Dodge the barrage, defeat enemies, and brave the Scarlet Mist incident.The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil returns with fresh music and graphics
An official remaster of the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil was announced today, releasing this September. The first time a Touhou game has gotten this treatment, and notably the first time EoSD is available digitally at all (I think). Featuring art and music redone by ZUN, updated gameplay, and notably, inbuilt translations for 10 languages!
Happy to admit that I'm part of the English translation team. Notably the process is still ongoing and the trailer and Steam page use different versions of some text. There's not much else I can say about it at this point, but look forward to it!
I knew to expect a big reaction, but thanks for all the personal congratulations too!
I figure I should circle back around to clarify some of the things that people online seem most curious about. This is all from public sources, not any kind of insider info.
The circle "Shanghai Alice Reprise" formed for this project consists of ZUN and some of his usual collaborators like his wife Kii-san, Jyunya and Curee from AQUASTYLE, and Unabara Iruka from Twilight Frontier, plus some other staff. There is some vague hope of continuing with the remasters in the future. New Touhou games are still going to be done by Team Shanghai Alice i.e. ZUN with some help, just like before. Nothing has changed in terms of the fanwork guidelines either, he wanted to clarify, I guess because there's a new circle involved and all.
Contrary to what I kinda vaguely said, the art is done by other people like Curee (close redraws of ZUN's old art), Jyunya (enemy sprites) and Kii-san (player sprites). The coding is being handled by other people like Jyunya recreating ZUN's old game in a newer engine.
The music is all redone by ZUN himself. It has wider instrumentation and better audio quality, obviously, but I'd say it's still pretty close to the original rather than e.g. some attempt to make "2026-style versions" that'd sound like they came out of FW. I'm not a music person, though.
While the others talked ZUN into this project, it isn't just something he gave his blessing, he is closely personally involved with it. In his own words, until now he's been very busy just making all the music, but now comes the part where he needs to check other people's work and nitpick everything he wants changed (mostly joking). They've had a very tight schedule coming up on this announcement, and still a lot to do in the three months before release.
The release includes both the new version and a close recreation of the 2002 original, down to lacking quality of life features that the new version adds in. (screenshot source)
This is a gun we’re talking about. The projectile is fired using an explosion, not by compressed air of a toy gun or the elastic forces of a sling shot. People would be lucky if they only lost their finger.
The finger won’t block it - the shaft is only there for keeping the bullet straight, all the propulsion happens behind the bullet. The bullet would rip through the finger, not that many would actually fit without the victim being a child, and beyond.
Why the dingleknockers would you even consider sticking your finger in the barrel of a loaded gun?? the amount of force propelling the bullet at that close of range would shatter the finger at the very least; this is a petition for 1,000,000 people to loose the use of their hands. If a bullet explodes the back of a persons skull when they shoot it in their mouth it sure as hell will explode a finger.
You guy who think the bullet would stop at the finger have never shot a gun and can volunteer to it their fingers in the barrel of my 9 mil and I’ll I’ll the trigger and see if it will stop the bullet. Dumdasses
These fuckwits are back again? How’s it going, Nine Finger Nasty? About to turn into an Eight Finger Egghead?
@meatswitch @raptorific this is a US based site. US Americans are known for two things- obsession with guns and incredible stupidity. Had this been anyone else, I’d say they’re trying to fuck with us. But with US Americans, about 70% of them are dead serious about mangling their hands trying to stop a bullet.
….Mythbusters WELDED A METAL SPIKE into the barrel of a gun to obstruct it, something heaps stronger than a human finger (and sealed the barrel better with the filler metal used to fuse the metal spike into place and prevent the explosive gases from escaping) but even that didn’t stop the bullet from doing damage.
Had a dream that markiplier was struck by lightning and imbued with electrical abilities. People were encouraging him to use his powers for good but he just went back to playing videogames. All the videos were about three minutes long because as soon as he got jumpscared there'd be a brilliant blue flash and he'd fry his computer.
