In Progress Resident Evil: Survive - OPENBOR Game 2.0.0

[Chris Monvel]

Hi everyone, i've been working on an Openbor game recently and i wanted to unveil it mostly to get some feedback if needed to improve it. As implied the title is based on the entire Resident Evil franchise and will contain several locations from different entries and it uses CPS2 style sprites, some taken from Mugen and others made entirely by me.

Any comments, suggestions and advices are highly welcome, specially since this is my first Openbor game.  ;D

 

[darknior]

Nice draw, the style is cool. Can you share with us a video gameplay to help us to answer you ?
Thanks

 

[darknior]

i expanded the resolution to 480x272 and it looks way better now.

Excellent, really better in 16/9
kimono maybe can help you ...

 

[Bloodbane]

But theres a little problem, i don't like that empty black space bellow the stage and as much as i try to stretch it it still doesn't fit with the new resolution.

Is your panel 276 pixels high?
If not, you'd need to scale it so its height reach that value

 

[kimono]

I notice that a long time ago, there is a 4 pixels differences with any screen resolution. Usually I shift the levels 4 pixels down and set the upper part as transparent colour.

 

[Chris Monvel]

kimono yes, I've also noticed that even if you re scale your stage the Openbor will still remove a small part of the edges, I figured it out when I compared the screenshot with the actual level file. Weird. Anyway I followed nsw25 advice and i had to make minor adjustments to the levels to make them fit with the new resolution.

Thank you 

 

[xandegraf]

From the images it looks cool more or less in the style of the Crisis Evil series, but as a friend said, you can't give an opinion without testing the demo first. I've done it in a more pro-original footprint by adopting editing tools for the original [http://www.chronocrash.com/forum/index.php?topic=4713.0], but I hope your project is successful and good luck ... ;D

 

[NED]

Wider screen is better.
Looks OK to me. Just wait to see how it actually plays.
If it's more than just gun/weapon action.
Good luck, looks promising even if tit's hard to evaluate any gameplay possibilities here

 

[zexika]

I have been following this project for a bit now, the OP starter is Chris Monvel from Mugen Multiverse. I have analyzed the code structure based on similar games he's used to upgrade Crisis Evil 2 and it's a shame he wont release what he's posted so far. So, I've decided to start my own version, effective immediately. For those of you who were hoping to play something like this, i'll be working on something more transparent and public.

Unfortunately, Chris does not appear to be as active on these forums.

https://mugenmultiverse.forumotion.com/t13635-resident-evil-survive-openbor-game

 

[Kuvark]

Ive Watched Your YouTube Video Of The Character Select Screen And Stuff! I CANNOT WAIT TIl This Game Releases! Its Gonna Be The Best Resident Evil OpenBOR Game For Sure!  ;D

 

[zexika]

Ive Watched Your YouTube Video Of The Character Select Screen And Stuff! I CANNOT WAIT TIl This Game Releases! Its Gonna Be The Best Resident Evil OpenBOR Game For Sure!  ;D

Considering he doesn't understand how to use the CURSOR function for character select, there's some room for improvement. To be fair though, not many MODs use this feature. I will say this, he seems to have people making him sprites that don't exist. And that gives him something unique to offer.

 

[Chris Monvel]

Ive Watched Your YouTube Video Of The Character Select Screen And Stuff! I CANNOT WAIT TIl This Game Releases! Its Gonna Be The Best Resident Evil OpenBOR Game For Sure!  ;D

Thanks man that means a lot. I'm working right now on more surprises, a lot of them very unexpected. Trust me.

Honestly I haven't posted anything here because I never expected to get a bit of attention with this project. Anyway here are some videos of my current progress. More updates coming soon.

 

[msmalik681]

Always thought openbor deserved a good resident evil game. The early progress looks good keep up the good work.

As feedback some animations need to be smoother and try to balance the characters with different loadouts.

 

[Psykai]

Wow, I've seen a few Resident Evil projects attempted with OpenBOR but this is by far the most faithful! I'm loving the look of the roster, both artistically and the fact you have every main and supporting character throughout the series (though it appears some are missing as I didn't see Sheva or Sherry when you were showing off the roster and palettes despite their portraits being there?) and I like the way the power meter is used as ammunition (very creative!). The weapon moves look pretty fun to use too. I'm loving the hand-drawn (I assume) background scenery too, such as in the Village video Very nice work. I assume that stages such as the train roof in the first video have placeholder graphics for now given the clash in style?

