AuthorTopic: Feature 11 - Pharaohs Return (C64)  (Read 87131 times)

Offline STE 86

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Re: Pharaohs Return (C64)

Reply #30 on: June 10, 2012, 10:01:52 pm
trust me on this.

hires does not draw the eye when used with dark luma values like red, brown, dk blue and dk grey. it provides "background detail" like lineart in the the background of a cartoon.

you also have to remember that you are by definition looking at these graphics in isolation on an 21st century display. probably an lcd. once you put dark "hires" graphics on a real c64 or an emu running any kind of PAL emulation, they blur dramatically, so much so you would have trouble seeing individual pixels through all the chroma noise being generated.

The double pixels in contrast are less prone to chroma noise, show up clearer and and bolder and therefore hold your eye.

it worked for us 30 years ago. it still will. :)

Steve

Offline ptoing

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Re: Pharaohs Return (C64)

Reply #31 on: June 10, 2012, 10:34:26 pm
I totally have to agree with STE here. If you have something with hires bg detail, esp as he said dark colours, on black, and watch it on a real C64 monitor the black will eat into the colour and the blur does the rest (this is even more so the case on old TV sets).

It works very well in a lot of games, such as Rick Dangerous for example and there are lots of games on the C64 and in most of them it works well. In context of the real hardware I do not see any reason to deviate from this practise. Darkish colours on black just work well on the C64 for subtle detail which is unintrusive.
There are no ugly colours, only ugly combinations of colours.

Offline Helm

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Re: Pharaohs Return (C64)

Reply #32 on: June 10, 2012, 11:27:38 pm
Sure, on a blurry crt a different result is to be expected. I'm just going by what I am seeing here. I do agree it's good to keep in mind variable critique if this actually makes it on a c64

Offline Carnivac

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Re: Pharaohs Return (C64)

Reply #33 on: June 11, 2012, 08:38:03 am
If you say so.  I guess I've never used a display quite that blurry as to not be able to see any sign of a 1x1 pixel's definition on certain background colors perhaps (on a home computer anyways where I usually had the relevant monitors.  My consoles of that era usually had to use the TV instead and that awful RF cable lead garbage for a long time.  Heck, my NES even had to use a now ancient 14inch black and white TV meaning my earliest memories of playing Super Mario Bros feel like they're from even decades before the 80's).

Certainly in this particular Soulless shot...

...I find the blue and red background 'hires' tiles extremely distracting because of their more clear and yet grainy appearance (and possibly due to their colour too which stands out from the rest) when compared to other graphics in the image.  But yeah I suppose it might look 'better' being all blurred through a PAL display/emulation.
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Offline Grimsane

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Re: Pharaohs Return (C64)

Reply #34 on: June 11, 2012, 03:03:50 pm
Nice Progression, I kinda like this sprite version you did:
(albeit a c64 downgrade of your avatar)
but I am not sure if that'd work 3 colours is your sprite colour limit? 4 i guess if you include the alpha channel, unless you can do some sprite dividing wizardry like the NES? where you can potentially break it down into 8x8 chunks, (which is detrimental to the sprite quantity limitations, but allows for interesting colour combinations) no? haven't really researched C64 specs, and haven't read enough to be sure.

but I've noticed in the latest screen shots contain 4 colours on the sprite, 1:Grey 2:brown 3:Green 4:pink/flesh.
and I am guessing filling out the 16x24 space a bit more will make animations more difficult to do?
(featuring 70s afro jumpsuit man)

and Is your adventurer meant to be stereotypical  fedora wearing adventure machine/adventurer ala Indiana Jones? or atypical kid wandering into danger?
here's me messing around:

I agree with Ptoing's comment on pushing the sprites readability on different BGs, especially with the similar palette, he does blend into the BG quite alot as is.

interested to see where you keep pushing this.

Offline Carnivac

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Re: Pharaohs Return (C64)

Reply #35 on: June 11, 2012, 05:40:31 pm



I like the design of the far right sprite those the pose is a bit uninteresting and the black boots may be hard to make out on this type of game's backgrounds.
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Offline Grimsane

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Re: Pharaohs Return (C64)

Reply #36 on: June 12, 2012, 02:22:07 am
yeah I wasn't really thinking about that, I was just experimenting, figured I'd share in-case it would be helpful at all. and was more thinking if the predominant BG tone was brown or grey and not black.
quick palette change to accomodate the black just because it's easy:

Offline Adam

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Re: Pharaohs Return (C64)

Reply #37 on: June 12, 2012, 01:49:18 pm
Was also experimenting with the sprite a bit. I agree with the black outline separating the sprite from the background. With a bit of loss in colors you can probably do it without losing detail as in the previous examples:



By the way, why sticking to the classic Mario stance?
Nice. Now do the whole thing with the EGA palette!

Offline Helm

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Re: Pharaohs Return (C64)

Reply #38 on: June 12, 2012, 06:04:29 pm
Now that's a great sprite too! There's so much going on in this thread, it warms my heart. I think your last variation of the sprite but using a green shadow instead of the grey... does the first_eight_colors thing count for the mcolor parts of the sprite?

Offline ptoing

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Re: Pharaohs Return (C64)

Reply #39 on: June 12, 2012, 07:44:23 pm
No, on sprites you can use any colour for the free colour, not just the first 8.
There are no ugly colours, only ugly combinations of colours.