Hello and welcome to my C3 thread!
Last time I realized that not many people here are familiar with non-SMW hacking, let alone obscure nes game, so let me explain whats this all about and give some history.
1. What is "Solstice" anyway?
I wonder what the publisher was smoking when they demanded this to be the boxart
"Solstice: The Quest for the Staff of Demnos" is nes game released in 1990, developed by Software Creations.
Its isometric puzzle-platformer, adventure game, where the main goal is to find six pieces of staff hidden in huge maze with 252 rooms. There are some other items too, four potions that can kill all enemies and reveal fake blocks, freeze all enemies/platforms/etc, give player invincibly for one room and reveal all hidden blocks.
Most people know this game from its awesome intro music by Tim Follin, which is three minutes of awesomeness.
2. Where did this all begin?
By editing the disassembly you can make the room sized 2x2 or even 8x8 (3x3 and 7x7 are the smallest and largest rooms used by the game) and the game can "render" them properly too, considering how you can put exits/doors in the "extended" area the developers considered having super large rooms at some point but didn't in the final game, as seen here
I started poking the rom around 2018 early summer and then finished my documentation of the games room data format and some other stuff that goes with that, then month or two later I updated it with more data and shit.
After that I made the "manual randomizer" hack, where I just shuffled around the items, but afterwards I lost interest for Solstice and didn't touch it for years.
There was also the "Solstice alternative" hack that went nowhere, I forgot that I even made thread in 2020 c3 about it lol.
Some old rooms
Then few years later 2021 Cyneprepou4uk made thread on possible requests for NES game disassembles, I made request for Solstice, I thought it will not go through but you never know, but after some time it did happen which I honestly didn't even expect.
The nes PPU can only handle so many tiles at once and the game just keeps drawing tiles if you go beyond what can actually fit. There is way to optimize so that theres no repeat tiles so that you can fit more block in the rooms, but its not fun thing to deal with. If you wonder how it works, heres video showing it in action
After year of procrastinating I finally got started around summer 2022, I worked on this hack alongside of further expanding my documentations and commenting out the disassembly, and figuring out some other stuff, most recently I figured out and documented the gameplay demo format, its really not that complicated but making new ones from scratch was bit annoying at first to get the timings just right.
3. So what is this hack about?
Solstice - Return to the Kastlerock is hack I started around in summer 2022.
This hack redesigns the whole maze, the whole layout is made from scratch, all 253 rooms are made from scratch(219 currently in the latest demo). There are some new sprites/enemies too but nothing too fancy. Graphics and music are the same as the original, but some stuff are more commonly used, as there was one tileset that was just barely used and one enemy which only appeared in single room in the original game.
This hack is intended for those who has played the original couple times before, as the difficulty is higher but nowhere kaizo-level.
Theres also more focus on exploration and keys/detonators are used better, theres more puzzles and platforming. If you haven't played the original game before, I highly playing that before this hack.
4. Whats new since last c3 post/demo?
-A whole lot of new rooms/areas are added, +152 rooms, all items outside of last credit and one detonator are in
-Some old rooms are redesigned or remade from scratch, some areas has more rooms
-Implemented intros gameplay demos
-Edited story and some other text
-In some areas items are shuffled around
-More additions to the disassembly
5. Whats left to do?
Plans past this demo are:
-Finish up the last area (34 rooms, I might use them for some other areas too)
-I feel like some areas/rooms are bit lacking or boring, so Im gonna spice them up or redesign them
-Comment out more of the disassembly, Im still beginner at assembly so dont have high expectations
-Fix some minor issues with custom sprites (I know how to fix it, but other stuff took priority)
-Remove the progress lost when continuing from game over (I got it partially working but I postponed it as persona 3 reload came out)
-More additions to the disassembly
-Make the image of all rooms less ugly
The final area is layout, item and idea -wise planned, currently I have the layout drawn out but only placeholder rooms inserted into the rom.
And the one thing that needs work is beta testing, since the so far Ive only got generic "its good" comments that are appreciated, dont get me wrong, but they dont help me at all. Even recorded playthrough would help a ton(video or just emulator input movie).
6. TL;DR wheres the demo
Here:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/r2i5gey3j7gkq0x/
Version beta 2.5
Check out the disassembly over here too.
It got some updates since the last time.
