AuthorTopic: Berserk (NES) mockup  (Read 10096 times)

Offline Ryumaru

  • Moderator
  • 0100
  • *
  • Posts: 1683
  • Karma: +0/-0
  • to be animated soonly
    • ChrisPariano
    • View Profile

Berserk (NES) mockup

on: May 29, 2015, 07:10:54 am
Hello all, Here's a thing I've been working on. I would like it to fit NES restrictions to the point where it could potentially exist on the console ( please disregard the non tile based text for this matter, as it's just for presentation, but I guess a tile based character alphabet would be 26/256 tiles in memory right?). Comments and general critique are welcome, especially when it comes to the portraits and restriction optimization. If you're lucky I might show my awful attempt at a more close up version of Griffith to match the one of Guts. Also, I will be making a new sprite for Guts to fit the original scene, this one just kind of happened and I thought it was pretty good.

full mockup:


full mockup once I remembered the shared tile color rule:


background only:


Griffith sprite:


Griffith sprite with overlay:


Could definitely use some optimization for his overlay, I'm sure there's a much more clever way to do it. I'd like to save as many sprites as possible for effects and such.

Thanks for viewing   :D

Offline Rosier

  • 0010
  • *
  • Posts: 477
  • Karma: +1/-0
    • View Profile

Re: Berserk (NES) mockup

Reply #1 on: May 29, 2015, 07:50:00 am
My love for these is like a truck BERSERKER.

Feels a bit weird that Guts' sword is blue tinted like that.  Kinda clashes with his red.  Otherwise I want to see soooo much more of this. 

Offline Cherno

  • 0010
  • *
  • Posts: 122
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile

Re: Berserk (NES) mockup

Reply #2 on: May 29, 2015, 08:07:22 am
Only ever saw one or two episodes, but I like the contrasting color scheme.

Offline rikfuzz

  • 0010
  • *
  • Posts: 427
  • Karma: +1/-0
    • View Profile
    • twitter @hot_pengu

Re: Berserk (NES) mockup

Reply #3 on: May 29, 2015, 08:57:33 am
Always love your mockups.  Do you have a portfolio to see them all together, or twitter to keep an eye on new bits?

I don't know too much about the technical NES restrictions (despite it being the only console I own atm) but it looks great, and certainly seems like a (particularly good) NES shot at a glance.

Offline kullenberg

  • 0001
  • *
  • Posts: 92
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile

Re: Berserk (NES) mockup

Reply #4 on: May 29, 2015, 10:45:07 am
Awesome! I especially liked how you refrained from using pure white for snow. The only thing I don't like is the tree which looks off.
First of all, it looks as a hardwood tree which doesn't make sense given the climate which would make the branches naked.
So I'm assuming it's either a spruce (the kind that you have for christmas trees) or a pine tree. A spruce's branches wouldn't start that high up I think, although there might be some kind that does. If it is a spruce I'm not feeling the conical shape, it looks roundish.
If it is a pine tree it seems awfully thick and again, quite rounded. Generally for most types there should be some thinner solo branches below the thicker ones.
Also, IMO it looks odd to have it as a sillhouette. The darkest snow shade seems to be the same as the sky, but I don't think that would be a problem.
Not to say that I'm an absolute expert at trees or anything, just my immediate thoughts.

Offline Cyangmou

  • 0011
  • **
  • Posts: 929
  • Karma: +3/-0
    • cyangmou
    • http://pixeljoint.com/p/32234.htm
    • cyangmou
    • View Profile
    • Pixwerk Homepage

Re: Berserk (NES) mockup

Reply #5 on: May 29, 2015, 10:48:02 am
Gut's Claymore looks to short. Guts always wields massive over the top sword. While yours use perfectly usable as sword, the very point of berserk is that Guts weapon always is ridiculously big.
Given that Guts is really tall (~,90) his claymore has a length of about 2,20m with a blade length of about 1,80m, width of the blade is estimated somewhere between 10-15cm to give you an imagination of how massive it is in comparison some of the common German Zweihänder have the same blade length but have an average width of (estimated) 6cm.
Yours looks currently more like a normal sword, I'd increase the handle length and exaggerate the bladlength since at the given size you need to exaggerate everything and the sword surely a lot more.

