Pixelation
General => General Discussion => Topic started by: Streaksy on January 16, 2013, 03:51:49 am
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Hi. I'm Streaks and I make games. I'm a bit of a nostalgia junky aswell. One of my projects is a spoof retro game system called Obsoleet. It emulates pixelly-palettey screenmodes efficiently and you can switch palettes instantly on-the-fly. Usually, holding the middle-mouse-button opens a palette menu, the contents of which is automatically populated by palette files in the palette folder.
Point is... maybe someone here might have a use for them.
(http://s8.postimage.org/fns2qrzx1/Palettes.png)
The Obsoleet collumn are my spoof retro machines that I play around with. Admiral 16 is a Commodore 64 spoof, with a similarly desaturated 16-colour palette. Some other colour-sets bare explanation, so ask if you're interested. "Library", for example is my collection of named colours I started like 4 years ago for a UI project and became one of my beloved children because I have no life.
Now... the last collumn is called TheWayOfThePixel.net. Little story about how I found this site. When I started on this Obsoleet game engine project (2010 or 2011, I forget), I did a little googling for people's custom palettes, and the only thing I found of interested was a post on this site from someone called Arne who proposed a few nice 8-colour palettes. I included them because I like them, for private experimenting. Later I added a few more palettes that people had suggested on this site - some interesting sets from pixel-art challenge threads. All named after the proposer. Ages ago I made this account so I could send a PM to Arne and (I think) Locoluis, but I spent like months trying to get a verification email. like 6 month later I manged, sent messages, and still no reply. I just logged in again today, and my sent folder is empty. Either it failed or the sent folder self-empties after a while, or whatever.
Anyway, very impressive stuff on this site. Hope this can be of some use to someone, or at least slightly ammusing. :P PS don't rip off my obsoleet stuff. I sweated over them. :P
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Here is a stupid demo of Obsoleet. It's insane, loud, and has some swearing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOPP3U7Ravg It's the only demo of it on Youtube, but shows random palette switching, after-effects and pane rotation/position changes.
The main point of this post is to share my palettes, not show off little insane self-indulgances. ;/
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Looks like an earlier/other version of my 16pal with the pink and purple.
I've made a page for it here (http://androidarts.com/palette/16pal.htm).
Would be interesting to see a collection of Bitmap Brothers' palettes, and their warm-cool-thing. Maybe also Paradroid for the Amiga, and The Killing Game show.
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Purple is awesome. :yell:
And streaksy the CPC palette has a couple errors. Some have a value of 1 where it should be 0. And the blue on the far right has a value of 0, 101, 202 when it should be 0, 127, 255. Even given my immense amount of experience with the CPC palette (almost 30 years now) I'm still amazed I spotted the 'off-ness' of that blue on an image that has almost 2000 colors...
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Arne:
Ah, I'm guessing you didn't get the message then. Cool, I'll bung that in if you don't mind, then. Glad you're still active here because I'd have to take it out if I didn't get your permission and I rather like it. I like the 8-colour set so I'll have one called Arne 16.
Carnivac:
You mean the Pirange sets? :D They're called that because the first one went through pink and orange. I never had a CPC and was unfamiliar with the palette until I made this project and wanted some popular retro palettes. Thanks for the info. I'll fix it in after this post. I think you have superpowers to spot that.
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Carnivac:
You mean the Pirange sets? :D
Well they're nice but my comment was actually aimed at Arne and their comment about purple in that linked article and the lousy reason (in my opinion) for not having purple in the final palette (not I care much for the rest of it...)
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Great round-up, thanks :)
BBC Micro represent! I haven't seen much love for that here and it's a shame. Demo looks like a pretty accurate insight into my early exposure to game consoles :P, seriously though: the effects are pretty interesting and I was summarily amused watching after the other project you posted.
Amazing eye for the palette there Carnivac.
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Hehe, thanks. >D I've probably remade tons of BBC Micro games for my own ammusement over the years. Especially Reptons. By the way, I pitched some of those to Superior once too and they weren't having it. I hope it's not liablous to suggest that a few ideas in mine MIGHT HAVE appeared in theirs. ;/ I'm done with Superior. Their last newsletter was basically "fill out these forms on these 8 affiliate links and get an iPod" or something. Meh.
I just wish people with absolutely NO intention of releasing games would stop jealously hoarding the IPs so the people who actually love the games can have their niche market.
But yeah, I was raised on a BBC Micro. :D
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Arne !!!
Just glanced through your site. Not only are you a ridiculously good artist, I've actually seen some of your stuff before. :O
I messed around remaking Mego-Lo-Mania about 2 years ago, and did a little googling to see if anyone else had. I came accross your sprite concept art for it. Was it on DeviantArt? Can't remember. Mad.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_yG0eSSjZA I didn't have sprites yet because I'm not really a graphics designer, but there it is. ;/
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I guess some people just have a poor taste in colors, liking purple and stuff. It's a slippery slope down to halfbrite yellow, I tell you!
