Author Topic: Castlevania  (Read 10068 times)

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Offline dancingmad

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Castlevania
« on: September 06, 2007, 02:10:00 am »
Hi!
I think those who like old-school platform/adventure game sould take a look at that:

http://www.ticalc.org/archives/news/articles/14/142/142854.html

It'a project for TI82, 83 and 83+ I have just finished after two years of (non-intensive) work...

Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Castlevania
« Reply #1 on: September 06, 2007, 02:24:00 am »
Heya nice to see you again. I played the game yesterday for a while and it made me feel nostalgic :)smile.gif Very well done and good job on it. I was pondering posting a news about it here and adding it to the RPG archives since the game is above the standards here but unfortunately I still haven't decided because idk if it's RPG enough :(sad.gif sorry. But since the RPG archives were revived recently I may add the GBA lib :)smile.gif

Are you planning to redo some of the other castlevania and maybe even mario btw?


And congrats for the feature btw, it deserved it! :king:king2.gif

EDIT: well i finally managed to indirectly feature Castlevania even if it's not in archives now :Dbiggrin.gif
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Delnar_Ersike

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Castlevania
« Reply #2 on: September 06, 2007, 03:50:00 am »
If you want, I can tell you a full-scale review based on my experience yesterday... of course, I don't have the time to do it right now *cough*school*cough*, but maybe sometime in the afternoon...

Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Castlevania
« Reply #3 on: September 06, 2007, 03:58:00 am »
considering ticalc take ages to post reviews i would post it here as well ;)wink.gif (providing it abide to forum rules)

welcome back delnar btw
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Liazon

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Castlevania
« Reply #4 on: September 06, 2007, 10:55:00 am »
welcome back!  i think i might try castlevania today and see how it is :)smile.gif

Delnar_Ersike

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Castlevania
« Reply #5 on: September 06, 2007, 12:55:00 pm »
QuoteBegin-DJ Omnimaga+6 Sep, 2007, 7:58-->
QUOTE (DJ Omnimaga @ 6 Sep, 2007, 7:58)
welcome back delnar btw  

:???:confus.gif I was here all the time, even if I didn't post...

OK, well here is the review:

Controls: 8/10
Even if the controls were pretty smooth and well mapped out, I still regularly mixed up Alpha to attack and 2nd to jump (I kept on wanting to press the Up arrow key to jump and 2nd to attack... probably because I am so used to Bubble Bobble... %)rolleyes2.gif ). I know they fit well in Mario, but in this game you don't kill enemies by jumping on top of them. Also, I hated the way you have to frequently equip and unequip auxiliary weapons to be able to see the invisible blocks in the beginning part of the mansion and that you cannot use auxiliary weapons near a door (gee, I wonder why). I suggest you add a separate button for the auxiliary weapon in a future version.

Gameplay: 9/10
Mostly smooth, though it took me a while to find out how to talk to people. Also, the way enemies respawn is completely random, and to me very annoying as well. Oh, and did I say the directional jumping is horrible? To be able to jump in a direction, you have to be moving in that direction before you jump. Once you jump, you cannot change your direction in midair, unlike in most platformer games I've seen (Mario, Bubble Bobble, Double Dragon, etc.). The real plus side towards always missing your jumps is that you really have infinite lives, as long as you can put up with losing almost all of your hearts every 9 lives.

Story: 8/10
Though the story is somewhat payed attention to, this game rarely dives deep into different plots, unlike something similar to TVF or Desolate, but those aren't platformers: in platformers you don't need to pay that much attention to the story to have a good game. Still, it would be a nice addition to the game to have the storyline mean more than just the places you should go in order to complete the game: there should be something special about the game that urges the player to keep on playing (the different levels in Bubble Bobble and Mario, the intriguing story in Desolate, the different weapons, bosses, and spells in TVF, the different weapons and levels in Gemini, etc.).

