Impressive SNES Graphics

[Kirk_Johnston]

Unfortunately, the code is where I get stuck on SNES. Design, art and ideas for it are in my wheelhouse. And I can do some concepting on GameMaker 8.1. But that's as far as I can take it myself, sadly.

Edited November 1, 2022 by Kirk_Johnston

[91SNESplayer]

7 hours ago, Kirk_Johnston said:

Unfortunately, the code is where I get stuck on SNES. Design, art and ideas for it are in my wheelhouse. And I can do some concepting on GameMaker 8.1. But that's as far as I can take it myself, sadly.

Same here. I would be more that happy to create art and to make/convert music to the Super NES if time permits, but I am not much of a programmer.

[DragonGrafx-16]

On 10/24/2022 at 8:59 AM, Kirk_Johnston said:

By the way, expanding on that waterfall idea, I just saw this work-in-progress by Kulor the other day, which is using basically the same Mode 7 faux 3D method I was thinking about, and I can see how cool it would be: 

 

 

He's also using the SNES' 512x448 high-res Mode 5 too (one more example proving this mode can actually be used fully in-game, and, no, isn't limited to just 16 colours total for the background layers as some people believe):

 

 

Impressive stuff, and the kind of cool effect possible on SNES because of all those different background modes. And stuff that you're really not going to see being done on the likes of Genesis, PC Engine or even Neo Geo for the most part. Bonus points for SNES there.

If this turns into a full game I will buy the cartridge. This is sick!

[Tanooki]

^^That's how I felt for years about the helicopter rescue stages of Pilotwings.

 

Ever try out Hind Strike?  It's something like that fully fleshed out and it's amazing.  It's like if that Pilotwings set of stages had a baby with the Strike series a little from EA.  Crazy piece of homebrew that uses a DSP chip to work so it never was cheap when Piko got with the author to sell physical copies of it.  I wish I had got one, but the money wasn't there at the time. 😕 This one is like the king of SNES homebrew as far as quality and technical achievement goes into a ground up project for the SNES.

 

 

[Kirk_Johnston]

7 hours ago, Tanooki said:

^^That's how I felt for years about the helicopter rescue stages of Pilotwings.

 

Ever try out Hind Strike?  It's something like that fully fleshed out and it's amazing.  It's like if that Pilotwings set of stages had a baby with the Strike series a little from EA.  Crazy piece of homebrew that uses a DSP chip to work so it never was cheap when Piko got with the author to sell physical copies of it.  I wish I had got one, but the money wasn't there at the time. 😕 This one is like the king of SNES homebrew as far as quality and technical achievement goes into a ground up project for the SNES.

 

 

Yeah, I found this very polished for a homebrew, with nice use of Mode 7. And I think yet even more could have been done with this to really push the system visually/graphically too, as well as expand on the gameplay a bit also. If only all SNES homebrew games were finished to this level of polish.

Edited November 3, 2022 by Kirk_Johnston

[johannesmutlu]

On 10/14/2022 at 12:45 AM, Kirk_Johnston said:

I made a little article with a bunch of really cool SNES graphics examples and the like:

 

https://inceptionalnews.wordpress.com/2022/10/12/impressive-snes-graphics/

 

If you have any others you'd like to add--there's plenty I never included--please go ahead and post them below.

 

Note: I specifically focussed on only stuff that's capable of running on the stock SNES hardware, so no expansion chips in my examples, which makes them all the more impressive imo. But you go ahead and add whatever examples you want. There's loads of games that use enhancement chips that also make the SNES shine and are well worth highlighting. Yoshi's Island would be right at the top of the list of chip-enhanced SNES games for me personally for example. I mean, check out how cool all the bosses from that game are:

 

 

Let's celebrate this awesome little console!

 

PS. Credit goes to all the people who created any of the videos I linked. I just lumped them in one place, really for my own convenience.

Just imagine a yoshi’s island hack running on a stock snes by doing sprite scaling and polygon rendering TROUGH SOFTWARE instead,sure it may lead to a risk of slowing fown the snes,even with fastrom,BUT it would be just sooo impressive to see it happen,this would be great for snes flashcards lacking a fx chip,another approach would be to store everything as predrawn sprites on the cartride by using tons more memory,

heck the snes could even run nes games trough a nes emulator trough a aot & jit approach (nested),

it’s just mind boggling why the snes was never fully utelized by game developers,for instance they mostly used slowrom and slow ram to save on costs wich is a shame because the snes can do sooo much more then we ever tout it could do.

a demo of sonic the head hog proves that the snes could run it even better then the awful gba port,even the graphics & sounds are better then the shameful gba version.

