Mortal Kombat HD Remix with MUGEN

Before you send it Calactyte, there's something important I need to bring up so I'd appreciate it if you hold off until I finish my post.

That head looks awesome by the way.
 
I still have the 1 complaint about the body shadows on the pillars being to visible, you can see the whole silhouette on the pillar shadow that casts on the wall.
 
Okay so Calactyte, I was going to bring this up later but seeing as you're going to send the Pit to Interloko soon, I should probably do it now. This post is more about functionality than aesthetics.

So firstly, I'm assuming that the shadows in the middle of your bridge are from the clouds overhead. However on the off chance that they're not, they shouldn't be there since the backdrop of the moon and mountains is supposed to be a fixed image, so the moon should be casting light on the bridge at all times. Apart from cloud shadows, there should be no variations in lighting.

Here's a little breakdown of the Pit:

pitsource.png


* The bridge/yellow background represents the length of the stage
* The Pit backdrop represents the area where both characters start, this one is formatted to 16:9 already
* The clouds here are the total amount of clouds that pass the screen, this is their exact positioning at the first frame

For the sake of accuracy, your backdrop should be similar to this 16:9 image (ignore the leftmost side of the mountain as I've just mirrored it to extend its length):

pitbackdrop.png


I still feel the mountains in your backdrop need to be replaced, as to my eyes they are clearly lower resolution than everything else. But after that backdrop is finalized, anyone else who is working on the Warrior Shrine, or Test Your Might, should use it because the one that is in the Pit is also in those stages. Otherwise there could be some obvious inconsistencies in the backgrounds.

Another issue is the height of the stage. The height between the bridge and the bottom of the stage doesn't matter, since it's only function is the distance that the character falls. However, the height between the top of the screen and the bridge does matter, and its something that should be amended in your version.

Here is Interloko's rip of the stage:

interlokopit.png


Here is your stage resized to the width of Interloko's, and moved up to match the position of the bridge on the screen:

calactyteresize.png


As you can see, the backdrop is up too high, cutting the moon off. Since we've agreed that the characters need to have the same distance in height from their heads to the top of the screen as the original, the way I've composed it here is the way we've agreed on. So it's necessary for the backdrop to be moved down. As for the situation when characters jump or are uppercutted, the stage lifts like so:

pitjump.png


The backdrop is still in a fixed position of course and so there is no additional space above the moon. I'm not sure whether you're in charge of making the final compositions though, so if you've left that up to Interloko then I'm sorry for wasting your time with this.

Lastly onto the clouds...
Your most recent version of the clouds looks good and fits with the stage. However if you wanted to get it really close to the original, its the animation, size and positioning that would definitely sell it. I'm not sure if you have started on the animation yet or if you are even doing it, but I've composed and calculated this, and it wouldn't be hard to do. Here's the reference image I've made:

cloudssource.png


This is the total amount of clouds present in the stage. They are made up of 3 rows that each move at different speeds to each other. I've worked out the duration of each row, in regards to how long it takes for them to pass through the stage before they loop:

Top clouds: 21s
Mid clouds: 28s
Bottom clouds: 42s

You can refer to the first image in this post for their exact positioning on the screen from the first frame.

Anyway all that would be needed is roughly the same amount of clouds, and three rows with each one being of similar size to the original. They clouds don't need to look like the original, what you have is good is at is, but IMO it'd be better if they occupied the same amount of space and behaved the same way.

So that's all for now, please consider what I've written since any changes should be easy to implement and would be beneficial for the stage IMO.
 
Hi Fester,

Thanks for your input. The key light is coming from the left.

These are two different sized objects. Now if the material of the clothing is lighter than the material of the columns like it is here, light will reflect or bleed into the shadow creating slightly different shadow tones in the shading. When light scatter refracts through a transparent object we see a much more apparent version of this phenomenon known as a caustic. But in our case, we have a completely matte object (the column) which sucks in light and a semi gloss yellow cloth material and skin which reflects light. You'll get two slighting different shadows from two objects with subtle but different reflectivity.

