AuthorTopic: Minecraft type game/Atari 2600 shading concept.  (Read 4286 times)

Offline BladeJunker

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Minecraft type game/Atari 2600 shading concept.

on: May 16, 2012, 11:31:51 pm
Hello I've been trying many ways to get more traditional lighting and shading into 2600 graphics or to be more specific the hot and cold contrast between foreground to background. Usually in 2600 games there is no background making the visual difference between solids and BG details moot.
I had considered mixing objects to get shading colors but there are so few and precious sprites or bits on the 2600 and other means for more colors per scan line are sparse and costly enough that I would rather save them for more distinct color changes from tile to tile(EG vertical pipe through a floor plane).


Mostly its about vertical line gap distance in the background to create contrast but I'm not sure how good this looks so I'd like to get some impressions and CCs. Grabbed a Game Boy shot of SML3 and tried a translation. I put a couple background line densities of the same BG forms into the mockup for comparison.


Can't say I've formally decided on overall styling yet as in Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Fantasy Sci-Fi lol, or maybe a Steampunk vibe like Dark Cloud has. Definitely leaning to the Chibi or Sackboy standard in physical stature or big noggins, little body to get as much detail and personality into them. Despite the confines of 8 bits wide Player object that I likely can't enhance given the other sprite demands I have been trying to get some variety in body types and gender traits. In the end I may have to emphasize the costume and animation space most and just go with a blank circle for the faces.
My nieces showed some interest in Minecraft but were underwhelmed with the avatar selection being so plain and without any stronger "girly" options in appearance. They also wanted to move the furniture around a lot but things like item chests are a pain to move. :lol:

Back when I started my research I tooled with the idea of a Minecraft type game on the 2600 but I had a lot of false starts since I knew next to nothing about the hardware, even now there are dark spots in understanding it.
I might go up an Atari hardware generation to the 5200/400 range since its less stressful from a hair splitting standpoint but I can't help but think that I'd miss out on an opportunity at defining a good 2600 standard sooner rather than later. Still if I had the increase in sprite objects found on the 5200 I'd know exactly where to use them to enhance the graphics.

The primary issue is getting shading out of one color as I likely can't invoke much in the way of color changes per scanline as I have a lot of sprite related overhead for NPCs. This is also true with the sprites as well with color variety which I have tried a couple styles of dither on them in my attempt at two distinct lighting states to reflect the shading more correctly than is possible with just a palette swap.

Gross lighting system uses the Background layer and it will likely palette shift a day to night change plus the lower half darkens based on density of ground material IE. a solid line of material across the entire screen width equals blackness below it. Hopefully I can finagle a sun & moon block into the background with a mid-line color change and make it go up and down.


Well here's my first actual post, I hope it looks like a good one. :)
« Last Edit: May 24, 2012, 12:12:12 am by BladeJunker »