[Kirk_Johnston]

7 hours ago, johannesmutlu said:

Just imagine a yoshi’s island hack running on a stock snes by doing sprite scaling and polygon rendering TROUGH SOFTWARE instead,sure it may lead to a risk of slowing fown the snes,even with fastrom,BUT it would be just sooo impressive to see it happen,this would be great for snes flashcards lacking a fx chip,another approach would be to store everything as predrawn sprites on the cartride by using tons more memory,

heck the snes could even run nes games trough a nes emulator trough a aot & jit approach (nested),

it’s just mind boggling why the snes was never fully utelized by game developers,for instance they mostly used slowrom and slow ram to save on costs wich is a shame because the snes can do sooo much more then we ever tout it could do.

a demo of sonic the head hog proves that the snes could run it even better then the awful gba port,even the graphics & sounds are better then the shameful gba version.

Yeah, I think a lot of people in recent time especially have come to greatly underappreciate what the stock SNES was/is capable of. And I know it's capable of even more than we've seen for the most part. It couldn't quite do all the sprite rotation and polygons of Yoshi's Island, but I think it could get pretty close with the rest for the most part.

Edited November 12, 2022 by Kirk_Johnston

[Tanooki]

He likes to make up stuff for attention, so thanks for pointing that out about the sprite scaling, rotation, and polygons, no the SNES itself could never run that game, and there are other tricks that FX is utterly necessary for pulling that game off too as it does, as the speed it does too.  They didn't even go with the half speed GSU1 then went full clock on that one just to get that system to handle that game, so there's no way in hell some low level fairy dust coded piece of magic could make a SNES ever do that under software only.  We've seen the rough examples of what that system can do with the polygons unassisted and at what rate...the shit end being Race Drivin' on SNES seen here:

 

The high I think roughly put likely is Star Trek Star Fleet Academy that can display a decent amount of things at a good speed, but also does this because it's only using less than half the screen since the rest is the bridge of a starship as sprites/background layer.

 

The system alone surely can scale and rotate a sprite, a sprite, maybe a few sprites, in software sure...why not.  But, did you actually want to you know, play a game with this that doesn't utterly suck and end up devoid of most other things on screen, in audio, ai for the enemies, etc?  Not happening, too slow of a CPU and the other caps of the hardware.  Yeah kind of not being as nice but the nonsense getting put in thread after there here but that is just headache inducing at this rate.  Get the point, do some research, then comment.

[Kirk_Johnston]

14 hours ago, Tanooki said:

He likes to make up stuff for attention, so thanks for pointing that out about the sprite scaling, rotation, and polygons, no the SNES itself could never run that game, and there are other tricks that FX is utterly necessary for pulling that game off too as it does, as the speed it does too.  They didn't even go with the half speed GSU1 then went full clock on that one just to get that system to handle that game, so there's no way in hell some low level fairy dust coded piece of magic could make a SNES ever do that under software only.  We've seen the rough examples of what that system can do with the polygons unassisted and at what rate...the shit end being Race Drivin' on SNES seen here:

 

The high I think roughly put likely is Star Trek Star Fleet Academy that can display a decent amount of things at a good speed, but also does this because it's only using less than half the screen since the rest is the bridge of a starship as sprites/background layer.

 

The system alone surely can scale and rotate a sprite, a sprite, maybe a few sprites, in software sure...why not.  But, did you actually want to you know, play a game with this that doesn't utterly suck and end up devoid of most other things on screen, in audio, ai for the enemies, etc?  Not happening, too slow of a CPU and the other caps of the hardware.  Yeah kind of not being as nice but the nonsense getting put in thread after there here but that is just headache inducing at this rate.  Get the point, do some research, then comment.

