Dreamcast Castlevania: Ressurection

[JustAnyone]

looks like seller is going to release it!

 

[Anthony817]

I had to click the actual auction to see what you were taking about. That tweet does not even show the correct info.

The Dreamcast Junkyard has a tweet about it.

 

[thedoctor45]

Oh dear, it's already at 20k in just one day - those bids can't be serious, I wouldn't be surprised if that sale fails.

Looks like the guy attracted too much attention and invited the trolls.

 

[saibot_20194]

Are you guys watching the show right now on ebay? haha i'm grabbing my popcorns right now.

 

[TheNameless0ne]

Impressive. I always mantained faith that I would see the game in motion.

I remember that IGN got a demo of the game at 80% complete.

Wow. Primal Rage 2, Dinosaur Planet, 007 on 360... I only need Killer Instinct 2 on snes to say I can die peacefully.

Primal rage 2??

 

[deadlegion]

I think somebody just retracted a bid.
It has dropped back below $25k lol

 

[Diablodin]

And now it's no longer available, so that was quite the ride!
Gonna be a hassle selling prototypes on Ebay from now on it seems lol

 

[MKKhanzo]

Primal rage 2??

Aw yeah!

 

[KGRAMR]

Seriously, what the hell is going on with this Castlevania Resurrection drama!? XD

 

[Diablodin]

Seriously, what the hell is going on with this Castlevania Resurrection drama!? XD

Sounds like a chat log between regular Twitter users.
I don't think the aggressive communication followed by "hahaha" is going to make collectors more eager to come forth with items like this tho...

 

[segamax]

I have no doubt the game will be floating around in a very near future although the eBay auction has been removed.
Just be patient guys, we have been waiting for so many years

 

[Raen]

Sounds like a chat log between regular Twitter users.
I don't think the aggressive communication followed by "hahaha" is going to make collectors more eager to come forth with items like this tho...

Sounds like a lot of BS and bluff from that composer guy.
In what way does he have any rights over the prototype? Didn't he get paid to do his work for Konami?
If anything, it's Konami who owns the IP and the assets belonging to the game. It's their interest to pursue any legal action over seeing confidential material turned into profit without their permission. Anyone who worked on the game was paid for their work/creations and doesn't own anything.

 

[Diablodin]

Sounds like a lot of BS and bluff from that composer guy.
In what way does he have any rights over the prototype? Didn't he get paid to do his work for Konami?
If anything, it's Konami who owns the IP and the assets belonging to the game. It's their interest to pursue any legal action over seeing confidential material turned into profit without their permission. Anyone who worked on the game was paid for their work/creations and doesn't own anything.

If you check the sub-comments under BawesomeBurf's, Dongled say Mark Lindsey, the composer, supposedly hadn't signed a contract with Konami in regards to his work yet, so they had most likely implemented it to see if it would fit and never meant for this game to be canceled and later be leaked.
So, the natural thing would be for Mark to be mad at Konami and not the owner of the prototype.

 

[Diablodin]

Dongled made an update video. Includes some explanations, conversations, and research. And apparently, there's a dump on the way.
Seems like there wasn't much of a sour tone after all - which is great to hear and is just as important imo!

 

[Sega Dreamcast Info]

he is the one who is adding a layer, creating a drama all that to make views on his YouTube.

 

[Diablodin]

It happens. Calling it drama was unnecessary, but it's resolved now, so we should leave it at that.
We should be happy someone is working on releasing the build.

 

[Getta Robo]

https://www.obscuregamers.com/threads/castlevania-resurrection-e3-pre-demo.3466/

Castlevania Resurrection release on Dreamcast, complete file

Castlevania Resurrection release for the Dreamcast !!! You will find a complete file about its history, from its origin to its cancellation. You can read a test of this demo version. The analysis part goes in detail on the particularities of the "Build". You will be able to download its home...

en.sega-dreamcast-info-games-preservation.com

Castlevania: Resurrection playable build finally released online!

If you've been keeping an eye on the internet in the last month or so, you will be very aware about the discovery of the long thought lost D...

www.thedreamcastjunkyard.co.uk

It's out.
It's out!
Kudos to Comby Laurent and to the rest of the team for all of their efforts!

 

[Diablodin]

Would you look at that! Congratulations, Castlevania fans!

 

[Sega Dreamcast Info]

The 2 videos above really didn't make you want to put the game online.

We must stop with this kind of video.

 

[Sifting]

Thank you for making this release possible, everyone.

This has been something of a holy grail for me, and it was super neat to try it out. It really made me wonder what it would have been like if they had a few more months, but who knows, maybe if we're lucky some later builds may surface. It'd be fun to see how the Tim Curry looking character handled!

That aside, I enjoy reverse engineering stuff, so I wrote a script to dump the assets. It's super fascinating to see what they put together. For those curious here's some initial observations:

A lot of the game appears scriptable in plain text, including AI. Entities are also composed in a component style model in plain text, and adding new ones seems easy enough. Levels are entirely described in plain text, including entity placement and lighting data. Level geometry is in binary, however, and is referenced in these level scripts. In fact, everything seems to be oriented around the concept of a 'level', very much like how a scene works in Unity and such. Overall, it's a super modern impression that I got from this well over 20 year old prototype! Some examples

Item definitions:

ITEM_DEF
UNK_ECandle_tallstand_candle
tallstand_candle
NULL
NULL
1
0 0 0 0
NULL

ITEM_DEF
ECandle_s2_01_Lght_item_glow01
tallstand_candle_glow
NULL
tallstand_candle_glow
1
1 0 0 0
s2_01_Lght_item_01