Graphics: 9/10
This game is very good in the way of graphics, though the weapon, item, and auxiliary powers' icons could have been a little more descriptive. The only thing that I want to touch on is the way enemies go off the screen: instead of just disappearing once one column of pixels in their sprite is off the edge, I think the enemies' sprites should still be partially displayed if they go off the screen (like in Mario and Bubble Bobble).

Size: 7/10
This thing is all in one program and it's bigger than Gemini! I had delete all the other games I had on my calc plus some of my own programs (I backed them up, of course) in order to play this! Note: I am not talking about Archive memory, I am talking about RAM memory. And even if you do have enough RAM, you need about 50 B more so your game will be saved. IMO, you should either optimize the program heavily, split the program into two parts so that one can reside in the archive the entire time, or both.

Overall: 8.2/10
If it weren't for that horrible size (I am talking RAM, not Archive), untouched storyline, and some annoying gameplay aspects, this game would have scored much higher. For clarity, anything I didn't criticize is considered good and anything I said was good was actually very good. Please, if the author is reading this, keep in mind some of my suggestion for a future version (smaller/split size, deeper story, minor graphical improvements, key remapping, and the change-direction-in-midair thing).

Offline DJ Omnimaga

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« Reply #6 on: September 06, 2007, 05:37:00 pm »
nice review delnar. I was wondering if you were away because of the non posting for a few days x.x I guess i missed you visiting the forums :Ptongue.gif
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Offline JonimusPrime

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Castlevania
« Reply #7 on: September 07, 2007, 11:09:00 am »
I will definitely try this out and tell you what I think.

"Always code as if the person who will maintain your code is a maniac serial killer that knows where you live" -Unknown

"If you've done something right no one will know that you've done anything at all" -Futurama

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Offline Halifax

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« Reply #8 on: September 07, 2007, 12:14:00 pm »
I agree. This game looks sicknasT with a capital T. :)smile.gif:thumb:thumb.gif
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Offline JonimusPrime

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Castlevania
« Reply #9 on: September 09, 2007, 01:00:00 pm »
Wtf, It is huge I can't even get enough free ram to run it. And that is with every thing archived. I'm sorry but 23993 is a little big don't you think?

"Always code as if the person who will maintain your code is a maniac serial killer that knows where you live" -Unknown

"If you've done something right no one will know that you've done anything at all" -Futurama

"Have a nice day, or not, the choice is yours." Tom Steiner

Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Castlevania
« Reply #10 on: September 09, 2007, 01:36:00 pm »
well i got this pb with gemini too, its because castlevania was originally a TI-82 game and the TI-82 have 28 KB of RAM, not 24, like the 83+. he even had to cut down features to fit it on the 83+. Maybe he could cut down some others too or split the data in a separate program and archive it, like with desolate
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Offline Madskillz

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« Reply #11 on: September 09, 2007, 01:36:00 pm »
Yeah, it is huge. You are gonna have to delete some programs, archiving them wont do it.

Besides that though, it was well done, and really brought back the memories of the classic games!

Offline DJ Omnimaga

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« Reply #12 on: September 09, 2007, 01:40:00 pm »
now i wish someone ported Ys III or Zelda II to TI =)
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Offline kalan_vod

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Castlevania
« Reply #13 on: September 09, 2007, 03:52:00 pm »
QuoteBegin-DJ Omnimaga+9 Sep, 2007, 19:36-->
QUOTE (DJ Omnimaga @ 9 Sep, 2007, 19:36)
well i got this pb with gemini too, its because castlevania was originally a TI-82 game and the TI-82 have 28 KB of RAM, not 24, like the 83+. he even had to cut down features to fit it on the 83+. Maybe he could cut down some others too or split the data in a separate program and archive it, like with desolate  

 Or make it into an app, with all the features ;)wink.gif

Offline DJ Omnimaga

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« Reply #14 on: September 09, 2007, 03:53:00 pm »
oh yeah that, but idk if GBA supports them :(sad.gif
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