I feel like the SNES could do some of the simpler sprite rotation in Yoshi's Island but that's about it with the more advanced stuff. I think the rest of the game could generally run on the stock SNES though, if you take away any of the special graphical tricks like polygon doors falling into the screen, large rotated sprite bosses, and that kind of thing. Most of it is technically using stock SNES features, at least that I can see. And when you look at some of the stuff achieved in Alisha's Adventure (the rotation of sprites on bosses, flame enemies and cannons) and the Donkey Kong Country series on SNES, it's clear you can make the system do some pretty special effects*. But, it's all the extra little details that I think push the Yoshi's Island game over the edge and beyond a stock SNES in quite a few places.

 

*

I think it would be very interesting to see how close you could get to the final Yoshi's Island game on a stock SNES.

Edited November 13, 2022 by Kirk_Johnston

[91SNESplayer]

*Sees Race Drivin’*

*Shudders*

Yeah, that game definitely has problems (and if you are unfortunate enough to play it, you’ll quickly find out that the frame rate is not the only issue).

Has anyone seen Another World and Flashback for the Super Nintendo? They both employ polygons extensively for the cutscenes and I think the former uses it in the main game as well. While the SNES version does not run as well as some other ports, they still preform admirably.

[Kirk_Johnston]

8 hours ago, 91SNESplayer said:

*Sees Race Drivin’*

*Shudders*

Yeah, that game definitely has problems (and if you are unfortunate enough to play it, you’ll quickly find out that the frame rate is not the only issue).

Has anyone seen Another World and Flashback for the Super Nintendo? They both employ polygons extensively for the cutscenes and I think the former uses it in the main game as well. While the SNES version does not run as well as some other ports, they still preform admirably.

Are those really polygons in those other games though, or some other method that creates a kind of polygon look? I feel like it has to be the latter.

[Tanooki]

4 hours ago, Kirk_Johnston said:

Are those really polygons in those other games though, or some other method that creates a kind of polygon look? I feel like it has to be the latter.

It's a look, they're not actually using those.  It's more I guess in a way like prince of persia where you get these slower smoother rotoscoped style animations but the graphical choice is to look flat, blocky, like polygons while they're not.  Kind of like how you can called Wind Waker cel shadeded, but it's polygons not actual animation cels moving around like a image by image cartoon being produced yet has the same effect.

 

If you want to get into just polygons and without the FX where it doesn't run like crap it's a smaller pool, proably Star Fleet Academy sitting at the top as it performs quite well all things considered.

[Kirk_Johnston]

3 hours ago, Tanooki said:

It's a look, they're not actually using those.  It's more I guess in a way like prince of persia where you get these slower smoother rotoscoped style animations but the graphical choice is to look flat, blocky, like polygons while they're not.  Kind of like how you can called Wind Waker cel shadeded, but it's polygons not actual animation cels moving around like a image by image cartoon being produced yet has the same effect.

 

If you want to get into just polygons and without the FX where it doesn't run like crap it's a smaller pool, proably Star Fleet Academy sitting at the top as it performs quite well all things considered.

OK, I thought so.

 

Yeah, for what it's doing with those polygons, Starfleet Academy isn't too shabby on SNES. I mean, it's not gonna blow any minds, but I'm inclined to believe that it could probably be optimized further in modern times and maybe could even get a few more frames per second of smoothness at a push, given how much programmers have learned since the time it first released on SNES.

 

I really would love to see just how far a stock SNES can be pushed in the right hands today and in many different areas.

[91SNESplayer]

8 hours ago, Tanooki said:

It's a look, they're not actually using those.  It's more I guess in a way like prince of persia where you get these slower smoother rotoscoped style animations but the graphical choice is to look flat, blocky, like polygons while they're not.  Kind of like how you can called Wind Waker cel shadeded, but it's polygons not actual animation cels moving around like a image by image cartoon being produced yet has the same effect.

 

If you want to get into just polygons and without the FX where it doesn't run like crap it's a smaller pool, proably Star Fleet Academy sitting at the top as it performs quite well all things considered.

Here is an interesting article discussing how Another World works on the Super Nintendo featuring an interview from the programmer on how the game was developed. It's quite fascinating.

THE POLYGONS OF ANOTHER WORLD: SUPER NINTENDO Link

[Tanooki]

Oooh fun link I'll have to definitely read into that, used to love the game back in the day.  It has been handed around so much with the original developer being quite helpful, even down to a foxysofts non-commercial release on GBA that runs great.

