Umihara Kawase-themed Rom Hacks of Other Games

[Princess Rescuer]

There's rom hacks of Umi, but what about other games? I know Mario has plenty of hacks. What about other games known for mods? Is Umi's content just not enough? Post here if you see any.

[KawaseFan]

Surely there's gotta be an Umihara-themed Bionic Commando rom hack out there?

[imgibbon]

I was contemplating doing some simple sprite hacks of Dig Dug and Dig Dug II to be Umihara-themed, considering the early Umihara Kawase prototypes seem to specifically be riffing off them. Would be a nice little callback

[Combi~ringer]

That's an adorable idea. Would you make new sprites or use the sprites from the prototype?

[imgibbon]

Hmm, that's a good question.

Dig Dug 1 & 2 are NES titles and have limited pixels to work with, so you wouldn't be able to do a straight reuse of the prototype sprites



But you could probably do 8-bit approximations at the very least.

I figure you could swap Taizo for Kawase, obvs, but also the little dragon dudes for eels, and the red goggle boys for fish.

Not sure what else I'd change, really.

[Combi~ringer]

imgibbon! I liked your idea so much that I just cooked up some sprites! Just Kawase for now.


This image is upscaled, so don't download it. See the attachment!

I used her Shun design since I couldn't get a readable 3-color sprite for her SFC design. All of them are the same size as or smaller than the sprites they replace, and they use three colors: tan, brown, and blue, plus black for transparency.

I'll probably revisit them once I've sprited the rest of the game's graphics, since I'm now noticing problems as I post them, but they're done enough for now. Lemme know what you think!

[imgibbon]

Oh my goodness those are wonderful! ^_^

I guess I should go boot up a gfx editor heh

[imgibbon]

So I did in fact go find a gfx editor and get to work, but sprite hacking is more complicated than anticipated so this is gonna take a hot minute lol

Having fun tho!

[Combi~ringer]

What graphics editor are you using? I'll give it a shot too and see if I can help.




Here's a fish, along with some revised Kawase sprites. Three colors plus black, same size as original, etc. I used the same colors as Pooka for simplicity's sake, but you could use a shade of orange or something instead. Here's a non-upscaled version, which I also added as an attachment.


I'm not sure what to do about the second enemy. You said an eel, but then what would I do for the fire? Maybe I could change it into electricity...
...I was also thinking I could make the enemy a shark, and the fire would become a swarm of this attack:





What do you think?

[RetroBreak]

Not sure what else I'd change, really.

Maybe change the flowers at the top of the screen to backpacks? Looking forward to seeing how this turns out, it’s a great idea

[imgibbon]

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 ^_^

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

[imgibbon]

Also, Combi your sprites are amazing! ^_^

[Combi~ringer]

Maybe change the flowers at the top of the screen to backpacks? Looking forward to seeing how this turns out, it’s a great idea

I 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 ^_^

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

yychr? Okay, I'll see what I can do.
...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!

[imgibbon]

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.

Maybe change the flowers at the top of the screen to backpacks? Looking forward to seeing how this turns out, it’s a great idea

I had the idea of changing them into the pencils from SFC, the carrots from Shun, or some other background object from the games.

Not strictly from the series, but perhaps traditional "fish on a stick" campfire cooking method for the flowers?