The hard drive to my ancient computer was visited by bad clusters and finally the click of death. I was writing up a post in notepad++ and preparing to release most of whatever I was working on in it's current form, but even to the end I drug my feet.
So this is actually a non-release stage release thread and you get nothing. Goodbye.
Ok, I'm lying about the last part. I was smart enough to not leave anything important on that hard drive (although I'm limited with what I'd like to do on this computer ATM, since it's a cheap replacement). So, here's a (mostly) copy/paste that I added some stuff to. Would've been nice if I didn't end up massively dragging my feet on posting this because I'm no longer racing the clock, but better late then never, I guess.
My computer's currently slowly dying, so I figured it'd be best to do this while I'm able to. I wanted to do a proper release of these, but who knows when or if that was ever going to happen.
SNES, NDS, and GBA stages are upscaled through MUGEN (unless otherwise specified). If there appears to be gaps around pieces of these stages, tweak the numbers ever so slightly until it looks right (blame MUGEN. Or me. But it's totally MUGEN's fault).
Most of these are complete. I did and redid these on and off over the years as I learned how to not suck at doing things as much. Considering I made them, they will have issues with them.
My stage names are all over the place. Some follow a theme until they don't, and some have weird filenames because I got bored (the links aren't them). They also come with .oggs, with most of them edited so they'll loop in MUGEN (support the official release, or something :p). They may have issues as well.
I tested some of them in IKEMEN GO a while back, and they seemed ok. I even tried to give them stage thumbnails.
Spoiler: 1 (click to see content)
I lost count of how many times I redid the .sff for this damn stage because I wasn't satisfied with the rips (fun fact: I initially couldn't rip anything because there's an address for each BG element that prevents them from being position modded unless you set the value of them to 0. Also, the star in the center's supposed to be seperate, but I didnt' want the .sff to be any bigger). Wasn't able to recreate how the foreground effect behaves (when layered over Kirby), but i don't care.
Kirby 64 - Miracle MatterSpoiler: 2 (click to see content)
Made this before I decided my NDS stages should be upscaled 1.25x. Maybe that's not a bad thing because of how big this stage is. There's nothing falling out of the tubes because of how random their behavior is.
Contra DS - Harvest YardSpoiler: 3 (click to see content)
Made this before I decided my NDS stages should be upscaled 1.25x (elevator is edited so it fits the screen, walls are moved further over). Screen should technically be as tall as stage #2, but I found it disorienting. Also, the floor moves up and down like in the game (I don't know why it does that in the source game, considering it doesn't look like the camera ever moves during this).
Contra DS - Waterfall (2nd part)Spoiler: 4 (click to see content)
The earlier versions of this and #5 were my first attempt at this effect. Also, I got cute and tried to layer things.
Castlevania Harmony of Dissonance - Castle Top Floor ASpoiler: 5 (click to see content)
Spoiler: 6 (click to see content)
Fun fact: Turns out VBA tells you what addresses the colors to a palette are located at. I only mention it because I settled on ripping the effect as it appears in the doorway (to make it easier to correctly position it), which meant recoloring the stage.
Castlevania Harmony of Dissonance - Skeleton Cave, Legion (Corpse)Spoiler: 7 (click to see content)
Spoiler: 8 (click to see content)
I wonder if you can see the torches flickering?
This stage was why I hated anytime I had to redo the SotN stages in the past (which I had to do multiple times. The earliest versions were made before I attempted to learn how to use Artmoney. Here's something else interesting: this game's actually the reason I wanted to learn how to mess with games in whatever way I could). These probabaly should be upscaled, but I don't care (I'd have to add the borders the source game has so it'd all look right).
Castlevania Symphony of the Night - ColiseumSpoiler: 9 (click to see content)
I think the fountain animation's unoptimized, and I don't know how to replicate the 3D effect (IIRC, the front of the buildings is also used for the sides. Pretty sure that's doable in MUGEN, but not by me.). I also don't know how to replicate the lighting effect of the moon (wish I recorded a video showing what happens when I messed with it). Also the floor's been flattened because I didn't want this stage to be 1 screen in size.
