Rondo of Blood Thread

[RyuHayabusa]

Keep in mind that CIV is an early SNES title and only 8 megs whereas Rondo is a Super CD game that came out late in the lifespan of the PCE. When it comes to sprites and frames of animation of course it's going to win out over CIV. Having hundreds of megabytes compared to 1 megabyte will give you an advantage when it comes to frames of animation and detail. Same thing goes for Forgotten Worlds PCE vs the Genesis port. Heck, even Ghouls N Ghosts could've been closer to the Supergrafx port had it been 8 megs instead of 5 megs. As I said before, Rondo is the better game due to it's depth it still lacks the atmosphere created in CIV due to the darker visuals and tunes. And, I love the first few levels of CIV, especially level 2 in the forest. The parallax in the clouds looks cool and the music creates a dark atmosphere. Something I loved about Symphony of the Night is that it's music had elements of both games. Some upbeat tunes that sound nice and a few creepy tunes like when you go down into the darker areas of the castle. Lastly, keep in mind that Slogra and Gaibon were carried over to SOTN as well. Not sure what other games used Rondo sprites besides SOTN.

1. I don't think rondo is using hunderds of megs for grafx. not even close.
2. so if castIV was "only" an early SNES game, what was dracXX in 1995 using how many megs?

I didn't mean that Rondo was hundreds of megs, only that when you have that much space at your disposal it allows for many more frames of animation, more sprites, and more content in general. I can't remember the size of the game data on Rondo but it's considerably more than CIV. Having more storage data gives it a distinct advantage when it comes to details.

SNES Dracula X was 16 meg I believe, which is only 2 megabytes, nothing compared to a CD. Also, for whatever reason Konami chose to go a different route rather than make a straight port of Rondo. Looking at the sprites it's obvious that the SNES could've handled a straight port had they had the space. Rondo is not a game that couldn't have been done on the SNES had it had a CD attachment.

[fragmare]

The thing that bugs me the most about CV4 isn't the length of the game, number of animation frames, linear paths or any of that... it's the fact that Simon's sprite looks as if it's made up of about 5 or 6 separate sprites all kind of trying to coordinate into something resembling a walking animation.  It's just clunky and weird looking.

Really? I don't see that other than maybe when you hold down the whip button and use the d-pad to jiggle the whip around. If you want to see a character made up of multiple sprites that looks clunky check out Earnest Evans. They tried something unique but it didn't work out at all.

I don't think Simon is ACTUALLY made of different sprites.  He just appears that way.  There's just something off with his animations CV4, though.

[geise]

Me too.  That's great stuff!

[Bonknuts]

SNES Dracula X was 16 meg I believe, which is only 2 megabytes, nothing compared to a CD. Also, for whatever reason Konami chose to go a different route rather than make a straight port of Rondo. Looking at the sprites it's obvious that the SNES could've handled a straight port had they had the space. Rondo is not a game that couldn't have been done on the SNES had it had a CD attachment.

 Rondo is about 16-18megabits total (well, excluding cinemas). The SNES has enough space. Not only that, but the SNES has 128k of work ram; they could have been used for even better compression schemes because of its size. Space wasn't the issue.

[lukester]

SNES Dracula X was 16 meg I believe, which is only 2 megabytes, nothing compared to a CD. Also, for whatever reason Konami chose to go a different route rather than make a straight port of Rondo. Looking at the sprites it's obvious that the SNES could've handled a straight port had they had the space. Rondo is not a game that couldn't have been done on the SNES had it had a CD attachment.

 Rondo is about 16-18megabits total (well, excluding cinemas). The SNES has enough space. Not only that, but the SNES has 128k of work ram; they could have been used for even better compression schemes because of its size. Space wasn't the issue.

Wow, interesting.

So, could Rondo have been on a 20 meg Huey, minus cinemas and only PCB music?

[Black Tiger]

SNES Dracula X was 16 meg I believe, which is only 2 megabytes, nothing compared to a CD. Also, for whatever reason Konami chose to go a different route rather than make a straight port of Rondo. Looking at the sprites it's obvious that the SNES could've handled a straight port had they had the space. Rondo is not a game that couldn't have been done on the SNES had it had a CD attachment.

