AuthorTopic: Of Value, Saturation, Hue, Contrast and gray;  (Read 7651 times)

Offline Gizmonicgamer

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Of Value, Saturation, Hue, Contrast and gray;

on: November 30, 2008, 07:37:25 am

So. I'm working on a game (have been for quite some time now) which is primarily pixelled. It has a 256x192 screensize/resolution* (akin to the Metroidvania Castlevania titles) but what seperates this from most games I see, particularly games featuring sprites, is that it is essentially gray - "black and white" if you will. All of the shades are predominately gray; occasionally with a tint of red or maybe blue and green, but 'gray' is the dominant shade and feeling. Thus the aspect of saturation and hue are reduced dramatically, and most of the game will feature dark and dank castle hallways with a sort of (if all goes as planned) 'frightening/lonely/gloomy gothic aesthetic'; or grey, misty forests and dusty wastelands which will likely rely more on value and contrast then hue and saturation. Is this heavily-grayed out style applicable, or does it suffer too much from a lack any true distinction?

Screenshots from the game in question; Please do not critique the sprites themselves (unless it is related to the primary question at hand) but rather the screen as a whole in regards to this subject. It should also be noted the Healthbar is not omnipresent; it will only be visible during combat.




    *That is at the minimum windowsize. Its base pixel level. The game scales itself by default to match your resolution, generally resulting in slightly blurred graphics. This scaling can be altered from your resolution, to windowed 512x384 or 768x576 (with 256x192 also an option) to help accomodate for speed issues and general preferences.

Essentially; what are your views on this heavily desaturated visual style - Is it a smart move, is it applicable, does it even work? Furthermore, if it does have issues, either in its nature or in my representation of it, what do you think can be done to fix them?

Offline happymonster

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Re: Of Value, Saturation, Hue, Contrast and gray;

Reply #1 on: November 30, 2008, 09:09:51 am
The problem I see is that the contrast range isn't very high. Most of it is quite low with a lot of white added to try to add detail. So it looks a little strange to me as the brightness of the pixels doesn't seem very realistic. You could use more dark colours to improve this, but don't just add black and white to add detail.

Try looking at pixel art when converted to greyscale. :)

Offline Atnas

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Re: Of Value, Saturation, Hue, Contrast and gray;

Reply #2 on: November 30, 2008, 03:24:39 pm
I agree, your execution is way too blurry. (and think about what it will be like resized, then.)

Desaturated can work well, as long as you remember you don't have color to separate, only brightness. Things should be crisper to look nice, in my opinion. Try getting rid of gradients and replacing it with harsh shadow. You can still get a misty look with higher clarity.

Offline ndchristie

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Re: Of Value, Saturation, Hue, Contrast and gray;

Reply #3 on: December 03, 2008, 03:33:29 am
agreed about the shadowing and need for strong spot brights.

also, i think you can work more with color.  Here's an example of lower-to-middle-saturation that's beautiful and still conveys that grayness you want :

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Offline Gizmonicgamer

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Re: Of Value, Saturation, Hue, Contrast and gray;

Reply #4 on: December 03, 2008, 06:19:02 am
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Try looking at pixel art when converted to greyscale.
Actually I was trying to specifically avoid doing just this - those sprites aren't meant to be in greyscale; hue is still a necessary element to them. Using those as a reference is more bound to mess things up then anythng else. That is, a direct reference anyway. I decided to look at some Castlevania Symphony of the Night sprites that I greyscaled and I think I've got a better grasp of how to change the shading. Make it a bit more bold and less reliant on "gradients", while not jumping into a 'kiddy anime' style of shading. (Though the edit below won't be much of an example)

Quote
The problem I see is that the contrast range isn't very high. Most of it is quite low with a lot of white added to try to add detail. So it looks a little strange to me as the brightness of the pixels doesn't seem very realistic. You could use more dark colours to improve this, but don't just add black and white to add detail.
???
On my computer it's displaying a lot of contrast for these. The 'wasteland' shot (which I forgot to add is incomplete; there is still sky to be added) on the ground goes from a near black dark gray (with a blue tint) to mid gray to white . Exactly how new is your computer/how bright are the settings set too? One thing I've noticed the game has a tendency to look a lot different depending upon which computer is running and viewing it. That is, the palettes are the same but the computers representation of them is very different.