Castlevania Symphony of the Night - Blood FountainSpoiler: 10 (click to see content)
The stage that spawned a thousand better versions of it. :p
The reason you see so much of the floor is because of the ceiling. There's nothing sprited above what you see for the green section in the center of the stage in the source game.
Castlevania Symphony of the Night - Castle KeepSpoiler: 11 (click to see content)
I don't think the stage name will be confused with the 1 or 2 other versions of this stage that exist. I changed it on a whim.
Castlevania Symphony of the Night - Knee Deep in the DeadSpoiler: 12 (click to see content)
Better than "Leftrox" (I'm sorry if you somehow have that in your collection). :p
Castlevania Symphony of the Night - OlroxSpoiler: 13 (click to see content)
The stage that spawned another stage. It just screams "repurpose for MUGEN", doesn't it?
I decided to fix the tiling this time (it doesn't look right in the source game).
Castlevania Symphony of the Night - Olrox's Quarters HallwaySpoiler: 14 (click to see content)
Initially, I tried tiling a single pixel for the black BG because I thought "that'd make the filesize a little smaller". Turns out having MUGEN tile 1 320x240 image is better than 76,800 1x1 images.
Earthbound - Giygas 2Spoiler: 15 (click to see content)
Spoiler: 16 (click to see content)
This stage apparently really didn't want me to use posadd for the BG movement, because I somehow managed to keep losing the version of this stage that used it. It's one of the battle backgrounds for one of the enemies.
As for why it don't have a floor but Giygas does: The area you fight this in isn't as interesting looking as Giygas' area. Edit: I've since removed the floors to those stages because I used the Blackjack method with the foreground layer to them, and trying to fix it broke them further. No big loss.
Earthbound - Vs The Uncontrollable SphereSpoiler: 17 (click to see content)
I don't know which version is actually used. Well, besides the one with the kangaroo in it. That's an unused asset and it's position on the stage is assumed.
Fighter's History - ClownSpoiler: 18 (click to see content)
I didn't code the unused assets for this one because I think after you break the skull, the snake is supposed to come out. Also, easiest movement pattern to figure out for the rasterization.
Fighter's History - KarnovSpoiler: 19 (click to see content)
I dunno. It looks fine on a 320x240 screen. I initially did this because of the animated rasterization (I gave Electr0 suggestions that might've have been helpful if he were only recreating the movement pattern to Karnov's stage). The floor's the way it is because it's my first attempt at a parallax floor, and I really wanted it to behave like it does in the source game.
Fighter's History - SamchaySpoiler: 20 (click to see content)
This was intended to be used as a template in case I decided to make another stage using this effect. The animated rasterization effect's from CTFA/CTFB (I got the image from someone else initially. I then replaced it with the source game image, thinking that'd improve the image quality, or stop the issue I was having with the mask color. It didn't, so I'm curious how I messed that up.). The music choice is because that's what was playing while I was working on it. :p
Also, I somehow broke the mask color.
Some RPGMaker image with a rasterization effectSpoiler: 21 (click to see content)
I ended up upscaling this through MUGEN. This was a pain, and another thing I made because I wanted to see if I could.
Kirby Super Star Ultra - Marx SoulSpoiler: 22 (click to see content)
The best stage I ever did! Because I've only ever had to redo it once.....and it was completely unnecessary. Fun fact: The room before this has something hidden under the door sprite. It disappears when you open the door to Bass' room. None of the other doors around this room have it.
6ยดSpoiler: 23 (click to see content)
Spoiler: 24 (click to see content)
About 12 years ago I made this and #27 for N-Mario's Omega Zero. It's a good thing everyone thinks he made them instead of me because it was rescaled through paintshop (I hate every time I've decided to do this.), it was my earliest attempt at coding animated tiles, and it might've had an issue similar to #14 with single pixel tiling. I intentionally never corrected the misattribution after all this time because I thought it was funny.