The other crit I can give you is that guts doesn't look like Guts.
You simply drew a face and added features like guts features, the underlying portraiture of the character doesn't express the feeling the character expresses.
Miura tends to draw very round cranial masses and that leads to very wide faces. the facial mass of most characters is always rather short in terms of height but characteristical in it#s width, the only character which strongly deviates from this scheme is actually Griffith.
The ears are about as big as the eyes for most of the characters (the exception here again is Griffith or some of the very tough men with small and earnest eyes (Azan, Zodd, Mozgus - all with faces of this Archetype. The eyes are only about half the size of the ears)

Features of Guts are a square face, really strong jaws, a concave nose, quite pointy ears.

At this (or any size close to it it also is better to us true horizontals and verticals for the faces since that needs the least work in terms of facial feature placement. With the limited colors you use you don't have the possibilities to make the stuff "right looking" with subpixel techniques, so just drop it and to the easiest thing you can, which is still hard enough to get good looking.
For example yourh mouthline and eyeline look terrible inconsistent.

I'd also use the same placement style for griffith. At the moment his face looks considerable smaller and his nose is by far too big in the current portraiture.

I also made you a small edit to address my points for guts:
« Last Edit: May 29, 2015, 10:59:41 am by Cyangmou »
"Because the beauty of the human body is that it hasn't a single muscle which doesn't serve its purpose; that there's not a line wasted; that every detail of it fits one idea, the idea of a man and the life of a man."

Dev-Art
Twitter

Offline Kasumi

  • 0010
  • *
  • Posts: 275
  • Karma: +1/-0
    • View Profile

Re: Berserk (NES) mockup

Reply #6 on: May 29, 2015, 10:53:52 am
NES is weird in that a lot of restrictions that most games had to deal with can be overcome with hardware in the cartridge.

I don't see anything in a quick check that makes it not possible. (Variable width fonts are even possible.) There are some things worth thinking about if you'd want this whole thing as a game and not a standalone image being displayed with the hardware, so I'll speak a bit on that.

A really quickish check makes it seem like 56 sprites are being used, which is quite a few. (It could probably be less, depends on how they're distributed. I'm convinced after counting you had a different palette arrangement in mind than what I used to count.  :( )

NES has a resolution of 256x240, yes. But you should pretty much count on at least 8 pixels being cut off the top and bottom, and probably more due to TV shenanigans. It is very unlikely you'd be able to read, "GUTS LV: 40", and "GRIFFITH LV:20". If the player needs to read that stuff, it should be moved down. The bottom of the parry bubble might also get cut off, but maybe not the actual text in parry if you're lucky. Ninja Gaidan games are kind of interesting to look at in this respect. 1 played it very safe and left three whole rows of tiles above the HUD, plus 1 row of tiles below the screen blank because they figured you wouldn't see things placed there. 2 and 3 left two tiles above the HUD, none below the screen. (There's no action below anyway, so it doesn't matter if you don't see it.)

I would absolutely not use an overlay for Griffith's sword. It is already the widest part of the character, and the 8 sprite per scanline limit exists. So not only is that horizontal piece of him requiring six of eight across even without overlays, you're then adding two more for the extra colors. You're basically guaranteeing the sword will never be fully seen properly colored.

The game would have to not scroll with what you're doing with the character portraits. (Unless they go away when the battle starts.) Even if they did go away, it's a slightly unusual choice assuming you're not using a truly epic cartridge. (It seems you're honoring 16x16 palette boundaries, not 8x8 which means you're not using said truly epic cartridge.) Because the portraits share scanlines with the scene, any tiles in the portrait would have to be stored with at least part of the scene. That's 19 redundant tiles duplicated for every different background it needs to be above. It's the same for the Griffith portrait, but it's a non issue if that Griffith portrait will only appear with that background. (I know nothing about the series. I'm assuming Guts is the protagonist.)

