I made a little article about the SNES' background modes

[Kirk_Johnston]

SNES Background Modes (< click to view the article detailing them)

 

Let me know what you think.

 

PS. If you find any errors then also make sure to let me know about those too. Thanks.

 

Edited August 27, 2022 by Kirk_Johnston

[SlidellMan]

I liked how you gave credit to Super Aleste and Prehistorik Man. One example that I think would have improved this is Tales of Phantasia.

[Kirk_Johnston]

5 hours ago, SlidellMan said:

I liked how you gave credit to Super Aleste and Prehistorik Man. One example that I think would have improved this is Tales of Phantasia.

Thanks.

 

Which background mode would you put that under, and where in the game is the example of the mode being used that I could point to?

Edited August 27, 2022 by Kirk_Johnston

[SlidellMan]

The line scrolling used in random encounters are a good start, and Mode 7 is used for overworld maps.

[Tanooki]

You know you poached a good bit of info, it works.  And as you said videos tend to leave stuff out.  One being the honest amount of colors the SNES can display when using it's various full bag of standardized tricks under Mode 0.  Mode 7 is the one every wets the bed over but it's also one of the more limited modes since resources are dumped into taking and moving, scaling, rotating an entire flat background as if it were some 3D plane to play with.  Some modes that say they stop at 256 colors technically but I don't recall if it ever really was tapped outside of some demos.  What it did well though was high resolution backgrounds, sometimes basic menus like Secret of Mana, or a nice moving background in a shooter like Spriggan Powered did which was beautiful.  A notable thing Nintendo did have going for it, highly colorful still images, including converted screen captures from a picture to the screen.  Indiana Jones Greatest Adventures had quite a few snaps from the movies used with text below to play out chunks of the story around some stages or as the game itself started up.  The next time I recalled seeing that trick used again was a few years later on GBC where it also exploited the palette on still images to have far more colors than expected and you can see that on the Tomb Raider titles among others.  I think what was done in both cases was you'd take each background layer, spread your stock image over multiple layers exploiting the color limitations of each to smash it down and have a higher color still.

[johannesmutlu]

For years i tout that mode 7 allows a 2D background to be rotated and moved around in real 3D space,

BUT i have readed just that the background is just getting shrinked,stretched or scewed in all directions,if that’s true then is there no 3D space involved to allow such tricks on snes???

i also do wonder how the dsp improves mode 7 on mario kart? Like what does ot do,does it generate it’s own mode 7 graphics to be streamed to the HDMA channel? Or does it take over the snes cpu and does it generate it’s own mode 7???

[Kirk_Johnston]

On 8/28/2022 at 12:24 PM, johannesmutlu said:

For years i tout that mode 7 allows a 2D background to be rotated and moved around in real 3D space,

BUT i have readed just that the background is just getting shrinked,stretched or scewed in all directions,if that’s true then is there no 3D space involved to allow such tricks on snes???

i also do wonder how the dsp improves mode 7 on mario kart? Like what does ot do,does it generate it’s own mode 7 graphics to be streamed to the HDMA channel? Or does it take over the snes cpu and does it generate it’s own mode 7???

I think I recall reading the DSP is used here for more advanced arithmetic and calculations mostly related to the sprites actually. As far as I remember, it doesn't really have any bearing on the Mode 7 track(s). But someone else could probably provide more detail on this.

Edited September 1, 2022 by Kirk_Johnston

[SlidellMan]

I just realized that Yoshi's Island used Mode 0 for World 6-8's hallway before Baby Bowser.

[Kirk_Johnston]

20 hours ago, SlidellMan said:

I just realized that Yoshi's Island used Mode 0 for World 6-8's hallway before Baby Bowser.

Yeah, it's one of the rare uses of this mode. 

[johannesmutlu]

On 10/2/2022 at 9:47 PM, SlidellMan said:

I just realized that Yoshi's Island used Mode 0 for World 6-8's hallway before Baby Bowser.