Anyways, I think I know how the fire effect's actually done (I'd have to code a rasterized animation like Metal Pirates Room, and get it to shift positions with posadds), but I don't have the patience to replicate that. Instead, I opted to remove the screen border tiles, record an avi of the animation, and fill the stage with that (but not as a tiled animated background. I tried, MUGEN said no, and then I stopped caring.).
Megaman Zero 3 - vs Omega ZeroSpoiler: 25 (click to see content)
Because "The Exiled One" works better as a name than Omega Battle ("Omega Battle - Vs Golden Omega"....blech.).
Megaman Zero 3 - Vs Golden OmegaSpoiler: 26 (click to see content)
This was experimental (NDS stage I decided not to upscale). I increased the canvas size of the rips by 1.25x, and ended up having to lower the floor. I should go back and redo this, but I feel like it's fine it as-is.
Megaman ZX - Another Area DSpoiler: 27 (click to see content)
I changed the name to reference the ZX version of Cannon Ball (most of the Z3, ZX, and ZXA stages follow this theme......I probably should've mentioned that sooner).
Megaman ZX - vs Omega ZeroSpoiler: 28 (click to see content)
1 of a set of 4. Collect them all!
Megaman ZX - Area M vs PandoraSpoiler: 29 (click to see content)
This foreground fire effect was annoying to figure out because I went about it all wrong (there's an effect layered over the fire sprites, but unlike the sprites, it takes up real estate in the camera's space. It also uses 1 byte values for the positions because of this).
Ever get so annoyed, that you half-ass a BG layer and then have to talk yourself into *redoing it, all because of an animation that you're only going to see a handful of pixels, if not a single pixel of?
* this involves ripping animations no one will ever see because of buildings obscuring them
Megaman ZX - Area O Vs Prometheus/PandoraSpoiler: 30 (click to see content)
This is a weird one. I first made this because I wanted to see if I could. Then I did some weird edits to avoid upscaling it and having it be 1 tiny screen in width. Then I tweaked it back to what it should be (I hope) when I was doing the other 3 stages to complete the set (that's why the normal version's not called "Grand Nuage - Area X Reactor Room").
Megaman ZX - Area X Vs PrometheusSpoiler: 31 (click to see content)
This has 2 versions because you don't normally get to see that much of the stage.
Megaman ZX Advent - Vs Prometheus/PandoraSpoiler: 32 (click to see content)
The transition effect's a workaround to ripping 60+ sprites (because the original effect's done through color modding, so frame modding's not doable). The other effect is how it's done in the game.
PuLiRuLa - Vs Jack O' ColsonSpoiler: 33 (click to see content)
It's the midboss screen extended to fit 3 screens. It was originally 88 keys but that's way too big. It's also not upscaled.
Sparkster - 51 keysSpoiler: 34 (click to see content)
Spoiler: 35 (click to see content)
There's scale-modded versions (I gave an earlier version of this to someone. And then I ended up having to re-rip the sky) of these because of the moon looking like an egg. Use whatever looks fine on a larger monitor. Fun fact: In the source game, the floor shifts a pixel after transitioning to the night version.
The Killing Blade - LongSpoiler: 36 (click to see content)
Someone wanted to make the normal version of this and at some point I considered making it myself, but realized it'd be very annoying to do (the back layer's an animated gradient that's 448 pixels on a screen that displays
320 384 pixels. I'd have to make custom position mods for all of the BG chunks that comprise both halves of it) and what I found wasn't as useful as I thought, so I set the palette number of the clouds to Nimbus' stage and changed the "bridge" to a value near it that looked normal. It's supposed to have y-scaled reflections, but I didn't bother because I'm not sure if that's doable. The clouds being cut off at the bottom like that's in the source game.
Bloodstorm - Bloodstorm Eye AltSpoiler: 37 (click to see content)
Ever come up with a punchline, and write the joke backwards from it?
I wanted to recreate the distortion effect that heated rooms in Norfair have (because I could then plug in whatever rasterized image I want and then apply it to that after some minor tweaking). I should point out that it's actually a lot easier to rip these backrounds normally than this lunacy I've committed myself to. 1 address for the current frame of the animation and 1 address for the animation timer. Position mods could make it even easer.