[DragonGrafx-16]

On 10/21/2022 at 12:29 PM, Tanooki said:

Maybe, if it is I"m curious how they pulled that same resolution and roll effect axelay did.  The only differences being the visual assets and it not being a vertical stage.  The game isn't super long at 6 stages but it's a quality ride that has some toxic $150 minimum pricing stupidly.  Not sure what decided to make the game a mess on price as it was super cheap years ago, even among those that did cost more and still do now, it got singled out.

 

It's called "It's a shoot 'em up" though the Spriggan games on PC Engine CD aren't even *that* expensive (around $90 last I looked but that could have changed). I prefer the first one on PC Engine because it's vertical.

Edited November 16, 2022 by DragonGrafx-16

[Kirk_Johnston]

On 10/30/2022 at 5:12 PM, 91SNESplayer said:

Looking at the mode 7 demo above and considering how it works, I’m surprised that I have not seen something like that on the SNES before.

Me too. And he says that's running at a solid 60 fps, even with all the bullets and stuff flying around too, so the [stock] console is clearly more than capable.

Edited December 13, 2022 by Kirk_Johnston

[Mittens0407]

On 11/12/2022 at 8:17 PM, Tanooki said:

He likes to make up stuff for attention, so thanks for pointing that out about the sprite scaling, rotation, and polygons, no the SNES itself could never run that game, and there are other tricks that FX is utterly necessary for pulling that game off too as it does, as the speed it does too.  They didn't even go with the half speed GSU1 then went full clock on that one just to get that system to handle that game, so there's no way in hell some low level fairy dust coded piece of magic could make a SNES ever do that under software only.  We've seen the rough examples of what that system can do with the polygons unassisted and at what rate...the shit end being Race Drivin' on SNES seen here:

 

The high I think roughly put likely is Star Trek Star Fleet Academy that can display a decent amount of things at a good speed, but also does this because it's only using less than half the screen since the rest is the bridge of a starship as sprites/background layer.

 

The system alone surely can scale and rotate a sprite, a sprite, maybe a few sprites, in software sure...why not.  But, did you actually want to you know, play a game with this that doesn't utterly suck and end up devoid of most other things on screen, in audio, ai for the enemies, etc?  Not happening, too slow of a CPU and the other caps of the hardware.  Yeah kind of not being as nice but the nonsense getting put in thread after there here but that is just headache inducing at this rate.  Get the point, do some research, then comment.

I had no idea Starfleet Academy didn't use an FX chip, that's impressive!

[Kirk_Johnston]

Interestingly, while it's totally sheeeat, I did just learn that Race Drivin' is another game on SNES that runs in SlowROM mode--that means it's running at 2.68 MHz, which is 75% of the SNES' full 3.58 MHz CPU speed. And it's being artificially throttled to that lower speed as a result of the publisher using the cheaper cartridges, which then set the SNES into SlowROM mode, rather than it being some inherent limitation of the SNES CPU. Just for anyone who still isn't aware of this--so, at least we know the SNES was technically capable of a bit more there too.

 

With a 25% CPU speed increase and some better-optimized programming, I'm sure it would have been more than possible to add a few extra fps to the Hard Drivin' game. Still wouldn't have been great, but an improvement on what we got nonetheless.

 

Given the difference between FastROM and SlowROM, it might have been a meaningful improvement, because it really does make a difference, as seen in the following example:

 

 

The Star Trek game is already running in FastROM though, so no 25% speed boost to the CPU to be gained there. However, i'm still sure the code could be even better optimized and some other little tricks used today to possibly eek out a couple of extra frames per second there also.

Edited December 13, 2022 by Kirk_Johnston

[Mittens0407]

1 hour ago, Kirk_Johnston said:

Interestingly, while it's totally sheeeat, I did just learn that Race Drivin' is another game on SNES that runs in SlowROM mode--that means it's running at 2.68 MHz, which is 75% of the SNES' full 3.58 MHz CPU speed. And it's being artificially throttled to that lower speed as a result of the publisher using the cheaper cartridges, which then set the SNES into SlowROM mode, rather than it being some inherent limitation of the SNES CPU. Just for anyone who still isn't aware of this--so, at least we know the SNES was technically capable of a bit more there too.

 

With a 25% CPU speed increase and some better-optimized programming, I'm sure it would have been more than possible to add a few extra fps to the Hard Drivin' game. Still wouldn't have been great, but an improvement on what we got nonetheless.

