Jump to content

Photo

Koten - Reimagined Classic

Tileset

  • Please log in to reply
237 replies to this topic

#31 anikom15

anikom15

    Dictator

  • Banned
  • Real Name:Westley
  • Location:California, United States

Posted 10 April 2014 - 07:36 PM

I know what he is restricting himself too. I'm asking why he's restricting himself in the first place.

The truth is, we really have no idea what developers actually saw on their monitor. The PPU output a YIQ signal directly which was decoded by the TV. Different TVs would interpret the colors differently. There was a standard, but it wasn't strictly adhered to. My palette is based on the standard and should match modern TVs. Miyamoto's TV probably had more red and yellow in it, judging how diminished red and yellow are in my palette.

I also have no idea whether the consoles actually account for the difference in black point between NTSC and NTSC-J (if it matters at all). Given that the PAL palette is grossly different from NTSC, it's possible that the American games are darker than they should be (but I know next to nothing about analog TV).

#32 DragonDePlatino

DragonDePlatino

    Pixel Dragon

  • Members

Posted 10 April 2014 - 10:07 PM

*Eyes glaze over*  :drool: 
 
To be honest, I was just picking the prettiest palette I could find. I really wasn't sure where it came from and I really didn't care. I just wanted something with brighter dark values so that I can tell them apart more easily. And the reason there's only 4 monochrome shades is because I purposely removed some. The NES had a few more grays but they were all so close (like 8/256 on the RGB scale) so I just removed some so that I can work with them more easily. Really, it's a nightmare working with such close grays when you're using indexed color. XD

 

As for the 3-color NES restrictions, that's essential. I'd like to keep the palette system simple for newbies and authentic to the NES. If I let myself use as many colors from the palette as I liked, it would look a lot less like an NES tileset and a lot more like this. And to me, that just looks like oversaturated DoR tiles.


  • Binx likes this

#33 anikom15

anikom15

    Dictator

  • Banned
  • Real Name:Westley
  • Location:California, United States

Posted 10 April 2014 - 10:57 PM

I wasn't questioning you limiting yourself to 3 colors. That's an artistic choice. I'm asking why you are limiting your total palette to 52 colors. I don't know color theory and am wondering if it is at all analogous to music theory. You have 12 hues which so happens to be the number of tones in the chromatic scale.

Spoiler


#34 Koh

Koh

    Tamer Koh

  • Members
  • Real Name:Dominic
  • Location:Monsbaiya, Virginia

Posted 11 April 2014 - 07:47 AM

*Eyes glaze over*  :drool: 
 
To be honest, I was just picking the prettiest palette I could find. I really wasn't sure where it came from and I really didn't care. I just wanted something with brighter dark values so that I can tell them apart more easily. And the reason there's only 4 monochrome shades is because I purposely removed some. The NES had a few more grays but they were all so close (like 8/256 on the RGB scale) so I just removed some so that I can work with them more easily. Really, it's a nightmare working with such close grays when you're using indexed color. XD

 

As for the 3-color NES restrictions, that's essential. I'd like to keep the palette system simple for newbies and authentic to the NES. If I let myself use as many colors from the palette as I liked, it would look a lot less like an NES tileset and a lot more like this. And to me, that just looks like oversaturated DoR tiles.

What I aim to do when I do NES style stuff is what that page does there, EXCEPT retaining 4 colors per 8x8 tile (with one transparent for sprites).  So most of the sprites wouldn't work that they show on the page there.  But rather you can do some nifty things, like what Dragon Quest did on the GBC.  The Hero's cape.  If you notice, the cape is always on the lower 8x8 sections of the 16x16 sprite, so wherever it shows up, it uses the blue and red colors, instead of the blue and tan colors.  This is to simulate the use of more colors on the overall sprite, even though it's really 4 8x8 sprites placed next to each other.  So, overall, you still retain the 8-bit feel and look, while ignoring the maximum sprites on screen limit and maximum colors per screen for the NES.