As far as font, there's really no technical reason not to use lowercase letters. The text never shares scanlines with the scene, and the tiles used to draw the screen can be swapped out at the beginning of a scanline. So it's not like the extra letters would cut into what you could use to draw the scene. All caps might be a style choice, but I figured I'd mention it.
I make actual NES games. Thus, I'm the unofficial forum dealer of too much information about the NES

Offline Ryumaru

  • Moderator
  • 0100
  • *
  • Posts: 1683
  • Karma: +0/-0
  • to be animated soonly
    • ChrisPariano
    • View Profile

Re: Berserk (NES) mockup

Reply #7 on: May 30, 2015, 01:04:50 am
Rosier: Heh, glad you like! I might also do things such as title screen and cutscene stuff. Of course the dream would be to have a little playable demo on the actual hardware. Also, I agree with the sword thing, but Griffith used more colors and the sword was an easy opportunity for a different palette, but maybe it's better just to keep it with his.

Cherno: Thank you! It's a great story that has influenced some great things ( Dark Souls, enough said) I'd encourage you to read the Manga if you have any interest! Warning; gallons of blood and quite a bit of sex.

Rikfuzz: Thanks for the interest man! I really do need to get them up on my website once I can get it going the way I'd like to. You guys get to see pretty much all I do this stuff wise- however I do cross post on twitter my instagram stuff which has anything from painting to sketches to slice of life stuff. @chrispariano

Kullenberg: Thank you! You are not wrong about the tree at all, it's mostly half assed by me. Below is an image of the original scene, I believe it is supposed to be a spruce or pine, but I know nothing about tree anatomy.

Cyangmou: Hey! My original excuse for the sword was that I was trying to conserve sprites, but you are right, realism means nothing to Guts, and neither should hardware limitations. I've spent two more sprites on it, I think that's all I can justify giving it for now.
Thanks for the edit! I wasn't completely sold on the portrait in the first place, but I didn't know where to take it.
Heh, it's funny, because I dont think YOUR guts looks too much more like the "real" one than my Guts. I think we all have an idea of him that's slightly different than anyone elses. Miura is pretty inconsistent in his drawings ( not any more than other manga artists; and it's quite understandable when you realize how long it's ran and how spaced out the chapters are). Also I was referencing the latest anime adaptations of him when doing the portrait. You're definitely right, I was trying to do to much with the angle of the head. Ditching it for pure horizontal and verticals is better.
I will most likely try for another Griffith closer to the range of the Guts one, but for now I just shaved off a couple of pixels on the nose.

Kasumi: Thanks so much for dropping in! I actually was sending you a personal message last night inviting you to drop some knowledge on me, but my horrible internet ate it and I needed to go to sleep!
Yes, I would ideally like this to be able to work as a game on the console, and not just be a viewable image.
My new version below I counted in at 52 sprites, which is a lot, but it's not too much, right? ;] I want it to fit the restrictions, but will push the limits whenever possible.
Ah, this bit is something I never would have known. I've edited it so there is a tile of space on the top and bottom, I hope this would be enough because I don't think I can spare anymore without aesthetics taking a dive.
Noted. I've redone the griffith sprite and overlay in a much less dumb way. with this one I would even be fine with it not having the overlays. However, I must admit defeat on the 8 sprites per scanline rule. This one hits hard and I don't know any way out of it, I know I basically can't with the way they are posed. Can you tell me about any magic that might would make me feel any better about this?
Luckily, the game does not intend to scroll. This would be a battle only screen and completely static. It might would have a traditional top down rpg overworld style for everything else, but it would not be a traversing sidescroller ( although I guess it could be if the portraits were battle only? Kind of the opposite of what you were suggesting, heh). I would intend to have mutliple enemy portraits that would show in a similar fashion. Would this mean that all of them would have to be on every tileset? Only Griffith would appear on this background, but many different enemies would appear on multiple different backgrounds.
For the font, really it's just one of few pixel fonts I have in photoshop and I happen to like how it looks! You mentioned that variable width fonts are possible, how would that be done?
I also wanted to ask you about the 8x16 sprites. Could they be of any use here or no? I read your description of them in the restrictions guide, but it soared right over my little head.

