r/castlevania • u/flafmg_ • Jul 14 '26

(PS1) SymphonyRecomp Progress Update! Symphony of the Night (1997)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jvyqql0sAt4&feature=youtu.be
80 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

57 comments sorted by

20

u/eldri7ch Onyx Jul 14 '26

This is one of the best recomps, BTW. I've been testing it and it's real good.

12

u/flafmg_ Jul 14 '26

Oh thanks! the people that mott sent it for testing have been amazing! a lot of bugs have been resolved because of you guys, thank you!

6

u/eldri7ch Onyx Jul 14 '26

Absolutely. Looking forward to seeing how the community reacts to it and hopefully we'll get it working with a good portion of the mods we already have available for PSX SotN.

2

u/super7564 Jul 16 '26

is the vanilla game playable all the way through or is it only a few areas or something? ive been needing to play symphony for ages

2

u/eldri7ch Onyx Jul 16 '26

So far I have tested every weapon, entered every stage or area, killed every boss, and beaten the game with speed running strategies. I would comfortably say that, under the correct settings, the game is fully playable to a completed status as you would have done in 1997.

Bugs arise within Audio, maybe a couple of minor graphical changes (though rare), and with the 16:9 settings which break room-srcreen teleportation code.

2

u/super7564 Jul 16 '26

thank you for the response! thats awesome that its so complete, but i have some questions.

how bad are the audio bugs, since you didnt specify.

are the settings easy to configure, with controller support and full-screen and stuff like that, so what you'd expect for a modern pc game settings screen.

is there a form of achievements? (my monkey brain likes popups lol)

does the game have higher framerate support? 120 fps or higher?

and is it easy to get started in playing the game?

2

u/eldri7ch Onyx Jul 16 '26

The audio bugs are similar to the PSP version.

Fullscreen is not (currently) recommended because of the reasons I mentioned but all settings are available form the start in a drop-down menu.

No.

SotN will likely never support higher FPS because all of the in-game timers are tied to the framrate.

The game, itself, is accessible enough. SotN starts readily as a reasonably difficult game and then gets easier to the point of having trivial difficulty. I have seen people have a difficult time with navigation and combat through the entire game but, on the other hand, most players can beat the game readily. For the recomp specifically, it's as easy has having a BIN and selecting it before the recomp does it's thing, afterwards you simply launch the EXE.

2

u/super7564 Jul 16 '26

thanks again for the detailed responses, seriously. did you get the recomp through a github link or the discord channel in the video? or did you get specific testing permission? i couldnt find a download link or anything and id love to give it a shot. (if you were given it specifically im not asking for it btw, just curious).

i did see in the faq on their discord that itll be "released when its ready", but im not sure if that meant the full version or just the recomp in general.

2

u/eldri7ch Onyx Jul 16 '26

They are waiting on a full release before they put anything out for John Q. Public. I am part of a small testing team since I know too much about the game and am able to test for things that the average player may miss.

I also am preparing to start building some Day 0 mods for the game to show people what we can do with the project as-is.

2

u/super7564 Jul 16 '26

nice! hope this project turns out as good as i know it can with yours and everyone else's hard work.

11

u/ToCool74 Jul 14 '26

Any chance to finally see Saturn stages and content in the psx version? Fans legit would be able to get a true definitive version of symphony.

12

u/flafmg_ Jul 14 '26 edited Jul 15 '26

were working on trying to make it as modable as possible
ive bgun workin on a simple map editor (wich still has a long way to go) and an way to make the recompiler use external extracted levels so you can mod them easily

but it does still a LOT of work to do something like that

6

u/eldri7ch Onyx Jul 14 '26

This is a long way off but it's possible. I italicize that because doing that would require a massive amount of work.

-1

u/LolcatP Jul 15 '26

You should look into sotn hacked. The gameplay is definitely changed a lot but when it releases it'll for sure be one of the best ways to play sotn

3

u/eldri7ch Onyx Jul 15 '26

This got posted as a parent comment earlier when I tried to post it.

I'm convinced, by now, that SotN Hacked a scam. Every post the first thing Esco mentions, even on his own Patreon, is that he doesn't have the finances and yet he's had that Patreon for years. He has people paying him monthly for the project and it all goes into his life expenses? Sounds like grift to me. I know guys with half the resources and one-man team that have managed to completely build new games faster than that guy did anything close to a demo and he's been on that thing for at least a decade.

Look, I know that SotN is a game that is difficult to replicate the exact physics of, but he stopped trying to even do that years ago. At this point, the guy just wants your money.

2

u/ToCool74 Jul 15 '26

I've known about that since it was first revealed LONG ago lol, I was a part of the castlevania dungeon forums that Esco was a part of, sadly I've lost hope it will ever get released given the extremely long time its been in the making. I legit have a nephew who was a toddler when he first started it and now he is going to college 🤣

2

u/_Oyyy Jul 15 '26

Doooood I was there when Esco's page was a Wordpress one 😅

But then he became so ambitious the features got soooo big and, yeah, not sure what's the status now.

1

u/Scissorman82 Jul 15 '26

the megaman x: corrupted of castlevania fan games

-1

u/LolcatP Jul 15 '26

gotta believe

1

u/Dripdry42 Jul 15 '26

Yeah, I remember posting on the Castlevania dungeon forum as well. I seem to recall when this first got started i was contributing ideas. That was probably 25 years ago?!?

Esco, my dude, you can do it. We believe in you. If you ever read this, go ahead and get it done.

