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8-bit/16-bit Styled Games/Indie Games


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#1 Koh

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Posted 14 June 2018 - 06:53 AM

Just something I thought we could talk about in general, inspired by the other thread.

 

What do you think of these styled games?  What are some of your favorites?  What do you like about them?  What don't you like about them?  What do you think can be improved with them?  What do you think are the best examples of these kinds of games?  Why?  What games would you recommend to others in this category?  Do you think there are too many?  Is the market for this styled game being oversaturated?  Ever feel like some games falsely advertise the game with the claims of either style?  Why?



#2 Anthus

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Posted 14 June 2018 - 09:05 AM

Axiom Verge, Shovel Knight, and Hollow Knight come to mind as recent favorites. A Hat in Time is also really good. All of these games have their own styles that work really well within their respective games.

I just wish Hat in Time was longer. Mods kinda make up for it, when I'm able to run them. This isn't the game's fault though, my PC is just shit.

#3 Koh

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Posted 14 June 2018 - 04:12 PM

Is a Hat in time 16-bit styled?  I know it's a 3D platformer, but...

 

I'm generally attracted to sprite based indie games, but the thing I dislike about most of them is that they're confusing technical tradeoffs of the past as an art style choice, when that's not the case.  8-bit and 16-bit RPGs of the 80s and 90s, for example, like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy, had limited character animation and overly simplistic overworld graphics (no water to shore trimming, everything looking boxy) because of memory constraints.  It wasn't an artistic choice to have things like that, it was a choice between using the most of their memory on their 64KB or 128KB carts for more game, or more sprites, so they chose the former.  The artistic choices are in the actual drawing style of the sprites, in the chibi form versus realistic proportions, or "super deformed" look as Final Fantasy calls it.  When you look at games from that era from other genres, like say fighting games, there's much more animation and stuff on the characters, because there's less "game" there.  It's just two characters fighting it out in a closed screen.  There's no overworld map that needs to be stored, or dungeons, or anything else but all the battlegrounds.  Then there's the character animations, and  game code.  The remaining memory can then be entirely dedicated to highly animated characters.  It seems like most of the developers out there aren't seeing this, and therefore hold their 8-bit or 16-bit styled game back artistically, from a misconception.

 

The few that DO get that separation, like say, Shovel Knight, really show they understand the difference between technical tradeoffs of the past and artistic choices.  Shovel Knight's music is using chiptune instruments, but not using only 3 or 4 sound channels like the hardware limitations of the past.  Shovel Knight's sprites are wonderfully animated, and there's lots of background elements like parallax scrolling, and not using janky animations and static backgrounds.  And the end result is a very beautiful package that both looks and feels like a classic game, while making use of modern standards.  THIS, I wish more indie developers would get, and make some really truly beautiful 8-bit and 16-bit styled games.

 

I do kinda feel like the market is oversaturated with them though.  It feels like every other indie release is a game that claims to be 8 or 16-bit, but isn't actually in either look nor sound.


Edited by Koh, 14 June 2018 - 04:17 PM.


#4 Anthus

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Posted 14 June 2018 - 05:20 PM

Is a Hat in time 16-bit styled? I know it's a 3D platformer, but...


Yeah, totes, it uses the FX chip to great effect. :D
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#5 NoeL

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Posted 14 June 2018 - 08:44 PM

I like them a lot, I guess primarily due to nostalgia but also because it's the kind of art I like doing myself. I grew up doing a lot of 2D game development because that's what was available to me, and I was most interested in making games that looked like the games I played and loved (which tended to be low-res), so I made a lot of "pixel art". I definitely prefer the 16-bit look over the NES* look, even though I prefer playing NES games. "Retro" games tend to be simple and twitchy, and that appeals to me as a gamer.

 

Is the market oversaturated? To an extent, yes, but not really any more so than video games in general being oversaturated - particularly on Steam. The "pixel art" style is attractive to indie/hobbyist developers because it's accessible at low resolutions, particularly with NES style where your palette and vertical dimension is decided before you even start as this cuts down dev costs considerably. So nostalgia and accessibility are no doubt the driving factors for there being a lot of "pixel art" games out there.