New Version:


New Griffith:



This is a shot showing just a little of  how i'd arrange the gameplay stuff I had in mind. Imagine a kind of turn based system That relies on prediction, catching little cues on animated sprites, and knowledge of how starting certain actions prevent changing into others on the next turn ( vertical slash- high can't change into thrust- low, but it can turn into block- high or horizontal swipe- mid, etc) all done under a reaction timer bar to add pressure and emulate the quick reaction time necessary to read and counter an opponents move, and learn how to mitigate the damage of mistakes that you've already selected previously in the action tree.



And the original scene. Is it too late for a *spoiler warning*?
« Last Edit: May 30, 2015, 02:24:10 am by Ryumaru »

Offline Cyangmou

  • 0011
  • **
  • Posts: 929
  • Karma: +3/-0
    • cyangmou
    • http://pixeljoint.com/p/32234.htm
    • cyangmou
    • View Profile
    • Pixwerk Homepage

Re: Berserk (NES) mockup

Reply #8 on: May 30, 2015, 03:08:04 am
Heh, it's funny, because I dont think YOUR guts looks too much more like the "real" one than my Guts. I think we all have an idea of him that's slightly different than anyone elses. Miura is pretty inconsistent in his drawings ( not any more than other manga artists; and it's quite understandable when you realize how long it's ran and how spaced out the chapters are). Also I was referencing the latest anime adaptations of him when doing the portrait. You're definitely right, I was trying to do to much with the angle of the head. Ditching it for pure horizontal and verticals is better.

I agree the mine isn't perfect either, I took your portrait and exaggerated on a few of the critique points I said.
For this style of portrait and size a single pixel takes up by far too much space to capture all of the little proportions exactly plus you exclude subpixels, so there is no way to get it exactly "right" because even with subpixels it's sometimes really hard..

If "I"  design Guts for a conversation portait I'd most probably go with a completely different approach than you did
-The first thing I'd change is that I'd most probably go with a viewing angle from slightly below to underline that Guts is huge.
-The other major consideration is that I'd avoid to let the left side of the face facing the viewer - since that wouldn't be great after the carnival.
-Then I'd go with the exact proportion design Miura used for the scene /chapter, since it's pretty inconsistent (and a lot of it has surely to do that he also refinded his style and techniques)



And Anime characters aren't consistent, although an artist rarely changes his proportion measurement approaches for a character.
The movie designs were as far as I know not done by Miura and therefore completely different.

eye/ear size is clearly different in the styles - the movie's proportions are a lot less stylized and much closer to reality (esp. cranial ball - and I guess that's the main reason why it looks completely different.The movie just uses a completely different proportion ruleset and a differnet styleset)

stuff one would have to compare with more angles (I just name some of them unrelated to the image because I checked it out for myself as I saw the movie)
width of chin / size of the ball of the nose / height of the line from ear to jaw / shape of the ear,
general distance from upper eyelid to middle eyeline to eyebrow ( a lot narrower and different proportions in the manga, even for angles from below)

(left image in the spoiler is actually from the movie, right one is from the Retribution arc and those don't share the exact angles, but where the ones I managed to find quickly via google images for the lazy ones here in the thread ;)
"Because the beauty of the human body is that it hasn't a single muscle which doesn't serve its purpose; that there's not a line wasted; that every detail of it fits one idea, the idea of a man and the life of a man."

