29 replies to this topic

[Anthus]

Looking at a few SNES ROMS helps me understand a little bit more about what hackers and stuff mean by "block" and "address". Everything, including code, seems to be stored in blocks, and it put into the CPU as needed for graphics, and functions. I'm obviously not really experienced enough to make this call, but it seems, almost, like it would have been harder to code a S/NES game than it is to code a game today what with all the tools, and resources available.

[Lüt]

I don't think I'll have to 8-bit them.

edit: I ended up making them 8-bit.

I had intended to rip these for others to use, but the time it would take to mask off tiles, and manipulate palettes, it might not be worth it since people might not be able to fit them in with other sets easily, unless they want to edit/ recolor tiles in those sets for this palette structure or are already using 8-bit color. These will be ripped in 8-bit, as is, but I'll continue to test stuff out. I'd like to not 8-bit it, but I may still submit them, with that caveat.

You could set up different tilesheets for different sets. That's what I was getting at when I asked what the most popular tilesets using 2-tile-high dungeon walls were - I had a feeling I'd have to provide alternately-colored tilesheets for their alternate palette structures. Fortunately, it seems DoR and Pure are the two main ones, with Lost Isle lingering in the background, so I won't have to make like 10 different tilesheet versions.

 

Here's a more complicated option that I was considering with the LttP dungeon tilesheets: design an import palette. It creates a series of unique colors across all level CSets. The palette and tiles will be color-coded, not colored, so they will look incredibly strange. But what it does is allow all the colors to go to the correct place in the palette during import, then when you add the individual level CSets, everything will already be in order. I found this necessary with LttP due to some dungeon palettes using duplicate colors in places that other dungeon palettes used unique colors (Dark World L6 is the only dungeon that uses all 9 wall colors), but maybe Gunple doesn't have this issue. I don't even know how interchangeable its level palettes are anyway, but at first glance it seems it would take some effort to align them for such a thing.

(I also have next to zero image editing experience. I've never touched PhotoShop, and I've.. *gulp* used MSPaint notoriously throughout the years.)

MSPaint's OK for some things like these.

The thing in Photoshop that's quite useful is the non-contiguous wand selection. What that does is allow you to select a single color, and it will also select all pixels of matching color throughout an entire image. If I'm trying to assess tile rips, I use it to additively click on all the colors I want and progressively add them up until I see the entire tile [collection] fully selected, then note how many colors it took to assemble the full selection.

As an example, the Gunple area I was most interested in ripping was the Wood Tower. It turns out, if I follow the CSet 5 suggestion I made and relegate things like torches and spikes to a non-level palette, the entire Wood Tower palette fits in exactly 45 colors - yes, that's 3 CSets minus the first transparent color. And that includes the rugs, water, blue wall torches, pits, and that green-bar/red-carpet platform in one of the bottom right rooms. With the 8 colors for torches and spikes relegated to CSet 5, you can have fully accurate color for that particular map.

Almost. The only thing that grabs my attention are some strangely colored wood overlays that take another 4 colors. They seem odd, like the designers tapped into a sprite CSet or something. If you wanted those in the main level palette, you could ditch the greens in the aforementioned green-bar room, since that's the only place they appear in the entire level, and use standard wood-bars in their place. If those other 4 weird browns aren't part of a sprite CSet, that is. I haven't seen many screenshots of the game in action, so I'm not sure what all colors appear where.

Of course, you could also relegate the 4 blues of the wall torches to CSet 9 - I suppose it would make sense if torches stay lit during a level fade. Point is, you can have every color, but plan for the full 3 level CSets in most instances, with consideration of CSet 5 for standard objects and perhaps CSet 9 for lit objects.

At least, I really don't want to have to  .

This seems to be a common sentiment, but I don't understand why?

Particularly in sets like these and LttP's, where the dungeon walls/objects/etc. don't change colors throughout the level, there's no need for CSet switching in the first place - only full level palette switching. LttP would have to account for alternate floor colors, but these don't even require that.