 Rondo is about 16-18megabits total (well, excluding cinemas). The SNES has enough space. Not only that, but the SNES has 128k of work ram; they could have been used for even better compression schemes because of its size. Space wasn't the issue.

Wow, interesting.

So, could Rondo have been on a 20 meg Huey, minus cinemas and only PCB music?

And fewer voice/sound samples, but since the samples were already stretched thin in the CD version, enough could be kept at a low quality that it would seem like not much was lost.

[RyuHayabusa]

SNES Dracula X was 16 meg I believe, which is only 2 megabytes, nothing compared to a CD. Also, for whatever reason Konami chose to go a different route rather than make a straight port of Rondo. Looking at the sprites it's obvious that the SNES could've handled a straight port had they had the space. Rondo is not a game that couldn't have been done on the SNES had it had a CD attachment.

 Rondo is about 16-18megabits total (well, excluding cinemas). The SNES has enough space. Not only that, but the SNES has 128k of work ram; they could have been used for even better compression schemes because of its size. Space wasn't the issue.

I think you're waaaaay off here. Rondo has two data tracks on the disk apart from the audio tracks. Both of those data tracks are around 20 megaBYTES each. Not megaBITS, megaBYTES. So, you're comparing Castlevania IV and Dracula X SNES which are 1 and 2 megabytes to Rondo which is 40 megabytes. Yes, some of that is for cinemas but not that much. Rondo could NOT have been done on a 20 megabit huey minus the cinemas and music.

[Black Tiger]

SNES Dracula X was 16 meg I believe, which is only 2 megabytes, nothing compared to a CD. Also, for whatever reason Konami chose to go a different route rather than make a straight port of Rondo. Looking at the sprites it's obvious that the SNES could've handled a straight port had they had the space. Rondo is not a game that couldn't have been done on the SNES had it had a CD attachment.

 Rondo is about 16-18megabits total (well, excluding cinemas). The SNES has enough space. Not only that, but the SNES has 128k of work ram; they could have been used for even better compression schemes because of its size. Space wasn't the issue.

I think you're waaaaay off here. Rondo has two data tracks on the disk apart from the audio tracks. Both of those data tracks are around 20 megaBYTES each. Not megaBITS, megaBYTES. So, you're comparing Castlevania IV and Dracula X SNES which are 1 and 2 megabytes to Rondo which is 40 megabytes. Yes, some of that is for cinemas but not that much. Rondo could NOT have been done on a 20 megabit huey minus the cinemas and music.

It has been discussed in the forum many times before. The game has a specific number of loads for in-game content. Each stage before a boss uses <2 megs. Judging by how much content there is in that, it seems unlikely that any bosses use more than <1 meg. But each of these sequences are using duplicate assets for Richter and misc, which means that the in-game content is even smaller than the sum of each stage/boss.

Even if we count Stage 0, and even if you believe that each load of in-game content completely fills the Super CD's 2 megababit memory... where exactly are the missing 295 max-memory-filling loads required to equal 40 megabytes?

[RyuHayabusa]

SNES Dracula X was 16 meg I believe, which is only 2 megabytes, nothing compared to a CD. Also, for whatever reason Konami chose to go a different route rather than make a straight port of Rondo. Looking at the sprites it's obvious that the SNES could've handled a straight port had they had the space. Rondo is not a game that couldn't have been done on the SNES had it had a CD attachment.

 Rondo is about 16-18megabits total (well, excluding cinemas). The SNES has enough space. Not only that, but the SNES has 128k of work ram; they could have been used for even better compression schemes because of its size. Space wasn't the issue.

I think you're waaaaay off here. Rondo has two data tracks on the disk apart from the audio tracks. Both of those data tracks are around 20 megaBYTES each. Not megaBITS, megaBYTES. So, you're comparing Castlevania IV and Dracula X SNES which are 1 and 2 megabytes to Rondo which is 40 megabytes. Yes, some of that is for cinemas but not that much. Rondo could NOT have been done on a 20 megabit huey minus the cinemas and music.