WoooW now that’s really really impressive so eventrough mode 0 wasn’t used for 99,99% at all except for a few parts in a few snes game including in bowser’s room of yoshi’s island,

and interestingly enough,while in the snes version you will see all 4 background layers in that room,BUT in the gba version,you will only see atleast 3 background layers,

this is definitely an interesting note about it, i never knew that untill now,

another thing i didn’t realized untill recently in that warphing backgrounds, in the snes version you will see background warping both horizontally and vertically while in the gba version you will only see vertical warping and that warping isn’t even real,all it does is cycle trough each background at different presets to fake a warping effect,i don’t know why nintendo didn’t had try it trough software,maybe they wasted already alot of power for generating polygons trough software,mmmm,

anyway i prefer the snes version because the gba version has been kindergardenized anyway☹️.

[Kirk_Johnston]

17 hours ago, johannesmutlu said:

WoooW now that’s really really impressive so eventrough mode 0 wasn’t used for 99,99% at all except for a few parts in a few snes game including in bowser’s room of yoshi’s island,

and interestingly enough,while in the snes version you will see all 4 background layers in that room,BUT in the gba version,you will only see atleast 3 background layers,

this is definitely an interesting note about it, i never knew that untill now,

another thing i didn’t realized untill recently in that warphing backgrounds, in the snes version you will see background warping both horizontally and vertically while in the gba version you will only see vertical warping and that warping isn’t even real,all it does is cycle trough each background at different presets to fake a warping effect,i don’t know why nintendo didn’t had try it trough software,maybe they wasted already alot of power for generating polygons trough software,mmmm,

anyway i prefer the snes version because the gba version has been kindergardenized anyway☹️.

Yeah, I prefer the SNES version across the board.

[jeffythedragonslayer]

On 8/28/2022 at 7:24 AM, johannesmutlu said:

For years i tout that mode 7 allows a 2D background to be rotated and moved around in real 3D space,

BUT i have readed just that the background is just getting shrinked,stretched or scewed in all directions,if that’s true then is there no 3D space involved to allow such tricks on snes???

The PPU does not know where the camera is in 3d space.  The 5A22 very well may because it's changing the matrix parameters with HDMA.

On 8/28/2022 at 7:24 AM, johannesmutlu said:

i also do wonder how the dsp improves mode 7 on mario kart? Like what does ot do,does it generate it’s own mode 7 graphics to be streamed to the HDMA channel?  Or does it take over the snes cpu and does it generate it’s own mode 7???

These are all DSP-1 commands:

 

https://sneslab.net/wiki/DSP1

 

Also, I put pages for all the different background modes on SnesLab as well.

Edited July 18, 2023 by jeffythedragonslayer

[Kirk_Johnston]

I updated my SNES Background Modes article with Maxel/Maxwel's Mode 6 demo.

 

Looking forward to being able to add more new examples for some of the other rarely-used SNES background modes and features in the future too. 

 

I'm confident we'll get that fully-working example using an 8bpp 256-colour background during full gameplay as well.

 

Doesn't even have to be exactly on the same level as my very much doable mockup examples like this and this--I like to push close to the limits with my ideas just to see what's possible there--but really just anything using the mode during gameplay [a single-screen high-colour level with characters jumping around like the original Super Mario Bros., a racing game like Super Off Road but just with an 8bpp 256-colour track, a cool looking boss battle with an 8bpp high-colour enemy in some graphic adventure novel, a "walking simulator" where you just walk past a looong scrolling background displaying a gorgeous 8bpp 256-colour landscape that conveys some interesting story/narrative across a series of intertwined images, etc] makes exactly the same point, which is that you can absolutely use the SNES' 8pp 256-colour backgrounds during full gameplay, and how [the royal] you choose to show that off in your own example is the only real variable there.

 

All good things in time. . . .

Edited January 16 by Kirk_Johnston
Tidy up