My Cave Story Sprites

Jul 19, 2006 at 10:15 PM
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I just wanted to post a preview of some sprites i'm editing to resemble the characters in Cave Story. At the moment, i'm working on Curly Brace, modelled and edited off of Eri's sprite from the Metal Slug series.

Curly Brace Sprites

The last one to the right uses an edited head of Eri and her guns, but a custom pixelated body, which would explain why the single sprite looks nothing like the others. I've also just started on the main character (points to siggy) but I haven't had the chance to make more of his walking/shooting animations.

UPDATES!

Mock-up Screenshot
Sue's Sprite Sheet
Sue's Sprite Sheet 2
King's Sprite Sheet

Ending Sequences

Sequence 01

Sets

Balrog, Kazuka, King, Momorin, Sue, and Toroko

Professor Booster, Dr Gero, Nurse Hasumi, Misery, Jack, Itoh, and Jenka's 5 Pups

Ballos, Cthulthu, Arthur, Mimiga-sized Main Char, Jenka, Megane, the Doctor, Sue (human form), Tetsuzou, Chaco, and Mahin
 
Jul 19, 2006 at 10:25 PM
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Those are really awesome. If you can put up a complete set of frames, I would be able to rig the game to use your sprites instead of the current, smaller ones. It would require maps to be edited, but at that point it's your hack, not mine. ;)

Very nice work!
 
Jul 19, 2006 at 10:26 PM
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It looks really good O_o !! Keep up the good work! ^^
 
Jul 20, 2006 at 12:24 AM
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Jul 20, 2006 at 12:40 AM
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Thanks for the comments guys. I'll see if I can complete Curly's animations, but each frame becomes extremely tedious. It would be awesome if you could put these sprites into the game itself, but isn't there a limited palette of colors that Cave Story uses? I'm not sure if it would be able to support these.

Anyways, I finally got around to editing more Cave Story sprites. I'm such an idiot sometimes, because I never thought to model the redone sprites after the original ones themselves!

http://home.comcast.net/~lengoclien/set1.bmp

For the three mimigas (Sue, Toroko, and King) and Balrog, I resized their sprites in proportion to the Metal Slug sprites and recolored them so that they'd have more shades. In addition to outlining the sprites in black, I also made some edits and modifications to the sprites themselves so that they could appear as close as possible to their portrait counterparts. I know, I know, King's scar is on the wrong side, but it wouldn't be visible otherwise :p

For Kazuka and Momorin, I desperately tried to find the mad scientist sprites I remember seeing in Metal Slug. But to no avail, I had to do some hardcore editing with several different sprites, which included transplanting of pixelated arms, legs, and heads XD
 
Jul 20, 2006 at 12:54 AM
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There isn't a limited palette - Cave Story uses standard bitmap functions to work with its graphics and could load 24bit images easily enough. The problem's adjusting the display rectangles to make the images fit.

I love what you've done to Balrog. On the other hand, I don't like your King's legs - too big. Great work so far, very nice use of colors.
 
Jul 20, 2006 at 1:25 AM
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Yeah I see what you mean, King's legs are a lil chunky. I was difficult from the beginning because on close inspection, his legs were already deformed to begin with o_o;

I edited it again so that his clothes hangs lower and less leg is shown, so it should show up correctly now.

At the moment i'm working on the witch, which is very difficult for me to finish at the moment because she has no distinct base model from the Metal Slug series. So far, she's at most 75% custom pixelated, with remnants of body parts from other sprites XD
 
Jul 20, 2006 at 1:31 AM
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ZOMG THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT CAVE STORY NEEDS. I would have your babies if you (or someone using your sprites) up-scaled the entire game to accomodate these bigger sprites.