 

Less of a case of false advertising, but what I personally don't like are "retro" games that don't feel anything like retro games (e.g. Vlambeer's stuff, or even Terraria to an extent). I think heavy usage of sprite scaling/rotation, particle effects and complex physics kill the illusion and make everything feel wrong. Oh, and inconsistent pixel sizes (like having your game look 240p but the text look 600p).

 

 

* It's a bit misleading to label the NES style "8-bit" since there were many 8-bit computers with completely different video hardware to the NES (and thus, many different styles that would quality as "8-bit"). You could even use "8-bit" to reference the colour depth, which is 256 colour (an "8-bit" image looks very different to a NES image). 16-bit computers had fairly similar video outputs though.


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#6 Cukeman

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Posted 14 June 2018 - 08:46 PM

I haven't played as many as I'd like to, but I love the concept. I was a huge fan of Mega Man 9 and 10, even though they didn't fully capture the feel of the NES games they came really close.



#7 Espilan

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Posted 15 June 2018 - 12:35 AM

Shovel Knight's music is using chiptune instruments, but not using only 3 or 4 sound channels like the hardware limitations of the past.

It uses at most four pulse waves, one triangle, one sawtooth, one noise, and a DCPM sample channel, which is still legitimate as it conforms to the Konami VRC6 chip used in a few of their NES games (the Japanese release of Castlevania III being the most well-known example).
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#8 Koh

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Posted 15 June 2018 - 05:03 AM

Which was great, and to me, still shows what I was talking about.  They didn't limit theirself to the raw NES limitations with no expansion chips.  Remember how empty and repetitive most early NES music sounds, because they only use like 3 or 4 channels and the cart size was only like 32 or 64 KB?  

 

@Noel

I also don't like mismatch pixel sizes and over use of scaling and rotation.  The former is simply jarring and pulls you right out of the experience, and the latter two can result in blurriness and/or really awkward quality rotations depending on the game.  I understand that drawing all those angles by hand and such is more work, but if you really think about it, even for smoothness, you only need the cardinal and ordinal rotations.  You can use a program to get the ordinal rotations as a base, and then clean them up legit, and it ends up looking way better than the game engine doing it for you during runtime.

 

I also prefer the 16-bit look.  I can't deny that I love me some good looking GBC styled games, though.  One person was on a crusade to make hi res versions of the Pokemon sprites, and when I saw their Crystal sprites, it reminded me why GBC styled things can look damn good with the right artists.  A couple samples:

 

hi_res_crystal_lapras_by_speedxaaa-dbkf5hi_res_crystal_eevee_by_speedxaaa-dbjz79hi_res_crystal_celebi_by_speedxaaa-dajxdhi_res_crystal_ampharos_by_speedxaaa-daehi_res_crystal_flaaffy_by_speedxaaa-d9u9hi_res_crystal_sandshrew_by_speedxaaa-da


Edited by Koh, 15 June 2018 - 05:03 AM.


#9 Nicholas Steel

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Posted 15 June 2018 - 06:47 AM

The Famicon used 112KB floppy disks, the NES (which was released several years later) uses up to 512KB cartridges though it wasn't until around 1991/1992 that games started to more consistently utilize 256, 384 and 512KB cartridges. The hardware within the cartridges also significantly improved during 1991 and 1992 allowing multiple memory banks to be read simultaneously (better Memory Controller) as well as using faster memory chips, these advances facilitated things like having a HUD that is separate to the gameplay (Super Mario Bros. 3 is an excellent example), diagonal scrolling and various other amazing new stuff etc.

 

You can see the performance impact of the faster memory when going between Metal Gear and Metal Gear: Snake's Revenge, changing screens in Metal Gear or trying to access your inventory results in the screen going blank for a loooong time where as in Snake's Revenge you barely notice the loading.


Edited by Nicholas Steel, 15 June 2018 - 06:49 AM.


#10 Saffith

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Posted 15 June 2018 - 11:38 AM

You can see the performance impact of the faster memory when going between Metal Gear and Metal Gear: Snake's Revenge, changing screens in Metal Gear or trying to access your inventory results in the screen going blank for a loooong time where as in Snake's Revenge you barely notice the loading.