Dev-Art
Twitter

Offline Ryumaru

  • Moderator
  • 0100
  • *
  • Posts: 1683
  • Karma: +0/-0
  • to be animated soonly
    • ChrisPariano
    • View Profile

Re: Berserk (NES) mockup

Reply #9 on: May 30, 2015, 03:43:24 am
I think the bottom line is, 32x32 is barely enough to do anything :p
I'd love to see you take a stab at it if you found the time, although I know for us that's often precious! Doing it with a viewing angle from below in 32x32? You're a braver man than I! Haha
I actually did make a portrait post carnival ( is that the official spoiler free name?) and even tried to get the mark in there. Why hide it, when you could put it on display? Miura definitely hides his eye sometimes, but then he also has lots of frontal images even on covers showing it off. My purpose in this angle for the portrait was just the stereotypical  looking right = towards progression.
Yeah the movie changes a lot, definitely highlighting some of the homoeroticism Miura included there. The most bad ass man ever created also has the most beautiful eyelashes.

Post Carnival portrait, even more an example of trying to do way too much in way too little space:

Offline kullenberg

  • 0001
  • *
  • Posts: 92
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile

Re: Berserk (NES) mockup

Reply #10 on: May 30, 2015, 03:49:26 am
Here is a quick overpaint of the tree, might give you an idea or two:


Offline Kasumi

  • 0010
  • *
  • Posts: 275
  • Karma: +1/-0
    • View Profile

Re: Berserk (NES) mockup

Reply #11 on: May 30, 2015, 07:47:34 am
Scary questions abound. Maybe one day I'll make some actual pixel edits...
Quote
My new version below I counted in at 52 sprites, which is a lot, but it's not too much, right? ;] I want it to fit the restrictions, but will push the limits whenever possible.
My sole question is... do you push the limits to the epic cartridge (MMC5) only a few games used? With its 8x8 region background palettes instead of 16x16, its hardware multiply, and its ability to draw from 16384 tiles at the same time? (Also extra audio and a bunch of stuff... it's kind of a monster.) It's why NES restrictions questions are so tough. There's what NES can do on its own, and then there's what MMC5 can do. And then there's what a bunch of less terrifyingly powerful boards can do which are somewhere in the middle.

I digress. 52 sprites isn't really bad for the whole scene. Depending on how many animation frames you want for each character, those unique sprite tiles could begin to add up in ROM space, though. Assume without MMC5 that you've got 256 KB for all graphics (sprites and backgrounds) in the game. 256 tiles is 4 KB. There's always more to it, but it's not really worth being concerned until a game is actually being made.

Quote
However, I must admit defeat on the 8 sprites per scanline rule. This one hits hard and I don't know any way out of it, I know I basically can't with the way they are posed. Can you tell me about any magic that might would make me feel any better about this?
Nope. Flickering is all you get, 8 sprites per scanline is a limitation even MMC5 can't beat. You could draw one of the characters using the background, but then you can't really have an actual background. Depending on how iconic his fighting stance is, the really easy thing to do is just have him hold his sword at a 45ish degree angle. Then all the sprites of his sword won't be occupying mostly the same scanlines even disregarding whether or not there are overlays.

Quote
I would intend to have mutliple enemy portraits that would show in a similar fashion. Would this mean that all of them would have to be on every tileset? Only Griffith would appear on this background, but many different enemies would appear on multiple different backgrounds.
If you are using tile ROM, the answer is yes. Any time a portrait needs to appear over a background, it needs to be stored with that background. Because the background and the portraits occupy the same scanlines in your mockup. (Unless you're using MMC5, which is often the exception to, "You can't do that.")

You wouldn't need to store the portraits multiple times if the game were using tile RAM. Every portrait could appear with every background with no redundant tiles, even. BUT, if you did that you would have to be much more careful about using ONLY 256 tiles for the entire screen. (I don't know a cartridge offhand that gives you both tile RAM, and the ability to swap out tilesets on a specific scanline. I guess it's a thing that could be built if it doesn't exist, though. )

Quote
You mentioned that variable width fonts are possible, how would that be done?
The NES in general doesn't care if it's accessing ROM or RAM. ROM is obviously ROM and can't be written to. RAM can be edited, so you could generate and edit tiles on the fly (with many caveats).