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I agree, your execution is way too blurry. (and think about what it will be like resized, then.)
I agree the execution is a little blurry; I've started to repallette the main characters sprite slightly; removing a useless color or two and upping the contrast and fixing up the shading a little. I'm not sure if you'll really see the differences here, but I'll post the two of them to show anyway. At the end of the post*

Also I don't have to imagine as alongside making sprite and backgrounds I've been programming the engine; those shots up there are in-game. Honestly, it only blurs the edges slightly. In my opinion it looks nice.

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Try getting rid of gradients and replacing it with harsh shadow.
This sounds like a decent idea, actually. I'll see about giving it a shot sometime.

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agreed about the shadowing and need for strong spot brights.

also, i think you can work more with color.  Here's an example of lower-to-middle-saturation that's beautiful and still conveys that grayness you want : [IMAGE]
Actually I disagree entirely, that image is far too warm and colorful and in my eyes completely lacks the atmosphere/style I'm attempting to attain. Though there will be key points with certain effects where color will be slightly more prominent; not majorly so though. Mostly with water and blood and possibly fire.
Also what do you mean by "Strong spot brights"?


*NEW > OLD
« Last Edit: December 03, 2008, 06:24:05 am by Gizmonicgamer »

Offline happymonster

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Re: Of Value, Saturation, Hue, Contrast and gray;

Reply #5 on: December 03, 2008, 10:29:58 am
I meant you have a lot of white, and midgreys but little darks.
The backgrounds have almost no detail in them, so that makes the whole thing look lacking in contrast.

I'm not trying to offend you, just giving honest C&C.

Offline Conzeit

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Re: Of Value, Saturation, Hue, Contrast and gray;

Reply #6 on: December 03, 2008, 04:14:59 pm
The idea reminds me a lot of the first SoulReaver. Soul Reaver isnt so much gray, as it is monochrome. I only noticed this when I was forced to play it in a B&W monitor...I noticed that this was my only PS1 game to actually look good in the B&W monitor...it was because it was basically designed in grayscales, only that everything had a slight tint to diferentiate the ambients.



perhaps you should go look at some SoulReaver stuff in Youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-R9u7J3BYlU&feature=related here seems to be a guy who has several videos of it. I still love that game to this day....if you could bring any of the ambience of it to your game I'd definitively love it.

Offline Gizmonicgamer

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Re: Of Value, Saturation, Hue, Contrast and gray;

Reply #7 on: December 03, 2008, 06:59:47 pm
Quote
I meant you have a lot of white, and midgreys but little darks.
Alright, this is probably the fault of my 8-9 year old computer and monitor then, because for me I'm actually seeing a lot of really dark, near black colors.

Depending upon context;

In between the blue lines shows up as the 'mid-gray' range. Anything past the small red line is almost indistinguishable from black, unless the shades are surrounded by darker colors, then that can be extended as far forward as the dotted red line; but regardless any shade beyond that is still "black" for me. Does it look any different to you (or even anyone reading this?)

As far as Soul Reaver is concerned; I'll have to actually play the game to really pick up the true extent of its atmosphere and style, but so far it doesn't look too far off from mine; albeit more colorful in parts. I'll see if I can't try and get anything out of the game.

Whether or not it seems like it, your comments are helping me out here~

Offline happymonster

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Re: Of Value, Saturation, Hue, Contrast and gray;

Reply #8 on: December 03, 2008, 07:04:49 pm
If I look really close I can see at least 6 shades before the small red line, but 4 of these are very clearly seperate without trying to look close. That grey with the small red line is not even 'that dark' to me.
I have a LCD monitor here if that helps.

Offline Dr D

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Re: Of Value, Saturation, Hue, Contrast and gray;

Reply #9 on: December 03, 2008, 08:47:02 pm
Only the first 4 colors look like black to me, after that I can clearly make out it's gray.