Resident Evil: Behind the Mask [+Hazardous Battle]

[Burt Mustin]

That is part of the strangeness that is RE2-- it's beginner/medium modes are the easiest of the series, and yet, it's hard (or nightmare) setting arguably then makes it the most difficult. And I think that statement is objective if you use Claire. An adrenaline ride for challenges (no damage 'S' rank? shudders).

Most people wouldn't know this, of course, because the majority of titles were sold on the PS1, which never had that extra mode. And only reading about the Japanese version, makes it sound shamelessly easy. Weird game.

[Saavas]

The interface looks very nice, and arcade-style I just want to drop a thought for the Hazardous Battle - how about making unlockable 'remix/invasion' stages, where enemies from other RE games appear in locations from other titles ( f.e Lickers, Birkin, Ivys in Mansion etc ). That would make the whole experience longer, and it shouldn't be a lot of trouble to just change enemy setup, assuming those enemies would work in environments from other titles. I hope that You'll add as many enemies as possible from the RE games, including bosses.
Some other ideas I have are :
-Boss Rush mode ( obviously a mode where You have to survive waves of bosses from all RE games, maybe even in small groups or with additional normal enemies as an additional difficulty [ little note : auto-aim should target boss first, then the closest enemy ] ) You'd get some ammo/healing items after each succesfully defeated wave of enemies.
-Unlockable enemy setups from Dino Crisis / Silent Hill / other Survival Horror games from that period of time for RE locations.
-If possible , RE0 /REMake Files with downsampled backgrounds from those games. The enemy models would be bigger problem, I don't know if there's easy way to decrease polygon count of a model and make it look decent.

I know I'm just throwing random ideas , and I'm aware that it's actually a lot of work to create such things , but the game has so much potential that I sincerely hope You'll push it to the limits and create a ultimate experience! Also, those features do not have to be present at launch, they could be released as updates to the game.
Kind Regards
Saavas

[Guest]

Something I had been curious about. How hard would it be to create a limb lock on system? Currently when you hold R1 and aim at an enemy you can free aim the weapon either high, mid or low using up or down. Instead would it be possible to lock on to specific limbs depending on which direction you press? So for sample, holding R1 and pressing up would aim directly at the head, left and right would aim at the arms, down would aim at the legs and neutral would aim straight at the torso. This way you could implement new kinds of enemies that wield weapons and give the player a way to attack a wider variety of limbs for added strategy and challenge with combat and resource management.

Perhaps not something for this particular project, but it's something I'd been wondering for a while as a way to expand on this kind of gameplay without losing the original camera perspectives. The newer games such as RE4 started introducing enemies with weapons and it was strategically beneficial to aim at them and knock them out of enemies hands, I thought perhaps this might be a way to add little bits of that type of gameplay without losing too much of the original style.

[RetroRain]

So much potential with this project. With the main game, obviously classic horror Resident Evil. But with the Arcade Battle game, you can make it as action as you want.

A couple of questions Gemini:

- Dino Crisis 2 was an awesome arcade type of game. Have you actually considered making zombies spawn just like in DC2, with every camera shift?

- As your project gets bigger and bigger and more fine-tuned, has your desire to remake Survivor changed a bit, and perhaps you might want to just make an original Resident Evil game instead?

[Gemini]

how about making unlockable 'remix/invasion' stages, where enemies from other RE games appear in locations from other titles ( f.e Lickers, Birkin, Ivys in Mansion etc ). That would make the whole experience longer, and it shouldn't be a lot of trouble to just change enemy setup, assuming those enemies would work in environments from other titles. I hope that You'll add as many enemies as possible from the RE games, including bosses.
Some other ideas I have are :
-Boss Rush mode ( obviously a mode where You have to survive waves of bosses from all RE games, maybe even in small groups or with additional normal enemies as an additional difficulty [ little note : auto-aim should target boss first, then the closest enemy ] ) You'd get some ammo/healing items after each succesfully defeated wave of enemies.
-Unlockable enemy setups from Dino Crisis / Silent Hill / other Survival Horror games from that period of time for RE locations.
-If possible , RE0 /REMake Files with downsampled backgrounds from those games. The enemy models would be bigger problem, I don't know if there's easy way to decrease polygon count of a model and make it look decent.