 

I mean, it's really the only option when you're trying to cram palettes of this magnitude into the NES format. What benefits do you seek by avoiding it?

[Anthus]

 

Here's a more complicated option that I was considering with the LttP dungeon tilesheets: design an import palette. It creates a series of unique colors across all level CSets. The palette and tiles will be color-coded, not colored, so they will look incredibly strange. But what it does is allow all the colors to go to the correct place in the palette during import, then when you add the individual level CSets, everything will already be in order. I found this necessary with LttP due to some dungeon palettes using duplicate colors in places that other dungeon palettes used unique colors (Dark World L6 is the only dungeon that uses all 9 wall colors), but maybe Gunple doesn't have this issue. I don't even know how interchangeable its level palettes are anyway, but at first glance it seems it would take some effort to align them for such a thing.

 

Yeah, after actually looking at LttP, I can see that the versions used in Pure/ DoR are not entirely accurate. Every level palette in those sets has the same spots reserved for the same shade of a different color so everything works together among other level palettes. Gunple is kind of all over the place, not unlike LttP. Some entire areas use as little as 12 colors, while others use as many as ~45. To make it work like Pure/ DoR is pretty much impossible, assuming that means that the tiles work, and look right over several level palettes. That's why I still think the a fore mentioned sets do a good job of making LttP's walls very flexible, and usable, even if some faithfulness to the original is sacrificed. That's my biggest knock against submitting 8-bit tiles; the average person won't actually use them, but they'll get rated highly cause they're purdy. 

 

 

 

The thing in Photoshop that's quite useful is the non-contiguous wand selection. What that does is allow you to select a single color, and it will also select all pixels of matching color throughout an entire image. If I'm trying to assess tile rips, I use it to additively click on all the colors I want and progressively add them up until I see the entire tile [collection] fully selected, then note how many colors it took to assemble the full selection.

 

Paint.net has something like that, but I literally used it once to crop an avatar, and forgot how to do it.

 

 

As an example, the Gunple area I was most interested in ripping was the Wood Tower. It turns out, if I follow the CSet 5 suggestion I made and relegate things like torches and spikes to a non-level palette, the entire Wood Tower palette fits in exactly 45 colors - yes, that's 3 CSets minus the first transparent color. And that includes the rugs, water, blue wall torches, pits, and that green-bar/red-carpet platform in one of the bottom right rooms. With the 8 colors for torches and spikes relegated to CSet 5, you can have fully accurate color for that particular map.

 

Almost. The only thing that grabs my attention are some strangely colored wood overlays that take another 4 colors. They seem odd, like the designers tapped into a sprite CSet or something. If you wanted those in the main level palette, you could ditch the greens in the aforementioned green-bar room, since that's the only place they appear in the entire level, and use standard wood-bars in their place. If those other 4 weird browns aren't part of a sprite CSet, that is. I haven't seen many screenshots of the game in action, so I'm not sure what all colors appear where.

 

That's actually the area I'm currently looking at too. It's pretty nice looking. If I didn't know it was called the "Wood Tower" I would have thought it was a dessert area. As far as the walls, I was thinking of omitting the outer most parts of the wall. As in, if you line up the floor corner to 0,0 of a tile, only 32 pixels of the walls beyond would be used. This would be a lot easier to rip, and a lot more usable, imo, plus it still lines up perfectly. I think some of the objects could be, say, recolored into a popular set since it is mostly greys, and blues, which Pure/ DoR have lots of. If you used the method you described for making multiple versions of tiles, you might be able to save colors, but if you are using 8-bit to begin with, it doesn't matter as much. But, I digress.

 

 

This seems to be a common sentiment, but I don't understand why?

 

Particularly in sets like these and LttP's, where the dungeon walls/objects/etc. don't change colors throughout the level, there's no need for CSet switching in the first place - only full level palette switching. LttP would have to account for alternate floor colors, but these don't even require that.

