Nes Mockup Grass Borders

[Fizz]

Grass, mountains, and dirt, all in one BG pallete.  The main reason I'm posting this here is that I'm looking for critique on the grass borders.  I've asked several people if they looked like grass, and they said they would if there was a darker shade around it.  However, in the nes pallete I'm using, I couldn't find a good intermediate shade between the green and the tan that wasn't weird looking or too dark. (But I could of missed some)  And dithering didn't help.  So I'm stuck, not knowing what to do to improve them.

[EvilEye]

I thought the NES was 4 bit color? Thats only 16 colors.. Your palette has 64 colors.

With 64 colors you shouldn't have any color dilemmas. I count at least 9 repeated colors you can swap out for ones you need.

[Fizz]

That's the ENTIRE nes pallete.   And my color selection is limited to that.

[EvilEye]

Oh ok, well then what is the color selection you plan on using?

It looks to me like 10 or 11 ( counting from the left, top ) would work.

I recommend clicking on that link up top called "generic 16 color palette" and using that.

[Xion]

So I'm confused - are you trying to emulate NES restrictions, or are you just using the palette?

[EvilEye]

Well I think he means that the 16 colors for the NES palette can only be chosen from the 64 shades he posted.

[Fizz]

I am trying to emulate nes restrictions. You can find out all about them in the mockup frenzy #7 and here http://www.wayofthepixel.net/pixelation/index.php?topic=3675.0

1 BG palette is 3 colors and a alpha/dropout.  You can have 4 of them, so that would be 16 colors.  But you can only use 1 palette per 8x8 block. (using the advanced chip? or it would be 16x16)

[Xion]

I see. Well, I quite like the look of this so far, but I don't like the way the grass just goes straight up to the base of the cliffs. It makes the cliffs that are over the grass look like they're floating or something, with such a huge gap in apparent saturation. Even a small transition would be nice. I sort of like the grass itself as is though. Nice and simple.
Also, the sandy color in your image doesn't seem to match any of the colors from the NES palette you've given...?

[vierbit]

The tiling looks actually pretty solid.
Colors are a little to bright for my taste though.

better?

1 BG palette is 3 colors and a alpha/dropout.  You can have 4 of them, so that would be 16 colors.  But you can only use 1 palette per 8x8 block. (using the advanced chip? or it would be 16x16)

Only to clarify, the alpha color is the global BG color which is always the same through all palettes(background and sprites).
Also yeah 1 palette per 16x16 tile, excluding special chips.

[Fingerfoods]

I liked the original cliffs better. The new ones look too rough, and not a rock kind of rough, a low resolution kind of rough.

This reminds me of Golden Sun, except NES. Quite a feat.

[Dusty]

I like veribit's... the original cliffs just don't stand out. Not to mention vierbit knows about tiles... so I'd definitely take his advice.

[ptoing]

Nice start, shows potential, tho I for one think there is way way way too much dither, and then some. Reducing the dither on the rocks would make them look more solid.
I don't think that at the distances between things the 25% dither does anything. I would prolly go without any substantial dither here.

[Fizz]

The tiling looks actually pretty solid.
Colors are a little to bright for my taste though.

better?

1 BG palette is 3 colors and a alpha/dropout.  You can have 4 of them, so that would be 16 colors.  But you can only use 1 palette per 8x8 block. (using the advanced chip? or it would be 16x16)

Only to clarify, the alpha color is the global BG color which is always the same through all palettes(background and tiles).
Also yeah 1 palette per 16x16 tile, excluding special chips.

I was going to make mountains brown, but then I would not know what to do about the color of the treetrunks. But the dark colors definitely help since they allow a wider value range.

[Fizz]

Is the reduced dithering noticable?  Also, I tried to match vierbit's colors and added little grass blades to the bottom of the mountains.

[Dusty]

Grass is way too saturated, it burns.

[Fizz]

Then which of these six do you recommend I use?

[Dusty]

This looks good to me:


Though, I don't see the green you were using in that palette?

[Fizz]

Pixen has a way of messing palletes up. 

[michael]

pixen has a way of messing up everything...

the grass edits by fizz are looking good, i like vierbits dark colors the best

[vierbit]

Is the reduced dithering noticable?  Also, I tried to match vierbit's colors and added little grass blades to the bottom of the mountains.

Hm, the dithering is still a bit overdone but its geting better. The grass edit helps, it only looks a bit to lined up on some parts.

I dont know if you keep the darkest shade for later tiles, but for now its mostly only present as dithering.

its a little overdone, but you get the idea.

[Fizz]

Did I copy too much?

[alkaline]

now there is too much of a noticeable jump between the midtone and the shadow. pick colors more like what vierbit chose so it's not so garish.

the grass is still too saturated.

[Sherman Gill]

now there is too much of a noticeable jump between the midtone and the shadow. pick colors more like what vierbit chose so it's not so garish.

Disagree...?

[Fizz]

I didn't find Verbit's midtone brown in the nes pallete, but maybe I need to check again.  The orange I have right now is the closest color to his.


Now with foliage.  The shadow effect will look better once I get the ground details in.

[dragonboy]

I think the dark shadows look too bluish.  It might look a little better to use red instead.

[Dusty]

I think the dark shadows look too bluish.  It might look a little better to use red instead.

Blue/purple is good for shadows.

[vierbit]

A really good process is shown in this thread.
Also very good work on the trees , although some stuff would be tricky to do on the real NES.
Only the green is still a little bright. The nes palette still has a good varity of greens.

I didn't find Verbit's midtone brown in the nes pallete

Strange, maybe some program or fileformat messing things up here. I look eventually after this.

[ptoing]

Looking nice, BUT, this would not work on a real NES as it only has one layer.
Also if you would wanna go behind something that is not a full 8x8 tile (as in partly seethrough), I thikn one of the colours has to be fixed as transparent. Doing this with the same 4 colours but different colours as transparent would be a new palette each time. And I think you know you only have 4 of those.