I've gotten quite a few mails about my palettes but I don't know who from, or who I replied to.
Mega lo Mania was great fun. I think I made it to the last map with 400-500 guys once (/10). It was cool how they carried over. It was one of the first games that I played which had cute little guys fighting with that fluidity and scale. Settlers cute chibi guys fighting too. But, neither game did a good job with combat mechanics. It was just a bunch of animations and guys dying. I always wanted the combat to make a little more sense. Nowadays RTS games are quite different of course.
Did you check out the Japanese version? It had some animé flair to the characters.
http://www.mobygames.com/game/mega-lo-mania/cover-art/gameCoverId,98912/
http://www.mobygames.com/game/genesis/mega-lo-mania/screenshots/gameShotId,159992/
http://www.mobygames.com/game/genesis/mega-lo-mania/screenshots/gameShotId,159991/
Our Madcap was better though. I was always Madcap.
Graphically, the biggest job would be to draw all the little guys animated from all the angles, all time periods, and factions.
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I played it on the PC, and more recently on a Genesis emulator. Saving state lets you really push your luck. I think I did the first island with 4 men and had about 3000 or something stupid saved for the last island. It wasn't anime, and I've not seen that before, but I've seen a version with custom character creation. Amiga or something? Dunno.
I suppose the original Mega-Lo-Mania had a kind of cartoonish style - especially the little sprites. I like it like that, though. The more something is defined, the more it accords to the artist's vision and adopted trends that I don't care about. If an artist can't be inspired by the original instead of thinking "this would be even better in anime/whatever" then he/she's the wrong person for the job, as far as I'm concerned. Nearly every time a game is remade and the style is updated along with the tech, my heart sinks. I don't blame them because people would complain and I'm probably a minority, and I suppose the more defined a sprite is, the more character it has to have. I think that's why I'm so reluctant to let go of retro styles, and why arbitrary design limits like pixelisation are so appealing to me. Modern game design elements really hit me as arbitrary instead of apt. I HATE arbitrary detail for the sake of it. I hate the Final Fantasy games after 7 because its like they see a space and have to fill it with meaningless detail out of pointless impulse. Even the soundtrack is just noise to me. It's like devs can't tell the difference between intricacy and artistry. Your sprites are damn good though. They're actually apt. That's rare.
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I don't think you can have that many (in the Amiga version. You get +100 per 3 islands/level, 8 epochs plus the last one, so 800 max? I think I completed the first 2 cell island with one or probably two guys on the Amiga. It was possible to do on some of the later levels too if you got lucky with mutual annihilation amongst the NPCs. I didn't on one of the nuke levels and had to spend 70 guys, otherwise I would've had 500 left, I remember.
The idea with my redesigns was to pay attention to the fact that many different aliens met up to fight for the world. In the game, all you get is human gods to chose between, but the intro quite clearly depicts aliens showing interest too.
The pic in question is here: http://androidarts.com/computer_games.htm - It's a bit old. I'd approach it differently now.
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I know the pic, with all the Gods gathered 'round the "new planet". They're guiding the primitive, indigenous people, I thought. Like guiding them through thousands of years of tech and conquest to see which God ends up with full control of the planet through the supremacy of the worshipful people they control/influence. That's the impression I got. But there's no reason the four "Gods" can't have their own species on the planet anyway, like they seeded the planet seperately and the game starts when they're ready to start conquering. Visually it's interesting and that's the point. :P
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I will share my palette!
My palette is 3 color: black, cyan, yellow (using exact rgb values for them)
Cyan is for sky, yellow is for sun. Black may be for other objects/player in game.
Ditherings: Cyan and yellow can be dithered to make light green, a color for grass. Cyan and black makes color for rain or water. Yellow and black makes dirt or gold.
Image sample of palette:
(http://i.imgur.com/Y4ejBfe.png)
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I will share my palette!
My palette is 3 color: black, cyan, yellow (using exact rgb values for them)
Cyan is for sky, yellow is for sun. Black may be for other objects/player in game.
Ditherings: Cyan and yellow can be dithered to make light green, a color for grass. Cyan and black makes color for rain or water. Yellow and black makes dirt or gold.
Image sample of palette:
(http://i.imgur.com/Y4ejBfe.png)
Interesting combos..
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Obsoleet palettes are interesting, especially that there are three 32-color palettes! Did you made them? Did you got ideas from someone?
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I just balanced various considerations. A big consideration was nostalgic vivid colours. The other was just practical variety. I gave myself a few options to play with to see what game-feels I could produce with them.
(My game engine can switch palettes instantly so it's interesting to see my games in various retro styles)