 

I mean, it's really the only option when you're trying to cram palettes of this magnitude into the NES format. What benefits do you seek by avoiding it?

 

I find 8-bit to be cumbersome. It's hard to edit tiles, since instead of clicking on one of 16 colors, you are clicking on one of 256. Also, when making blank comboes into 8-bit so you can Alt+Slide tiles around, it often makes the changed blank tile use a solid color, which then must be manually edited to use the 8-bit palette's transparent. Actually, changing to c-set 1 might fix this, since 8-bit's transparent uses c-set 1 color 0, but still. I also think a lot of people just expect stuff to work with the most commonly used tilesets, and 8-bit is not really fitting into that category, so the average user might be off put by using them.

 

If it's for me, I could care less how complicated, or colorful it is, but if I intend on submitting it, I want it to be as easy to use as possible, while still looking good, and fairly faithful to the source material. 

[Saffith]

Also, when making blank comboes into 8-bit so you can Alt+Slide tiles around, it often makes the changed blank tile use a solid color, which then must be manually edited to use the 8-bit palette's transparent.

Press Shift+B instead of just B and it will preserve transparency.

[Lüt]

Gunple is kind of all over the place, not unlike LttP. Some entire areas use as little as 12 colors, while others use as many as ~45. To make it work like Pure/ DoR is pretty much impossible, assuming that means that the tiles work, and look right over several level palettes. That's why I still think the a fore mentioned sets do a good job of making LttP's walls very flexible, and usable, even if some faithfulness to the original is sacrificed.

It certainly appears that way at first, but there are some tiles across multiple Gunple sets that are consistent.

Ancient Ruins, Red Canyon, Stone Tower and Wood Tower all use the water tiles, for example, so if you were to begin organizing palettes in a consistent manner, you could put those colors in a consistent place in each palette, and leave those spaces blank in palettes where they don't exist (or perhaps pick colors from the closest existing match if you want more design options than the default palettes provide).

And some maps like City of the Dead and home interiors share many of the same wall and floor tiles.

Looking closer at the graphics, the variety of wall types and associated colors has a lot of variation, but at least the total amount of colors per palette shouldn't cause any issues:

Ancient Ruins: walls 8, total 44
City of the Dead (houses): walls 8, total 40
City of the Dead (dungeon): walls 7, total 18
Demiseed Base (caves): walls 10, total 35
Demiseed Base (dungeon): walls 7, total 23
North Cave: walls 9, total 48 (but 2 were strays and the boss icon is a pure white overlay)
Red Canyon: walls 7, total 28
Ruined Mine: walls 14, total 37 (walls 6 not counting wood highlights)
Stone Tower: walls 8, total 42
Wood Tower: walls 10, total 49 (walls 10 counting top part, 7 without; total 45 minus green bar or weird wood)

So I think it's quite manageable, but yeah, not sure how well you could bother to align wall colors for palette swaps. Overworld should also be doable as long as you segment it. For example, that Death Mountain/Ganon's Tower area has 46 colors, 2 of which only appear briefly on grass patches at the bottom, and 1 dark shade which could easily swapped for the closest match.

Although, come to think of it...

Press Shift+B instead of just B and it will preserve transparency.

...does that mean that, when you switch to 8-bit mode, the previously-transparent first color of each CSet beyond 0 becomes a usable solid color in-game?

 

Because that would allow us to round off everything just fine.

(Also nice tip, I didn't realize that.)

That's actually the area I'm currently looking at too. It's pretty nice looking. If I didn't know it was called the "Wood Tower" I would have thought it was a dessert area. As far as the walls, I was thinking of omitting the outer most parts of the wall. As in, if you line up the floor corner to 0,0 of a tile, only 32 pixels of the walls beyond would be used. This would be a lot easier to rip, and a lot more usable, imo, plus it still lines up perfectly. I think some of the objects could be, say, recolored into a popular set since it is mostly greys, and blues, which Pure/ DoR have lots of. If you used the method you described for making multiple versions of tiles, you might be able to save colors, but if you are using 8-bit to begin with, it doesn't matter as much. But, I digress.