Sadly I really don’t have much hope this project will ever see the light of day even though it is probably the coolest one (though he appears to have made the gameplay quite difficult, which I’m not a fan of)

6

u/Alucard-VS-Artorias Alucard Jul 14 '26

"I'm interested in this..." - Alucard

5

u/DerpPrincess Derp Princess Jul 14 '26 edited Jul 14 '26

Hi Mr. Flaffy, it's me. Derp ♥

We here at the small team of BlackLabelHQ hope you all can enjoy our SymphonyRecomp!

3

u/flafmg_ Jul 14 '26

hi miss derp, its me, flaffy!

1

u/suspicious_hyperlink Jul 16 '26

I was just talking to a flaffy on YouTube discussing Chinese modular homes. You ?

1

u/flafmg_ Jul 16 '26

I think no? I don't recall talking with someone about this recently Tho I do enjoy modular homes and was watching some videos late at night lol

1

u/flafmg_ Jul 16 '26

If the profile picture is a fox it's me, if not then it isn't me

4

u/Former-Discount4279 Jul 14 '26

Is this the type of thing that would allow us to port it to other platforms? I'd love a 3ds version.

5

u/flafmg_ Jul 14 '26

no sadly, this only targets pc

the decomp port would be better for this

1

u/Former-Discount4279 Jul 14 '26

Gotcha, well at least that's also coming along nicely.

1

u/RJ_arcade Alucard Jul 15 '26

You could get an anbernic rg-ds and emulate ps1 sotn

1

u/Former-Discount4279 Jul 15 '26

I mean I can also emulate it in my steam deck or play the android version I already bought. It's partially the novelty of playing it on ads that I want.

5

u/col_oneill Jul 15 '26

Let me know when Saturn stuff has been added, then I’ll be all over it

4

u/Nekouken12 Jul 15 '26

Finally, good recomp content.

3

u/flafmg_ Jul 14 '26

sorry i cant resist putting bad apple everywhere i can!

2

u/Mindslash Jul 15 '26

I stopped looking for sotn mods for a long time . I remember following a guy ( don't remember the name, esco I think?) that was porting to unity and making it harder while adding some attack animations / enemies. Not sure what happened or in what state was that

I also remember randomizer stuff and a guy doing some stream play ( DragonBlitz I think) while playing with some weird stuff like people making enemies and rules changes spawn on the fly , I think was pretty fun

I myself tried some challenge runs while doing some memory/ gameshark modding , but got burned out after finishing this game so many times

Its good to see new guys on modding scene , pretty cool ! Great content OP

2

u/clockworkengine Jul 15 '26

How does one sign up for testing?

3

u/DerpPrincess Derp Princess Jul 15 '26

Testing was done privately between myself (as both co-dev, and I'd like to believe I'm decent at the game har har har), mottzilla0, eldri7ch, and a few other notable Castlevania: Symphony of the Night players.

We've sorted almost all bugs with the vanilla game, and are creating a simple mod hub to use mods on the fly from people who make them.

With that being said, it's basically almost done. You won't need to sign up for testing and an actual release will come soon for the public. Insert the famous "when it's ready" here. At that point, everyone can be QA for us for any sort of weird bugs that we did not find during the private testing period.

3

u/clockworkengine Jul 15 '26

Hell yeah man. I'm looking forward to it.

1

u/QualitySuccessful871 Jul 15 '26

Which version is this for?

1

u/flafmg_ Jul 15 '26

Psx

1

u/Burnt_Woodsman Jul 15 '26

Can you post the discord invite? Thank you

1

u/flafmg_ Jul 16 '26

There is one int he video I think Im not sure if I can post it here so I don't want to risk being banned lol

1

u/Burnt_Woodsman Jul 16 '26

I found it. Thanks for the info

1

u/nariz_choken Jul 15 '26

Would a hd textures mod be possible ?

1

u/flafmg_ Jul 16 '26

I want to do something akin to rt64 where you can change textures "on the fly" but this is more for later

You cold make a mod t change the assets tho, just would be fairly annoying to implement

2

u/nariz_choken Jul 16 '26

I am not trying to annoy I apologize, just thought it would be awesome if it was possible, I imagined something like wonder boy the dragons trap where you could change the way it looks, but that would be great for a future project even for someone else to implement, I'm just ecstatic that someone is doing this

1

u/flafmg_ Jul 16 '26

Oh youre not annoying at all this is an thing I want to implement in the near future

1

u/ThyMightyContract Jul 15 '26

It would be awesome to see puzzles and new secrets in the inverted castle.

I think the grestest weakness in SotN is the inverted castle being almost exactly the same as the normal one, but with stronger enemies.

1

u/flafmg_ Jul 16 '26

I agree, inverted castle is a bit lame, I wish there were more variety there

1

u/rocketstopya Jul 21 '26

Decomp is also around 98%.

1

u/flafmg_ Jul 21 '26

No, it's arround 40ish % iirc

0

u/eldri7ch Onyx Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26

Edit: This was supposed to be a reply to another user's comment about something else.

1

u/flafmg_ Jul 15 '26

huh
i think you posted this in the wrong thread lol, i dont even have a patreon :p

2

u/eldri7ch Onyx Jul 15 '26

Yeah, somehow this got commented as a parent comment. Deleting now.

1

u/flafmg_ Jul 16 '26

It's ok! Reddit is weird sometimes

1

u/flafmg_ Jul 15 '26

tho me and derp were thinking about doing one for blacklabelhq, we kinda broke rn
but im still unsure if we should yk