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Other Umihara Kawase Discussion / Re: Umihara Series Retrospective Video
« Last post by Alc on Today at 03:05:01 PM »Nice to see a fellow Brit! Good video too, you can tell a lot of work went into it.
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Other Umihara Kawase Discussion / Re: Umihara Kawase-themed Rom Hacks of Other Games
« Last post by Combi~ringer on January 18, 2021, 11:10:59 PM »
1x
Fish on a stick! Used the same colors as the original for simplicity - I'll choose a better palette later.
To the left are some carrots, since I couldn't get the fish looking good in such a small sprite.
To the right of that are three ideas for logos.
- The official English logo downsized.
- A logo in Japanese
- A logo modeled after the Dig Dug original. The "Hara" and "Kawa" can be swapped, in case someone is more likely to read it as "Umikawa Harase"
They're hastily made, all of them, so tell me which idea you like the most and I'll spruce up that one and make a proper logo out of it.
I was thinking the ground would be better served copying the floating geometry patterns of the early games, since shoveling through water would be a bit hehMy concern with a checkered tiles is that it might be hard to see enemies within all the detail checkers would bring. But I'm sure I could make something work.
I actually came across this screenshot from the Sharp X1 version of Dig Dug:
Great palette for a sea-themed game! And it's perfect that it's from the Sharp version, considering Kiyoshi Sakai had a fondness for developing games on Sharp computers.
So maybe rather than water, it could simply be blue soil like this? Or maybe some kind of blue marble...I was also thinking I could replace Kawase's shoveling sprites with swimming/waddling sprites... That could be fun!
I'll do the score items next, and then whatever logo you think would be the best fit for the hack.
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Other Umihara Kawase Discussion / Re: Umihara Kawase-themed Rom Hacks of Other Games
« Last post by imgibbon on January 18, 2021, 04:28:26 AM »Oh goodness that eel is great!
Sorry for the lack of updates myself, work has been really busy lately.
I was thinking the ground would be better served copying the floating geometry patterns of the early games, since shoveling through water would be a bit heh
But I'm open to exploring alternatives!
I like your ideas for the score-increasing items
For the title screen I was thinking of seeing if we couldn't swap it out to "Umihara Kawase" like what the UK SFC translation patch (though probably with one world on top of the other instead of longform?) but with, like, a "Prototype 1" subtag or something heh
Sorry for the lack of updates myself, work has been really busy lately.
I was thinking the ground would be better served copying the floating geometry patterns of the early games, since shoveling through water would be a bit heh
But I'm open to exploring alternatives!
I like your ideas for the score-increasing items
For the title screen I was thinking of seeing if we couldn't swap it out to "Umihara Kawase" like what the UK SFC translation patch (though probably with one world on top of the other instead of longform?) but with, like, a "Prototype 1" subtag or something heh
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Other Umihara Kawase Discussion / Re: Umihara Series Retrospective Video
« Last post by Combi~ringer on January 17, 2021, 10:52:22 PM »Really well done. You covered just about every bit of trivia related to the series and it's easy to see that you're a big fan.
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Other Umihara Kawase Discussion / Re: Umihara Kawase-themed Rom Hacks of Other Games
« Last post by Combi~ringer on January 17, 2021, 08:49:22 PM »Sorry for the silence!
Normal size
I decided to go with the electric eel route I suggested. If this gets your OK, then I think all the character sprites are done!
I've also learned about how the game stores graphics. Rather than being tightly around the sprite, there's a lot of black space around the 8x8 chunks that make up the sprite, like the Pooka and fish in the bottom-right corner. ...I feel silly for thinking otherwise, considering it's how so many games handle it. >~> Still, it was good to stay within the strictest possible limits. Maybe some things could even be redrawn to utilize the new space.
Eventually, I'll have to properly split these sprites into 8x8 chunks. I'll still do the colored BG since that conveys more information than a pure black background. When inserting, simply use a "select by color" tool to replace the light green with black.
Speaking of, which of the game's remaining graphics should we change?
Obviously the font and title screen can be changed to UK-related equivalents, but the rest are tricker.
My ideas were:
Let me know what you think should be changed and what they should be changed into.
Normal size
I decided to go with the electric eel route I suggested. If this gets your OK, then I think all the character sprites are done!
I've also learned about how the game stores graphics. Rather than being tightly around the sprite, there's a lot of black space around the 8x8 chunks that make up the sprite, like the Pooka and fish in the bottom-right corner. ...I feel silly for thinking otherwise, considering it's how so many games handle it. >~> Still, it was good to stay within the strictest possible limits. Maybe some things could even be redrawn to utilize the new space.
Eventually, I'll have to properly split these sprites into 8x8 chunks. I'll still do the colored BG since that conveys more information than a pure black background. When inserting, simply use a "select by color" tool to replace the light green with black.
Not strictly from the series, but perhaps traditional "fish on a stick" campfire cooking method for the flowers?I love it! This will definitely be the next thing I sprite.
Speaking of, which of the game's remaining graphics should we change?