These are DAMN AWESOME. :p
 
Jul 20, 2006 at 4:20 AM
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Haha, I wish I had the patience to recolour and edit all of Cave Story, but it would seem impossible for one guy like me to finish it. I can't even imagine recolouring all the background maps... Makes you wanna respect Pixel even more, huh?

anyways, another minor upload which features a small cast of characters.

http://home.comcast.net/~lengoclien/set2.bmp

Professor Booster was an oddball spite to make because of his HUGE head and small body (for me, Stewie immediately comes to mind), but I simply resized his original head and created his body. Doctor Gero and Nurse Hasumi are practically faithful to their original sprites because all I did was recolor them and added shading. I'm afraid to see how you guys will react to Misery, because she's strays far from how she originally appeared. I was trying to shoot for a more younger version ;p

Jack and Itoh simply got an update in color and shade. As for Jenka's 5 dogs, they aren't spectacularly different from their original counterparts, but I added in different faces for each of them. Can you guess which one is which? :p
 
Jul 20, 2006 at 6:09 AM
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Those look really nice, however, I'd like to offer some constructive criticism, if you don't mind;
-Booster should be hunched over a bit, as his original sprite is.
-Balrog's back is unusually jagged, and his pupils look dilated--try moving the "shine" to the upper-right corner of his eyes for a better effect.
-The Witch (named Misery btw) has much paler skin, and her eyes are a deep red. Also, while many people seem to ignore this, she has a purple marking under her left eye.
-Itoh's head is amusingly flat. Consider rounding it off, if only slightly.
-King's ears should flow with the shape of his head. He also appears to be leaning over slightly.
Overall, though, they're quite good. Excellent work, Felixir.
 
Jul 20, 2006 at 8:44 AM
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Epsilon said:
Those look really nice, however, I'd like to offer some constructive criticism, if you don't mind;
-Booster should be hunched over a bit, as his original sprite is.
-Balrog's back is unusually jagged, and his pupils look dilated--try moving the "shine" to the upper-right corner of his eyes for a better effect.
-The Witch (named Misery btw) has much paler skin, and her eyes are a deep red. Also, while many people seem to ignore this, she has a purple marking under her left eye.
-Itoh's head is amusingly flat. Consider rounding it off, if only slightly.
-King's ears should flow with the shape of his head. He also appears to be leaning over slightly.
Overall, though, they're quite good. Excellent work, Felixir.
Thanks for the suggestions Epsilon, they definitely made the sprites look better. The uneven jaggedness of these sprites are the consequences of resizing the original Cave Story sprites, which in the end is my fault alone for neglecting to anti-alias it in the end. I remember I was forgetting something as I was putting Misery together (including her name :p) , but I loaded her into my second set anyways without changing the skin palette I was using. I changed it so that Booster hunches and Itoh's head is smoother at the top. I also moved Itoh's mouth up a bit out of preference, and it seems to look better that way.

I took your advice and smoothed Balrog's back-end in addition to moving the light reflection up. The only problem I came across was your suggestion with King's ear (although I managed to fix the slight leaning, I think), because it's directly modelled after his original sprite's ears, as well as his portrait. I made an earnest attempt anyways and "widened" the width of the lower lobe.

My next set will be soon, which includes Jenka, several other mimigas, and maybe some fully colored ending sequences. Once I get home to my other computer, i'll see if I can start working on the full animation frame sets for both Curly and the main character since their sprites are saved on its hard drive.
 
Jul 20, 2006 at 9:19 AM
Hoxtilicious
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Looks Creepy Good O_o well maybe we can make a CAVE STORY HIGH RES GRAPHIKS community projekt
 
Jul 20, 2006 at 2:13 PM
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http://home.comcast.net/~lengoclien/set3.bmp

*Phwooshh* fresh off the press... and I have to work in 2 hours and I haven't slept yet -_-

Ballos was fun to make since I only had the bust of his sprite to build off of, so I had to make his lower torso and legs. I also edited a mimiga to what I envisioned Arthur to look like, in which a knight first comes to mind. For fun, I also threw in another edit of a mimiga dressed in the main character's outfit. I'm actually most pleased at how the doctor turned out, because his whole body was custom made (excluding the Demon Crown I transplanted from the original). The worst out of the bunch I made was probably Sue in her human form since I didn't spend too much time putting detail into her before I just threw her into the third set ;p

but c'mon, tell me you wouldn't wanna play as a gun totin' Sue Sakamoto. Mmmm... and Tetsuzhou the gunsmith was an accumulation of body parts I scrapped from the miners found in Metal Slug, and an edited head of an old crippling man sprite.

