Rondo of Blood Thread

[awack]

This is a good point. Look at Earthworm Jim. It's much more well animated than Rondo, but plays rather sloppier. Animation frames don't make a game.

In my opinion, more frames can make for a better game, rondo for example...first of all I have to point out that rondo has thousands more frames of animation, also individual enemies have more frames, EWJ has between 20 and 40 frames per boss, rondo has between 70 and 240 frames per boss, some of those are flips or color swapping though.... what EWJ and many other cartoony type platformers do is have only one move per enemy, they put all the frames in that one move, where is in rondo there can be three, four, five or so moves...this can but not always make for a more fun game, a few bosses from each game below to show what I mean.

EWJ


EWJ


EWJ


EWJ


EWJ



the rondo sheets are so big that you have to scroll over to the right.


RONDO DRACULA



RONDO MINATOUR


RONDO DEATH




RONDO SHAFT


RONDO WYVERN


RONDO WAREWOLF


RONDO DULAHAN





non boss enemy from rondo, this is what I mean, he jumps out of window, walks, runs, jumps, kicks, flips, sword attack, has death animation, and two different sparks from sword attack depending on where you face him, i realize im becoming more and more of a dip shit fanboy every day


RONDO



I completely agree about Axe 2, could you imagine a super cd Axe 3.

[bob]

Forgive how dumb I am, but how do you guys make these frame breakdowns?

[Black Tiger]

Cartoony animation like Earthworm Jim's stands out more because it's supposed to be exaggerated, with lots of bouncing. Games using a realistic and detailed style with clean polished pixel art like Dracula X don't usually have such perfect animation/consistency among key frames. Usually games like that have noticeable off-model frames or rely more on just waving a limb or something off of the same few frames, in an unnatural looking way. Rondo is packed with lots of fully original frames with animations, but also has lots of animating bits attached to shared frames, but it always looks natural. It's a testament to how well done the animation is done overall, that most people don't realize just how massive the number of frames is throughout the game. And that's part of the mystique: the maintained the same standard from beginning to end for all of the aesthetics. So you don't have as many money shots which stand out in other high profile games. It's all money.

Forgive how dumb I am, but how do you guys make these frame breakdowns?

Play a game in Magic Engine, turn off either the sprite or tile layer as needed, start hammering the backspace key.

[esteban]

Castlevania, in general, is overrated. Especially The PCE installment. The N64 Castlevanias finally introduced some new, creative ideas (motorcycle-riding skeletons, for example) that were subsequently ignored by Konami, sadly.

But, it gets worse: Rondo of Blood was originally slated to feature fresh new character designs (motorcycle-riding-skeletons), but Konami panicked and missed a golden opportunity to cross-market Honda motorcycles in Rondo of Blood...I read that that a few thousand Dracula X Crucifix Keychains had already been distributed to Honda dealerships across Japan when the cross-promotion deal was cancelled. Damn shame. 

 

Thankfully, a few hundred promotional "Honda of Blood" PCE demos were sent to the dealerships. You can only play the first few stages, but I can't tell you how awesome it is to maneuver Richter around a Honda Scooter in a dungeon, or how insane Maria looks when you reach max speed on a Honda ATV (I counted 89 frames of animation for her hair blowing in the wind).

Again, Konami sucks.

[Nando]

Sprite sheet Pr0N!!! LOVE IT!!!

[lukester]

Interesting about Earthworm Jim.

In all honesty though, Awack, any other PCE sprite rips? The rips are really well done. Amount of frames does't bother me, I just want to see the beautiful sprite work.

[bob]

Forgive how dumb I am, but how do you guys make these frame breakdowns?

Play a game in Magic Engine, turn off either the sprite or tile layer as needed, start hammering the backspace key.

i havent used ME much.  you can do this?  why "backspace"? is that the screenshot hotkey or something?
or are you messing with me and i am falling for it?

[fragmare]

Forgive how dumb I am, but how do you guys make these frame breakdowns?

Play a game in Magic Engine, turn off either the sprite or tile layer as needed, start hammering the backspace key.

You're really better off using something like Ootake or Mednafen that has an "advance frame" option.  That way you don't have to hammer the screenshot key.

[EvilEvoIX]

I always wondered why people bothered comparing Frames of Animation between a Cart and a CD, highly dubious at best.  I think Awack is stating that the MD Version of EWJ has extremly smooth animation for what it is, I always thought that too.  Plus the game moves perfectly and has almost Zero Lag, just a quality representation.  It would be quite interesting to see a Super CD Port of EWJ on the PCE, to see how well it would run.

[EvilEvoIX]

If the Sega-CD got a port of Fortrgotten Worlds done the way that the PCE version was, then it would have likely sacrificed 2-player gameplay as well. The Sega-CD has 3 times the space of what Super CD games get to load into. But you're still thinking about it all wrong, there's no reason to bring up the Sega-CD. The PCE version's stages without bosses can't be more than <16 megs. It's obvious not only how much gets recycled, but how stages like the vertical ones aren't filling the 2 meg space. It's just another average sized 16-bit console game.

This Seems Confusing, isn't the Sega CD nearly double the strength of the Sega Genesis in terms of processing power?  Why would it be only single player?

[Bonknuts]

If the Sega-CD got a port of Fortrgotten Worlds done the way that the PCE version was, then it would have likely sacrificed 2-player gameplay as well. The Sega-CD has 3 times the space of what Super CD games get to load into. But you're still thinking about it all wrong, there's no reason to bring up the Sega-CD. The PCE version's stages without bosses can't be more than <16 megs. It's obvious not only how much gets recycled, but how stages like the vertical ones aren't filling the 2 meg space. It's just another average sized 16-bit console game.