 

TL; DR version:  I use the Master Palette approach, but still follow the 4 colors per 8x8 tile rule, while ignoring the maximum sprites on screen and unique colors per screen limits.  This still gives the 8-bit vibe, as shown below.

 

8BitTileTest_zps4280fa51.gif

 

I also pretend there are four layers drawn in this order:  Background (Tiles), Sprites Below (Characters and such), Foreground (Tiles ahd HUD tiles), Sprites Above (HUD sprites and such).


Edited by Koh, 11 April 2014 - 07:53 AM.


#35 NoeL

NoeL

    Legend

  • Members
  • Real Name:Jerram

Posted 11 April 2014 - 08:57 AM

Gotta say I love what you're doing here. One of the advantages is that if ZC ever gets slapped with a C&D we've got a library of graphics to simply cut and paste as the default. All we need is some original sounds...

#36 anikom15

anikom15

    Dictator

  • Banned
  • Real Name:Westley
  • Location:California, United States

Posted 11 April 2014 - 12:42 PM

I could probably make some sounds in a jiffy if such a thing happens.

Noel, you just gave me another project.

#37 DragonDePlatino

DragonDePlatino

    Pixel Dragon

  • Members

Posted 12 April 2014 - 01:13 AM

I wasn't questioning you limiting yourself to 3 colors. That's an artistic choice. I'm asking why you are limiting your total palette to 52 colors. I don't know color theory and am wondering if it is at all analogous to music theory. You have 12 hues which so happens to be the number of tones in the chromatic scale.

Spoiler

Well, I'd love to say there is some meaning to it, but in fact there really is no significance behind the NES's paleete. It's a wonky, poorly-designed thing that hasn't aged well. And that's not because of it's hardware limitations, either. The Commodore 64 predated the NES by five years and has 38 less colors but you could still pull off some beautiful stuff with it's 16-color palette! Here's a shot from a newer game called "Knight n' Grail".

barto01.gif


So don't look into the significance of the NES palette, because you'll find none. It only uses one saturation value, and that's full saturation! Colors should naturally become more or less saturated as they rise and fall in luminance, which the NES palette doesn't. A good music analogue for this is writing sheet music without any articulation. :lol: Yup! No staccatos or legatos or any kind of variation whatsover. Just plain ol' notes. :I


Edited by DragonDePlatino, 12 April 2014 - 01:13 AM.


#38 anikom15

anikom15

    Dictator

  • Banned
  • Real Name:Westley
  • Location:California, United States

Posted 12 April 2014 - 06:52 AM

I actually like the NES palette a lot. The colors are more natural looking than say VGA, and in that respect early-mid DOS games look more like a cartoon while the NES has a golden age comic book vibe.

Course, NES wasn't the only system with a more natural palette. But you are right that it gets weird as the brightness decreases. I want to believe that it would look much better on a Japanese television from 1984, but I have no way to test that.

#39 Timelord

Timelord

    The Timelord

  • Banned
  • Location:Prydon Academy

Posted 12 April 2014 - 10:57 PM

I also have no idea whether the consoles actually account for the difference in black point between NTSC and NTSC-J (if it matters at all). Given that the PAL palette is grossly different from NTSC, it's possible that the American games are darker than they should be (but I know next to nothing about analog TV).

 

They don't. The RP-2C02 is used on both the NES, and the FC systems. The only variations of the PPU other than the standard NTSC, are the PAL, and RGB versions; although there are some revisions to the PPU, that may account for some colour differences, but to my knowledge, the PPU revisions were primarily implemented to fix sprite handling. Neither version adheres to SMPTE-C.

 

I suppose the blackpint/whitepoint would be correct on 1950s colour television systems in America though. :/

 

An American display would interpret the L/I/Q, and appear slightly dimmer than a Japanese display, with the same game and system, and identical H/S/B or C/L settings. NTSC is a pretty sloppy stabdard, compared to PAL (or SECAM), in terms of maintaining colourimetry.

