Castlevania Mod - Plans/Summary

[Botdra]

Ages ago there was a Castlevania Mod being done for JA, and we've decided to pick that back up again.

Basically, we are NOT doing this with the "SP total conversion or bust" mentality. While we'd love to remake Castlevania 64 in JA it just isn't realistic for us right now. So, the plan is to work on related content in the hopes that we finish it all and do end up with a solid Castlevania TC, but we're working on things in such a way that at any point in time if we need abandon the project or call it quits, we will still have enough content to release a smaller mod pack (some maps and models). Currently Omegasigma and I are working on mapping out sections from Castlevania 64/Castlevania Legacy of Darkness. We have a couple player models in the works and some weapons as well. THIS IS NOT A CASTLEVANIA 64 REMAKE, we are just taking a lot of inspiration from it since it was the first 3D Castlevania game to have the Castle so extensively mapped out, similar to what we intend to do in JA. There will be content from all kinds of Castlevania games and original content as well.

If you wish to contribute we would love to have you on the team, every little texture and map object is still a huge help to us, and your feedback is also much appreciated. Thanks for your time!

[katanamaru]

There was another Castlevania mod way back when that wanted me to add my shield style to the skeleton and an Alucard model. I did and sent it to them, but nothing ever came of that mod. Thing is I still have the skeleton and Alucard already to go with the shield style if ya'll want them.

[CaptainChar]

I have the alucard model still, its just incomplete

[CaptainCrazy]

I agree, it'd be a hard task to make it on this engine.  I prefer to use Source for full remakes of such things

[CaptainChar]

I considered making the original mod 2.5D, like Megaman X8, Dracula X CHronicles,, and Mirror of Fate, it wouldn't be that hard to make the engine run in 2.5D mod, and if done, it would open up another door

[Botdra]

There was another Castlevania mod way back when that wanted me to add my shield style to the skeleton and an Alucard model. I did and sent it to them, but nothing ever came of that mod. Thing is I still have the skeleton and Alucard already to go with the shield style if ya'll want them.

 

Yeah we've got the incomplete Alucard model like OmegaSigma said, just gotta make it fully functional.

 

@@CaptainCrazy: We're not really going for a full remake exactly, we're kind of working away at this with the approach of "Making a TC would be sick so let's work towards that, but all the content we make should be rad on its own as well." So at the end of the day if we do finish a TC and it's just "meh", no worries. It'll be fun regardless to make and play, and we will still have lots of maps, models, weapons etc. that people can use like any normal mod download. Think of it like an MP mod pack, that we are trying to make as a SP experience as well.

[Botdra]

Although we are making great progress and have some solid work being done, we are always looking for people to make contributions. We've had people make small things for us (a reskin, a couple map objects, some textures etc.) and each of those small contributions is greatly appreciated by the team. It gets us one step closer to completion.

If anyone is willing to contribute in some small way (no contribution is too small) just me or another team member know and we'll sort you out!

Thanks very much!

[Botdra]

Figured we needed to start discussing the SP side of this mod, since the MP side is extremely easy to do with assets from the SP side. I'm gonna copy and paste some ideas from myself and Omegasigma into here, since we were talking a bit about it over PM.

 

Some ideas I had:

- Jumping height of the player should be about Force Jump height 2, since I feel that stays most true to the general jumping height in the Castlevania series. Perhaps later on jump level 3 could be something you unlock in order to get to the next area if we want to add that.

- Different weapon types/system:

- I'm thinking there should be different weapons with different damage if possible, but considering that might be rather complicated we could always just have a variety of weapons with all the same stats that you can choose from (basically the same idea as choosing a hilt, where it's all about look and preference instead of stats).

- A whip would be killer if we can pull it off, but we'll need to look into that further. It seems like it would be very tough to do. If we can get it work, perhaps that should be the character's main weapon?
- Another tradition I feel we should honor is the secondary weapon system. I'm thinking the best way to emulate that is to replace the force powers with different secondary weapons (Bible, Axe, Holy Water, what have you) so that you still have a limit on how much you can use them, but you can put points into each one so you have access to multiple secondary weapon types. We could also easily make this seem like the soul system from Aria of Sorrow, spells, whatever you want the secondary weapons to be.

- Another idea if we get the whip functioning is we could have the melee weapons also have a primary and secondary system. So force powers would be replaced by special weapons of some kind as discussed earlier, but melee could be two handed, where you have a sword/axe/dagger/lance/club etc. in your left hand that you swing with Left Click, and the whip in your right hand which you swing with Right Click. This could become a very dynamic system if we can work in weapon stats as well. Have the whip for long range, then a really damage-heavy dagger for up close for example.
 

