King's Field 2

[Holy_Diver]

I'm posting this in the DD board on purpose.... but first I want to say, after playing beta DD I wanted to play KF2 again (before playing DD again) ...now I've played thru KF2 at least two times in my life, once when it was fairly new, and later again when I was either finishing highschool or had some time to kill after having finished, and well now I've officially played thru two sittings (which in my case tends to not be very long) and I'm astounded how quickly the game seems to have unraveled. More or less my first recognizable accomplishment was to find the dragon fountain, and not too many minutes later I'd mustered the courage to start slaying the guards and had in my possession the jail key. Let Alef's comrade out of jail and had in my possession the first dragon figure key (forget what the name was) ...and I had the presence of mind to walk back and save my game to make sure I chose the right spring (something I don't think I ever did before) which makes a huge diff, because in past play thrus, A) I recall not finding the fountain until later in the game, and B) I'm pretty sure both times I ended up unleashing the ailment healing spring first (so no free MP until even further into the game) ...though I think I would've been wise enough not to do that on my second play thru unless I had so ingrained the game into my psyche I'd taken it for granted the status spring would just come first. Anyway it's a real joy... and it's been significantly long enough that I've forgotten nearly everything in detailed terms about the experience, which is something I always see to before revisiting a book/movie/game I have great esteem for.

All that said.... I gotta admit, I really can't place the starting map of DD into the layout of this area in KF2. I'd be shocked if the key locations on the map lineup at all or even orient in the correct directions... I haven't heard much of anything from Todd lately (I'm assuming because we're not keeping the same hours) but I'd really like to see a side by side layout of the KF2 and DD maps for this area dissected. I really like DD and I really like KF2 so much, the rest of DD really hits home, but this map just doesn't fit.... I'd go so far as to get out a sketch pad and totally redo the damned thing for DD if Todd would promise to put it in the official game sooner or later.

To be honest I'd like to see DD's maps poured over and over time refined until they mirror KF2's as perfectly as possible (perhaps paving the way for a KF2 remake) by whoever would pitch into the task. I don't see anything in KF2 that I couldn't model in Som... even if it meant a few more cheesy transitions it would be well worth it to get it right / do justice to the layouts (even if DD was never meant to be a 1 to 1 mirror of KF2 Melanat)


EDITED: Btw, it just blows my mind how awesome an experience you can have for 600yen off the PSN compared to all the liquid gold dipped turds lining the shelves of all the retail outlets... I consider video games my one true love in terms of media, but in reality my media attention span is more divided about 40% music, 30% tv, 20% film, 8% print, 2% games... and that's a shame. But as a medium games have only been around for a short while so the back catalogue is not much, and well let's face it, the golden years are long gone and were short lived. A least I can focus all that latent energy into video game related work (usually far more tangentially so than what I've done for Som already)

[dmpdesign]

The maps most definitely do not mirror the original exactly, however the orientation and relative placement should be similar.

It was difficult to really attempt to duplicate KF2 because of the multi-layered maps that employs so well...as north village/west garrison and the dragon fountain were the first three maps i ever made, i was fairly green with SOM and did not think to build my own parts to accomplish a multi-leveled map in the same style KF2 employed.  For the record, I will be the first to admit KF2 destroys DD in the coolness aspect because of how the maps intertwined so well.

Below is a quick illustration (the left side being from a walkthrough map of KF2 that I made, the right side being the overall layout of DD) to give you an idea of the similarity (where there is some).

As for someone wanting to redo the maps, they can do as they please.  Once 1.7 is done, I  am making the source files available to anyone who wants to toy around with it.

[Holy_Diver]

I'd really like to see this area more faithfully executed... it's how people orient themselves to Melanat I think. I wouldn't be such a stickler about if the other areas of DD were not so reminiscent of KF2... otherwise I'd just consider it a total reworking of Melanat. I think there should be a nostalgia and familiarity factor there however.

I think I could do it well enough without making any custom things general layout wise. Some things like the steps leading up the side of a wall might be very tough to do without custom pieces/objects however. Without doing a very custom layout it would probably have some awkwardly placed loading/warping points, but it would be worth it I think. I would feel better if it was just more tightly modeled, many areas like north village would not be so hard to duplicate faithfully... and I gotta admit, like I've always told you, the starting map seems like a weak beginning for an otherwise very rewarding experience (if you stick with it)

PS: Remember what I told you about starting in a jail cell being a good idea (sorry to say so publicly) well since I've played KF2... it seems like the perfect beginning would be starting in the jail cell with the secret door to the dragon fountain / old hand scrawl and just kicking things off from there. Classic KF beginning.... no equipment, and you start in a locked cell, and must start by finding the secret door in the wall... then Guyra opens the doors in the dragon fountain for you, and voila you stumble out into N. Village.... if I have anything it's a knack for game design, you gotta just trust my instincts in this stuff

[Verdite]

This is an interesting post for me, a few reasons;

This game is actually "kings field 1" in europe 

Secondly, its brought back memories for me too. But when i look at the old games like on the ps1, ps2 etc i think... would i actually like them remade? Strangely i like kings field's blockiness. Blocky controls... To an extent at least... I also like the distorted sound effects!

It brings back that old... Ps1 feel doesnt it? Kings field in the making. Shame it didnt get too far.

[Holy_Diver]

When I said "remade" I think what I had in mind primarily would be a faithful ripped graphics remake which would theoretically look identical except for the black cracks and distortion and also probably the dithering effect (which I don't actually like if your tv is big enough to make it out)

But there would also be a side by side Som version also, so you could swap between the two presentations. The Som version would have some limitations such as map transitions. But I could make a fully faithful version of KF2 by extending a Som runtime simulator which will be developed. The final KF2 remake would support stereo 3D and possibly other effects which would not be computationally intensive for the simple graphics like depth of field (also we could raise the camera up to eye level, which is something I don't dig about KF2)

It would probably take a while to perfect, but I think in the future translating classic games into more open platforms (instead of emulation) will become more and more of a preoccupation.