 

Given the difference between FastROM and SlowROM, it might have been a meaningful improvement, because it really does make a difference, as seen in the following example:

 

 

The Star Trek game is already running in FastROM though, so no 25% speed boost to the CPU to be gained there. However, i'm still sure the code could be even better optimized and some other little tricks used today to possibly eek out a couple of extra frames per second there also.

Oh well...

[Tanooki]

On 12/13/2022 at 11:21 AM, Mittens0407 said:

I had no idea Starfleet Academy didn't use an FX chip, that's impressive!

Yeah no doubt.  The only other release done was on the 32X and while it had a bit more detail in the colors on the bridge and places due to the more processing power, and included in that some added sound channels layered in, other than some added basic windows for texture on the ships with that one they're largely identical right down to the low FPS they run at.   I wanted it bad in the day given the era it was after Star Trek VI came out and before TNG got theirs, so to see the ability to go with the red suited uniform era ships from that point, learn how to manage a crew, various ships, solve missions, it was insanely easy to decide buying.  After finding out it had a fairly decent AI on the thing (on hard) in the combat arena they setup too (also has 2P play too) and it really rounds out to an amazing package that just gets so little credit in a sea of console based Trek games that were largely effectively, crap.

[Mittens0407]

2 hours ago, Tanooki said:

Yeah no doubt.  The only other release done was on the 32X and while it had a bit more detail in the colors on the bridge and places due to the more processing power, and included in that some added sound channels layered in, other than some added basic windows for texture on the ships with that one they're largely identical right down to the low FPS they run at.   I wanted it bad in the day given the era it was after Star Trek VI came out and before TNG got theirs, so to see the ability to go with the red suited uniform era ships from that point, learn how to manage a crew, various ships, solve missions, it was insanely easy to decide buying.  After finding out it had a fairly decent AI on the thing (on hard) in the combat arena they setup too (also has 2P play too) and it really rounds out to an amazing package that just gets so little credit in a sea of console based Trek games that were largely effectively, crap.

Let's not that the 32x version had pool! Quite possibly the GREATEST pool simulation on the 32x!

 

...for lack of any competition, that is.

[Kirk_Johnston]

Dang, the battle with three Klingon vessels is actually rather impressive for a stock SNES: 

It's also just cool to see all the different ships in battle simulations in this clip:

And, like I said, I actually expect the code could be optimized further in modern times for a slightly smoother frame-rate too (probably only an extra frame or two, but even that would be appreciated).

Edited December 14, 2022 by Kirk_Johnston

[Mittens0407]

30 minutes ago, Kirk_Johnston said:

And, like I said, I actually expect the code could be optimized further in modern times for a slightly smoother frame-rate too (probably only an extra frame or two, but even that would be appreciated).

True, but you could say that about almost any game really. It's hard to speculate, especially with crazy software 3D stuff like this and Race Drivin'.

[Kirk_Johnston]

48 minutes ago, Mittens0407 said:

True, but you could say that about almost any game really. It's hard to speculate, especially with crazy software 3D stuff like this and Race Drivin'.

Of course, that's basically true.

 

What I would say though is that we've seen so many original SNES games see pretty major frame rate improvement patches in recent times via nothing more than either moving them from SlowROM to FastROM and/or even just optimizing the code better, that it actually has genuine value to point it out here imo. Because, the SNES is a system that I've seen many people try to knock down and diminish in recent times, whatever their reasons and motivations, and every time I see an example of it doing something that most people probably thought was impossible, or when I see an old and once slowdown-riddled game suddenly get basically all the slowdown removed, and all without any expansion chips involved at all, it's worth highlighting as far as I'm concerned.

 

For a SNES fan like me, and hopefully some others in here too, it's just really nice to see this kind of thing from the console I/we love. In some ways, it reaffirms my love for it.

 

Also, note, it doesn't make any real difference with the games being 2D or 3D when it comes to simply optimizing things better or indeed moving from SlowROM to FastROM. The odds are, giving how much coders have learned both about the SNES architecture and just new coding methods in general since the '90s, most games could be optimized quite a bit. And I think that's true of many SNES titles more than games from other systems from that console generation, simply because of how convoluted a system it is to understand even the basics and to get the best out of in the first place.

Edited December 14, 2022 by Kirk_Johnston