Animation sets:

ANIMSET_DEF
E06_GhostCardinalAnimSet
5
E06_GhstCardinal_Death
E06_GhstCardinal_Get_Hit
E06_GhstCardinal_Move
E06_GhstCardinal_Shield
E06_GhstCardinal_Strike

ANIMSET_DEF
E02_GhostAnimSet
2
E02_Ghost_Die_Blue
E02_Ghost_Float_Blue

Entity placements:

ENTITY_DEF
RigidModel
s2_01
0
2
0
-2174.27
-2167.98
3.0305
0
0
0

ENTITY_DEF
Actor
Sonia
0
3
0
-3094
-1445.29
68
0
0
90

ENTITY_DEF
Emitter
Ghost_Cardinal_Dist500_Max1
0
4
1
-1692.35
-2385.17
21.646
0
0
-135

Note that the entity placements reference level geometry with the RigidModel tag.

AI script:

AI_DEF
Attack_FarRangeCorkscrew
TurnTowardTarget    0.0
FlyForwardUpLeft    50.0
FlyLeft                50.0
FlyForwardDownLeft    50.0
FlyDown                50.0
FlyForwardDownRight    50.0
FlyRight            50.0
FlyForwardUpRight    50.0
FlyUp                50.0
TurnTowardTarget    0.0
FlyTowardTarget        0.0
FlyForward            75.0
FlyUp                50.0
AI_ENDDEF

AI_DEF
Attack_FarRangeSawtooth
TurnTowardTarget    0.0
FlyForward            75.0
FlyUp                75.0
FlyForward            75.0
FlyDown                75.0
FlyForward            75.0
FlyUp                75.0
FlyForward            75.0
FlyDown                75.0
FlyForward            75.0
AI_ENDDEF

AI_DEF
Spawn_MedusaHeadRise
FlyUp                75.0
TurnTowardTarget    0.0
Death2                0.0
TurnTowardTarget    0.0
TurnRight            22.5
TurnLeft            45.0
TurnRight            45.0
TurnLeft            45.0
TurnRight            45.0
TurnLeft            45.0
TurnRight            45.0
TurnLeft            45.0
TurnRight            45.0
TurnLeft            22.5
Taunt                0.0
FlyDown                25.0
AI_ENDDEF

AI_DEF
Dying_DefaultRotInHell
Death1                0.0
Wait                5.0
AI_ENDDEF

The AI script reminded me the original Quake, where AI routines were built up on small, generic atomic actions, but in form it reminded me more of Half Life, which regimented the Quake style into a more data-oriented style. See here for a comparison! It's not really surprising though, the game programmer world is pretty small. As an aside, if you've ever read DeLoura's book you've probably noticed the castlevania team really took it to heart!

Another fun curiosity is this script file for a font tool they were using, which was left on disk:

/* Font database. */
/* setdir: set the path for font textures for subsequent fonts */
    DIRSYS #basepath, (#subpath1, #subpath2, ... ) - set path from dirpaths.txt */
/*      DIRPATH #fullPath - set path directly; path must be a string (i.e. enclosed in double quotes, with '\' at end) */
/* type: 0 - fixed width, 1 - proportional */

fontname Heading_White
type 1
asciirange 32 126
texturesize 256
numtextures 1
celldimension 21 17
texturefiles heading_white.pvr
sp 8
. 5
0 12
1 10
2 12
3 12
4 13
5 13
6 12
7 12
8 12
9 12
A 16
B 15
C 15
D 15
E 13
F 12
G 16
H 14
I 5
J 12
K 15
L 13
M 17
N 14
O 16
P 13
Q 17
R 15
S 14
T 13
U 14
V 16
W 21
X 15
Y 14
Z 14
a 14
b 13
c 13
d 13
e 12
f 11
g 14
h 12
i 6
j 10
k 13
l 11
m 14
n 12
o 14
p 12
q 15
r 13
s 12
t 12
u 12
v 14
w 19
x 13
y 13
z 12
end

The actual file is quite a bit larger, but all follows this same format

It's likely that all these files would have been converted into some binary form for production, but imagine how cool it would have been if the game had shipped with this system intact? we could have a very modifiable castlevania!

Moving on, there are no major surprises on disk from what I can tell. The other character is not present in any form, and some of the creatures seen in other screenshots are not here either. No extra levels seem to be left on disk either. It's unfortunate, but then again, we're very fortunate to have just this release as is! There are some neat trivia about the assets though:

All textures are 16 bit, encoded in either ARGB1555, ARGB4444 or RGB565 format. Larger textures use the VQ encoding, while smaller ones are just morton coded. None use the bump map format, though there are two textures, 'b_brick_01_bump' and 'b_brick_01_bump' which appear to be meant to be, and may possibly be used, as bump maps. Sonia is a single 512x512 texture, as well as Medusa and the Evil Cleric characters. Lesser ones are 256x256. Environmental textures run the gamut. Animated effects like the candle flames have each frame of animation stored in separate images, which are then referenced in a binary file that appears to describe the animation. The script dumps these into png format, in case anyone is wondering, and I've attached a few for those interested in art appreciation.

Characters all use skeletal animation. The skeletal hierarchies are described in separate binary files from the meshes. I'm unsure of the exact number of vertex weights at the moment, but it's likely to be a limit of one per vertex. If I have time I'll get the script to dump the assets in gltf so people can play around with them in Unity or whatever. The script itself should be available soon for anyone else interested in diving into the guts of this.

That's about it for now. Thanks again to everyone involved in getting this released. It's been a lot of fun!