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Gabriel Belmont and Alucard (Castlevania Lords of Shadow) (Read 38570 times)

Started by Dope, June 14, 2014, 05:11:10 pm
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Gabriel Belmont and Alucard (Castlevania Lords of Shadow)
#1  June 14, 2014, 05:11:10 pm
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Both Castlevania Lords of Shadow 1 and 2 have in game sketch animations when reviewing or upgrading skills in the pause menu. I think they'd make for some cool mugen characters so the animations are currently in the ripping process. Here's a youtube video of what Lords of Shadow 1 Gabriel looks like:


Only thing missing really would be hurt animations and optional stuff like a walk and animated stance. Everything else has some badass mugen possibilities. Finding someone interested in shading the sprites would be nice. But for now I'm going with the simple sketch style for sprites.

The second game also has sketch animations for all the abilities. Second game's main character is Gabriel turned Dracula so it has a different moveset and outfit. Dracula has a blood whip (actually called shadow whip in game) that he makes at will to attack like he did in the first game. He also has what's called the Void Sword which has some ice abilities here and there and also gives him life with each hit. Mugen version probably won't give health. His other main weapon is called the Chaos Claws. It's basically a punching based style with some fire abilities to it.




I did some random testing of my own to make these into simple sprites. Basically changing contrast, using irfanview to lower the amount of colors to 4, and then doing some manual color changing. Didn't take very long. I kinda like it, it's like a Mr. Game And Watch kinda thing.




The LoS2 animations have much darker and solid outlines though so I don't have to bother with the whole contrast adjusting thing with those. LoS2 also has DLC story featuring Alucard which also has sketch animations. Alucard will most likely be ripped and converted first it seems. Here's a rough draft of his stance and one of his slashes



If anyone wants to help in any way whatsoever please speak up because I'd be more than grateful for any kind of help. A few things off hand that would be nice to get help with:
- gathering or ripping voice clips from Lords of Shadow.
- Any sort of custom spriting for extra animations that aren't in the source such as an animated stance or walk. Maybe some hurt animations.
- Some of his animations are zoomed out so they're not to scale with his other animations. Anyone willing to rescale some of these would be greatly appreciated.
- This is a bit far fetched for the moment but anyone interested in shading this into a more popular 2d sprite style like CVS would be awesome. Or even at least color separating the existing shading so I could give him palettes with different color hair, clothes, etc.
Last Edit: September 10, 2014, 10:23:26 am by Dope
Re: Gabriel Belmont (Castlevania Lords of Shadow)
#2  June 16, 2014, 12:57:19 am
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its a shame the monster animation at 01:05 is not full, but still there's plenty to work with here.
and about the damage animations... well you have to get creative there, use some frames from other moves that could work.
this animation from the back flip works as a falling down animation

and try squeezing something out of those too (if you have a rotating software you can use the one in the middle as a laydown move)


can't wait to see it in mugen :D
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Re: Gabriel Belmont (Castlevania Lords of Shadow)
#3  June 16, 2014, 04:34:16 pm
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Remember that there are PC versions of those games. They'd make the capture process much easier.
Re: Gabriel Belmont (Castlevania Lords of Shadow)
#4  June 16, 2014, 08:44:37 pm
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Re: Gabriel Belmont (Castlevania Lords of Shadow)
#5  June 16, 2014, 10:26:31 pm
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cant waittttt to downloaddd   omg  yessss please be done soon
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Re: Gabriel Belmont (Castlevania Lords of Shadow)
#6  June 17, 2014, 01:48:26 am
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and about the damage animations... well you have to get creative there, use some frames from other moves that could work.
this animation from the back flip works as a falling down animation
Spoiler, click to toggle visibilty
and try squeezing something out of those too (if you have a rotating software you can use the one in the middle as a laydown move)
Spoiler, click to toggle visibilty
I hadn't looked at the video frame by frame yet but yes I figured there'd be some useful frames here and there to use for other things than just their original purpose. Back roll does work well for the fall animation. Also a frame or two from the second image makes for a decent low hit animation. I think it wouldn't be too hard to do some frankenspriting either. I'm a great frankenspriter, shading and animating has always been the main thing I need improvement on but that's not such a big deal with this art style so I should be able to custom sprite some stuff. Actually I think someone like Graphicus would do an awesome job at custom spriting for this project but I don't feel like going around asking every spriter I know to find out. I'd rather someone stumble upon it and take interest of their own to help out with some of the custom spriting. Even without custom sprites there's a lot of potential here. But having seen some of those back roll frames has made up my mind on this project. I'm officially about to move this topic from idea engineering to projects.

Remember that there are PC versions of those games. They'd make the capture process much easier.
I don't have a good enough computer to run the pc versions. Even if I did it's still not an easy task to rip and clean the sketch animations because the book background has a dark and light gold texture blended together, making it difficult to clean and rip from direct gameplay footage. This youtube video has a white background though so it's very easy to clean. I am curious if the pc or ps3 version has exploitable files to rip directly from the game instead of using gameplay footage.

I might go ahead and make a character out of it this way.
Do it. Just... do it.
Thanks for the encouragement. It does give me more motivation to start this project

cant waittttt to downloaddd   omg  yessss please be done soon
Umm, I haven't even actually started but I appreciate the sentiment.


