Proto:La-Mulana (2006)/Sample

This is a sub-page of Proto:La-Mulana (2006).

Download La-Mulana (Sample Prototype) File: LaMulana_OldestPrototype.zip (55 KB) (info)

La-Mulana Sample is a test build made by GR3Project programmer duplex, based on a mockup image by director Naramura. It would remain obscure until footage of it appeared in the History of La-Mulana video promoting the remake's PC release.

General Differences

• This build only contains the level seen in the preview screenshot above; there are no title and bootup screens, prologue cutscene or an ending.
  
• Unlike later versions, there are screens with width or height higher than the game's window, which will be called scrolling screens here for making the game scroll through them.
• No weapons other than the whip can be acquired; the sub-weapon can't even be used.
  
• Pressing the Escape key simply closes the game, but that can also be accomplished by pressing F12.
  
• Instead of any unused track that the developers revealed, this is the only music that plays. The only information on name is the filename music8_2.mid.

HUD

Prototype	Final

The only graphical difference (aside from the tileset) which barely survived into the remake trailer is the HUD.

• Seals, weights and the Experience bar don't exist yet, leaving only the Vitality one present.
• Money is also indicated before weapons by a number below text saying GOLD, instead of an icon to their right equal the amount of money.
• The weapons are the most interesting part: a sub-weapon isn't limited by an amount, since sub-weapons restricted by that limit didn't exist yet, and they don't exist inside a fancy graphic - instead weapons and sub-weapons are categorized by "RIGHT" and "LEFT" respectively, likely shorthand for right and left hand.
• The whip is also shorter than in the final, and the sub-weapon in the Hand Scanner's place is a plain magnifier instead of one attached to a scanner's handle.

Mapcheck

Pressing Z reduces the tileset to simplistic 1-color tiles, presumably as a debug mode of sorts inferred by the name of the file with them, mapcheck.bmp. Below follows a table listing what color corresponds to what.

Color	ID	Representation
	0x0	Everything else
	0x1	The left continuous ladder tile
	0x2	The left tile of the top of a ladder
	0xF	Anything else solid

It's very hard to use, however. It doesn't work at points where the screen will start scrolling, and pressing Z again doesn't return the tileset back to normal, so you have to make the screen move in any way to do that; either by entering another screen, or moving further in a scrolling one. Bizarrely enough, it can show mapcheck tiles from the other end of the screen, if toggled after fully walking through a vertical scrolling one from the bottom and a horizontal one. If toggled while entering the bottom of a vertical scrolling screen, it fails at applying the respective tileset and corrupts the entire tilemap. Toggling it after entering the top of one allows for the debug tileset to be displayed correctly.

Original Screen	Corrupted Check	Intended Check

This even has the unintended behavior of showing mapcheck tiles that are normally unused: while the red and pink colors can already be seen above, tiles 0x5 until 0xC are also used by the corruption, but they can't be seen due to being colored the same as 0x0.
An oddity of this mode is that there's another tile that's used, but it also can't be seen for the same reason: 0xE is used for the right tile of the top of a ladder.

Unused Graphics

In font.bmp, there are blue-shaded symbols, but there's no text in this build that uses them. Characters that aren't found in the HUD (or the pause screen) also went unused.

This block in item.bmp that actually appears in later versions doesn't appear anywhere in this one. Since the mockup image has a block, duplex might have planned to use it while the build was still being made.

The normally unused 10 tiles between colors 0x2 and 0xE located within mapcheck.bmp, as well as color 0xD which is not used even by corrupted mapchecks.