I liked how Gunple added an extra segment of height to its walls in places, but yes, if you're going to use NES dungeon door combo sets, you'd have that 32-pixel cutoff. I'd probably include the top level anyway, not only for the sake of non-rectangular freeform designs, but because a number of diagonal walls reach up to that height regardless.

 

Either way, I'm not trying to imply it's impossible to acceptably reduce the color spectrum for current sets, but relative to a thing like LttP, you would inevitably face a significant amount of color loss with a few of the sets.

 

Then again, a thing like Demiseed Base already looks like ass on rye, so I doubt a color reduction could make it much worse.

I find 8-bit to be cumbersome. It's hard to edit tiles, since instead of clicking on one of 16 colors, you are clicking on one of 256. Also, when making blank comboes into 8-bit so you can Alt+Slide tiles around, it often makes the changed blank tile use a solid color, which then must be manually edited to use the 8-bit palette's transparent. Actually, changing to c-set 1 might fix this, since 8-bit's transparent uses c-set 1 color 0, but still. I also think a lot of people just expect stuff to work with the most commonly used tilesets, and 8-bit is not really fitting into that category, so the average user might be off put by using them.

Fair point with the editing (and that includes recoloring as well), but as a loose tile submission, I treat it under the assumption that all editing is already complete and only importing is necessary.

 

The only part I'd imagine to be a pain is getting the new palettes into a quest, which is where, yes, designing loose tiles for existing sets makes things much easier.

[Timelord]

[...]

...does that mean that, when you switch to 8-bit mode, the previously-transparent first color of each CSet beyond 0 becomes a usable solid color in-game?

[...]

Sorry: No.

Only index 0 of the full 8-bit palette is transparent. The indices at 0x10, 0x20, 0x30, and so forth, become a solid; often black.

There is no 'transparent colour'. Index 0 is simply hardcoded (in ALLEGRO, and in almost every other gfx lib), to be the 'transparency swatch'.

I'm curious: Is this a situation where being able to set any palette index to any hue (by script) would be useful? SetPaletteIndex(int cset, int index, int colour) and SetCSetColours(int cset, int arr[16]) are on my agend for 2.54, or 2.55..

Edited by ZoriaRPG, 19 October 2017 - 10:18 AM.

[Saffith]

...?

Yes, in 8-bit tiles, color 0 of each CSet above 0 is opaque and can be used like any other color.

[Anthus]

Got around to ripping most of the Wood Tower. I'm not done yet, this is just the main stuff. I'll need to edit the floor borders, since the floor uses a 2x2 pattern. The floor borders will need to be layered to make them easy for me to use. If I remove the blue torches, it fits entirely in 32 colors. Alternately, I could remove the LttP other torches since they are used in all dungeons, and have those use c-set 4/5. This is probably the better bet here; all objects that appear in multiple areas will be ripped separately.

 

 

I probably won't be submitting these to the database, since I don't want to do that much extra stuff, but feel free to grab from this thread, if people want them with the caveat that they are color-heavy, and kind of hard to use, and don't easily fit in with other sets. Next I'll be ripping the Stone Tower, and then, I'll probably rip the North Cave area, but I'm going to make it a snow cave, since there is already a regular/ lava cave.

 

I'm actually not even sure if I'll be using all of these. I'd like to, but honestly, they clash pretty badly with all other stuff I've been making/ ripping recently. I may not care, and use them anyway, or I may just rip them to rip them. Yep, I make sense.