 

I suppose the only true colour values that you can use as a baseline are the RGB output PPU, but even then, they can be subjective, based on the actual CRT in use. This discussion is reminding me of a philosophy discussion on subjective colour. The basis being: Do we all see the sky as blue, or do we all call the colour that we see the sky as 'blue'.?
 

In any event, I don;t see anything wrong with making a tileset based on the actual capabilities of the NES, although I think that an easy-to-use RGB tileset that is not based on existing games would also be a great benefit.

 

I found the article 'The NES That Never Was', an interesting (if short, and shallow) read. I feel that it lacks technical explanations that aren't obvious to the average reader, as it tries to explain the colour limitations of the NES, without explaining the technical reasons for those limitations; and it references overlays--similar to hold-and-modify graphics--without explaining how they work, and why they were used.

 

It could have gone into much further depth on these subjects, and been far more interesting for doing it, but I don't expect much from journalists today.

 

P.S. A little history lesson:

 

I' not sure where you got the idea that the C64 predated the NES by five years, but the Commodore-64 actually pre-dated the NES by almost exactly one year.

 

Were you thinking of the VIC-20 here?

 

The international launch of the NES may have been in December 1985, but it was released in Japan in August, 1983; and the C64 was launched in August 1982. The technology of both systems is similar in some aspects, but the actual capabilities differ. The SID is probably the only component of the C64 that is, at its core, fundamentally better than any counterpart on the base NES; although the FM chip for the FDS (released 1986) makes up for this, as do later (Japan-only) music enhancement controllers. (Surprisingly, the FC was designed with audio expansion in mind.)

 

There is also both a significant price difference between both systems (C64 at US$595 vs, Famicom at ¥14,800, which was about 1/4 the cost), and the physical capabilities of the Ricoh RP-2xxx (PPU) vs. the MOS 656s/657x (VIC-II). The Ricoh PPU was designed to handle game scrolling, for one thing; while the VIC-II has a lot of trouble with this kind of thing. The Ricoh PPU also has much better colour handling than the VIC-II, which uses 16-colours, instead of 52, and both requires that sprites use three colours, and that some colours are shared.

 

It's only when you take colour blending, and sprite (or other graphical) layering into account, that either can be used to their full potential; and this both requires more RAM, and reduces the total on-screen spritecount.

 

Really, you can defend the C64 as much as you wish, but the graphical, and gameplay capabilities of the NES overwhelm it at every turn, simply due to things like screen scrolling, and multi-button controllers.

It may also be interesting to note that both the C64, and the NES/FC were discontinued (outside of Japan) almost one year apart. The C64 died in 1994, the NES in 1995; whereas in Japan, you could still buy a brand new Famicom all the way through to 2003! The latter, thanks to Nintendo Co. Ltd having a 20-Year policy of standing behind a product.

 

It's also important to keep in perspective that despite its name, the 'Family Computer' was neither designed, nor intended to be a personal computer. Its name comes from the simple problem of the Japanese having no 'English' lexicon word for a video game console in 1982. The choices were 'TV Game' and 'Computer', the latter, making a better sounding product for a system that used games on cartridge. I suppose that made sense at the time.

 

By the by, the cost of a C64 may have been US$595 ,but its manufacturing cost was about US$10 higher than the retail price of the FC in Japan. I'm not certain what the manufacturing cost was on the FC, but I can guarantee that Nintendo made their money on the games then, just as they do today. (The huge difference in built-in DRAM of course, also greatly affected the price of the systems.)


Edited by ZoriaRPG, 12 April 2014 - 11:59 PM.


#40 anikom15

anikom15

    Dictator

  • Banned
  • Real Name:Westley
  • Location:California, United States

Posted 12 April 2014 - 11:53 PM

Actually, it was silly of me to think that black point matters. It doesn't because there were several ROMs that were identical in both Japan and the US, and they look identical to each other on their respective systems.