Thats all for day 1, enjoy?!
Last time I realized that not many people here are familiar with non-SMW hacking, let alone obscure nes game, so let me explain whats this all about and give some history.
1. What is "Solstice" anyway?
I wonder what the publisher was smoking when they demanded this to be the boxart
"Solstice: The Quest for the Staff of Demnos" is nes game released in 1990, developed by Software Creations.
Its isometric puzzle-platformer, adventure game, where the main goal is to find six pieces of staff hidden in huge maze with 252 rooms. There are some other items too, four potions that can kill all enemies and reveal fake blocks, freeze all enemies/platforms/etc, give player invincibly for one room and reveal all hidden blocks.
Most people know this game from its awesome intro music by Tim Follin, which is three minutes of awesomeness.
2. Where did this all begin?
By editing the disassembly you can make the room sized 2x2 or even 8x8 (3x3 and 7x7 are the smallest and largest rooms used by the game) and the game can "render" them properly too, considering how you can put exits/doors in the "extended" area the developers considered having super large rooms at some point but didn't in the final game, as seen here
I started poking the rom around 2018 early summer and then finished my documentation of the games room data format and some other stuff that goes with that, then month or two later I updated it with more data and shit.
After that I made the "manual randomizer" hack, where I just shuffled around the items, but afterwards I lost interest for Solstice and didn't touch it for years.
There was also the "Solstice alternative" hack that went nowhere, I forgot that I even made thread in 2020 c3 about it lol.
Some old rooms
Then few years later 2021 Cyneprepou4uk made thread on possible requests for NES game disassembles, I made request for Solstice, I thought it will not go through but you never know, but after some time it did happen which I honestly didn't even expect.
The nes PPU can only handle so many tiles at once and the game just keeps drawing tiles if you go beyond what can actually fit. There is way to optimize so that theres no repeat tiles so that you can fit more block in the rooms, but its not fun thing to deal with. If you wonder how it works, heres video showing it in action
After year of procrastinating I finally got started around summer 2022, I worked on this hack alongside of further expanding my documentations and commenting out the disassembly, and figuring out some other stuff, most recently I figured out and documented the gameplay demo format, its really not that complicated but making new ones from scratch was bit annoying at first to get the timings just right.
3. So what is this hack about?
Solstice - Return to the Kastlerock is hack I started around in summer 2022.
This hack redesigns the whole maze, the whole layout is made from scratch, all 253 rooms are made from scratch(219 currently in the latest demo). There are some new sprites/enemies too but nothing too fancy. Graphics and music are the same as the original, but some stuff are more commonly used, as there was one tileset that was just barely used and one enemy which only appeared in single room in the original game.
This hack is intended for those who has played the original couple times before, as the difficulty is higher but nowhere kaizo-level.
Theres also more focus on exploration and keys/detonators are used better, theres more puzzles and platforming. If you haven't played the original game before, I highly playing that before this hack.
4. Whats new since last c3 post/demo?
-A whole lot of new rooms/areas are added, +152 rooms, all items outside of last credit and one detonator are in
-Some old rooms are redesigned or remade from scratch, some areas has more rooms
-Implemented intros gameplay demos
-Edited story and some other text
-In some areas items are shuffled around
-More additions to the disassembly
5. Whats left to do?
Plans past this demo are:
-Finish up the last area (34 rooms, I might use them for some other areas too)
-I feel like some areas/rooms are bit lacking or boring, so Im gonna spice them up or redesign them
-Comment out more of the disassembly, Im still beginner at assembly so dont have high expectations
-Fix some minor issues with custom sprites (I know how to fix it, but other stuff took priority)
-Remove the progress lost when continuing from game over (I got it partially working but I postponed it as persona 3 reload came out)
-More additions to the disassembly
-Make the image of all rooms less ugly
The final area is layout, item and idea -wise planned, currently I have the layout drawn out but only placeholder rooms inserted into the rom.
And the one thing that needs work is beta testing, since the so far Ive only got generic "its good" comments that are appreciated, dont get me wrong, but they dont help me at all. Even recorded playthrough would help a ton(video or just emulator input movie).
6. TL;DR wheres the demo
Here:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/r2i5gey3j7gkq0x/
Version beta 2.5
Check out the disassembly over here too.
It got some updates since the last time.
Thats all for day 1, enjoy?!
