Rapid animation for palette saving?

[Jad]

I can only guess that on the gameboy there weren't these limitations so they could trompe-l'oeil with a frame rate of 1/100 of a second everything on this line is pure conjecture

I doubt that on the gb you will get more than 60 fps if even that. One of the features that helps on the GB to make the colour making via flicker work is how shit the screen is, it ghosts quite a bit, meaning the colours kinda stay there for a while and thus blend better.

'Shit', haha, I don't really know, it's not like you couldn't see shit in games because of super slow refresh rate, I sort of think it lends a nice smoothness to everything on the Gameboy screen.

Well, an old brick boy with low batteries was horrid (from what I remember) but a fully charged one is cool.

Also yeah, the fading in-fading out quality of the refresh rate of the game boy screen made for good flicker transparency, since the 'flickering' wouldn't appear O:!

[ptoing]

Yus, tho I can only think of 2 games that used it from the top of my head.

Castlevania 2 (titlescreen logo thing and I think in 1 of the levels in the bg)
Chikyuu Kaihou Gun ZAS (backgrounds in some levels, quite extensive actually.)

[Jad]

You mean Belmont's Revenge? The other one is just castlevania adventure(s?), right?

[ptoing]

Yes, or Dracula Densetsu II (which is actually better than that US version because it has the Cross and the Holy water instead of the Axe and Holy water which are almost the same, booo)

[Jad]

Ya, that game uses it for the mermen, before they appear out of the water. That's one thing I remember from the top of my head.

[setz]

Ya, that game uses it for the mermen, before they appear out of the water. That's one thing I remember from the top of my head.

Theres a stage late in the game, where the entire background flickers.

A less dramatic example is on harvest moon GBA, where the textbox flickers

[ptoing]

Ya, that game uses it for the mermen, before they appear out of the water. That's one thing I remember from the top of my head.

Theres a stage late in the game, where the entire background flickers.

Are you sure? Afaik there is only one level which uses it a bit. I played this game recentlyish in KiGB (only emulator in which the flickering works properly) quite a lot and I do not recall massive flicker. (it is quite subtle on the real thing anyway, or when properly emulated)

[setz]

By flickering, I meant the flicker-transparency effect, I think its the first stage after you beat the 4 base castles. The entire background flashes in/out, which on a slow screen would look better. This sounds like a great excuse to replay this game, maybe I'll make the time later. I'm curious how it would look with some of the filter options enabled and tweaked with mednafen.

The harvest moon GBA flicker is pretty annoying, at least on emulator: its a 50% dither pattern that alternates, it can look pretty smooth most of the time, but there are times when it'll lag and be like "hey vision, you're totally fucked "

The subtle feeling of helm's flickering image earlier in this thread gives off a creepy feeling, and I think it works well for that, but I'd shy away from it in most cases.

[Jad]

Well, there's a lot of flashing in the background around the 8-minute mark in this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UzWd8Qgw2o&feature=related

I remember it looked kickin rad on the original machine, so ya

You were thinking of the extensive flashing in the latest part of Cloud Castle, not the dracula castle outer grounds. Can be seen around the 2-min mark in this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pdzekd_Des&NR=1

Note to all that these actually looked good on the original game boy.

[Helm]

some awesome music in those clips too.