Thank God for desktop publishing. (And digital television for that matter.)

#41 Timelord

Timelord

    The Timelord

  • Banned
  • Location:Prydon Academy

Posted 13 April 2014 - 12:54 AM

Actually, it was silly of me to think that black point matters. It doesn't because there were several ROMs that were identical in both Japan and the US, and they look identical to each other on their respective systems.

Thank God for desktop publishing. (And digital television for that matter.)

 

Eh? I don;t want to drag this out; but how are you viewing the ROMs, and how are you differentiating the PPU output based on ROM input? The PPU output would differ, with a change of PPU, using the same ROM code, which only references the colour to use, not any specific details on calibration. Any colour information (video output) is handled by the PPU directly: The appearance would change, but only slightly, between NTSC and NTSC-J, on displays alone, using the PPU from either a NTSC NES, or an NTSC FC system.

 

This is most notable on CRT displays--or plasma displays--as no backlit LCD has a true blackpoint, and all LCDs will skew the appearance of a game developed to view on a CRT because of their inherent brightness shift.

 

The ROM doesn't determine PPU output, blackpoint, whitepoint, or most other video factors, with the exception of v-sync/refresh rate, which is why a PAL and NTSC games will run at different speeds if used on the incorrect hardware. If you play a PAL game on an NTSC system, it will use the colour palette from the NTSC PPU too. Likewise, if you run an arcade ROM on home hardware, most will have bizarre colours, because the ROM references for the colours have changed to different registers that form its palette index.

 

The colours will only be correct, if you use the right PPU, to which the registers correspond to those colours. The reason that they do not all share the same values, was, to my recollection, to prevent coin-op owners from easily converting games, without buying new Vs. boards.

 

i.e,. Excluding arcade games, if you play a PAL game in an NTSC system, it will produce the same colours on a given display, as an NTSC game, or an NTSC-J game would, from that system, on that display, with those settings (and settings being a variable, only assuming the display allows manual H/S/B shifting).

 

I always found 'tint' control amusing on NTSC CRTs. In any event, we may very well be the only two people in this thread, if not on the forum in general, that know what we're discussing here.

 

Oh yes, and I second a Thank G-d for DTP, but digital telly? I think we've past the television age entirely, and that it needs to die a nice, quite, and complacent death... We're now in the age of worldwide, sans-advert streaming media. Thank G-d for that! ..or thank the thousands of people that made it possible. I don't honestly understand how you Tanks endure the endless march of mindless adverts on every media broadcast format!

 

I have a feeling that very few people here are familiar with analogue signal technologies; because of the general demographic here. If anyone else wants to know what any of this nonsense means, feel free to ask, but I'm done derailing this thread.

 

I'm looking forward to tileset development. :)


Edited by ZoriaRPG, 13 April 2014 - 01:18 AM.


#42 DragonDePlatino

DragonDePlatino

    Pixel Dragon

  • Members

Posted 13 April 2014 - 01:04 AM

They don't. The RP-2C02 is used on both the NES, and the FC systems. The only variations of the PPU other than the standard NTSC, are the PAL, and RGB versions; although there are some revisions to the PPU, that may account for some colour differences, but to my knowledge, the PPU revisions were primarily implemented to fix sprite handling. Neither version adheres to SMPTE-C....

 

Ah, but of course! I got a few of my facts wrong here, but really the point I was trying to make is that the Commodore's graphics had a lot more thought more thought put into them as far as color-choices go. In every other graphical aspect the NES trumps the C64 (i.e. scrolling and scanline swapping), but even today you can really tell the C64 palette has really managed to outshine the NES palette as far as larger, unanimated, pieces go. You can check around on most major sites like PixelJoint and see some great stuff being pulled off with the C64 palette, with NES art being pretty much absent aside from mockups. The C64's palette was built for art, with the NES's being built for sheer clarity. Really, you'd think it'd be the other way around but I guess that's how things turned out.  :shrug:

 

And if you still don't believe me, check out this image I found floating around on the WayOfThePixel forums...

