Splatterhouse: Remastered

Right now at this point in development, I'm not doing any testing of files with other people. When I get to that point I'll be posting public links to the files, and things should be in a much more polished state. I will at some point need help from someone that has a devkit so I can use the in-engine shader builder to fix the graphics on a few of the folders, but that's more down the road. A tree being discolored bugs me a lot less then having to scrap a section because something's horribly wrong with it.

So anyway sorry for the silence, been busy with work and doing some level planning. I did run into a problem where the game apparently does not like the final level not being in a fixed spot, so going to have to keep the phases to the same number. To tackle this, the last two phases of the game will be combined into one level. The eye guardian and portal rooms in 7-1 will be cut and used with the restored island level (with their surrounding areas restored), and the chapel areas will be fleshed back out and built back up. Going to streamline and fix a few things here too, such as optimizing out a few one-time-use animations and bits of garbage data that while small do contribute to helluva loading times, and make up space that's better utilized by more meaningful files.

Now let's talk bosses:
-The Furniture Boss is going to get a lot from the beta, and restoring a lot of what made it more unique (like summoning furniture, faceless, having to make it break through the floor itself, etc). The June beta offers the best, most dangerous version of him and I think I'll keep that aspect going.
-Biggyman needs a few fixes, namely that his grapple animation with Rick is, surprise surprise, broken. At some point in development they accidentally overwrote Rick's animations with those for Mirror Rick, and as a result they don't sink up at all (a double chainsaw cleave now has Rick getting his arm broken by air?). I'd like to say I'll make this fight all the more brutal too but I think it works out for what it is. At the very least his older, more healthy looking character model will get made use of.
-Experiment 765 is done. The robo-ape's room jumping antics now make him insanely dangerous and the added dialogue fleshes him out. His throw behaves as it should, his AI sharpened, and his files optimized.
-Mirror Rick has a whole cutscene that needs audio, but other than a few coding fixes here and there he's staying the same.
-Leonora is getting some heavy modifications. The wickerman's character model is intact and by god is it going to get used. This fight will take inspiration from the cross and Master Dead battles in the original game, though is still practically getting planned out on paper.
-Thule isn't getting forgotten. Similar to Leonora the fight will be heavily from scratch, but involve Rick fleeing moreso from his enemy than facing it head-on. Thule's a physical god, the mask is terrified of it, and it'll harken back to the kraken of Splatterhouse 2.
-The Body Boss surprisingly enough has the most to work with from the betas, so where he gets taken should be rather interesting to say the least.

Anyway other than this been fixing quite a few bugs across the board and fixing out a few issues, including three major tweaks to Berserker mode: cannot get grabbed whiel transforming, will lose all necro upon exit, and the music won't suddenly change. The song is still going to be intact, just don't expect to hear it nearly as often as they went with in the finished game. Seriously why interrupt a boss fight with that.

I'll keep you guys posted as things get built in, sorry this is taking longer for me to update. It's a hard winter this year...

 

thanks for the update Kung Fu Man, really appreciate it! Take your time , this will be epic when finished!

 

Hi there Kung Fu Man,

first of all, please allow me to congratulate you on your endeavour of restoring the "cut" content from this game, secondly, I would like to ask you something. Is the first part of this video " http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFnUhMODFx0 " part of the content that will be restored? I like the part with the spiky columns on the walls and Rick bouncing on the walls, also the "tree" monster, I don't recall it from the full game. Also is there anything I can help you with? Besides encouraging you I mean hehe.

Keep it up.

 

While there's a lot there I want to restore, I can't: the vast majority of that content was only in the Bottlerocket SH beta Dulledblade offered up. Unless he suddenly comes forward or an older version of the beta appears I can only restore bits of what you see there and not those whole areas. Thankfully the wickerman can be restored in part, so just a matter of figuring out *how*.

Best help I can get is someone with 3D animation experience, namely with havok; someone with knowledge of how to convert the console havok files to pc format will help also (it's viable and I've done it with a few files, but it's very tedious as it involves changing big endian to little). I could use a hand from someone with a devkit also, in order to rebuild the shaders needed for a few of the fx and whatnot.

 

Crap it's been ages since I last posted...um, anyhoo! Finally got a capture device, and did a run through of 2-2 to show off a lot of what's changed with it, and a few bits added to the game. Note it tended to lag at the worst possible times, namely against superdemon faceless that like to relieve you of your limbs, so this isn't the world's best gameplay. Highlights:
-1:45 Superdemon faceless splatterkill. Also available against zombie Jens.
-4:47 Footsoldier piledriver
-6:40 'Scared' animation restored to footsoldier
-10:55 Restored skullbats. The double-jump-ish thing Rick does here isn't a feature, it's a debug element I built in to bypass certain areas better before the debug versions were found. The skullbats themselves actually needed their character model fixed to work right in every area except 3-2 oddly enough... Also replaced the oddly used student zombies with the actual ones needed here (they only did one variant of 2D zombies.)
-12:30 Biggyman 'scare face' restored to here.
-22:40 An Aggressor replaces the brute that was to come through the door here, to mix up the enemies a little (plus the files reference one was intended to appear somewhere in the level). After defeating him, two brutes spawn as seen in earlier trailers.
-23:45 Room has been turned into an actual freezer now, restoring the ice blocks and debris. Morlocks replace the slaughterhouse zombies here as they were intended for the microwave rooms originally. Also visible here, Morlock backbreaker.
-26:00 Restored 'uninjured' Biggyman model. It works a lot better here, and the injured one will be unique to the Killing Floor arena's version now.
-27:20 Rebuilt cutscene...needs a few timing tweaks, but puts the shotgun back in Rick's hands and shows how it just vanishes before Rick falls.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkfm3jY6kK4&feature=youtu.be

 

AMAZING job Kung Fu Man!
Can't wait to get my hands on this, my jtag is ready

 

wow Kung Fu Man. this looks fantastic!!! any chance of some gameplay from the islands that would be killer to see

 

This is phenomenal! I echo many of the statements of everyone in this thread, in that Splatterhouse is indeed an underrated reboot of a classic series that, while having some minor issues (the biggest being the load times), never got a fair shake. I absolutely love this game and cannot wait to see all the changes you've implemented.