- Mix idea is what I had planned, but that requires all enemies to be already implemented. Given the amount of time it takes me to work on a full enemy (ranging from a week to a full month), it's best if this aspect is expanded later with a possible File #2 or when more code is developed for BTM (which has really most RE1-2 enemies, serving as a better test ground).
- Boss Rush Mode is nice, it wouldn't be bad to structure it similarly to have SS RE did.
- Enemies from non-CAPCOM series aren't exactly ideal.
- Sonic and I already considered the idea of RE0, but not from GC assets.

Something I had been curious about. How hard would it be to create a limb lock on system?

It wouldn't be hard, but ultimately useless. The engine keeps it simple to make bullet calculations not drain the CPU like a hooker, plus it's really a lot of work for the user to get to the desired part they'd want to aim. In this case simple is better, waaaay better.

- Dino Crisis 2 was an awesome arcade type of game. Have you actually considered making zombies spawn just like in DC2, with every camera shift?
- As your project gets bigger and bigger and more fine-tuned, has your desire to remake Survivor changed a bit, and perhaps you might want to just make an original Resident Evil game instead?

- That or 1.5 style, like what appears in BH Complete Disc videos. There you see a zombie scaling down in its blood pool, until it eventually disappears and a new one replaces it somewhere else in a room.
- I'm not a designer or writer, so GS serves better as a measure of development for me. REmakes are much more interesting because you already know all the flaws and can work easily on solutions to improve the original.

[biohazard_star]

Have you and Sonic considered maybe demaking the added rooms from REmake instead? I'd love to see locations like Lisa's cabin and the lower levels of the mines done in RE1 classic style. Or maybe start with something small and just do places from the mansion exclusively, like the west staircase hallway and terrace instead. It should be a lot more manageable than remaking all the N64 Zero backgrounds, which I imagine is what you and Sonic had considered when thinking of adding in RE0 locales.

- That or 1.5 style, like what appears in BH Complete Disc videos. There you see a zombie scaling down in its blood pool, until it eventually disappears and a new one replaces it somewhere else in a room.

Haha. I thought I was going crazy when I noticed that in the Complete Disk video. You can only very briefly see it happening during that part where a zombie gets crushed by the shutter in the lobby corridor, but it definitely occurs. The effect is very arcade-ish. I wonder if IGAS will go that route and maybe improve upon it with fizzling effects and such.

[SonicBlue]

Have you and Sonic considered maybe demaking the added rooms from REmake instead? I'd love to see locations like Lisa's cabin and the lower levels of the mines done in RE1 classic style. Or maybe start with something small and just do places from the mansion exclusively, like the west staircase hallway and terrace instead. It should be a lot more manageable than remaking all the N64 Zero backgrounds, which I imagine is what you and Sonic had considered when thinking of adding in RE0 locales.

How did you connect them with the already provided backgrounds?

The idea was to make the Train scenario only for RE Zero battle mode.

[biohazard_star]

You could always shoop in recreated doors on existing backgrounds by using masks. The angles used in areas where the doors exist in their REmake counterparts seem accomodating enough to have the doors shooped in.



Train seems like a great idea as well. But at that point, you and Gemini might as well give us a mock RE Zero N64 Trial edition while you're at it.

[SonicBlue]

You could always shoop in recreated doors on existing backgrounds by using masks. The angles used in areas where the doors exist in their REmake counterparts seem accomodating enough to have the doors shooped in.

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Adding masks for the new doors is an unnecessary step, the background with the door already on it will work better, as the player never goes behind the door or near it in a way that needs to be masked out.

Including a set of extra backgrounds in the same room won't be a problem, we don't have this kind of limitations, if we had the original assets we could use the lossless version, and not some kind of ultra compressed version of it.

Train seems like a great idea as well. But at that point, you and Gemini might as well give us a mock RE Zero N64 Trial edition while you're at it.