That's not a memory speed issue. Metal Gear uses CHR RAM, so graphics have to be loaded into memory on each screen transition. Snake's Revenge uses CHR ROM, so it only has to switch banks.

#11 Nicholas Steel

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Posted 15 June 2018 - 01:15 PM

That's not a memory speed issue. Metal Gear uses CHR RAM, so graphics have to be loaded into memory on each screen transition. Snake's Revenge uses CHR ROM, so it only has to switch banks.

Really? Huh, the other stuffs right though (with regards to status bars, diagonal screen movement etc.)



#12 Koh

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Posted 16 June 2018 - 01:06 PM

I thought I'd make a little example better demonstrating what I meant with my post.  I took a screenshot from my save file in Dragon Quest 2, and then played around with it.

 

unknown.png

 

The top version is what's from the original game.  Notice how they just repeat a singular tile for the mountains and forest, because they had to.  They had 2 games on one cartridge (Dragon Quest I and II), and had to save enough memory not only for both games, but also both groups of save files and such.  So, the top one is forgivable because of memory constraints and the time it was released.  Cool.  

 

Fast forward to today's era, we have memory coming out of our ears, so we have certain standards we should be at now with top down RPGs.  And cleaning up that repeated tile look is one of them.  So, if one were to make an 8-bit styled RPG that plays like Dragon Quest 2, I expect at least the level of effort I put in to clean up the overworld graphics a bit now.  Making those extra tiles to make things look a bit more natural with the mountains and trees only took like 20 minutes tops.  Still 8-bit, still the same artistic style in the way the mountains are drawn, except now, memory is no longer an issue, and we can afford to have the variants on the tiles I made to make things look nicer.

 

I don't accept anything short of this for anyone is what I said before.  I hold everyone to the same minimum standards we should be at now, whether the game is 8-bit styled or 1080p HD.  AAA team, singular developer, they can all spare an hour or so to clean things up.


Edited by Koh, 16 June 2018 - 01:17 PM.

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#13 Anthus

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Posted 17 June 2018 - 12:04 AM

Cool. And no body cares but you, cause this is all your own opinion. Accept that most people here don't agree with your philosophy.

We got it the first time. No need to make another thread to try and show us graphical heathens the way.
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#14 Koh

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Posted 17 June 2018 - 06:09 AM

It's easy for you to say that because you personally don't care, which is fine.   However, you have to look at it from the perspective of the market.  You and a few others may not care yourself, but the market greatly cares when you're advertising your game.  

 

As a developer or team of developers, it's your job to sell me your game.  Why should I play your specific top-down 8-bit RPG over the bazillion others that exist in the market?  What makes yours so special?  What do you offer that the others don't?

 

It's easy to see how much graphics matter when you think about it in this perspective.  Cuphead is a perfect example of the graphics alone selling a game.  The game itself is just another platformer shooter (That's mostly a boss rush, but still a platformer shooter) that is also a really good game, which greatly backs up the graphics.  What really sold the game is the fact that it uses handdrawn animation, and has the rubberhose era art style and animation.  You can see the love and care they put into every single drawing, and it continues to captivate people today.  It's the first thing people mention in almost every review.

 

So when you make yet another 8-bit RPG game, how do you plan to differentiate it from the others on the market aside from the gameplay?  You have to advertise it and get it to stick somehow.  Videos are one thing, but a lot of people are only going to be exposed to screenshots from a simple google search.  By choosing 8-bit or 16-bit as a style, you've already got a niche market, but, if your screenshots look as bland and barren as the things you're trying to give homage too, you've just lost yet another good portion of your audience.



#15 Cukeman

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Posted 17 June 2018 - 06:19 AM

Extra touches like that are nice. That's the kind of thing I've been doing with my QLC tileset, and people seem to appreciate it. People seem to think you're trashing any other way of thinking though. Personally I don't know why either side has to be an issue. It's like people who enjoy extra toppings on their pizza will always like their way better, and people who just like a plain cheese or pepperoni pizza think their way is superior.

 

"My way is better" seems to provoke people. They want you to say "My way is also good, but not better" instead. But you know deep down that they're secretly afraid to admit that they too think "My way is better" every time they order a pizza how they like it.


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