Rurouni Kenshin's Saito Hajime WIP 08.21.09 UPDATE

[Aoshi24]

I still have a LOT of work to do with Saito's sprites. As I said before, all the programming is pretty much done and is in the process of beta testing. I intend to finish this project before 2010 by picking up the pace with at least 3-5 sprites a day. Unfortunately work, traveling, and life in general is getting in the way lol.  In the meantime, here is a preview video of Saito's progress so far.  Note that get-hit, running, and intro/win sprites were already done but not yet implemented in the character during the making of this video.

Saito Hajime Mugen Preview #3: Aoshi (Eng Dub) Vs. Saito (Beta)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INwsREMANjU

You may also notice on the video that I made a separate english dub SND pack for Aoshi.  If people are interested I can put it up on mediafire and sendfile for download.

OTHER SAITO WIP VIDEOS:

Saito's Gatotsu Zeroshiki
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3BjeTQWUnQ

Saito's Motto
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWpTGQsPq9Y

[blunted]

good to see you back in the community, man. 

the sprites look great, but there's some pretty heavy color loss in that last shot.

it looks like some sort of animated BG. have you thought of changing the color scheme to some kind of monochrome to avoid this?

[Cybaster]

Nice. I'm happy to see you back here.

As for Saito Hajime, will he follow the same gameplay as your other characters ?
For the cutscenes, try to find good quality videos and rip them. This will allow you to have nice rips without too much colorloss, to get the clip without subtitles, and even to make it high-res, if it fits the character.

[Jarek Bachanek]

Oh cool. I remember your stuff it was very enjoyment. I was thought that'a are you planning on working an other chars like main hero Kenishin.

[Cloudius]

omg 
Glad to see you here!

Aoshi was awesome.

as for Saito, only thing i recalled from the characters was like he had like an infinite with his aerial Gatotsu. Other than that, Im glad you have continue your work.

[Warner]

Awesome !
good luck with Saito  project! 

[Aoshi24]

Thanks a lot for the morale boost everyone. 

Cybaster:  Saito will follow the same gameplay as my other characters. The only difference is that Saito is a charging character (like Guile).  The gatotsu zeroshiki animation actually looks fine in-game, but I'll see what I can do to reduce the color loss.  As for the victory cutscene I ripped it from the Rurouni Kenshin RPG for PSX like I did for Aoshi.

Warner:  I love your work on Kenshin and Shishio.  I can't wait to pit Saito against your Kenshin once its done. 

[Warner]

Thanks Aoshi24 !
your Ruronikenshin's chars were my inspiration to make Kenshin.
in that time when i found your chars, i was really amazed that how good edited they are and their nice gameplay.
also i remember a Saito char with the shinsen gumi suit. 
But at last we could have a Saito with the clothes as Goro fujita. 
i can't wait. 

[Hadoabuser]

A returning legend eh can't w8 for the release.

[Aoshi24]

I'm sorry I haven't been able to work on Saito Hajime as I should, but I am making a lot of progress with him.  In fact, I have all the coding done for his idle, movement, and attacks (normal, specials, and hyper).  Also all his sounds/voice rips are done.  About 60% of his sprites are done and it will be based on Last Blade's Washizuka. Unfortunately I will not be able to edit more sprites that will show  him as a left-handed character on the P1 side (maybe in future updates).

PLEASE REFER TO THE FIRST POST FOR MORE DETAILS AND SCREENSHOTS/VIDEO.

[Cloudius]

Thank for the update.

[Slayer.]

Hey, guy, i am your fan.
Thanks for this char. 

[blah]

i really enjoyed both warner and aoshi24's rurouni kenshin characters =D
can't wait for this one to be done
will there be other future characters? like sanosuke or anji...hee

[Cybaster]

Why don't you rip clean videos from DVD rips or the such, so that you can get new rips with less colorloss and without the subtitles ? Also, putting the video sequence in high-res would be cool.

[Aoshi24]

^ I took your advice and re-ripped the gatotsu zero scene w/out subtitles but I always end up having some colorloss when moving it into the sff file.  It looks good on regular mugen but I can't seem to make it high res.  I'm not very good when it comes to palettes and hi res stuff.  I'll definitely fix this in future updates as I learn more but for now I am 100% focused on finishing the sprites and debugging his clsns and attacks.  Thanks for the advice though.

I will try to get this done before the end of the year.  I MIGHT make my version of Kenshin (w/ Warner's sprites and permission) or Usui or Jinei next.  I guess I'll make a poll after I finish Saito.

[Cybaster]

To make it high-res, just save your images at a size 640x480. Then, when you display them as an explod (or a helper calling an explod, whatever), use scale=0.5,0.5. That's all.

Your images for the videos don't seem to have so many colors in most cases, so reducing colorloss shouldn't be so hard with programs such as Photoshop, the Gimp or Paintshop Pro (when palettizing the images, use an interpolation mode such as "closest"). If you can't get rid of some horrendous color loss, you'll have to go through the tidy job of seperating each image into tiles before paletyizing them, and displaying each animation at the correct axis.
Alternatively, the RGB method could use ... but well, multiplying by 3 the number of 640x480 images in several animations = unless you don't mind 50MB SFF files.

[Slayer.]

Usui and Jin-e?



Wow, excellent!

[Aoshi24]

As I said before, programming is completed and sprites are still being worked on. In fact, the only thing left to do is to make his attacking and taunt sprites.  I even made a preview video of Saito Hajime's progress.  Note that get-hit, running, and intro/win sprites were already done but not yet implemented in the character during the making of this video.

PLEASE REFER TO THE FIRST POST FOR MORE DETAILS AND VIDEO.

[Cloudius]

Looks good. Probably unlikely to be done but Saito also uses his punch and kicks in the anime.  I also remembering his Third Stance Gatotsu (Upward Slash), being unblockable.

[Aoshi24]

Saito will only have two punch animations; one for standing weak punch and one for crouching strong punch. The crouching strong punch will be similar to the uppercut he did to Sanosuke in the anime. Saito will also have several kick animations; 2 for standing, 2 on air, and 3 for crouching. His crouching strong kick will be similar to Guile's patented double sweep kick. Another idea that just came to mind is adding a mid-air grab move just like what he did to the Venom-looking dude in the Jinchuu arc in the manga.

As for the third stance, it will definitely be blockable and the infinite problem has been fixed.

I will do my best to make him accurate to his anime/manga character and make sure he doesnt resemble Washizuka too much.  I will even add his signature smoking pose. I'm not going to implement a belt move though. it sounds ridiculous to me. lol.  If you have any other ideas let me know.