Some of the animations could be a little smoother (Krauger's running animation looks a little weird) but overall it's not bad. I would've liked more stage-scrolling too rather than being stuck in a single area of the stage for too long, but given the name 'Survival' I guess you were going for more a Survival Mode type thing? So it makes sense to have it the way it is now. If it was possible to extend the length of the stage and add more scrolling to make it feel more like you're progressing, that would be nice

My only major complaint is that there are FAR too many enemies on screen at once at times for a single player to handle (especially in the first video example on the train) which is a mistake I've noticed a lot of people make with OpenBOR. Not only does it make the game feel frustrating, but it clutters the screen too much and makes it harder to see and appreciate the action On a higher difficulty, this would be more acceptable, but not for the base difficulty. Sometimes less is more! The Village video seemed more balanced in this area as there never looked to be more than 4 enemies at a time

The enemies also seem to do a LOT of damage sometimes. I noticed in the train video a basic zombie did three swipes and you were almost dead instantly. That along with the number of enemies in that stage is just a terrible combination, so I would personally nerf the damage or decrease the number of enemies. The beginning of the 'on top of the train' level is a good example, where within seconds of spawning you're piled on by enemies and die in a couple of hits. Imagine that being the first thing every player experiences and how discouraging it would feel Again, maybe this is fine for a harder difficulty mode, but I recommend adding lower difficulty options.

I was writing this as I was watching but have finished now and yeah, The Village video is much more what I would expect and hope from in terms of enemy count The train levels just seems like overkill.

Hopefully this doesn't come across as too critical. I honestly think this looks like it could be a ton of fun which is why I'm worried about things like this because I see so many OpenBOR creators ruin their own games with enemy hordes and I would really like to see this project do well because it has a lot of potential! Excited to see more videos in the future. Keep up the awesome work

 

[Chris Monvel]

As feedback some animations need to be smoother and try to balance the characters with different loadouts.

- Yeah I'll take a look at the animations. I also think that Krauser's running needs some fix.
- You mean wasting energy or "ammo" depending on the weapon used? Good, here's how i could manage the MP bar (One block per projectile):

- Pistol: 12 energy blocks
- Shotgun: 2 or 4 energy blocks (depending on the weapon model)
- Machine gun: 6 energy blocks in a row
- Grenade Launcher: 6 energy blocks
- Magnum: 6 energy blocks

Did i get it? I'm planning to make this Openbor force the player to recover ammo only by taking ammo items anyway, so they won't be spamming projectiles all the time and keep the combat more balanced, that's why i added the knife animations.

...

Very good observations! I really appreciate the feedback. Well let me check.

- Sherry and Sheva are still missing because I'm working on them, i will upload an updated version of the roster with both later. I even plan to expand the roster with more characters and Steve Burnside has high possibilities to appear among others.

- I'm also creating new portraits and a new hud that will change with the current palette, i will show them on the next video  ;D

- Indeed, the levels are drawn from scratch by me. In some cases like the First Zombie hallway and the train roof the lighting, textures and shading are still missing because they are still sketches for testing purposes. I promise they will look very different in subsequent updates 

- I agree, Krauser's running animation will be fixed, it has a very weird sensation when running.

- The idea is to actually have some scroll on the levels like in any standard beat em up games but i placed all those enemies wrong during my first experiments with the Openbor. The Village level looks more balanced because I've learned how to deal with the entity spawning and now i can place them properly in the rest. That leads me to another question, Should i reduce the enemies health? Or should i decrease their attacks? Keep in mind that the game will have 4 players, so the less enemies on screen the easier it will be to beat it.

I think that's all. Waiting for your reply. I'm highly opened to suggestions.

 

[Miru]

I think a villain story would be cool to see, with Nemesis, Tyrant, Lady Dimitrescu, Ada Wong, and Wesker himself as playable there. Maybe a few others, too. (Possibly even a “Rebellion Mode” like SOR2X, though I prefer a few bad guys with full movesets over a ton with limited ones (though both is great)) Frank West and/or Chuck Greene could be cool guests to put in the game, as could some Darkstalkers characters and Dante. I feel like Shotguns could have more energy blocks. Heck, have you start with half of the maximum possible blocks, requiring more ammo to hit full capacity.