Super Metroid - Metal Pirates RoomSpoiler: 38 (click to see content)
This one's kinda crazy. You'd think I'd just record a video of the whole thing and call it a day, but I opted not to do that. I instead rasterized 14 256x256 images, and then coded animations for each line of them. The result is a .def that's 8.24 MB and an .sff that's 101 KB because I don't want to torture myself trying to mess with posadds for every single line for 2 movement patterns when I could write macros in Notepad++ and handle it through sequentially showing/hiding animated images.
Earthbound - Vs The Ghost of StarmanSpoiler: 39 (click to see content)
My favorite game......that I've never actually played, and jumped to the final stage once I got the addresses to make the last stage accessable. Their name doesn't sound right to me, probably because it's supposed to be a Nintendo DS reference.
I could've gone crazy with this. The x/y movement's separate from the multiple x movements, and there's rasterization. I opted to record a video of this BG layer and use that instead. I was going to try this with the 2nd form, but there's too much happening with that, so that's not happening.
Kirby Canvas Curse - Vs Drawcia SorceressSpoiler: 40 (click to see content)
I bet you weren't expecting this. Well neither was I! TBH, my motivation for this stage being made was spite (mostly towards me, because I apparently like to torture myself). On the plus side, I learned about scalestart and timed possets.
There's some cheats that could make it easier, but in the end, you'll probably be using a combination of cheats and the hex editor to find bar/stage things. I feel like it could be better, but it's still a fairly decent attempt.
Spoiler: just talking/rambling (click to see content)
- If you've never tried to get BG assets from this, they're all objects (the best way to explain that is if you decided literally everything in your stage should be coded as helpers), so using something that views BG layers isn't an option.
- Did I mention these BG objects share RAM addresses? This means anything I find stops behaving as intended for any number of reasons. Savestates can mitigate this. A mirror match with Ichigo in training mode might've sometimes fixed it.
- You can't reposition the camera to let you rip past the stage edges, so you'll probably be doing some sprite editing (like I did) to fill in the missing floor.
- The sky BG is rescaled in-game and is impossible to rip without some trickery. By trickery, I mean change the layer priority of the sky to hide it and make one of the flags (or other BG assets) instead display it unscaled since there's an address you can use to cycle through all of the BG sprites. This also applies to the light beams as well. I opted to guess what it was (it turned out ok, compared to when I was trying to use a bad rip). The deltas I just did whatever and applied to the light beams (the zooming doesn't help with figuring it out).
- The flags seem to use a random value when they go into their idle frame. Did I mention there's no address you can use to get timing values from them? Trying to put a RAM watch on the sprite doesn't help because it feels like there's some kind of delay between what value it's showing and what's on the screen (turns out this is a Bizhawk issue). I ended up trying to find a way to get it to tell me the idle values by coding a "timer" in lua that increases until it's out of it's idle frame and resets when it goes to a certain frame later in the animation. After I got a bunch of values for those, I coded super-long animations with them.
- Those light beams are interesting in how I ended up handling them. In-game they loop to specific start and end points. I did something like that by having it do it after a certain amount of time (I repurposed my flag timer so I could count how many frames it takes for it to reappear on the screen. It may be off by 1 or a few pixels). Hmm....that has some potential with bypassing having to deal the nonsense that comes with coding animated tiled BG's now that I think about it.
- The music being incorrect's on purpose (I put it in there initally to be cheeky, and then left it because I needed something to listen to while I finished it up).
Blech Dark Souls - Stage 1Spoiler: 41 (click to see content)
I ended up making it after all because why not? The sky's broken up into 2 parts because I don't feel like joining together two parts to a 77 image animation (turns out I just needed to stop caring it's not a single image. That and dealing with multiple 64 pixel wide BG chunks is what kept me from wanting to make this). Also, it's got the same issues the alt version has with the reflections (I forgot I flipped the images for the alt version to further differentiate them).
Bloodstorm - Bloodstorm Eye
