Shmup Sprites

[Mako]

My friend and I are tossing around ideas for a shmup game and wanted to make some sprites. We want to use the latest CAVE games as a reference for quality (Dodonpachi, Mushi Futari, Espgaluda II). Does anyone know the rough sizes of the main ships, enemies, and larger bosses from any of these? What's the frame rate for those games? Is there any sort of database of shmup sprites?
Thanks!

[Obiwanshinobi]

Acquaint yourself with MAME a.s.a.p. Disable any filtering whatsoever there and you can count pixels one by one on stills.
Arcade shmups run at frameretes ~60, but various systems have refresh rates different from NTSC TVs (and bullet hell shmups tend to slown down by design a lot, although I think the latest ones may keep the framerate stable at that).

[Mako]

Acquaint yourself with MAME a.s.a.p. Disable any filtering whatsoever there and you can count pixels one by one on stills.

oh dang! Is that the only way to do it? I thought there might be some standard dimensions like 300 x 300 or something.

[Obiwanshinobi]

It is trivial. You press one hotkey and MAME saves a screenshot. You press the pause button and the game halts. You press the next frame button and MAME displays another frame. And so on.

Counting pixels of a typical ship sprite is hardly rocket science either.

[ptoing]

Ripped these a while ago. Links because biggish images.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/155 ... prites.png

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/155 ... prites.png

[Mako]

Ripped these a while ago. Links because biggish images.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/155 ... prites.png

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/155 ... prites.png

That's a huge help! Thank you!
And I counted pixels of Esp II and the sprite was roughly 145 x 145. Just fun fact moving forward.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Don't CAVE CV1000 games run in lo-res in the arcades (and on MAME)? I thought either everything in 360 ports was rendered in higher res, or everything on the cabs was downscaled.

[Doctor Butler]

Your sprites should be proportional to your display resolution. What kind of game are you making? Hi-res, STR, Vert, Hori, Hertizontal?

[Mako]

Your sprites should be proportional to your display resolution. What kind of game are you making? Hi-res, STR, Vert, Hori, Hertizontal?

We're planning on a vertical, high res shooter in 1080.

[ptoing]

Don't CAVE CV1000 games run in lo-res in the arcades (and on MAME)? I thought either everything in 360 ports was rendered in higher res, or everything on the cabs was downscaled.

All Cave games with the exception of the PGM stuff, Progear and DSII is 240x320. And the other raster based ones are lores as well, no clue what res DSII is. The original art was made for the PCBs, so nothing on them is downscaled.

Also the only ports in which everything is higher res is Akai Katana Shin and DDP SDOJ, all other games are a mix and match of partly cleaned up backgrounds and sprites.

[320x240]

Don't forget to scale the sprites the same amount you will scale the screen. For instance, if the original CAVE resolution is 320x240 and your game will have a resolution of 1280x960, ie 4 times larger, a sprite that is 32x32 becomes 128x128.

Trivial, but important and sometimes forgotten.

[Mako]

Don't forget to scale the sprites the same amount you will scale the screen. For instance, if the original CAVE resolution is 320x240 and your game will have a resolution of 1280x960, ie 4 times larger, a sprite that is 32x32 becomes 128x128.

Trivial, but important and sometimes forgotten.

Yes, sir! A very important point. I work in media and that little tidbit can make aaaaaallllll the difference!

[Doctor Butler]

Don't forget to scale the sprites the same amount you will scale the screen. For instance, if the original CAVE resolution is 320x240 and your game will have a resolution of 1280x960, ie 4 times larger, a sprite that is 32x32 becomes 128x128.

Trivial, but important and sometimes forgotten.

Yeha, this is what I was sort of getting at. You want the ship proportinate to the size of the screen, regerdless of the screens actual size (res)

[slateman]

1080p means anything I have isn't worth jack...but I ripped a bunch of Cave shit ages ago. Maybe someone finds this interesting. (MMP stuff is newest)

DonPachi/DoDon Pachi (http://slateman.net/images/gaming/ddp/)
MuchiMuchi Pork (http://slateman.net/images/gaming/mmp/)
ESPRa.De. (http://slateman.net/images/gaming/esprade/)
Guwange (http://slateman.net/images/gaming/guwange/)
Progear (http://slateman.net/images/gaming/progear/)

It's old and not my best work...however it's something.