- Depending on the storyline and such, multiple playable characters might be a cool idea. Would be too much work to have them use different combat systems though like in other CV games.

 

- Some sort of model scaling system should be set up, as I would feel pretty bored fighting a Dracula or Death that's my height, and would mean we could easily make different version of enemies. For instance, Skeletons that are player height would be a common enemy, and then we could make a Giant Skeleton as a boss.

 

 

Some ideas Omegasigma had:

 

 

 

OJP had an energy whip, if we could find some of them (if they're still around) we could get a functioning whip easily

force jump sounds about right, Cause Alucard and Maria can double jump, and Richter jumps about double his body height

 

umm we do Have some sub weapons made for the original mod.

 

 

and holy crosses were made

 

 

all these were made by Tobe_one if I recall correctly

 

Dracula to Richter is 1.5X taller and Death well in some games his human sized, other games hes a beast eg Lament of Innocence, but its really up you, and he could even have 2 forms, our Dracula Oriiginally transformed into his SOTN form, which was an altered rancor

 

Also, say you pick Richter to play as, I wonder if he could be set with the whip as his default weapon, and with Alucard's case (should we get the model fixed) start off with the Alucard Sword, ones a close range, and the other is a mid range

 

 

So let's start the brainstorming on gameplay and storyline and see what happens. All ideas are welcome!

[AshuraDX]

you can rescale character models via their NPC file so that's not going to be a problem

I can kinda see problems incomnig with replacing the forcepowers for secondary weapons

we cant bolt a model to the players hand which will be shown when using the specific force power without any sort of code mod

unless we place a model righ tin the .efx file at the origin of the "weapon" effect

[Botdra]

you can rescale character models via their NPC file so that's not going to be a problem

I can kinda see problems incomnig with replacing the forcepowers for secondary weapons

we cant bolt a model to the players hand which will be shown when using the specific force power without any sort of code mod

unless we place a model righ tin the .efx file at the origin of the "weapon" effect

 

Don't you need some other config file along with them though? I remember JA+ had model scaling but base JA didn't?

 

Yeah, we may have to go with replacing blasters instead of force powers if it gets complicated. That might even be MORE accurate to the games because you have ammo instead of force, and it doesn't recharge like Force Powers do. We could make all the weapons use the same ammo type, and you have to pickup ammo (or in this case, we can model the ammo pickups to look like hearts, like in Castlevania) and the mechanic would then be essentially the same as the original series.

[AshuraDX]

we could also make all weapons use the same kind of ammunition

 

and NPC scaling was allways possible in SP

just look at the jawas or ughnaughts

 

the meshes are the same size as any other character model

[Botdra]

we could also make all weapons use the same kind of ammunition

 

and NPC scaling was allways possible in SP

just look at the jawas or ughnaughts

 

the meshes are the same size as any other character model

 

Yeah but for the MP side of the mod we need the scaling as well. Well, I think it would be nice anyways, it's up to the team.

[CaptainChar]

Death and Dracula in my keep maps were extremely tough, especially since Dracula in that version transformed into a rancor, (we didn't have the model yet done for the SOTN/RoB/DoS form down) but originally, me and Zion were going to look into a scripted Dracula battle, the classic teleport then fireball moves, I considered this as (when Drac's in motion his cloaked, when he stops he must stop to fire his projectile attack, leaving him open for attack, this was a crude method cause neither Zion or myself knew of scripts or coding then, Death Is a bit easier since he would have behaved more like Ragnos in our original version, floating around, cept wielding a scythe, which as I recall Tobe made 3 varients of

[Botdra]

Death and Dracula in my keep maps were extremely tough, especially since Dracula in that version transformed into a rancor, (we didn't have the model yet done for the SOTN/RoB/DoS form down) but originally, me and Zion were going to look into a scripted Dracula battle, the classic teleport then fireball moves, I considered this as (when Drac's in motion his cloaked, when he stops he must stop to fire his projectile attack, leaving him open for attack, this was a crude method cause neither Zion or myself knew of scripts or coding then, Death Is a bit easier since he would have behaved more like Ragnos in our original version, floating around, cept wielding a scythe, which as I recall Tobe made 3 varients of

 

Personally I think there should be a two-form Dracula with a beast form like in some of the games. For now Rancor reskin would be sick as the stand-in, but eventually a standalone model would be needed I think. I would be a bit disappointed to see a reskin of a rancor as the final boss of the entire game, you know? And then we can take the reskin of the rancor and use it as another enemy in the mod.