Here are some tiles from Tetris (4X for clarity):

Nintendo decided that for their copyright notice that would look nicer, so they used the extra six tiles despite there also being 26 letters+punctuation+number tiles in that same set. Tetris' tile data is ROM, but if one used tile RAM, one could generate tiles like "Nintendo" above at runtime. Essentially you load the letters from CPU ROM, mash them together and write the result to tile RAM which is then displayed. It's not easy to program, not many commercial games did it, and there are other caveats too. But it's doable. See RHDE. Some translation patches have actually done a simpler thing where common sets of letters that look bad monospaced just have their own tile. <ll>, <. >, <'t>, <'d> or things like that. RHDE straight up generates everything, which is hardcore.

More specific to your case, assume you have a single row dedicated to pre battle trash talk. (which is actually not quite the case right now, but it makes the example easier.) That's 32 tiles across. It's a good idea to not draw things on the leftmost/rightmost pixels either. (Err... I just realized that sort of affects a lot of your mockup as well >_>. That's the thing about non handheld consoles. Television Safe Area) So 30 tiles. When you draw the screen, you'd draw that row with blank tile, tiles226-255, blank tile.

You then draw C to tile 226 one frame. You draw a single pixel of A to tile 226, and the rest of the A to tile 227 on the next frame. You draw half of N to tile 227, and the other half to tile 228 on the next frame. And you continue like that. Because you are editing tiles that are already being used to draw the background, they'll appear. For a single row, it's even better that storing the alphabet and looks nicer. 30 unique tiles reserved for variable width font row, vs 26+?!.,'etc.

Quote
I also wanted to ask you about the 8x16 sprites. Could they be of any use here or no? I read your description of them in the restrictions guide, but it soared right over my little head.
I basically never recommend 8x16 sprites. That sword is not even a full tile tall. Using 8x16 sprites would ensure that every part of it is now two tiles tall, making even parts of it that would be fully transparent eat into the 8 sprites per scanline limit of things below it. (or above it.) As well, you'd have a significant amount of redundant fully transparent tiles eating up space in your set.


On the top are the tiles you'd have to use in your set of 256 to display the sword parts I removed. Note the 3 totally blank tiles. All those orange and green pixels represent space the sword sprites might occupy in regards to the 8 sprites per scanline limit.

If you hit the 64 sprite limit they can be worth looking into, but they tend to use more tiles in the set to display the same thing as in 8x8 mode. The other benefit of 8x16 mode is they can use less CPU time to draw the same scene. (Half as many "Is this sprite offscreen?" checks, provided all the space is actually occupied.) Hitting the 64 sprite limit isn't necessarily the end of the world anyway, you could "flicker" which sprites are displayed in the 64, the same way you could as if you hit the scanline limitation. (Though it's much harder to reasonably do.)

Admittedly the 8x16 sprite explanation in the post is lacking, but it's really not simple. At some point I want to make an interactive ROM that people can play around with to see the limitations, but it's very low priority.

Of course the dream would be to have a little playable demo on the actual hardware.
;)
I make actual NES games. Thus, I'm the unofficial forum dealer of too much information about the NES

Offline Ryumaru

  • Moderator
  • 0100
  • *
  • Posts: 1683
  • Karma: +0/-0
  • to be animated soonly
    • ChrisPariano
    • View Profile

Re: Berserk (NES) mockup

Reply #12 on: May 30, 2015, 09:07:19 am
Kullenburg: Thanks! That definitely shows it's form off a lot more. I will probably try to make a version similar to that, that doesn't use too many tiles.




Kasumi: I think to be safe, I push the limits of of the standard, non epic cartridges. The 16x16 region is a unique restriction that I would like to learn to work under, rather than throw in the towel and go for the epic.

That seems like it would be enough. There would probably only be a few different enemy types and a boss or two. But yes, let us not get ahead of ourselves there x]

Man, I really thought you could help me out on that one. His stance is pretty is pretty iconic for the scene. Maybe during the cutscene only he would be a combination of background and sprite, and then during battle he could change to all sprite with a better positioned sword? Or this could just be a net presentation version and I alter the sword angle for the sprite in the " real" version.

