I'd also like to share these: http://imgur.com/a/kUrra
1. Does HUD also count towards limits? That's why interface and walkable platforms are constantly red/orange?HUD counts yes, but I think the 120 is already excluding the HUD (hence why it's only 120), so you don't need to worry about it. Depending on game, recolors even count, so if you have a tile and you want to use it in two separate palettes on one screen, you double it. There's plenty of ways around that though, so you can skip it if you want.
2. Does the whole first level (VGMaps link (http://www.vgmaps.com/Atlas/NES/Castlevania-Level01.png)) have to use only one palette for outside AND inside areas? Just when I thought I was going to make some sweet forest graphics outside of the castle :(No, you can switch tiles per screen, or even on scanline sometimes, depending. For this exercise, just don't mix the two and you're fine. Like, if you make outside and inside areas, and you want to mix those tilesets, you make sure the combination doesn't go over the limit.
Quick and dirty edit of Ryumaru's excellent piece, have no idea whether it would work:
(http://i.imgur.com/dJ0FGeg.png)
Basically made the tiles in the foreground big to create a sense of depth and obviously changed the colors, based on the palette in Ruymaru's original post.
If I understand the color restriction correctly you have one color that can be used anywhere and four 3 color ramps where you can only utilize one ramp and the omni color in a given 16x16 area?
(http://i.imgur.com/GZBZpv2.png)
One test image was Phoenix849's (Sorry man!)I actually didn't check it for 16px regions yet, so I presumed it contained mistakes. It's still unfinished, so I'll be manually looking through when I merge these 3 mockups into one. Right now it's in 3 different Pyxel Edit files, where you can't switch grid from 8px to 16px without resizing tiles themselves.
Was pretty fun! Not sure if I've done it all correctly though.
(http://i.imgur.com/VIVi8W6.png)
we have those 8px tall black bars on top and bottom. What are they? Can we use them?There's certainly nothing in the hardware that stops you from using them, but Castlevania specifically seems to not allow tiles there. I hacked in zeroes to the lowest structure:
I guess the main question is if we can put tiles there.So yes on NES, no in Castlevania.
And also how to correctly check it for 16px regions? Just forget about all that and move it for 8 pixels to align with the grid?This is going to sound like a sarcastic answer to the question, but I promise it's not. If you can put the grid anywhere on the image and create no problems, well, that's where the grid would be. If you put the grid someplace where there are problems but there is a place where the grid could not cause problems why would you put the grid where it causes problems? NES scrolls in hardware. If you had a screen that was problematic with the grid starting at the top left corner of the screen, you'd absolutely offset it in a way that would make your graphics work. One caveat: The 16x16 grid must always start at the top left of an 8x8 tile.
I dig your color choices, Night. The dither half-tone gives the wall a texture of wallpaper, and it the tears (with the exposed brick) add a good amount of visual variance without using too many tile resources.Thank you! Indeed, I think I could have even added a few extra tiles using the grey to create the look of indentations that don't go as far as to reveal the bricks behind them.
By the way, it appears like you added a panther statue to the scene? The panthers in the original screenshot are enemies, so it makes for an interesting interpretation.
Careful with that dithering. It creates a less than ideal wave effect (http://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=11313#p129617).
I think some occasional noise clusters might work better than the constant dither. Really love that brown/blue combo though.
Hello! First post in the forum, I hope I'm not breaking any rules.Stellar! You got nicely creative with the room composition. Love the coffin in the center, the inclusion of the organ and angled windows, et cetera.
Phoenix849 brought this challenge to my attention, so I decided to take part in it by remaking Dracula's room. Here it is (without sprites and with sprites):
(http://s24.postimg.org/drq8hfuat/room_clean.png) (http://s24.postimg.org/v6agpprfp/room_simon.png)
I tried to keep the overall idea of the original intact (coffin in the center, pillars by the sides) but I went a bit crazy. Here is the tileset.:
(http://s23.postimg.org/d4u309e7b/tileset.png)
I managed to save 13 tiles, and if I sacrifice one of the floor brick tiles, I get one more :P
Also, thanks to Phoenix849's input, I also fixed some issues that had escaped me. So, kudos to him there.
EDIT: OK so I went back for those tiles. Turns out I saved three more. At this rate I'll end up saving enough tiles to rebuild the entire scene starting from the staircase ;D
(http://i.imgur.com/kjswvG2.png) (http://i.imgur.com/PYPiyed.png)
I love the idea of programming nes games but its way over my head!Totally agree with this. I also have an unfinished Castlevania engine that I started some years ago, after realizing how much time, work and how many headaches would take me to put all my ideas on an actual NES hack.