[CaptainChar]

IM going to go ahead to liquidate all the beta screens I had, from the former "Vampire Blood Chronicles" mod

Dracula 2nd form:

 

 

 

 

 

Castlevania early 3d Mock up, note the N64 keep

 

 

 

 

 

Early Exterior shot of the castle

 

 

 

 

 

Early version of the keep I made:

 

 

 

 

[Botdra]

Things brings to mind another point. I think it would be good to have some exterior levels as well, like a village level outside the castle. We'll have to plan out and design the entire map of the game some more to figure out how things would work, but I like the idea of a village level to start you off slow, but develop a lot of the story through a mix of cutscenes and possibly scripted conversations? Maybe even a bit of questing if we feel like it (maybe meeting Rinaldo Gandolfini to get the vampire killer or some other weapon he forges for you, depending on what we can swing with the JA code) before things get rolling in the actual castle.

I think we could also give that Rancor a bit of a makeover. Some shader work to give him big, bright red glowing eyes maybe? New soundset too perhaps. Just to get him as far away from the base rancor as possible... while still using the same model haha.

[CaptainChar]

Id like to point out, in Castlevania Dracula X, or Rondo of Blood, Dracula sieges a town to get the Belmont's attention, usually kidnapping people, its a reoccurring theme

[Botdra]

Id like to point out, in Castlevania Dracula X, or Rondo of Blood, Dracula sieges a town to get the Belmont's attention, usually kidnapping people, its a reoccurring theme

 

Yeah, I had the idea after playing LOS and remembering back in the day when I tried to make a small medieval village map... and of course LOS has one too.

[CaptainChar]

could always have the hero passing by, notice a village in distress and go to investigate where they find out Dracula has returned

[Botdra]

I thought we should start a thread on enemies for the mod. It can be classics from the Castlevania series or it can be original monster ideas, but we should start talking about this anyways.

So far we have a skeleton enemy, a Dracula model/skin, a "2nd form" of Dracula which for now is a reskin of the Rancor model, and Tobi's Orc skin, which I'm assuming we can use. It's also worth mentioning we can scale different enemies and reskin them (for example, normal skeletons can be turned into a mini-boss giant skeleton) to get variation out of the same models.

I thought it would be worth mentioning these models as possibly ones to use for the mod:
http://jediknight3.filefront.com/file/Werewolf;67567
http://jediknight3.filefront.com/file/Peeping_Eye;93515

Might be worth seeing if we can use those. On top of that we could also do some ghosts up (Ragnos style) and maybe some floating and/or flaming skulls to replace the remote droid possibly. Just brainstorming ideas of how to get some classic enemies up in here.

So I'm leaving this side of things in the hands of @tobi_one, @@AshuraDX and @@ChalklYne to do the actual work, but I think we should all be involved in the discussion of things. You three have a lot of freedom to do whatever you want on this side of things, but be sure to keep us in the loop and updated when you can. Anywho, let's start a discussion! Who do you want to see in the mod?

P.S. If we can make as many of these enemies playable characters in the MP side of the mod as possible, that would be rad, but not a must.

[AshuraDX]

I could do the flaming skulls pretty easily by altering this guy here :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzYYLhBbXfE

could even include the laugh as some sort of taunt or something

 

then make the noghri weapon invisible , place it i nhis mouthz and make it shoot fireballs , I think the noghri gun would work best for this as it leaves a DOT(Damage over time) effect on you

and with altered effects It could turn out decently

[tobe_one]

Hi! The skull is very cool

I have some reskins maybe we can use.

[Botdra]

I could do the flaming skulls pretty easily by altering this guy here :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzYYLhBbXfE

could even include the laugh as some sort of taunt or something

 

then make the noghri weapon invisible , place it i nhis mouthz and make it shoot fireballs , I think the noghri gun would work best for this as it leaves a DOT(Damage over time) effect on you

and with altered effects It could turn out decently

 

Great idea man, sounds like a plan to me! Can't wait to see it.

 

 

Hi! The skull is very cool

I have some reskins maybe we can use.

 

Very cool man! Soma's looking nice. These skins can definitely be put to use. Looking at the second one I really feel like that model could also be used to skin a great Mummy enemy as well.

[CaptainChar]

I see a Some Cruz, also is there any way to get a hollowman/ hollow knight in game? eg just a suit of armor with no one inside it per say.

these guys are seen since Castlevania 1, usually using throwing axes at you, in Dracula X they carry spears and pikes and attack from more distance

[AshuraDX]

ofc there is

somebody'd just have to model a few armro parts , match them to the skeleton and voila , you get living armor