I was actually going to ask you if you had an easy to use tile counter for images like this? I also would like to make things fit in the 256 tile limit ( I would probably make a version with  text done the easy way to run through it). If I can get the screen to be 256 or less always, then the handling of the portraits would be much easier.

I made a more Television Safe version, the sides aren't too much of a problem. Please don't make me move anything else though  :'( The health and stamina bars going off screen don't matter too much as you would still have the numerical readings easily in sight.



I wasn't so much asking for the sword alone using 8x16 sprites, but rather the characters themselves. But it does sound very complex and other than the scanline limit, amount of sprites is not currently a problem, nor would it be the way I would intend things.

From doing a lot of GBC mockups, I've always wondered how sprites and tiles work. Are they essentially the same except sprites are transparent? Or are there any interesting differences/ limitation that one can do and not the other? Also related, I've seen some games actually utilizing a screenshake effect. How is that done exactly? If I remember correctly, i've seen it done two ways, where the sprites stay still, or also move along with the screen, but I may be  making that up in my head.

I don't know if that wink is just the standard " isn't it always" wink, or an invitation, but if you might happen to know a berserk fan/ NES programmer, you should definitely link them this thread :D

Thanks again for chiming in. I plan to make a boss encounter scene which should be chock full of issues as well.
« Last Edit: May 30, 2015, 09:11:19 am by Ryumaru »

Offline Probo

  • 0010
  • *
  • Posts: 317
  • Karma: +1/-0
    • View Profile

Re: Berserk (NES) mockup

Reply #13 on: May 30, 2015, 10:43:37 am
Cool mockup man, love the mountains and the colour.

quick edit of your guts icon



i removed detail in the nose, gave him a more robust jawline and made his eyes a bit angrier, amongst other little tweaks

i dont watch/read beserk so i dont know the character very well and my edit might be bad, but to me thats closer to the dude in the google image search i did :D

Offline Kasumi

  • 0010
  • *
  • Posts: 275
  • Karma: +1/-0
    • View Profile

Re: Berserk (NES) mockup

Reply #14 on: May 30, 2015, 12:04:45 pm
Quote
I made a more Television Safe version, the sides aren't too much of a problem. Please don't make me move anything else though  :'(
Remember the palette regions are 16x16 not 8x8. It's possible to have your portraits arranged like that by offsetting the scroll 8 pixels to the left. But that also affects the palette boundaries of everything sharing those scanlines.

It would, as an example, break something like your sword up top which uses two different different palettes for each half. If the boundaries were shifted 8 pixels, the same palette area would then affect both halves... Now, that part of the sword is above the portraits, so you could change the scroll on the scanline the first portrait begins, and change it again after. You'd still have to make sure the each piece of the scene that shares scanlines with the portraits obeys the shifted palette boundaries. Ain't NES fun?

I was actually going to ask you if you had an easy to use tile counter for images like this?
For Single Screen mockups, NES Screen Tool will get you there. It can import indexed BMPs and create tiles out of them. However, it expects them to already have their indexed palette arranged in a specific way. Basically a 16 color palette with each 4 colors representing one set of colors an area could be. If the same color (besides the universal one) exists in multiple palettes, this can be tricky to work with. It also can't be trained to recognize cute things like offsetting the palette boundaries for X scanlines.

Pyxel Edit can also get you a fairly decent count with much less work, but if you happen to have tiles that are the same except for their palette, it won't detect that. (And the free version will merge tiles that are mirrors of each other.)

That fact that NES has 16x16 palette boundaries with 8x8 tiles means most tools won't really give you what you want with it... I feel like I've seen a post here with a script for Pro Motion that forces the tilemap to be palette proper, and the program already has actual tiling support. But I can never find that post. My current workflow is mostly Pyxel Edit. When I get close to the tile limit, I convert everything to four colors and have Pyxel Edit remove duplicates to see how many I really have left.

Quote
Are they essentially the same except sprites are transparent?
For the NES, they're nearly exactly the same. You know that whole shared color thing? Imagine the screen filled with a color. If you don't draw anything on top of it, the color is never changed.