The last very important part of the equation is the size of the light shining on the object and it's distance and direction from those objects which determine whether the shadow will be sharp or blurry. You'll have to take my word for it since I don't have the time "prove" it by setting up and photographing a controlled experiment.
 
Hi Jarvis,

I have nothing to do with the cloud animation, that will be done in code by Interloko. He'll have the PSD so he will have the final say over how the clouds are composed. We've talked about the mountains already. If it's bugging you, please provide me new ones. Personally it doesn't bother me since he mountains are far away they wouldn't be as sharp. But if you are seeing pixels and it's bugging you, then I'm open to a fix for that.

Good call on the BG height. I'll extend the sky higher so Interloko has more field of view to work with.
 
the BG height is fine. in my reference image i haven't riped the "invisible" part when characters jump, etc.
here is an example of the stage. it has 168 "invisible" pixels, so it's ok
102v5t3.gif
 
ok bg height is fixed, also sized the moon smaller to be closer to the original dimensions. As for the lighting, I can't easily change that without re-rendering. I may come back to it some point but I think the light variation is too minimal of a crit verses the level of effort it would take to correct it. In the meantime just pretend that it's a shadow cast by the clouds. Also when you are only seeing portions of the screen, the lighting variation will be less apparent. It's all about point of reference.

night_background.png


Here is the raw night background. You should attempt to match the size when providing your new mountains to Interloko.
 
ok bg height is fixed, also sized the moon smaller to be closer to the original dimensions. As for the lighting, I can't easily change that without re-rendering. I may come back to it some point but I think the light variation is too minimal of a crit verses the level of effort it would take to correct it. In the meantime just pretend that it's a shadow cast by the clouds. Also when you are only seeing portions of the screen, the lighting variation will be less apparent. It's all about point of reference.

I see, I had hoped it was just the cloud shadows but turns out my gut feeling was right. This is one aspect that I wouldn't consider too minimal, on the contrary IMO it should be on the top of the list to change. Because what's going to happen is that since the backdrop is fixed while the characters walk the length of the bridge, you will always have a moon however the majority of your bridge is not moonlit. Which won't make sense.

Although I think a simple shadows/highlights edit on just the bridge itself would be a quick and painless solution to this problem. Here is a 10 second edit I did just now:

pithdedit.png


This is obviously just a rough example but with a bit of playing around I know you could find a good setting.

EDIT:
What you could do to keep some lighting variation in the image, is place a vignette overlay that's fixed just as the backdrop, so that the same lighting will surround the characters at all times. I think this is a practical solution that would bring some life back to the stage after it's flattened.
 
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Hey Jarvis,

Did you end up completing the UI screens? I don't think you ever posted what the VS. screen looks like?

Yeah I have completed them, I'm uploading them for Interloko soon actually, however I wasn't happy with what I'd done for the VS & Insert Coin screens so I'm redoing those currently. I will post them for feedback before I send them off of course.

Also good work on the updated moon, that looks right to me. Thanks for the mountain reference pic too.
 
You actually did a nice job on your color variation. What settings are you using, perhaps I'll attempt to match yours on the original?
 
You actually did a nice job on your color variation. What settings are you using, perhaps I'll attempt to match yours on the original?

For that I just used the default shadows/highlights setting, then used selective color to deepen the blues to retrieve your original sky tones and deepen the reds for blood. A slight contrast boost too. Since you have the layers separated then you need only play with shadows/highlights for the bridge, that's all you'd need to correct the lighting I think.
 
Hey guys,

I'm new in the forum. I worked as a graphist for my MK9 screenpack.
I recently just made an HD remake of the courtyard and try to be closer to the original.
EVERYTHING has been made by me, except for the Shang Tsung model and the Soldiers of catalyst.
And this time, I do it myself interloko ;)

111126011726834187.png


So what do you think of it ? I allready included it in Mugen
 
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Ok thanks for the tip Jarvis, I think I fixed the lighting issue. I really thought I'd need to re-render but turns out Photoshop can fix a lot.

Original:
the_pit_HD_h.jpg



Lighting Fix:
the_pit_HD_i.jpg
 
And that right there is what I love about you Interloko...

You might not be saying that after you look at a file with 80 layers though. :)
 
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