 

edit: And yeah, the  final area looks the least interesting. Plus, there aren't really very many tiles there either, so the rooms would end up being pretty plain. There are however, some rather nice looking walls that are used in the area before, which may be worth ripping but they are just variations of the City of the Dead after looking at them closer, but there are some minor differences. I'm not really a fan of the "pink cave" like tiles though, either.

[Lüt]

It could be worth making all these sets into a tileset.

 

Overworld colors would have to be multi-paletted - i.e. you get a palette for the stone ruins like the SotW you submitted last week, another palette for the main town, another for the abandoned town, another for the death mountain area, but I've been looking at the colors and they'll all fit within a standard level palette, the only exception being the main town area - but if you leave out the signs on the buildings, you can fit everything except the large wooden fences into 48 colors - and, if you recolor the flowers to the very similar tan shades of the houses, 46 colors - and you can also recolor the large wooden fences to match the smaller wooden pegs around the houses to get those in there as well (or recolor those to match the fences, whatever).

 

After that, it would just be a matter of what to use for enemy/item/player sprites.

 

If you were really going to do a thing like that, it would probably be best to find an existing tileset with those sprites in place and build the new scenery on top of it.

[Anthus]

If I did that, I'd probably use Pure, or BS as a base. Mainly, cause both of those use outlines, but not always, like Gunple. Even GB could work, but I kind of feel like the flat shaded characters would look odd in the higher colored surroundings of these tiles. That's not stopping me from using my own character, but it's a WIP.

 

As it is now, these have all been ripped into Classic, but that was just for testing them. I have a quest file that I've been testing scripts, graphics, and ideas in. I have another quest file where that stuff is actually used in a quest. I like this approach cause I have a "sketchbook" or "canvas" file so to speak, then I can clean up stuff, and put it into my quest without moving a bunch of crap around in the main quest file.

 

I did download Nick's Pure Basic 2.5, and that might be the best start since all 2.5 enemies and items are accounted for. As well as sprites, objects, and a palette structure to base stuff off of. I might be changing a few of these around, but at least they are set up, and have a spot in the tile sheets, and animations already. I'm not sure if I'd submit it as a tileset, or a loose tile submission though, since making a full, usable tileset, even with an existing set for other is a lot of work. It may be worth it though, just so we don't see so many AlttP dungeons.

 

As for the mountains. I think those will be the hardest to set up. Not rip, necessarily, but setting them up in a clear and usable way might be tricky for me. I'm not the best at organizing combos, and I often get disorganized. I'm getting better though, and each of these wall sets has turned out better, and cleaner organized than the last. That was another reason I wanted to look at Pure, since it has been so long since I've seen how they use walls, and organize stuff. I may look at Radien's simple LttP Mountains, and Joe123's FFA set mountains for reference. The Gunple mountains seem to be closer to FFA than to LttP. They aren't as "thick" as LttP's if that makes sense. The mountains are odd, cause the fronts, and sides use normal 'dungeon wall' perspective, while the backs are squished into one or two tiles using what I like to call, "mountain changers". 

[Lüt]

I suppose the thing to consider is though, do you think the Gunple style of sprites are worth aiming for in the first place? Because, from the footage and screenshots I've seen, they often don't seem to match the style of the map graphics very well. Most of them are smooth and cartoony looking with single colors and next to no shading, while the map graphics are mostly grainy and multi-shaded. Outlines may or may not be a thing, but I'd sooner pick sprites that focus on matching the map graphics rather than matching the original sprite graphics, given that I don't think those were a great match in the first place.

 

To which extent, looking through Pure 2.5, I do think it's a good half-way point. There's also Radien's MC Enemies pack, colored for DoR but easily adapted.