So when you're drawing tiles, you're really still getting three colors+transparent. It just so happens that transparent ends up being the shared color, because that's the color the screen is filled with before the background itself is drawn.  :D

Quote
Or are there any interesting differences/ limitation that one can do and not the other?
The tiles themselves are stored exactly the same, and you can actually use the same 256 tile tileset to draw both the background and display the sprites if you wanted. Sprites can be flipped, placed arbitrarily, colored individually but there are only 64 of them. You can fill the screen with tiles, but they're aligned to a grid. Nothing more to it, really.

Quote
Also related, I've seen some games actually utilizing a screenshake effect. How is that done exactly? If I remember correctly, i've seen it done two ways, where the sprites stay still, or also move along with the screen, but I may be  making that up in my head.
Sprites have zero knowledge of the background's position. You can offset the position of the background map, and the sprites won't move at all unless you add logic for them to as well. You can offset the positions of all the sprites and the background won't move at all unless you add logic for it to move. No tricks to this one. You'd move the background for a screen shake the same way you would to scroll, you'd move the sprites the same way you would to move them any other way. If you think it looks best for sprites to move a few frames after the background shakes, you can do that. If you think it looks best for them to move opposite to the background's direction you can do that. And if you think it looks best for every sprite to move in a different direction you can do that.

Quote
I don't know if that wink is just the standard " isn't it always" wink, or an invitation, but if you might happen to know a berserk fan/ NES programmer, you should definitely link them this thread :D
It was a, "This photo is halfway done." wink.

Forgive the dusty TV. :(  I'm capable of doing it, but not for free, heh. I think that's the case with most of the programmers who do this, since it's certainly not easy. For what it's worth, that's 251 tiles without the text or the icons below. The text and stuff doesn't make the scene impossible, but I wasn't about to write scanline tileset swapping just for this.

Hopefully you can see what I mean about the top getting cropped, the top of the sword is straight up gone. The left and right seem to have not lost much at all, but it does also depend on the TV. No sprites, because I don't have a way to do that even slightly automatically. I used the old version because there are no spriteless new versions, and I don't have a way to do sprites even slightly automatically. The sword is also very slightly messed up (the issue I mentioned where the same color in multiple palettes can be hard to work around with the tools I use. NES handles it fine).

One more wall of text completed.
« Last Edit: May 30, 2015, 12:11:19 pm by Kasumi »
I make actual NES games. Thus, I'm the unofficial forum dealer of too much information about the NES

Offline Ryumaru

  • Moderator
  • 0100
  • *
  • Posts: 1683
  • Karma: +0/-0
  • to be animated soonly
    • ChrisPariano
    • View Profile

Re: Berserk (NES) mockup

Reply #15 on: June 03, 2015, 09:42:26 am
Probo: Hey, thanks! Your edit would be perfect for the older version of him, but he's actually relatively young in this scene. Me and Cyan were talking about it a bit back. Not only does his face change as he ages, but the creator takes so much time off inbetween chapters, that his style changes as well! Either way I like how you minimized the scar a bit, will have to put that in.

Kasumi: AH I FORGOT. I should've known it wouldn't be that easy. Regardless, The new version should fit the rule, I don't mind the artifact-y nature of the new border.

Oh man, that is the best kind of wink ever. Seriously thanks for doing that, too cool!It feels so official on that dusty TV ;]

251 tiles is much more than I hoped. I might get around to redoing the background with more clever tiling.

It's crazy how much it takes off the top and bottom, I'm probably cutting it at the bare minimum with the single tile clearance, but that's ok with me, as long as the names can be read.

Here's the latest version, without sprites ( wink)



And here's where I'm at with the boss encounter. The idea would be that you would have a special option to hide behind the foreground pillar to get a chance to see how his moves work. He would strike it, and deal damage to it ( taking 2-3 hits to break) and then you would be left to battle him on your own. I honestly have no idea how I would go about justifying the boss. He would almost have to be a combination of tiles and sprites, and it would be about trying to reuse as many 8x8 assetts as possible while still maintaining an organic look.



This is the encounter that the battle is meant to replicate: