Balrog BalFROG color

I don't know if anyone has asked this

But why is Balrog a different color in the Gum room?

before he turns into balfrog hes a little bit more.. grayish i guess?

Has anyone else noticed this?

Also in the Japanese version of cave story do they not call Balrog "Balfrog" (However they would say that) or is that just something fun that was translated

 

I don't know if anyone has asked this

But why is Balrog a different color in the Gum room?

before he turns into balfrog hes a little bit more.. grayish i guess?

Has anyone else noticed this?

Also in the Japanese version of cave story do they not call Balrog "Balfrog" (However they would say that) or is that just something fun that was translated

It’s to bland the character with back ground, knowing that gum use bkplantation or something
And that also the room is mostly green make sense to have balrog greenish.
After all, if balrog have a brand new char for his bossfight, might as well make sense.

 

probably to blend in with the environment a little more, pixel probably forgot to add new color schemes for balrog in different areas (or just didnt want to bother)

 

The reason for this is because Pixel usually made himself use a maximum of 16 colours, and since that Balrog NPC uses Balrog sprites from the same spritesheet as the boss, he's borrowing their colour to avoid Pixel having to use a 256-colour bitmap.

Balfrog is a pun that only works in English. The closest you could get to "Balfrog" in Japanese is probably "バルカエル."
The moment I saw Balrog as a frog I was like "hey dassa bal-frog," and seeing the "Balfrog was defeated!" text at the end made me go ":O iss really call that." In Japanese it just says "Balrog was defeated!" like ususal.
In the credits, the Balrog frog boss is called "ボスフロッグ", or "Boss Frog."

 

The moment I saw Balrog as a frog I was like "hey dassa bal-frog," and seeing the "Balrog was defeated!" text at the end made me go ":O iss really call that." In Japanese it just says "Balrog was defeated!" like ususal.

You said "Balrog was defeated" twice.

 

I'm guessing 256 color bitmaps were more annoying to make back in 2000 right?
I just use 24-bit bitmaps. I can use all the colors I want that way.

 

I'm guessing 256 color bitmaps were more annoying to make back in 2000 right?

No but Pixel was really adamant about making the game's file size very small, hence the proprietary sound/music files, low-fi bmps and exe that was compiled with a setting that makes it 2x larger than it needs to be... oh wait except that last one.

 

No but Pixel was really adamant about making the game's file size very small, hence the proprietary sound/music files, low-fi bmps and exe that was compiled with a setting that makes it 2x larger than it needs to be... oh wait except that last one.

Heh, maybe it would've still had used the 60fps framerate instead of dropping to 50 if the exe size was smaller, then.

 

Heh, maybe it would've still had used the 60fps framerate instead of dropping to 50 if the exe size was smaller, then.

Well, it would have probably so much more time efficient, so yes Pixel may have totoally fucked up there. Then again, there's no easy way to know without having a copy of one of those versions.

 

I also put the game at 60fps. It looks cool

 

It is cool.

 

It is only kinda screwy when you want to use <WAI

But everyone who's done it should know that.

 

Aside from you guys derailing the conversation for no comprehensible reason besides just a lack of compassion regarding this game and this community,
the true reason is because of the size limit on all images in Cave Story. (320 x 240)
Pixel would not be able to fit all of the normal balrog sprites and Balfrog in the same sheet, so he cut out ones that he wouldn't need ( or didn't implement at the time) and created a separate sprite sheet. The reason Balrog's colors are different is because of optimizing the palette, and thus, reducing the size of the game.

He could've easily made Balfrog smaller and fit it in one sheet, but it wouldn't have the same dramatic effect.

 

Aside from you guys derailing the conversation for no comprehensible reason besides just a lack of compassion regarding this game and this community,
the true reason is because of the size limit on all images in Cave Story. (320 x 240)
Pixel would not be able to fit all of the normal balrog sprites and Balfrog in the same sheet, so he cut out ones that he wouldn't need ( or didn't implement at the time) and created a separate sprite sheet. The reason Balrog's colors are different is because of optimizing the palette, and thus, reducing the size of the game.

He could've easily made Balfrog smaller and fit it in one sheet, but it wouldn't have the same dramatic effect.

oh i didnt know that adding more colors to a sprite sheet took up a lot of space

 

I ignore space requirements. I have A LOT of space on my laptop(s). So I even have 7 different copies of Cave Story and more.
But I'm sure other people care about space. I just move videos onto a USB if I need space.

 

Well now, space requirement doesn't matter, Cave Story was made in 2004, when Windows 98 and Windows 2000 were still a thing (and compatible with Cave Story), every byte matters for those operating systems.

 

Reminder that some of the earliest videos of Cave Story on youtube and other video sharing websites had people struggling with their framerate.
Somewhat makes me concerned how I'm gonna go about optimizing my game, considering I used to get terrible framerate when I ran windows 7.

 

Reminder that some of the earliest videos of Cave Story on youtube and other video sharing websites had people struggling with their framerate.
Somewhat makes me concerned how I'm gonna go about optimizing my game, considering I used to get terrible framerate when I ran windows 7.

It ran fine for me, and i use a lower end w7 laptop.

 

Pretty much anyone who's looked at the assembly can see that cave story's executable is waay larger than it needs to be.

 

Aside from you guys derailing the conversation for no comprehensible reason besides just a lack of compassion regarding this game and this community,

Jeez, calm down!

the true reason is because of the size limit on all images in Cave Story. (320 x 240)

Wrong.
For tiles it's 256x240. For NPC primary and secondary spritesheets it's 320x240... but if you use any rects that go outside this limit, instead of the extra space being filled with nothing, your object will no longer render at all.
For all of the spritesheets that are loaded at the start of the game, any reasonable size is allowed. (Bullet.bmp, NpcSym, NpcRegu, etc.)

This is because Pixel probably didn't want massive load times between areas.

every byte matters for those operating systems.

considering I used to get terrible framerate when I ran windows 7.

i use a lower end w7 laptop.

The operating system should have nothing to do with the specs of the relevant computer. However, on Windows 7 you may indeed see far worse performance from two computers same specs, because Windows 7 is quite taxing, especially the Aero theme. (hey, remember all the shit Vista got for that?)

every byte matters

Now, if every byte mattered Cave Story would not have been able to run at all on systems of the time, because allegedly Pixel used a debug flag to compile it, making all the assembly code extremely verbose and inefficient.
Drives already existed in 1998 that stored multiple gigabytes. And if someone was poorer they could probably still afford a multiple megabyte drive.
I think the best theory as to why Pixel tried to make Cave Story compact like he did is that he wanted it to fit on a floppy disk, as well as not take up a great portion of any user's potentially small drive. (1.5MB on a 40MB drive would feel like quite a bit)

Reminder that some of the earliest videos of Cave Story on youtube and other video sharing websites had people struggling with their framerate.

Screen-capture videos are usually not a good representation of how a game performs. Encoding/writing a video is very taxing. Even for me now, I find it very hard to get Cave Story to run well whilst recording it.
I mean, it probably doesn't help that it uses DDRAW and its only thread besides the main one is the org-player.

Well now, space requirement doesn't matter,

The amount of space people generally have (due to its decrease in cost over time) and the space requirements for modern games are only getting bigger as they implement more detailed models and textures.