The Mugen Fighters Guild - Eternal Champions Sprites Project

DieMM

Eternal Champions Sprites Project

#1 January 19, 2016, 07:53:23 pm

Day Dreamer

Hello,

Eternal Champions is a gem of fighting game in Genesis and Sega Cd. This games has 2 flaws: weird gameplay and strange palettes. But mugen can change this!

This sprite project has 3 goals:
1. Rip every sprite that its not ripped yet.
2. Make new palettes for the chars,without contrast and weird shadows
3. Color separation the sprites.

I already started but dont intend to do it alone, if you love Eternal Champions you can join me and help in any area you want.

What need to be done?

Chars 100% Ripped: Xavier, Dark Champion, Hooter, Crispy, Raven, Thanatos.
Chars ripped but are missing theirs sega cd exclusive sprites: Blade, Larcen, Rax, Shadow, Trident.
Missing chars (need to rip all sprites): Jetta, Midknight, Eternal, Blast, Ramses, Riptide, Dawson, Chin Wo, Senator, Slither, Yappy, Zuni

Examples:

Spoiler, click to toggle visibilty

First Release: Xavier Sprites Revamp + Basic CS

Spoiler, click to toggle visibilty

Last Edit: February 11, 2016, 03:16:51 pm by DieMM

O Ilusionista

Re: Eternal Champions Sprites Project

#2 January 19, 2016, 07:56:42 pm

A living Mugen dinossaur :)
23 years of Mugen O_o

Ah, good to see you here

Like we had talked, I will code Xavier when you are done.

See ya.

Nuroravage

Re: Eternal Champions Sprites Project

#3 January 19, 2016, 08:42:24 pm

I'm liking the palettes. I always wanted to play this game but the animation quality and bad palettes. Along with weird controls made it difficult to enjoy as it came out alongside killer instinct mortal kombats and super street fighter. Also Forgettable character designs. I realize it sounds like I'm being sarcastic lol but I'm really not. I really enjoyed Time killers. And some how this game always reminded me of it. I might dig up some old creations. Change their controls and adjust their palettes so I can give them a spin while I await your guys stuff. I really want to play fighters history now for some reason

Glisp

Re: Eternal Champions Sprites Project

#4 January 22, 2016, 05:13:23 pm

I personally think you should keep blade's clothing green. Mainly because it's supposed to be a sort of jumpsuit rather than a shirt and pants and it just looks out of place IMO. Also, you might want to tone down the skintone's brightness just a bit one some of the characters. The new color looks a bit too yellow IMO. Midknight, Larcen Rax and Xavier are more or less the ones I'm referring to. I do like your idea to amp up the sprite quality though.

Oh and Jetta is actually a redhead in her concept art but in the FMV's and certain ingame art, she's blonde leading to inconsitencies. (though a lot of characters suffer from this) so whatever hair color you pick is up to you as long as it's one of those two. I was never real happy with how her face looked on the sprite. I felt it was ugly and could stand for improvement to make it less so. With Xavier, I'd make his pants the same color as his hood for the sake of consistency. These are just suggestions mind you and you don't have to follow them.

I actually did rip Blade's Vendetta sprites a long time ago btw. I'm gonna have to reupload them though because imgur's recent changes. Crispy is gonna have to be reripped. Mainly because of his shadow. he doesn't need it and it interferes with his sprites pretty bad. I was in the process of ripping Blast's stage and I think I might have started on Blast. I know I do have a partial of Riptide as well.

As for characters, Eternal Champions characters are very complex and some features from the games may not be easy to pull off, or even possible for that matter. Like Xavier has a move in the original Genesis/Mega Drive game that turns the opponent into one of the other characters at random for a short amount of time. In the Sega CD game, this move was replaced with a body switch type move which allows you to temporarily control the opponent's body and them yours. While the bodies are swapped, health bars aren't, so taking damage in the opponent's body will cause their healthbar to deplete instead of yours. I don't think Mugen can do that yet. I could be wrong though.

I originally intended to do a fangame that was meant to be what Eternal Champions 3 was supposed to be but I can't code. The Mugen engine was my first choice but I changed my mind once limitations became apparent. I had Michael Latham, the series' creator's support. Even Tristan des Pres, the Sega CD game's music composer liked the idea when I talked to him. He even offered to compose music until I told him it was non-profit. If you'd like to know more about how the third game was going to work, let me know and I'll post all the stuff I've learned so far from Mike Latham.

