to palette - the question is how much memory would suffer tho.

The Doctor is the most inconsistent element in the game - you clearly turn him to goo, skull & bone but in the cinema where you face Dracula - he is visible laying face down with a bloody knife by his side

A question about the videos ; i don't see the dreaded black bars - are you stretching things usign code or are they still there if you play full-screen?
https://www.chronocrash.com/forum/index.php?topic=5338#msg73014

 

[Miru]

danno

since you are using photoshop, when i was able to use it i found it easier to select by color & thus it was easier to change a bunch of colors at once.
Also i have found information about the palettes & there are ways to not have them & you can even have different colorations without limiting to palette - the question is how much memory would suffer tho.

The Doctor is the most inconsistent element in the game - you clearly turn him to goo, skull & bone but in the cinema where you face Dracula - he is visible laying face down with a bloody knife by his side

A question about the videos ; i don't see the dreaded black bars - are you stretching things usign code or are they still there if you play full-screen?
https://www.chronocrash.com/forum/index.php?topic=5338#msg73014

I could see you fighting the doctor twice. The first time, he’d flee the area when beaten. The second time, either after or shortly before Dracula, is where he melts.

 

[danno]

since you are using photoshop, when i was able to use it i found it easier to select by color & thus it was easier to change a bunch of colors at once.

The problem with the sprites is the same colour is used for multiple parts of the character, for example

first frank, all one colour is marked blue, second frank that same colour has been separated, blue for skin, red for metal and a tiny bit of yellow for the hair

the lightest part of franks skin is also the lightest part of the metal shackles AND it's also the lightest part of the hair

so I need to change the hair to separate that 1 colour, say I have to do that for 300 sprites, then I have to go over those 300 sprites again and change the metal shackles to separate that 1 colour and then those same 300 sprites again to separate the skin from that 1 colour and that's just 1 colour 900 times, some character palettes share 3 or 4 colours in there sprites, that 3,600 individual changes if you make 0 mistakes, between the entire cast that's a couple months work for me, I mean I will do it all but just not right now as it's a lot of work for something the average player won't notice or care about.

i don't see the dreaded black bars - are you stretching things usign code or are they still there if you play full-screen?

I'm just stretching using full screen.

 

[oldyz]

danno
hah, ha, i had forgotten that little detail about doing it 300 times or more.

tell you what , once i'm  done with this year's update i will see if that AI "style" transfering program could do the trick, that way al you need is some keyframes every some frames.

there is also a colorizing algorythm but i don't know if it's available to the public.

so you are just stretching without keeping the aspect ratio, so circle objects are oval -
(i am peeved by this too much) i just hate the fact that characters look smaller (compared to the OG arcade) or distorted in full screen

 

[danno]

oldyz

Thanks dude but keyframes are for animation and colourising algorithms work best for turning a black and white images into colour, an algorithm won't work because the process needs a human eye with manual direct purpose, no guessing, no nearest neighbour etc algorithms are not really good at branching through the space of a sprite,  its a simple long process, it would be 1000 times easier if one colour didn't share different parts of the same sprite and yeah an algorithm would be perfect for that, it will be nice to recolour the whole game, I do intend to do it but I wanna get everything else finalised first, like putting icing on a cake.

so you are just stretching without keeping the aspect ratio, so circle objects are oval -
(i am peeved by this too much) i just hate the fact that characters look smaller (compared to the OG arcade) or distorted in full screen

This is why I went with a resolution of 420, even if I were to preserve aspect ratio like in this video its only around 5 pixels deep of black bars each side of the screen and a stretch would hardly be noticed either.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rzX-pNqlGY

I did experiment with wider screens but I felt like there was too much dead space and stretching looked awful.

 

[O Ilusionista]

In my version you'll interrupt the doctor working on him and you'll fight them both together.

Very nice work, buddy!

I have just one feedback: the block effect could be way smaller. Right now, it is almos as big as a character per se (because they come from CPS-2 games).
Try to simply using drawmethod scale 0.5 (play with the numbers) to make it smaller.

 

[danno]

Thanks for the tip buddy, I changed the colour too so it's more subtle

 

[Bloodbane]

Many of the characters share the same colour on multiple parts of the sprite, some characters are over 400 sprites in volume and it will literally take me months to do on my own

I know how you feel 

In my version you'll interrupt the doctor working on him and you'll fight them both together.

Personally I don't mind the original cause in original the doctor is a decent subboss. Aside of having multiple attacks, he can escape from combos and can summon one zombie while being invincible. Frankie has similar summon move in which he summons two zombies and also, golem can summon 4 zombies.

Speaking of which, I don't see the escape move from the doctor in the videos. Will you be adding that move?

Also, will you put Frankie's health bar higher so it doesn't overlap with doctor's?

 

[danno]

Bloodbane

this version of the doctor with frankie I wanted to be more of a block character, the version you fight in the alternate route in the computer room that transforms into a mutant is more dodge and avoid type, the 3rd resurrected by death doctor will summon lots of other zombies and have the escape move.

Thanks for the tip on the life bars, is there a way I can make the lifebars disappear when inactive for 1 second when using lifebarstatus?

 

[O Ilusionista]

Thanks for the tip buddy, I changed the colour too so it's more subtle

Yeah, that is it! If I would add something, I would make it a little faster, to avoid it staying on the screen for much time.
(I remember that this is the thing that I most hated on the original Beats of Rage - now long the effects stay on the screen).