 

[Psykai]

...

Hey! Thanks for the response You pretty much quelled all of my worries.

I'm a sucker for a big roster and was already quite happy/surprised to see how big this one was already so any more characters at this point is like a bonus, haha. The only one I just realized is missing from the main playables is Jake from Resident Evil 6, but to be fair he's such a non-entity that I forgot he existed until I tried to remember who the hell Sherry was hanging out with in that game xD

Miru's suggestion above made me wonder if Resident Evil 7-8 will be making any kind of appearance? I imagine Ethan would be an obvious choice for a playeble character (maybe one of his specials moves could be a self-heal using the classic miracle limb-regrowing medicine lol, but with a very high cost of course) and as mentioned maybe Lady Dimitrescu for a villain since she's such a fan favourite.

I know first-hand how long and tedious it is to make a HUD that changes with a character's palette so I commend you for putting in that much effort, lol. It's well worth it though! Looking forward to seeing the result

Ah! I had a feeling you were using textures and that they were simply not added to those stages yet That's cool. And I'm glad the Village is the more accurate example of how the game will be in terms of difficulty. Are their plans to have stages based on every game, or are you just picking some of the more memorable scenes from different ones?

For the enemies and player balancing, I think less health would help with the 'characters staying in one place too long' thing as the fights would go a little quicker and the enemies would be no less deadly 'cause they'd still have their damage. And one of the fun things about OpenBOR is that when you spawn an enemy, you can set the spawned enemy's health (ignoring what's in that enemy type's code) and if you simply add extra lines:
health #
2phealth #
3phealth #
4phealth #
You can set the enemy's health based on the number of players, so that way it will help with the balancing. There's probably other tricks too that some of the veterans might be able to suggest. Increasing the max enemy limit on screen based on the number of players would have been my first suggestion but as far as I know that's not actually possible

Frank West and/or Chuck Greene could be cool guests to put in the game

Those would be pretty fantastic guest characters

 

[Chris Monvel]

Frank West and/or Chuck Greene

Yeah, I'm planning to add guest characters some of them will be unexpected indeed. 2 Capcom characters and 2 horror characters.

More energy blocks for the shotgun? :O

...

I'm a sucker for a big roster and was already quite happy/surprised to see how big this one was already so any more characters at this point is like a bonus, haha.

Well, my priority right now is to update the existing characters since the gameplay has changed a lot. But yeah i have intentions of expand it with more additions Steve Burnside and Jake Muller are considered. Of course there will be a couple of pther character as well.

About RE7 and 8 there won't be any content regarding those games, mainly because i never played them and honestly i don't have the intention to. Not a fan  :-\

The game sill be structured by 3 levels per title, for example:

- 3 levels for Resident Evil 1
- 3 levels for Resident Evil 2
- 3 levels for Resident Evil 3 and so on

The games counted for the project will be
- Resident Evil 0, 1, 2, 3, Outbreak, Code Veronica, 4, 5, 6, Revelations 1 and 2, Umbrella and Darkside Chronicles and the Wildstorm comicbooks.

health #
2phealth #
3phealth #
4phealth #

I'm definitely cheking this out. Thanks for the reminder it will come pretty handy.

 

[Miru]

I feel like including 1 level each from the games from 7-onward (as well as non-game stuff, but it's your call on how much representation they get) would be enough. Or even just bonus characters. But, it's indeed your call concerning representation. Indeed, what about Villains Mode?

 

[Psykai]

...

Not the biggest fan of 7+ either. Well, I guess that's not true. As HORROR games, they're fantastic and I enjoyed the playthroughs I watched for them (never played them myself), but as Resident Evil games, they have literally nothing to do with the series anymore. They just toss Chris in every now and then to remind you what you're playing and in Resident Evil 7 it didn't even look remotely like him xD So the question was more of representation rather than personal preference. I don't care if there's no 7-8 content personally.

I grew up in the Resident Evil 4-6 era so I'm more familiar with that style and those characters (so I was happy to see characters like Sheva on the roster for your game 'cause she's who I played back in the day whilst my friend played her man-hunk Chris xD), but I've watched (and played a little) of the PS1 era too and whilst I was terrible at them, they're the golden era for sure.

But yeah, pretty excited to see how this project goes and will look forward to seeing more