Last Edit: January 22, 2016, 05:51:30 pm by Glisp

Cenobite 53

Re: Eternal Champions Sprites Project

#5 January 22, 2016, 06:48:04 pm

Angry Molesting Tree
Auf gehts ab gehts 3 Tage wach

Glisp said, January 22, 2016, 05:13:23 pm

I personally think you should keep blade's clothing green. Mainly because it's supposed to be a sort of jumpsuit rather than a shirt and pants and it just looks out of place IMO.

I guess this is just for the color separation, so later on different palettes for the char are possible, some where it is a whole suit, some where it is like shirt and pants.

look at my sprite rips HERE
look at my TMNT Project HERE
My Contribution to mugen: Stages: 897 | Chars: 8 | Fullgames: 1 | Spritesheets: 85

DieMM

Re: Eternal Champions Sprites Project

#6 January 22, 2016, 07:25:41 pm

Day Dreamer

Yeah, its just like Cenobite said, the blade and xavier diferent clothing are just color separations.

I research a lot of pics of Jetta to choose her hair and I found the majority show her blonde, although I personally prefer her redhead.

About the special attacks: EC has a lot of creative special attacks, like this one of xavier you said. I think you can use creativity to convert the attacks and create new ones. The idea is not a perfect conversion of the Genesis / Sega Cd game. Its better having simpler/diferrent characters on mugen than having none.

About the skin tone, I can try diferent tones. The idea in midknight tone is make a more pale tone, undead like.

Glisp

Re: Eternal Champions Sprites Project

#7 January 22, 2016, 08:42:38 pm

Yeah I can see that, though you might want to try a different shade of that color to make it less yellow. It just looks weird on Midknight IMO. For Mugen full games there are possibilities that aren't possible with regular mugen. The catch is, to do these you lose compatibility with regular Mugen.

As for the Infernals, it looks like no designs were made according to Mike. So we'll have to design them ourselves if we want them. That might be kinda hard because it means making a detailed backstory as well as coming up with a design for a new character. It's gonna be rough to come up with something that would remotely fit. (for me anyway) not to mention designing stages for them and music tracks.

GalFord

Re: Eternal Champions Sprites Project

#8 January 22, 2016, 10:03:39 pm

Give me Tea, or Cake!

Shadow's outfit was different in EC:CFTDS, it was more "oriental" than "90's dominatrix". Jetta's hair was, as stated.. Red in concept art, but the game sprites had it sort of a red/blonde, aside from her 2 player colours, where it was black.

O Ilusionista

Re: Eternal Champions Sprites Project

#9 January 23, 2016, 04:49:33 pm

A living Mugen dinossaur :)
23 years of Mugen O_o

Just a side note: I think Slash has a too dark outline at his legs, while on the original it was a dark brown. Have you tried to use a dark brown instead of black?

Glisp

Re: Eternal Champions Sprites Project

#10 January 23, 2016, 08:10:45 pm

GalFord said, January 22, 2016, 10:03:39 pm

Shadow's outfit was different in EC:CFTDS, it was more "oriental" than "90's dominatrix". Jetta's hair was, as stated.. Red in concept art, but the game sprites had it sort of a red/blonde, aside from her 2 player colours, where it was black.

I'll probably have to rip her sprites myself from CFTDS. I was intending to eventually anyway. There is a Mugen character that's pretty unfinished for her sega CD version. It has some of the sprites we need but not all of them.

Speaking of unfinished, the Senator character that's available is awesome, except it can air block (something not possible in EC) and it lacks its Vendetta (Goin' Postal)

I've also started thinking of things that aren't possible or limited in Mugen:

-I don't think body switching is possible unless it's used for a full game or something. (as I said above full games can do things regular mugen can't at the cost of compatibility to regular mugen)

-stage fatalities may be possible with 1.0 but it means adding code to each character to be compatible with them.

-Disabling controls during stage based transformations (such as the EC's) is ignored by characters that have Super Armor.

-Multiple rotating palletes can't be assigned to the same character. (mugen 1.0 supports permanent ones though but only one per character pallete.) SuperMystery's Eternal Champion is an example of this limitation (both the original version and his 1.0 version)

-using Vendettas and Cinekills on your opponents makes the Eternal Champion weaker but strengthens the Dark Eternal Champion.

-Cinekills: We could probably do them but it means taking a ton of screenshots during the FMV sequences and recording the sounds and only the default champions have them. The Eternals and Secret characters don't. For those that don't know what Cinekills are here's a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9BVTzwkHss

Edit:
Just got some new info from Mike on Facebook. Yes THE Michael Latham, as in the creator of EC. I'm friends with him on Facebook and skype so I ask him certain questions and things. Here's what he said regarding the Infernals. Apparently I was wrong regarding who they were.