Quote
- Ground/dirt tiles
- Rocks that fall down
- Font
- Title screen logo
- Various score-increasing items that appear (there are 11 in total)
Obviously the font and title screen can be changed to UK-related equivalents, but the rest are tricker.
My ideas were:
Quote
- Ground tiles
-> blue water tiles, as if Kawase is going into the sea to find fish
- Rocks that fall down
-> a checkered square like those that appear in the first level of SFC
- Score-increasing items
-> all the weird background objects throughout the games, like pencils, celery, cans, carrots, lamps, MILKSOFT, pocky, whatever this funky brown tree is, and so on. If there aren't enough of these, we could also other enemies like the tadpole and bucket fish, or traditional Japanese items like wind chimes and geta sandals.
Let me know what you think should be changed and what they should be changed into.
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Umihara Kawase Fresh! / Re: What are your opinions on Fresh?
« Last post by summer kawase on January 16, 2021, 06:12:28 PM »oh nice, i also have interest because of some of the ost
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Other Umihara Kawase Discussion / Umihara Series Retrospective Video
« Last post by RetroBreak on January 15, 2021, 10:30:39 AM »Hi everyone, I made a retrospective video on the entire series! Really loved putting this together, so I hope you all enjoy! 
Watch --> https://youtu.be/bvpmaS5EPKY
Watch --> https://youtu.be/bvpmaS5EPKY
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Umihara Kawase Fresh! / Re: What are your opinions on Fresh?
« Last post by Aigoo on January 14, 2021, 02:09:37 AM »would you recommend it for somebody trying to improve their rubbering action technique in the old games? prehaps the more forgiving leval desingh/ multiple paths and less spawning fish makes for a fun enviroment to practice.
I would recommend it for anyone trying to improve their technique from my experience with Fresh.
My first time with the series was with Sayonara. However, I never really mastered the different techniques. I didn’t really get too far in that game. However, that changed once Fresh came out. I was able to mess around with it and improve my understanding of the game greatly. It led to me improving technique in the older games. I imported Shun on the DS after beating Fresh and I was able to easily complete several different paths. I also went back to my copy of Sayonara and was able to 100% by getting all the endings and backpacks. Something I thought I would never be able to do back in 2013. And, I believe it thanks to Fresh for allowing me to experiment in an open level world.
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Other Umihara Kawase Discussion / Re: Umihara Kawase-themed Rom Hacks of Other Games
« Last post by imgibbon on January 12, 2021, 08:30:41 PM »Work is swamping me this week but editing progress continues as I am much more familiar with the pattern by which the tiles are laid out in memory now.
My next thing is editing the actual palette preset for kawase in the rom, which my romhacking friends tell me is pretty unavoidably a tedious process of "guess and check" heh.
Hopefully won't take too long to find the right palette sequence in memory and change it accordingly.
Using the same palette for goldfish that the pooka was already using saves the effort there as well, so thanks for that heh.
My next thing is editing the actual palette preset for kawase in the rom, which my romhacking friends tell me is pretty unavoidably a tedious process of "guess and check" heh.
Hopefully won't take too long to find the right palette sequence in memory and change it accordingly.
Using the same palette for goldfish that the pooka was already using saves the effort there as well, so thanks for that heh.
Not strictly from the series, but perhaps traditional "fish on a stick" campfire cooking method for the flowers?Maybe change the flowers at the top of the screen to backpacks? Looking forward to seeing how this turns out, it’s a great ideaI had the idea of changing them into the pencils from SFC, the carrots from Shun, or some other background object from the games.
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Other Umihara Kawase Discussion / Re: Umihara Kawase-themed Rom Hacks of Other Games
« Last post by Combi~ringer on January 10, 2021, 04:29:19 AM »Maybe change the flowers at the top of the screen to backpacks? Looking forward to seeing how this turns out, it’s a great ideaI had the idea of changing them into the pencils from SFC, the carrots from Shun, or some other background object from the games.
I'm using yychr and I'm having a good time of it. the tricky bits are that the dig dug dude sprites are actually five colors, not four, as there's a hidden collision bounding area, with them getting a little tricky with some layering to get the red tools, but it's not really a big deal to ignore that and just make the sprites four color for a first pass. I'm having fun learning about all this stuff ^_^yychr? Okay, I'll see what I can do.
I notice that there's also some "getting squished" sprites in there as well, for when a boulder falls on you. I was just gonna improvise but idk if you wanteed to make some "official" ones for our spriteset or not :3
...And whoa, I totally missed that sprite. Well, here's Kawase getting squished.
And the non-upscaled image. (Is there a better way to say it than "non-upscaled"? Unupscaled isn't a word, right? Non-upscaled doesn't roll off the tongue very nicely.)
I also put the other sprites behind a colored background - that way you can differentiate between "part of the sprite" black and "part of the background" black, in case that's needed. They'll look a little weird not being on black backgrounds, but hey, function over form. I'll do that for future sprites too.
Also, Combi your sprites are amazing! ^_^You're amazing!