Feature 11 - Pharaohs Return (C64)

[Lazycow]

More about Pharaohs Return in the web:
- youtube teaser
- devlog homepage (lazycow)
- the gallery (pixeljoint)
- gameplay infos (tigsource)

Hi, this is a mockup for a game with C64 restrictions. Using a 320x192 multicolor charmode screen here, with raster interrupts every 32 lines, which splits the screen in six 320x32 zones with selectable background colors and multicolor colors. (scoredisplay is build out of sprites in the border) I tried to use C64 restrictions to make the pixeling easier, but these C64 color restrictions in multicolor charmode made some problems...

The main problem for me is that the freely selectable color for each 8x8 block has to be one of the first 8 colors. But the "good colors" (browns and greys) you want to use for backgrounds are in the second half of the palette. 

Any suggestions? Or am I on the right path already?

[PypeBros]

neat ^_^

Some colours (or at least non-grey) on the sprites could be welcome, both for visuals and for readability. Iirc, the C64 had a "mixed" mode where some chars would be 4-colours while others are regular, monochrome (and hi-res) chars, too. That could be handy for e.g. your red bricks.

Oh, can't the background colour be brown and black be one of the 3 foreground colours, btw ?

[rikfuzz]

Is this an unofficial sequel to Pharaoh's Curse?  That was my very favourite game as a kid!

Pixel work looks good, but I'd sorely miss all the bright colours and interesting 1 screen maps (or at least slightly denser).


Don't know too much about C-64 restrictions I'm afraid, but it's this thread is pretty interesting to me!

[Lazycow]

Sorry about writing so cryptic stuff...  short version of this screenmode:
- In multicolor charmode, each 8x8 block can only have one of the lower 8 colors. The background color is the same for all blocks. (for each 320x32 pixel zone)
- a 8x8 block can be a multicolor-block. Then the block has double-wide pixels and you have 2 additional colors that are the same for all blocks. (for each 320x32 pixel zone)

@rikfuzz: I wouldn't name it "sequel", but... well, ok, yes, there's this Pharaoh and he returns... sort of. Right now it's just a mockup. (Your screenshot looks like Atari, by the way)

@pypebos: yes, there's too much grey in there. Selecting the colors is actually my problem. But I have examined some C64 screenshots and they all have more or less the same strange color combinations. So maybe there's no optimal solution. (Yes, i could set the block colors to black and use that black for background, I have setup the 3rd zone in the 2nd pic like that. That works, but as you have observed, it looks very grey...)

[Lazycow]

old -> new

Update.. I tried to make the caves more colorful. Most C64 screenshots seem to utilize the block color for the hilight, so I tried the same here. (using yellow, cyan and green) I kind of love and hate these C64 color restrictions. Still too dark...  


Sprites! Hero, Pharaoh, Mummy, Snake, Bat, Scorpion.

The three "humans" use two overlayed sprites. (a hires sprite on top of a multicolor sprite) This would eat up precious sprites and memory in a real C64 game, but well... I couldn't draw a reasonable figure without that. (there are some real C64 games which did that, too)

All multicolor sprites have to share 2 colors. (here, it's orange and dark grey)

Items: Whip, Dynamite, Gun, Magazine, Bullet, Keys, Potions. (multicolor sprites)
Additional keys and Potions. (this time hires sprites on top of chars, which effectively gives 2 colors)

[PypeBros]

Great new colours, although I'm undecided on the use of cyan in the pyramid.

I note that colours of your hero blend a lot into each other. Maybe a using blues (which I expect to be rare in the background) would be a wise move.

I also note that, compared to the original game, you made the environment rather large in regards to the hero's size. Maybe you could want to take advantage of that and do what some C64 developers did as well: enable the "tall" bit and have 24x42 sprites with multi-color square pixels (of 2x2 pixels each).

[BladeJunker]

Update.. I tried to make the caves more colorful. Most C64 screenshots seem to utilize the block color for the hilight, so I tried the same here. (using yellow, cyan and green) I kind of love and hate these C64 color restrictions. Still too dark... 


Sprites! Hero, Pharaoh, Mummy, Snake, Bat, Scorpion.

The three "humans" use two overlayed sprites. (a hires sprite on top of a multicolor sprite) This would eat up precious sprites and memory in a real C64 game, but well... I couldn't draw a reasonable figure without that. (there are some real C64 games which did that, too)

All multicolor sprites have to share 2 colors. (here, it's orange and dark grey)

Items: Whip, Dynamite, Gun, Magazine, Bullet, Keys, Potions. (multicolor sprites)
Additional keys and Potions. (this time hires sprites on top of chars, which effectively gives 2 colors)

Looking very good with the change in colors as most people who've done C64 art tend to say greys are better at bridging or shadow as a shared color than as the primary fill color of the sprite art. Me I hate too much grey despite many of my favorite classic computer games using an overabundance of it, a gamer can only look at so much stone & metal.

I don't think your layered sprite approach is too crazy for the C64 since a surprising number of games used that approach. I know how hard it is to get details into double wide sprites especially small ones.
http://www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=33782&sid=e45ee77c7736ba34cc6bd4ea3304839a

I appreciate the great deal of space offered on screen as a lot of C64 games suffered from a lack of room to move/dodge in the pursuit of detailed pixel art. Also I like the map too, so easy to get lost in a Pharoah's tomb.

[STE 86]

I think what the chap was trying to tell you about c64 multicolor char mode was that if you do use character colours above 8, what you actually get is a character coloured in colours 0-7 once again but in hires 320x200 pixel mode. so all your red background stonework detail would in fact be in hires 1:1 pixels rather than 2:1.

for a current example of pretty much the look you want to achieve you should check out the newly released c64 game "Soulless" from psytronik

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=k2H7GrZNRcA

Steve

[PypeBros]

Aaaah ... yeah, right. It was possible to mix hi-res and lo-res tiles on the same screen. bit 3 of the "colour" in COLOR part of the screen no longer pick colours, but tells whether you use hi-res or lo-res. We've got 3 "global" colours (still with the full palette, right ?) and one "per-tile" colour (only palette indices 0..7).
For some reason, I messed up the C64 colour memory (only FG color is defined per-location) with the EGA text colour memory (with individual background/foreground combo per character).

Note that one could switch to "extended background mode", but then you only have 64 characters to draw your scene... that's unlikely to be worth it here.

[Grimsane]

crap another edit i never got around to posting 
you've improved it alot since anyway, but here's a colour edit i did, whilst also trying to wrap my head around the restrictions, doubt it's that helpful, but it's what I'd have gone for, and yeah I'm not too keen on the cyan either.

was pretty sure it was within restrictions, but I dunno.