ShInInG PhAnToM said:
Looks Creepy Good O_o well maybe we can make a CAVE STORY HIGH RES GRAPHIKS community projekt

I doubt it XD It would take several skilled individuals and lots of dedicated time to make a high resolution CS. These sprites are just for fun, because I have no programming skills whatsever to put them in action. Although i'd imagine it would be possible with a team working on it piece by piece...

I also added an recolored ending sequence, and another one is coming along with the next set so expect a few more.
 
Jul 20, 2006 at 3:58 PM
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RuneLancer said:
Those are really awesome. If you can put up a complete set of frames, I would be able to rig the game to use your sprites instead of the current, smaller ones. It would require maps to be edited, but at that point it's your hack, not mine. :p

Very nice work!
Just sayin'... >"< It's hardly any difficult, just a wee bit of assembly here and there.


(24bit version)
 
Jul 20, 2006 at 7:46 PM
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I got friends at an RPG Maker forum that could probably help out here or there, and I'd like to claim I have a minimum amount of skill in the editing department too (avatar self made *oozing pride* :p).

It's definately possible. The only real hurdle is the fact that these larger sprites will make the large, complicated jumps and open areas a bit more difficult since they'd have a smaller view, unless it's possible to change that too?
 
Jul 20, 2006 at 8:15 PM
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The only problem is that the sprites are (I think) 25% bigger than their original counterparts. You would have to rescale and adjust all the maps so that it would be proportional with the main character, otherwise some of the levels would become increasingly difficult with a larger sprite body (ie: bloody spikes in narrow paths, etc).

A full upscaled version would look nice, but I'm not sure if it's in the realm possibility unless we can rework the entire game, pixel by pixel.

Edit: For fun, I made a mock-up screenshot using a Megaman X background

Mock-up Screenshot
 
Jul 20, 2006 at 8:36 PM
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Like I said,
RuneLancer said:
It would require maps to be edited, but at that point it's your hack, not mine. ;)

Admittedly the field of view would require some adjusting. I suppose an easy solution would be to move the camera forward a bit more, giving more of a "foreward" view. Jumps could be reduced slightly to compensate for the reduced height field of view and for the sake of realism (jumping 5x your height is a bit much, IMO :p ) But aside from that, if the new maps are tailored to take into account these changes, it could work.

Either way, it's up to Felixir how he wishes to use his sprites. :p They're awesome, but would require more frames to be any usable.
 
Jul 20, 2006 at 9:35 PM
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*sigh* I guess I'll just have to wait until the PSP version comes out for improved graphics. :p
 
Jul 20, 2006 at 9:40 PM
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RuneLancer said:
Either way, it's up to Felixir how he wishes to use his sprites. :p They're awesome, but would require more frames to be any usable.

Quite frankly, I couldn't use them myself even if I wanted to since I don't know too much about programming and coding. I definitely wouldn't mind if anyone wanted to use them though for their own hack or whatever, but at the moment i'm lacking original sprite sheets and character animations from Cave Story to make them usable at all. If anyone could provide the walking frame sets for the sprites in CS (inparticularly the mimigas and Sue), I could edit them to create fully animated sprites.

If anyone or anybody else wanted to start a project to upscale CS, I could provide the sprites and maybe backgrounds/platforms, but that's about it ;)
 
Jul 20, 2006 at 9:46 PM
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