I'm sorry if I missed it, but, is this only for JTAG devices or will you be able to patch an ISO and burn the image? Thanks!

 

It'll be a full blown ISO when done, so it should be playable on flashed xboxs as well as JTAGs. Initial releases will be JTAG only to be more lightweight, and I'm still aiming for an October release of some sort. Right now finishing up 2-2, including working on making Biggy an actual imposing boss (currently he is the weakest of the lot). From there, going to start working through 1-1 to 5-1, with 5-2 -> 7-2 getting some of the most in depth changes (such as the restored Wickerman and maze layout to 5-2).

That said, this is a one-man project still so bear with me if I go quiet at times, just a lot to juggle with a full time job to boot. I am, however, putting a bounty out on files that precede the June beta, namely anything relating to Clawface, bloaters, the original shantytown layout and so forth. I know that's still a longshot, but I'm hoping Dulledblade isn't the only one that got his hands on those parts (and he is next to impossible to contact). Just would need the pieces from it, not the whole beta.

I'll keep you guys posted.

 

awesome, really appreciate all the effort you put on this Kung Fu Man!
Hope you do get the assets you are looking for!

 

I have a JTAG if you need testing.

 

Bumping this to say it's still alive, albeit moving slowly.
1-1 is pretty much done at this point, and never needed much of an overhaul. A big focus here was addressing that some tutorial elements were left out, while bringing some things back into play. Another thing to consider was minimizing audio repetition, as there are a lot of times audio from this section (i.e. "No! Jenny!") got repeated several times later and really could've been replaced by other audio or better handled tutorials/cutscenes. Philosophy here is to let it still feel like an introductory level to the game, and get a lot of the training aspect out of the way smoothly.
-Upgrade screen now happens after the second fight.
-Poltergeist restored to the dining room, takes place after you fight the horde of faceless. Essentially a blocking tutorial.

-Original graphics and behavior restored to blood gatherer room. This is significant as the effects for it were still there, just occurring offscreen, but moreso because this room existed in the *earliest* version of SH, just kept getting modified until it was finally gutted and turned into another eye medallion room like you see in 3-1.

 

awesome news!!! so glad to see that this project is progressing, can't wait!

 

Well I've been looking through the Maya files from the BR beta too...it looks like they actually got a lot more done for this game than initially thought. Several of the mansion areas were done, as were the islands, shantytown, carnival and a few rooms of the Nazi base even. Something very interesting is that unlike other areas most of the carnival was recycled, with whole elements such as the 'Zipper' ride making it to the end of 4-1.

Fingers crossed and all that.

 

So I got a bee in my bonnet about trying to export some of the Maya content from old splatterhouse workfiles I have to NIF files so I could make use of them, rather than wait for the betas to pop up. And that...unfortunately didn't work out well. While I have version 3.3.1 of GameBryo and the plugin appears to be same version for exporting (7.3), it doesn't export a file the game can read (which used 2.2.2). So while seeing a lot of this in action is neat, the workfiles are really more eye candy and hints as to what might have been in regards to the BottleRocket version. :\ Damn.

Doing some touchup work on the fx for a few attacks too, and fixing some issues when it comes to Berserk mode:
-Restoring the red overlay, and slowly but steadily also bringing back the lightning effect he had in the very earliest footage. Coding for this was left behind in Mirror Rick of all places. The effect itself will use red lighting, while I'll create a modified texture so Mirror Rick gets the green necro effect.
-Also adding the floor spikes that appeared around Rick in one of the trailers for his 'Necro Explosion' attack. This was essentially the gutbuster from Splatterhouse 3, however it's moot in 2010 as the aerial smash has the same effect balanced out with risk.
-That said, not just the spikes will be coming along: going berserk will knock enemies away from you as well, like the Explosion attack did in the trailer.
-You're ungrabbable while transforming. Apparently they made sure Rick couldn't be knocked out of it due to game breaking issues, but didn't check that.
-Coming out of Berserk early will deplete all your necro. Makes it less viable to spam against bosses as a result.

I'll post shots once I get some of the kinks worked out with the FX.

 

Can't wait! Thanks again for the update

 

Ended up ditching the red overlay as it didn't work. It's intended to, but seems to be from when Berserker Rick didn't get huge like he does in the final. I managed to restore the lightning effort to Mirror Rick, and it looks great. There's a LOT of coding involved in it sadly, so I'm actually going to leave it just for MR. It looks damn nice on him though:

 

Greetings from the lost islands of Thule! A few havok issues in one of the rooms, but overall these shown work perfectly fine. It's a good start anyway once the shaders got fixed.

 

amazing work!
thanks for the update Kung Fu Man!!!
I hope you get some beta disks and this project gets faster to release state

 

This side scrolling section's getting rebuilt finally as well. Originally it was part of the eye guardian room in 7-1, with Rick landing here after the descent. I'm taking said eye part out of that level and putting the whole thing into the islands to rebuild it properly, since when's all said and done I'll have to bring the two levels together.

Slow and steady, always slow and steady. At least most of the coding from the original beta files functions, which was a very pleasant surprise.