It's been just over a year since Deltarune chapters 3 & 4 released! I did the 3D work, which mostly means Tenna 📺 I figured it's been long enough to share some "behind the scenes" stuff, starting with a look at the Maya file for his static poses...
I'd individually render the poses to get that early 3D shine ✨ Here's some of them at their original resolutions! I would work from text descriptions from Toby, and sometimes there'd be a Paint sketch to help out. Gigi drew the concept that I modeled from and some poses too!
I had a lot of fun pushing myself to match the dynamic poses Toby had in mind for Tenna - making him so crazy and expressive was something I couldn't have done without his prompts. He'd draw the faces on afterward too, which really brought Tenna to life!
(lots more after the Read More cut...!)
Here are some of the Paint sketches Toby drew to help me with specific Tenna poses! I love seeing his drawings LOL, genuinely really good and evocative 👍
There was a time when I was struggling to capture what he wanted for these specific Tenna poses… Until Toby acted them out himself, and I thought, "Ah, it's like that. I understand." and then I was able to make them just how he pictured them.
When looking through the renders and choosing what to share, I laughed at these two… Remember when Tenna had a gun? Remember when he bent over in a very specific way that might remind you of another, different image? No? Maybe you don't…? Well. Don't worry about it.
These ones are cute… Tenna is pretty cute sometimes! Has anyone ever thought this? Actually, before people knew he was going to be a strange 3D sprite the Whole Time, I was worried people wouldn't like the style and it'd sour people's views on him. I'm glad that didn't happen.
Toby thought it would be funny to have Tenna do some really smooth, mocapped animations sometimes - specifically free to use ones that often pop up in other things. An extra funny part to me is how many frames these take up in the game, and how his tails are stuck to his legs…
Speaking of mocap, Toby wanted Tenna to use custom mocap animations as far back as 2016 - Ten(na) years ago! I got an Xbox Kinect at the time and learnt how to set this up, but then never used it. Here's a look at messing with mocaped stuff again in 2022. So Normal.
Don't bother trying to help him here, he's just being dramatic 🙄
I particularly like these poses - I think I improvised most of these just based off the context they get used in… I always liked posing his tie and coat tails as if they were also parts of his body he could move. Which I guess they are?
After I rendered out the individual poses in high quality, I'd force the color palette to be limited to just a few shades and then I'd shrink the result down to pixel sized sprites. Like these! I'd tidy them up a little, but they'd really get improved on at the pixel scale by Clairvoire.
As well as Tenna's sprites, I also worked on his intro "movie"…! Seeing people be completely overloaded by this on first playthroughs would always make me laugh. In game, there's a ton of extra editing done by Everdraed, but my unedited cut looks like this ⬇️
This was the entire storyboard I had to work from, and I'm realizing now that there's the note "put him in car etc" that I never did and actually don't know what it would mean exactly. Working on this had me listen to the accompanying audio many times, but it's good so it's okay.
Here are a bunch of random clips of the Maya project for Tenna's intro movie. This is how movies get made, I think!! Yeah… Just like this.
Say it with him, folks!!
For the 3D Ralsei clip from the intro, Toby really wanted it to look a certain way, and drew more sketches for guiding me with this part than any other. They genuinely helped.
Remember how Toby's original storyboard has the note "covered in slime and shrinks"? That meant I had to learn how to make 3D slime. You can see my tech advancing here.
I'm really happy with how the final Tenna animation at the end of the intro movie turned out! It wouldn't look as good if it wasn't for some 2D animation to reference from SmallBuStudio, so thank you to them for the help! Tenna is cute… Huh, I already said that…?
Phew!! That's a lot of Tenna. I hope it was fun to look through my posts! Oh, one more thing - the Fangamer Mr. Tenna Figurine just straight up uses the 3D model I made, which I think is really funny and cool and nice. Check it out if you want! Thanks for reading!