 

c64pal.png

 

The C64's palette was limited, but you could still pull off tons of different color ramps by using grays as midtones. And as far as luminance values go, the entire palette is very balanced with pairs of colors sharing luminance values. If you try converting an NES palette to grayscale you'll see it's values are all over the place! And that's more important than you'd think...A lot of modern 16-color palettes like Arne's and Dawnbringer's look very similar if you convert them to grayscale. The C64 was definitely ahead of it's time.



#43 Timelord

Timelord

    The Timelord

  • Banned
  • Location:Prydon Academy

Posted 13 April 2014 - 02:01 AM

You can actually do some similar things with the Ricoh PPU, but yes, there are some obvious hardware differences that permit;deny certain applications on a given chipset. The VIC-IIe also has some neat features, that can be exploited in C64 mode,  on C128/D/DRC systems.
 
You can do a good amount of graphical modification with midtones, colour stacking, and other things, but the basic colours aren't all that vibrant, and it's challenging to do much with the basic palette, compared to that of the NES. The VIC may have more balanced greyscales, but the overall colour selection is still more limited. Neither have a proper yellow band; except perhaps for the PAL NES palette, to an extent.
 
Have a look at the PAL (RF), SCART, and PC10 palettes for Nintendulator (or other, newer, and more accurate emulators) sometime. There is a distinct difference between all three; and the PC10 palette is the RGB output, that is identical to the RGB PPU on the AN510 and C1 series systems. (The arcade palettes are all different from these three.) (Possibly Helpful Link)
 
The YIQ signal is honestly the biggest problem, because there is no singular, definitive standard that compares colours generated in this manner to RGB values. They could just as well be anything.
 
The NES limitation normally slams you down hard, because only 25 of the 52 unique colours can be on-screen at one time, without some digital magic, but you can still use more than the base 52 (technically 64) colours, with similar techniques. Actually, the VIC palette is very poorly (or, if you prefer, for the time, very cleverly) designed, to use only half the space on a single chip needed to produce sixteen colours, by inverting eight of them, producing the other eight.
 
You may want to read this article on the RGB palettes too. be sure to look at the 400+ Colour demo for the NES while you're there!  :)
 
Really, neither the NES, nor the C64 were 'ahead of their time'. They were intentionally designed to use slightly dated technology, as to be affordable to the mass market. The Mastersystem was far more advanced for its era, although its game library was terrible (in any region), which led to its demise. The SuFami has one of the best colour palettes of any console system, and even it is built around technology that was dated at the time of its release (the WDC65C816).
 
It was always up top the developers to find ways to extrude more potential out of both consoles and computers back in the 1980s and 1990s, whereas today, people just write sloppy, cumbersome, gigantic code mazes, because they have essentially unlimited memory and CPU process time. It sort of stupefies me that my average FireFox session uses over 1GB of RAM. (!!)

Edited by ZoriaRPG, 13 April 2014 - 02:21 AM.


#44 anikom15

anikom15

    Dictator

  • Banned
  • Real Name:Westley
  • Location:California, United States

Posted 13 April 2014 - 02:25 AM

Desktop publishing and digital broadcasting is what pushed standards to actually be adhered to more strictly.

#45 Koh

Koh

    Tamer Koh

  • Members
  • Real Name:Dominic
  • Location:Monsbaiya, Virginia

Posted 13 April 2014 - 07:30 AM

Gotta say I love what you're doing here. One of the advantages is that if ZC ever gets slapped with a C&D we've got a library of graphics to simply cut and paste as the default. All we need is some original sounds...

I'm not so sure about that.  It's obviously still Zelda, so they could still snag this.  Even just replacing Link with some random character, but keeping the tiles would be pushing it.

 

So how goes the progress now?  Keep us abreast.





Also tagged with one or more of these keywords: Tileset

0 user(s) are reading this topic

0 members, 0 guests, 0 anonymous users