This Seems Confusing, isn't the Sega CD nearly double the strength of the Sega Genesis in terms of processing power?  Why would it be only single player?

 Yes and no. The extra processor isn't going to give you move hardware sprites on screen (or more importantly, sprite pixel per scanline limit). There would be quite a bit of flicker or blank, if you ported the SuperCD version "as is" to the SegaCD but add in the extra player. If you used the bitmap function of the SegaCD, the frame would be about 20fps or less and all would have to share the same 15 colors for ~all~ sprites. It's one of the things they shouldn't have gone without; a simple but real 256color/8bit bitmap on the SegaCD side that overlays like the 32x did. 

 As it is, they could have made the SuperCD version 2 player - if they have used the lower 256 resolution.

[Bonknuts]

I always wondered why people bothered comparing Frames of Animation between a Cart and a CD, highly dubious at best.

 Actually, CD games have their weakness too. So it's fair game. There's no way you can do fit even a single stage of SF2:CE from the hucard into a SuperCD game. The SuperCD is limited by it's relatively small amount of ram (simulated cart space). Carts have the advantage that you can have more animation in a single level, and CDs have the advantage of being able to have more animation across an entire game. One can, and is, superior to the other - depending on what you need for a game design. Games that re-use the same enemies/objects through out different stages, give no real benefit to a CD setup. Games that need more than 2megabit of storage access in a single level, do not work on a CD setup (unless you break the level down into 'section' loading).

[Black Tiger]

I always wondered why people bothered comparing Frames of Animation between a Cart and a CD, highly dubious at best.

While it's true that CD games are at a huge disadvantage when it comes to animation compared to carts, the games are the games. Since the PCE launched, only two consoles haven't supported disc-based games. So you can disqualify Nintendo for two generations, but that would be highly dubious at best. Everyone with common sense takes the misc variables into consideration. It's no different than comparing two cart games which weren't released on the same day, hardware, rom size and expertize/effort.

I think Awack is stating that the MD Version of EWJ has extremly smooth animation for what it is, I always thought that too.  Plus the game moves perfectly and has almost Zero Lag, just a quality representation.  It would be quite interesting to see a Super CD Port of EWJ on the PCE, to see how well it would run.

Keeping things moving faster makes it so that less frames of animation are required for it to look smooth. Slower subtle animation requires the highest number of frames to look smooth. Drac X excels with both.

It would be much more interesting to see how an Arcade Card CD version of Earthworm Jim could turn out. If not limited by the source material, an original game could be tailored for the PCE hardware to show what it can really do.

There won't be any issue as far as running extremely smooth animation with zero lag, as Sapphire runs more on-screen pixels of sprite animation with at least as many frames per second as any 16-bit console game, all with intense 2-player gameplay and zero lag (what are these lagging games anyway?).

This Seems Confusing, isn't the Sega CD nearly double the strength of the Sega Genesis in terms of processing power?  Why would it be only single player?

The Sega-CD cpu is close to 65% faster than the Genesis cpu. But 2-player gameplay in 16-bit console games is normally bottlenecked by sprite bandwidth and not cpu power (except maybe SNES games which slowdown a lot with only single player gameplay). Hellfire on Genesis isn't limited to single player gameplay because the PC Engine is twice as powerful as the Genesis.

As has been discussed before, Forgotten Worlds is a pixel-for-pixel port of a CPS1 game and has poor sprite optimization. I don't think that any Genesis or Sega-CD game attempted to port CPS1 assets pixel-for-pixel, but some of the Neo Geo ports look like they use arcade sized sprites. The Genesis can line up more sprites at it's wider resolution (close to the resolution the PCE version uses), but if a Genesis/Sega-CD port was also sloppy with sprite usage, then it would also drop 2-player gameplay. Games like Hellfire, Raiden, Darius II, Mercs, Twin Cobra, Rastan Saga II, Thunderfox, Rolling Thunder 2, and Fire Shark all lost 2-player support when ported to Genesis.

Just look at the difference is sprite size and quantity in comparison pics:

http://tg-16.com/screenshot_comparisons.htm#Forgotten_Worlds


And that's just what you actually get to see in the PCE version, which wastes lots of sprite bandwidth with invisible overlap.

It would also be much more than "a little less" color if a Genesis port shot for full detail (see Final Fight CD, even with the shrinkage).

Both the Genesis/Sega-CD and PC Engine could do super detailed 2-player unique versions of Forgotten Worlds, which would look faithful to the arcade. But you can't just take the flawed PCE version and run it as-is on Genesis with more sprites.

[EvilEvoIX]

What is the sprite limit on Sega Cd?  Also again isn't it significantly easier to load more frames of animation on a cd vs a cart?  I know that the frames have to load off the cd but there has to be a benefit of having a massive storage space to fit highly detailed sprite information?

[SuperDeadite]

Compare the NeoGeo and the NeoGeo CD.  Both play the exact same games and have the same sprite hardware, the CD version was created to be cheaper.  Carts went for $250+ while the same game was sold on CD for $60 or so.  The trade-off is that when using CDs you have to pre-load the data into RAM.   

The NeoCD therefore had a whopping 7mb of RAM, but when you only have a single speed CD-ROM, it takes a long time read that much data, hence the infamous load times.  And even then 7mb wasn't enough hence cuts had to be made to later games.