It has been discussed in the forum many times before. The game has a specific number of loads for in-game content. Each stage before a boss uses <2 megs. Judging by how much content there is in that, it seems unlikely that any bosses use more than <1 meg. But each of these sequences are using duplicate assets for Richter and misc, which means that the in-game content is even smaller than the sum of each stage/boss.

Even if we count Stage 0, and even if you believe that each load of in-game content completely fills the Super CD's 2 megababit memory... where exactly are the missing 295 max-memory-filling loads required to equal 40 megabytes?

Well, let's just look at it this way. Not counting Dracula and the 4 bosses on Stage 6 since they're loaded with their stages, there are 11 bosses. There are 13 stages all together including the prologue. I don't how much data each stage takes up but let's say that each stage, including the bosses, is 2 meg. That alone is 26 meg, considerably more than either Castlevania IV or SNES Drac X. So we're talking a 3 megabyte game here. The rest of that 40 megabytes is voice tracks and cinemas. I misspoke about cinemas not taking up that much because it does take up the majority of the space alone with the music tracks. But, Rondo is a much bigger game than either Castlevania IV or SNES Drac X.

[bob]

Sorry to kill the momentum of the last few posts, but has anybody tried this?


Boot up Dracula X in the TCD add-on with the wrong system card in your turbo grafx; this will load a secret mini-game

[Bonknuts]

SNES Dracula X was 16 meg I believe, which is only 2 megabytes, nothing compared to a CD. Also, for whatever reason Konami chose to go a different route rather than make a straight port of Rondo. Looking at the sprites it's obvious that the SNES could've handled a straight port had they had the space. Rondo is not a game that couldn't have been done on the SNES had it had a CD attachment.

 Rondo is about 16-18megabits total (well, excluding cinemas). The SNES has enough space. Not only that, but the SNES has 128k of work ram; they could have been used for even better compression schemes because of its size. Space wasn't the issue.

I think you're waaaaay off here. Rondo has two data tracks on the disk apart from the audio tracks. Both of those data tracks are around 20 megaBYTES each. Not megaBITS, megaBYTES. So, you're comparing Castlevania IV and Dracula X SNES which are 1 and 2 megabytes to Rondo which is 40 megabytes. Yes, some of that is for cinemas but not that much. Rondo could NOT have been done on a 20 megabit huey minus the cinemas and music.

Look, I'm not trying to be an ass - but I actually looked into this game. And I'm the one that did the print and compression routines for it PCECD Dracula X translation project (including the title screen). I know bit about this game on a technical level. I was looking for secret stages in the ISO, based on all the CD read commands and tracked all the LBA/sector offsets (I found part of one, but not the rest of it). There is a lot of redundant data loaded each level. So while each level might load <2megabits, there's redundant data in those loads (tiles and sprites) across the level layouts. You can't simply look at data track/iso, and say that's what the game requires. There are huge gaps in the data track that aren't used (this is VERY common for PCECD games). And the second data track is there for redundant reasons ~only~. It's the same track

 I'm go by Bonknuts here, but I'm tomaitheous elsewhere (in relation to coding). If you don't want to take my word for it, then take a look for yourself in a debugger.

[Tatsujin]

Sorry to kill the momentum of the last few posts, but has anybody tried this?


Boot up Dracula X in the TCD add-on with the wrong system card in your turbo grafx; this will load a secret mini-game

lol..are you serious?

[bob]

Sorry to kill the momentum of the last few posts, but has anybody tried this?


Boot up Dracula X in the TCD add-on with the wrong system card in your turbo grafx; this will load a secret mini-game

lol..are you serious?

I know I know, but it was on gamefaqs and I didn't know if it was true.

[Tatsujin]

Sorry to kill the momentum of the last few posts, but has anybody tried this?


Boot up Dracula X in the TCD add-on with the wrong system card in your turbo grafx; this will load a secret mini-game

lol..are you serious?

I know I know, but it was on gamefaqs and I didn't know if it was true.

here.. @10:30

[bob]

Rad