Here it is the monthly update for the current projects we are currently working on:Ninja Gaiden DX
I have overcome one of the hardest obstacles, which was reverse engineering the stage layout format. While I am not going to edit the stages, this was needed if I wanted to colorize without limitations, take a look at this:
Both tiles with the red outline are the same blank white tile. If I colorized without stage editing, I wouldn't be able to choose a different palette for the real background and the beam (which is supposed to be in a different depth).But that is no more an issue, let's see how it looks in color at last!
Notice that the background tile is black, but the beam is red.
As a bonus, here it is an stage 2 screenshot (forget the enemy, he is not colorized yet):
As of now, the only big things missing (code wise) are the fades in/out and the HUD. The rest should progress flawlessly from now on.
Mole Mania DX
Sadly, I don't have anything new to show off (yet), well, as all progress done is related to code, but I am bringing very good news.The very first prototype of this colorization (it was two years ago), shared the eight available palettes for both the overworld and the underground. That meant, I had only five palettes for the overworld, two for the underground and one shared for both.With the recent progress, I can announce that I managed to switch palettes between overworld and underground in a single frame without being noticeable. This means, now I can use eight different palettes for both 'worlds'.But there is even more, I also implemented per-screen palettes so if a screen does not use a common palette in a stage, I can reuse that palette for another detail. This will be very helpful and will bring more variety and improve the results for sure!I haven't asked Kensu yet to do his magic, because I wanted to be sure these improvements were feasible before. Now it is time to start the mockups, hopefully, we will be bringing the very first screenshots next month, I'm so excited to see this one in action :-D