AuthorTopic: [WIP]the robot with sunglasses mockup  (Read 4275 times)

Offline Twirly

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[WIP]the robot with sunglasses mockup

on: September 24, 2009, 06:56:53 pm
So, I started this "mockup" a while ago... It's far from done, I just need some advice though. Like the colour choice and that stuff.

 Btw, these are NES restrictions. :)

Offline Mathias

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Re: [WIP]the robot with sunglasses mockup

Reply #1 on: September 24, 2009, 08:01:52 pm
That ain't a mockup, it's a robotic character and 4 crates. So far, the contrast is rather harsh.

Offline Gil

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Re: [WIP]the robot with sunglasses mockup

Reply #2 on: September 25, 2009, 02:45:21 pm
I'd like to point out that your art is not in NES restrictions. You can have 3 colors maximum (+transparency) for sprites and 4 colors for tiles. You have used 5 colors for sprites and tiles.

Offline Kasumi

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Re: [WIP]the robot with sunglasses mockup

Reply #3 on: September 26, 2009, 02:20:49 am
I'd like to point out that your art is not in NES restrictions. You can have 3 colors maximum (+transparency) for sprites

Not entirely true. It's still possible for a NES game. If you overlap two hardware sprites with different palettes using the transparency you can get five (or six) colors on one (not hardware) sprite. You can technically have one (not hardware) sprite use 12 different colors by overlapping four hardware sprites using all three colors from all of the available palettes. But that's not practical because of the 64 sprite limit.

Megaman overlaps hardware sprites with two different palettes which is how he is five colors. (black, white, skin, two shades of blue) Sprites that make up his face use black white, and the skin tone. The face sprites are overlapped over his suit sprites which use black, and two shades of blue. The result is more than three sprite colors in an 8 x 8 pixel area.

and 4 colors for tiles. You have used 5 colors for sprites and tiles.

His tiles are completely fine, since they are only 4 colors. (black and three shades of brown/tan) The background doesn't always use one of the four palette entries for transparency like the sprite palettes, so the first color in each palette can actually be displayed as a color. However... this first color is always the same in all four palettes so you each 16 x 16 (rather than 8 x 8 unless you use a special mapper) pixel area can display the set of three colors from any of the four background palettes, plus the one universal color.  (Which would most likely be black in this case.)

For the record, it's even possible to have tiles look like they have more colors by overlapping sprites but that's not practical because of the 8 sprite per scanline limit, and the 64 sprite limit. Also of note is that you can write different colors to the first entry of of the palettes which use the universal color from the first palette, but it doesn't affect how anything is displayed. The PPU doesn't even read them.
« Last Edit: September 26, 2009, 02:38:38 am by Kasumi »
I make actual NES games. Thus, I'm the unofficial forum dealer of too much information about the NES

Offline Endpiece

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Re: [WIP]the robot with sunglasses mockup

Reply #4 on: September 26, 2009, 02:25:48 am
For the record, it's even possible to have tiles look like they have more colors by overlapping sprites but that's not practical because of the 8 sprite per scanline limit, and the 64 sprite limit. Also of note is that you can write different colors to the first entry of of the palettes which use the universal color from the first palette, but it doesn't affect how anything is displayed. The PPU doesn't even read them.

Question from the dimwit - what are scanlines and what purpose do they serve regarding palette/sprite limits?

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Re: [WIP]the robot with sunglasses mockup

Reply #5 on: September 26, 2009, 02:40:49 am
A scanline is simply a horizontal line of pixels on a monitor/TV.

The issue I think has to do with memory so that you can only fit a certain amount of things you can draw into memory in the time a scanlines is drawn or something.
The screen gets updated starting from the top left line for line. Obviously we can not see that as it is too fast.
There are no ugly colours, only ugly combinations of colours.

Offline Kasumi

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Re: [WIP]the robot with sunglasses mockup

Reply #6 on: September 26, 2009, 02:58:40 am
For the record, it's even possible to have tiles look like they have more colors by overlapping sprites but that's not practical because of the 8 sprite per scanline limit, and the 64 sprite limit. Also of note is that you can write different colors to the first entry of of the palettes which use the universal color from the first palette, but it doesn't affect how anything is displayed. The PPU doesn't even read them.

Question from the dimwit - what are scanlines and what purpose do they serve regarding palette/sprite limits?

A scanline (for this purpose) is a row of pixels across the screen. (ptoing beat me to it, but I'll go more in depth) NES' PPU (picture processing unit) will only render 64 "sprite pixels" in any one row. (A transparent pixel of a sprite still counts.) Since each hardware sprite is 8 pixels across, you can have 8 sprites in a row (In other words, they Y values are all the same), but if you add a ninth sprite with the same y value, it will not be drawn to the screen at all. If you moved the ninth sprite 4 pixels down below where the others are, however, the bottom four pixels of that sprite will be drawn. (since the bottom of the ninth sprite is below the eight scanlines that the first eight sprites are occupying. It's an important distinction. It's divided into rows of 256 x 1, not rows of 256 x 8 [For NES]) This is where "sprite flickering" comes into play. You may have noticed in NES games with lots of sprites on screen at once, parts of enemies or whole enemies will start to disappear and reappear. This is flickering and contrary to popular belief this is not done automatically. They do this because having enemies "flicker" is certainly a better option than having the possibility of them not appearing at ALL! (since an enemy not rendered to the screen could still hurt you.)

Edit: And to more fully answer your question, the scanline limit doesn't directly affect your use of sprites, nor your palettes. It only makes the possibility that some sprites won't appear on screen. The issue is that if (like Megaman or my 12 color example) you use multiple overlapping sprites to get more colors, you cannot have as many enemies standing on the same horizontal plane as your character without immense flicker.

For instance, say your character is 16 x 16 pixels and you use all 12 colors on him for an extreme example. That means you're
A: already using ALL eight sprites in every scanline the hero occupies and
B: Using 16 of your 64 sprites JUST for the hero character. The other issue is that the palettes you chose for the hero better be reusable for the enemies, since they have to be reused for them. All the spaces are gone.

Any other questions, please PM me. I didn't intend to start this discussion in this guy's topic, only clarify.
« Last Edit: September 26, 2009, 03:08:53 am by Kasumi »
I make actual NES games. Thus, I'm the unofficial forum dealer of too much information about the NES