That would need some work on the engine, I don't think at the moment you can leave objects on the floor or swap characters in real time.
There are also some limitations on the speed the PSX can actually do that, but this is Gemini's field, if we decide to make a RE Zero demo I'm sure he will find a proper solution.

[biohazard_star]

I was under the impression that recompressing the backgrounds would cause them to be lossy, but if it doesn't then slapping them on to the background itself would be the best way to go.
As for the Zero-exclusive features, I don't think anybody's really expecting Gemini to add in item dropping and real-time partner swapping. It's just a mock trial after all. And this is if you guys even decide to recreate the train area from Zero at all.

[Gemini]

I was under the impression that recompressing the backgrounds would cause them to be lossy, but if it doesn't then slapping them on to the background itself would be the best way to go.

Squeeze Bomb can rely on both lossy and lossless, depending on whichever option you take (also emulator detection). The "master" renders I use for HB are those from the Saturn build, which are lossless (i.e. they can be saved as well as lossy with no extreme quality drops, at least on hardware or proper emulators). If Sonic were to add those extra doors, they'd be placed on top of lossless pictures, meaning there would be no additional artifacts due to recompression (even for lossy).

Still, the idea of expanding some areas was already proposed during our brain storming sessions. Namely, I wanted to have that underground room with the Crimson Head boss battle (as an extra objective). At this point I think it's probably a lot more interesting to have additional sections inside the underground dungeon connected to the courtyard, since that's a stage of its own and it's pretty short compared to other maps.

[EDIT] And there goes Sonic accepting the challenge:

Don't ask me why Rebecca looks like a midget more than her usual, this is really using correct scale and size from that door on the other side of the hall. RE1 is so random with doors.

As for the Zero-exclusive features, I don't think anybody's really expecting Gemini to add in item dropping and real-time partner swapping. It's just a mock trial after all. And this is if you guys even decide to recreate the train area from Zero at all.

Well, since the original plan was the possibility of having it as an arcade section inside HB, gameplay shouldn't need item drops.

[Mikhail]

I have question about the ps1, is it possible to represent the whole ps1 colourspace 24bit 16,777,216 or 16bit 65,536 in a single texture 1024×512 524,288 and map individual pixels from that texture over different model areas, or mirror texture parts across a model to save vram.

[Gemini]

You can't draw 24 bit textures with primitives; the hardware can render them only as 4 bit, 8 bit, or 15 bit textures. As for the actual mapping, you're limited to page size: max 256x256 pixels for each mode with sprites, while textured polygons only support 0-255 ranges.

[EDIT] RE1 style flat lights reworked for better results:

Even if Jill's model is quite different lights perform in the same way with the latest changes. Most major engine differences between RE1 and later titles, like odd floor height, should be there now.

PS: I forgot to mention Beretta M92F and M92FS are also implemented. They still work exactly the same, but it doesn't really need much work to have random critical shots on M92FS like in Director's Cut and Extreme Battle.

[RetroRain]

It's looking good Gemini. I'm glad this project is going well for you. You have also been inspiring me to work hard on my Zelda homebrew game. My Zelda game is using the Link's Awakening engine/style. I was thinking of putting in the LA overworld as a special mode (also for testing purposes), similar to what you are doing with the battle mode of your game.

Another idea:

In addition to character's limping based on injury status, how about blood drips, similar to the Outbreak games? The blood drips occassionally from the character, and after it hits the ground, it disappears within a few seconds.

[Getta robo]

Still, the idea of expanding some areas was already proposed during our brain storming sessions. Namely, I wanted to have that underground room with the Crimson Head boss battle (as an extra objective). At this point I think it's probably a lot more interesting to have additional sections inside the underground dungeon connected to the courtyard, since that's a stage of its own and it's pretty short compared to other maps.

I have a related question regarded Behind the mask. Now, you have mentioned that some areas will expanded or even altered for various reasons. Have you consider to make some new areas, connecting either the existent pathways or even make brand new ones? In more than one instances, I felt that several paths could had some alternate routes, or even had some thoughts about new areas/maps for that matter.