 

If it does become a thing, I think it may be worth submitting. Mountains are at least easier to work with than most DoR or LttP setups though. Regardless of how logical the 2-1-0.5 front-side-back depth configuration is, the Gunple 2-2-1 setup is more manageable when it comes to organizing them and designing with them. The odd thing is that they sometimes use both straight and diagonal dividers when the mountains change angles, so you'd have to allow for both options, whereas DoR's and LttP's only allow a single option. You also have to be aware that Gunple's map designer(s) laid out the mountains to take advantage of the 8x8 tile format at points, so don't worry about that when ripping the sides or backs and just pull from the areas that use the full 16x16 graphics.

 

(And yes, I've thought a fair bit about doing this myself.)

[Anthus]

Yeah, I wouldn't be interested in ripping any of the player, enemy, or item sprites from Gunple mainly cause the characters are too big for ZC. There are also very few items that would make sense in a ZC content. The only things worth ripping in this department might be the various treasures found throughout the dungeons. The player, and character sprites remind me a lot of Mother 3 actually. But yeah, they don't exactly blend with the background, but since all characters are like that, it kind of works since it is consistent if nothing else.

And those enemies are pretty nice looking. It will definitely be one option to consider. I was leaning more towards BS/ Other sets enemies since Pure's enemies are everywhere.

I'm going to be ripping the mountains next, while I still have some time. I'll see how they go.

edit:


I decided to drop the Gunple Mountain Tiles on top of Radien's simplified LttP mountains, since it seems like the perfect guide. What's amusing here is, that after doing this, it is looking more and more like the makers of Gunple literally just made some minor edits to the mountains, using the original lines as guides, but making the flavor pixels look a bit different. Just look at the formation in the bottom right.

That said, I may not actually rip these. Tbh, the mountains are.. kinda ugly, imo. I already have some intentionally bad looking LttP-esque mountains from Link's Hangover. They are not as cool as the dungeon interiors, and they are just as hard to use, if not harder than the better-looking LttP mountains, or BS mountains. There's no sense in reinventing the wheel here.

 

Plus these mountains are really confusing in a real 3D space, but they do convey depth pretty well in 2D.

 

In typical me fashion, now I can't stop messing around with drawing these. I want to remake LttP's world in full, but, that is neither here nor there.

 

Best if viewed at 2x speed.

 

[Lüt]

The mountains aren't that great, true, but if I were doing a tileset rip+recreation, I don't know if I'd necessarily exclude such a key component. Unless you're going to turn it into a melange project like DoR, but that's a thing that could possibly take a lot of extra time to balance out, and you have to consider if that additional effort would cause the project to die. Ripping can be tedious, but at least it's not a balancing effort.

 

Regardless, from what I can see, it seems the angled front-facing tiles are meant to be used to lead into side-facing tiles, while the straight front-facing tiles are meant to change vertical depth and nothing more. And it does look a bit odd with the waterfall in the example you chose, but that's a design decision, not necessarily a tile problem, and I see people do odd mal-perspective'd (?) things like that with other angled sets like MC-based dungeons, so it's apparently common no matter how much it hurts to look at.

 

Also, have you ever tried editing games like Quake?

[Anthus]

For the first point, yeah, I think I'm going to only use the dungeon walls, an a few overworld objects, and not the mountains. I don't really want to make a tileset, let alone a tileset in another tileset which will require loads of editing and recoloring unless I'll be using it extensively, which I won't be. I don't want to run out of steam either, so I don't want to get burned out ripping graphics I don't want. I found Gunple in some random YouTube video about obscure Japan only SNES games. I saw the dungeons, and really wanted them. I was interested in the overworld, but less so now, save for a few assets.

 

No, I have never modded any 3D games, besides dabbling with OoT. I did play Quake 2 a lot when I was a kid on my dad's computer, and it was one of the first, and only FPSs I played, and actually liked, but no, I've never been into it enough to try to mod it. I know it has a pretty lively modding scene though, not unlike the original Doom. Once the developer's console for A Hat in Time is fully rolled out, I will likely try to mess with that. I've never used any Steam related community stuff like this though, so I'll have to learn but it looks promising.

[Yuuki]

I recommend Mesen.