One thing I'm not sure of yet is the button layout for the mugen conversion. LoS uses square for normal straight forward attacks and triangle for widespread area attacks. I haven't played LoS1 in a while but LoS2 only uses circle for grabbing and interacting. I'm not sure yet if I'll make him with 4 attack buttons or six. There should be enough square and triangle attacks to make it a six button.
Re: Gabriel Belmont (Castlevania Lords of Shadow)
#7  June 17, 2014, 01:59:07 am
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Hell yes. This is amazing... great idea, even tho it's too soon but I'd love to make some custom HD Fx for this char. Keep it up man.
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Re: Gabriel Belmont (Castlevania Lords of Shadow)
#8  June 17, 2014, 12:46:23 pm
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having seen some of those back roll frames has made up my mind on this project. I'm officially about to move this topic from idea engineering to projects.
Glad to be the motivator, and i wish i could help you with the gameplay details, except that i sold the game 2 years ago and barely remember anything from it.
I will however download that video and see if i can give you more frames you can work with.
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Re: Gabriel Belmont (Castlevania Lords of Shadow)
#9  June 20, 2014, 01:28:18 am
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I'd love to make some custom HD Fx for this char.
That would be cool if you did. I think I could pull off ripping and using the fx in the video but they'd probably look better with custom fx.

i wish i could help you with the gameplay details, except that i sold the game 2 years ago and barely remember anything from it.
Same here. I got rid of the game a couple years back. I could get it again, that's not a problem, just don't really feel like shoving it on my ps3's hard drive at the moment because I'm running low on space as it is. But I have been playing LoS 2 and a lot of the whip action's the same minus the whole holy and demon magic enhancing stuff.

Only concern of mine with this character is his reach will be insane. Reminds me of Guts by Oggy all over again. Keeping the cheapness out of this character will be a bit of a challenge. I'm not entirely sure how I'll handle it yet since coding hasn't started yet so I don't have a feel for his gameplay. I'll figure something out though.

Sprite ripping from the video is a bit of a pain. Not the getting them sprite ready part. Just the act of getting all the screen captures of all the unique frames. Animget gave me like 1000 shots to sift through for the first 40 seconds. Only went through the first half of it and ended up with about 150 unique Gabriel frames. Progress will be slow until I get all the screenshots of all the frames.
Re: Gabriel Belmont (Castlevania Lords of Shadow)
#10  June 20, 2014, 05:48:32 am
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you could always shrink him down to oldschool castlevania size like richter or Alucard and have him go up against smaller characters.
Re: Gabriel Belmont (Castlevania Lords of Shadow)
#11  June 20, 2014, 06:10:34 am
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you could always shrink him down to oldschool castlevania size like richter or Alucard and have him go up against smaller characters.

oh no, please don't do this, small-sized characters are always annoying and you can't even re-size them without getting bugs
Re: Gabriel Belmont (Castlevania Lords of Shadow)
#12  June 20, 2014, 06:35:37 am
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well seeing as he'd be pretty broken otherwise I thought it'd be a good idea
Re: Gabriel Belmont (Castlevania Lords of Shadow)
#13  June 24, 2014, 04:20:35 am
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i'm getting hyped :)
Re: Gabriel Belmont (Castlevania Lords of Shadow)
#14  June 24, 2014, 05:26:19 am
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you could always shrink him down to oldschool castlevania size like richter or Alucard and have him go up against smaller characters.
Eh, I dunno bout that. That would make it a bit more fair I guess. But no I think I'll stick with his original size. I don't mind if he's a little broken but I'll make sure his reach doesn't make him overpowered. His reach should be fine against hi res characters. His reach should be about the same as Axl Low's from Guilty Gear and he seemed pretty balanced in those games. I think he'll be just fine normal size. Not sure yet but maybe I'll try and make a 1.0 patch when the character's done. I've never made a character for 1.0 so I'd have to do some research on all that. It's a maybe though. I'm just too used to making everything for winmugen.

i'm getting hyped :)
Me too :)


Good news is supervegeta's been kind enough to help out with ripping the sprites from the video. There was some trial and error at first but it seems like he should have it figured out now. I'd like to thank him while I'm on the subject because it would've been quite a wait had I been the one doing it. I'll still be converting the shots myself but that won't take long. Due to lengthy clean up processes I'm taking a few shortcuts and adjusting the brightness and contrast to make cleaning much faster. He'll lose a little bit of fine detail that'll end up a bit blackened but should still look nice. The pictures in the first post are what they'll look like. I'll keep the original shots on hand though incase someone eventually wants to make better sprites out of this character. I'd like to show a converted animation or two but supervegeta had to restart the ripping process. I should have some done later this week when he sends me the first batch so stay tuned for that.
Re: Gabriel Belmont (Castlevania Lords of Shadow)
#15  June 24, 2014, 09:37:05 am
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yeah I don't mind whatever you do but I mentioned that since Castlevania Fighters will be extremely ranged.
Re: Gabriel Belmont (Castlevania Lords of Shadow)
#16  June 26, 2014, 04:42:04 am
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Not the animation I wanted to show off first but a decent one anyways. Very roughly converted and could use touchups.
Re: Gabriel Belmont (Castlevania Lords of Shadow)
#17  June 26, 2014, 05:19:36 am
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good nonetheless
keep working at it and good luck of course
Re: Gabriel Belmont (Castlevania Lords of Shadow)
#18  June 26, 2014, 11:49:44 am
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that's not the full move is it?
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Re: Gabriel Belmont (Castlevania Lords of Shadow)
#19  June 26, 2014, 05:16:04 pm
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Man, I hope you can fully complete him. Also, get the needed sprites, if I had the money. I would commission a full cvs sprite build, from the game. Oh well, keep up the hard work.
Re: Gabriel Belmont (Castlevania Lords of Shadow)
#20  June 26, 2014, 11:27:38 pm
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that's not the full move is it?
Sort of. This is two or three attacks in a long combo string he has. So it's not the full combo.

I'm too lazy to edit out his shadow. I'm just gonna leave it and code the character with a noshadow assertspecial.