Quote

The prob with EC3 was I never got a chance to create a full design before Joe told me SOJ wanted it dead. So I never did full designs for the Infernals. The concept was they were the person who caused the death, not the killer, but made the call to kill that Eternal. In Shadow's case it was the CEO of Black Orchard Corp, For Larcen it was http://stc.wikia.com/wiki/Mr_Tagliani The other's can be guessed from their stories in the game. As for 8th form I did remember, it's entropy. That's about all I can help give you as details.

Chaos EC did have 8 forms as you can see above. Also each infernal was someone that caused their death, not the one that actually killed them directly. As he said above, Larcen's equivlant is Mr. Tagilini, his boss. And Shadow's was the black orchid CEO (whom lacks a name) We can infer who the others were via character stories as for actual names of the infernals, that's probably up to us. (Aside from Tagilini anyway)

Last Edit: January 23, 2016, 09:12:51 pm by Glisp

CoopNPB

Re: Eternal Champions Sprites Project

#11 January 23, 2016, 11:47:11 pm

Cowboys just didn't get Motown

Good luck with this my man. Despite the gameplay mechanics and bad coding, Eternal Champions is actually one of my favorite fighting games of all time. I hope my encouragement boost up your effort in theses characters my man

DieMM

Re: Eternal Champions Sprites Project

#12 January 24, 2016, 02:12:27 am

Day Dreamer

Quote

Shadow's outfit was different in EC:CFTDS, it was more "oriental" than "90's dominatrix". Jetta's hair was, as stated.. Red in concept art, but the game sprites had it sort of a red/blonde, aside from her 2 player colours, where it was black.

Yeah I know, im using this outfit as a base for my Sarah. I personally prefer her genesis version, that is most famous.

Quote

Just a side note: I think Slash has a too dark outline at his legs, while on the original it was a dark brown. Have you tried to use a dark brown instead of black?

Yeah, youre right, maybe I missed something. Thanks for pointing that.

Quote

Chaos EC did have 8 forms as you can see above. Also each infernal was someone that caused their death, not the one that actually killed them directly. As he said above, Larcen's equivlant is Mr. Tagilini, his boss. And Shadow's was the black orchid CEO (whom lacks a name) We can infer who the others were via character stories as for actual names of the infernals, that's probably up to us. (Aside from Tagilini anyway)

All that information will be very useful, but for now I think we should focus on doing the normal characters on mugen and later we can think about news. I have plans to try to sprite edit a tashile, the bionic woman from the game x-perts.

Talking about progress: Im still doing the Xavier palette corrections, its not just make a color separation, its a pixel hunt. For example, we have a lot of blue pixels in the middle of a green area, a red pixel appear from nowhere in skin in some animations. Its time consuming, but im progressing fine. Im perfectionist, so that make everything more difficult.

I did a new palette for dark champion based on a concept glisp send me, what you guys think?

O Ilusionista

Re: Eternal Champions Sprites Project

#13 January 24, 2016, 03:17:16 am

A living Mugen dinossaur :)
23 years of Mugen O_o

I liked it. But maybe the classic blue skin is more, you know, classic.

Glisp

Re: Eternal Champions Sprites Project

#14 January 24, 2016, 08:41:27 pm

That design for Dark EC is pretty much based upon his design from the FMV sequences. Still I never actually made a full rotating pallete for his new color set. I probably should have though. Even if the classic colors aren't used as the main palletes, having them as alternate palletes wouldn't hurt. I mean, the more colors the player has to choose from the better.

The FMV sequences in EC CD used the Sega CD's ability to play FMV's with 256 colors. It's the only title that did this on Sega CD. (that I know of anyway) As for gameplay, it was still limited to the Genesis/Mega Drive's typical 64 color limit. The video was of course still grainy, but it looks considerably better than other Sega CD titles. iirc I think I read somewhere that the cutscenes were recorded in cinepak codec rather than converted. (Cinepak is the codec Sega CD FMV's use) Dunno if it's true though. You can see examples of EC CD's fmv's in a post I did above.

Last Edit: January 24, 2016, 08:54:33 pm by Glisp

DieMM

Re: Eternal Champions Sprites Project

#15 February 11, 2016, 03:23:26 pm

Day Dreamer

Xavier is done!
Tried to revamp all sprites and do a basic color separation. This is the first time I do that kind of stuff, so if I missed something or some sprite has a minor error, forgive me.
I updated the first post.

Credits to Belial for ripping the originals sprites. You can use it as you want, I dont need credit for anything.

Im gonna start working on another character now, If someone wants to code a specific char, can pm me because I can priorize my work for most needed/wanted char.