I've wanted to make a 2d Castleroid/platformer for a long time. My first attempt, woefully, used RM2k3.



This approach was severely counter-indicated, but before I gave up under the weight of a nigh unplayable game, I did a lot of leg work with respect to the planned bosses/skills, etc. I even mapped out a fair chunk of the castle's layout.

I tried again when I got my hands on MMF2, but my product was pretty buggy and I had a hard time generating the artwork I wanted, or at least getting it to match the existing stuff, so I started writing a story that worked separately from Castlevania.

In the meantime, I've gotten a little better at working with the maker, (and hopefully I've gotten a little better at the artwork side too), so I decided to start a new project.



Herein lies the dilemma-

1)Go original with the game world.
2)Make it a Castlevania fangame.

With the "original" version, the story goes as follows.

The main character is an Inquisitor, essentially a Witch Breaker. He led a purge that cleared out a Cabal of Sorcerers. The surviving initiates are seeking to return their leader to the living. As the player, you begin by going to the cavernous crypt where the ritual is set to take place. A few twists and turns later, the Inquisitor is branded as a heretic by the Church and goes on a private war against the surviving members of the Cabal by hunting them in run down Monasteries, Abbeys, Castles, Caves, Forests, etc. I did a lot of leg work, looking up mythical/supernatural creatures to use as enemies (trying to avoid most of the ones that Castlevania uses consistently). I have in-game explanations for several of the skills/abilities that unlock new exploration options. The problem is that I think it may be too ambitious for a "first project", and that it feels like I'm trying to make a Castlevania game without calling it such.

If I were to take the fangame route -

The character is instead a Necromancer who has found a way to force the castle to appear early. His goal is to use his magic on Dracula's scattered remains in order to steal from him the knowledge of eternal life. A main feature (which might have been original when I came up with this back in 03...) was the use of Altars around the Castle to combine enemy essences into Familiars. An example from the horrible RTP Castlevania - collect bonemeal, ectoplasm, and an arrow to summon a skeletal archer. Some of the Altars, allowing for the creation of more powerful familiars, would be hidden and require the requisite movement ability upgrades to reach. The usage of the Necromancer framework also helps it to make sense for the character to suddenly learn new skills just for killing something, and I had a system (taken from an earlier attempt) that would allow the player to absorb essences from the enemies to restore mana. This essence was also part of familiar creation, in that it was "sacrificed" at the Altar to complete the creation.

Even if I go the fangame route, I would still have to re-draw any enemy sprites I wanted to use, because mixing and matching my art style/scale with sprite rips doesn't tend to look too stellar, so it wouldn't cut the workload down that much - with the exception of the basic structure being in place already, and the fact that I would already have a good portion of the map planned out.

I'd say the original route definitely. It also sounds more interesting and I like the Rm2k3 version of it anyway! The only trouble with it is that the chipset you used is not meant for platformers but with a little editing it can be.

yeah a fangame will be ignored and if you do an original that just takes inspiration people can understand it to an extent but not be put off by a castlevania title, since so many fangames are so awful.

One of the biggest freeware games out there, spelunky, takes a LOT of inspiration from La Mulana, Spelunker and NetHack, yet this doesnt put people off in the slightest. If he would have called it La Mulana: Spirit of Ultima Destiny Sword or summat fanboyish like that.

so yeah, i'm big support of the original route.

Thanks for the responses! What I meant by too ambitious, is that for the original one I have a bunch of areas and things in mind. I'm still working at the art side of it, and I have quite a bit farther to go before I'll be able to represent some of the ideas I had! I started working on the supporting characters and enemies for the first area, and I realized my main character's sprite had a neck that was about a foot long. I'm also still really hit or miss on my background art.

When I started jotting down some ideas for the story, I did realize most of the enemies would probably end up being human. The more magical enemies would appear as the story moves forwards because of the cult's actions. I would say that I have about half to 2/3rds of the story areas planned out - and most all of the motion abilities figured out.

What I think I'm going to do is to use the graphics (miniature RM2K3 sized - and they have black outlines sometimes) from the old one for a rough draft/remake in MMF2. I found some files on my old computer that flesh out almost an entire Castlevania game - so I figure the "fan game" will be the test run where I cut my teeth on getting all my functions to work, and the original will come along afterward once I've gotten my art and click-coding up to snuff. That way I can get feedback on a bunch of things, like my puzzles, boss patterns, overall difficulty level.

One of these days, I'm also going to throw up the "demo" of the RM2k3 disaster for any masochists to download.

And the art thing... the program I use for almost every low color piece I do is Deluxe Paint 2 Enhanced. The only graphic mode it gives me in 256 colors (because it can't detect a graphics card that is 15 years newer then the art program) is 320x200. The hard black outlines and contouring really clash at that resolution. I'm using a bastard screen dimension in the original content game of 480x360 enlarged to full screen because it keeps the artwork looking fairly decent and gives me roughly the correct sprite size I'm looking for. I'll give hard-lining a try when I do the repaired version of the main character, but no promises that it'll stay that way.

They feel wrong. I've used DP2 since I was about eight. I've even used it (in the past when I had older graphics cards that it could read at higher resolutions) for professional grade work. I sort of felt vindicated later when I found out that Lucasarts used it for a lot of game art.

I don't know, I've got all the keyboard shortcuts memorized and I really like the undo + page swap feature. The Gallery sub-program is also pretty good for checking to see if the frames for an animation flow well before taking it anywhere else.

Mainly comfort, but probably with a large helping of stubbornness.