What? You thought I was going to title this page Rosenkreuzstilette 2: Electric Boogaloo?
Yes, your eyes aren't deceiving you. I have found more to talk about.
First let's talk utilities.
I had lots of fun playing this game, but
that's not enough for me. I want more. Even though Spriter's Resource had done
the painstaking work of ripping a good portion of the sprites, there were a few
I wanted. So I started Google searching for utilities to extract the data files.
The first one to come up was Rosenkreuz Tool.
The promise of ripping the graphics turned out not to be true, but it does
the job of grabbing up the music, voice, and SFX.
On with the search. Next we have TSearch cheater.
This came up oddly enough while trying to find graphic hacks. First of all, you don't need to cheat to get through Spiritia's game. I didn't. But I certainly do need it in Grolla's
game. Jeeze. I've seen You Tube videos of people beating the game using Grolla
and no cheats. I sure as hell can't. I have yet to find the Infinite Weapon
Energy, Infinite E-Tank, or Infinite Lives cheats. INF HP is fine, unless you
keep falling in the lava right before the boss door.
I found this
tool to be quite useful on other games like Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude.
Now our answers have been prayered with the release of the Rosenkreuzstilette
Data Archive Decoder. All you simply do is drag and drop the data file onto the
Decode.exe application and the something.dat is turned into a regular file
folder that can be access with Explorer.
(One of the many mysteries I have to deal with in life is why Nero decided it
was the one to associate itself with .dat files.)
A side note: We were originally told that the Rosenkreuzstilette Data
Archive Decoder does not work with Rosenkreuzstilette 2. Well, us complete
idiots figured it out.
Reference Hunting:
A game I have avoided like something a little less worse
than the plague.
(Okay, not exactly.)
When I first started Googling Rosenkreuzstilette all kinds of forums and wotnot
came up with all kinds of references to Megaman and Castlevania. I wanted to
join in, but by the time I discovered this game in 2009, all of the really good
ones had been sniffed out already. Plus I noticed that people were taking
reference hunting a little too seriously. So seriously in fact all I can do at
this point is to riff at it.
She seems to be a somewhat popular target. Let's see if I can figure out why:
Sorry, just can't quite put my finger on it.
Overcooking.
In the last article I said that the graphics were over done. Even if you're
just playing the game and not doing any editing you notice that the graphics are
so rich in color.
If you don't know who this is, congratulations, you have a life. Anyway,
here's a screen shot of all the colors used in that image:
I think that's about 255 different colors. No repeats. Now I have to admit
some changes were made to the format to get this table, however I think my point
can be sufficiently made using it.
My point? That's a lot of work for two
guys to do. Too much in fact. If it was twenty people doing this no problem. But
for two guys? It's hurting production. For two years now we have been promised Rosenkreuzstilette
2 and have only gotten a couple of demos and a bunch of delays.
Part of the reason is the high level of attention to detail that Isemiya and
Womi are putting in. It's easy to lose oneself trying to figure out if that
pixel looks better one to the left or two to the right. The other reason I
believe is that Rosenkreuzstilette 2 is not a priority. These
guys went through all the trouble of remaking Rosenkreuzstilette 1 for sale on a
legit download site, only to have barely a 100 people buy it. I think they are
concentrating on their day jobs to pay the rent instead on a game that nobody is
buying.
Back to my original point (about
time.) They need to compromise some more. You don't need
255, 254, 253, 252 whites. I can't distinguish that one digit difference. So why
concentrate so hard on it? Use fewer colors. Concentrate on the story,
playability, music, bells and whistles.
Go play Megaman 4 on the Gameboy.
Awesome graphics. Total number of colors used in the entire game: 4. Eight on
the Super Gameboy and emulators.
All these delays are doing is pissing us
off, the fans. At this point in time only the real hardcore fans are going to
buy Rosenkreuzstilette 2. Everybody else is bored and gone on to other stuff and
has completely forgotten.
I sure would like to be able to play Rosenkreuzstilette
3.
By the way, how did I ever install the Rosenkreuzstilette English Patch without the original CD? In my original effort to figure out how to map the controller I translated the readme file. This particular line caught my eye:
"Please copy the content of installation CD in the place
where we like inside HDD."
Despite the rather busted English that BubbleFisch gives me.
I got the meaning. Now the English patch guys were pissing off everybody (re:
those that downloaded the game without buying it, and still haven't) by
originally making the patch only workable with the original CD. After reading
that line in the readme I thought to myself: "Self, what if I were to copy the
contents of the installation CD back onto a CD?" Took about two tries, got it to
work.