LsADX graphics demo

[agradeneu]

On 1/1/2023 at 12:04 PM, Defender_2600 said:

 

Yes, I know. And when needed you can still update the palettes for each screen but that requires a lot of additional design work and I really wouldn't go crazy composing a 160A+160B mosaic for 256 unique screens for a total of 245,759 tiles, 4x8 pixels.   But in the end, would the aesthetic result be better? Usually this type of game doesn't use many sprites on screen and using the 160A mode for the background you will still have a loss of color depth in some areas. By the way, I'm already using 25 colors on screen, as one palette is dedicated to background graphics and the other palette is dedicated to sprites and there are no colors shared between the two palettes, excluding black. As for the scrolling, it was not included by choice, as the original version does not use it.

 

The original GB/GBC version used a scrolling effect from one screen of a larger map to another, while your demo builds/draws each single screen line by line. Just an observation.

(Note that the game does not use the full color capabilities of the GBC, as it was developed for the orginal Game Boy.)

 

Also, for a proof of concept and a game engine, it would need to implent some sort of collision detection, move some sprites around the screen and add some sort of game logic.  

Graphically it looks stunning for an 7800 display demo.

I am not sure what you mean by "anti aliasing" - that would require some sort of software algorithm to produce extra pixels to soften the edges, which makes not a whole lot of sense in low res 8 bit graphics and would require processing demands no 8 bit or even 16 bit console could achieve. If you mean adding some color blending pixels to the artwork by hand, ok, I have done something similar for a Lynx game but i would not toss the term anti aliasing in, except if i wanted to joke a bit. 

 

Saying that, a feature complete game engine on par with the GBC Zelda would be a huge achievement on the 7800. A promising start. 🙂

 

Edited January 6, 2023 by agradeneu

[+splendidnut]

4 minutes ago, agradeneu said:

I am not sure what you mean by "anti aliasing" - that would require some sort of software algorithm to produce extra pixels to soften the edges, which makes not a whole lot of sense in low res 8 bit graphics and would require processing demands no 8 bit or even 16 bit console could achieve. If you mean adding some color blending pixels to the artwork by hand, ok, I have done something similar for a Lynx game but i would not toss the term anti aliasing in, except if i wanted to joke a bit. 

The term Anti-aliasing is not limited to describing a software algorithm.  It can be used to mean "adding some color blending pixels to the artwork by hand":

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-aliasing

 

[agradeneu]

1 minute ago, splendidnut said:

The term Anti-aliasing is not limited to describing a software algorithm.  It can be used to mean "adding some color blending pixels to the artwork by hand":

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-aliasing

 

Good to know, thnx.

I can def. see some additional grey pixels on the Link sprite that creates some slight "blur effect". But like I said, I dont see a lot purpose for that regarding 8 bit graphics that look blocky by default (and looking nice because they are!)

 

[RevEng]

7 hours ago, agradeneu said:

Also, for a proof of concept and a game engine, it would need to implent some sort of collision detection, move some sprites around the screen and add some sort of game logic.  

Graphically it looks stunning for an 7800 display demo.

Collision detection is trivial, as are additional sprites. There's plenty of DMA and CPU time left here, so this could be added just like any old 7800 game. I'd disagree that the demo *needs* those trivial things fully fleshed out to be a proof of concept. A proof of concept isn't the same thing as a fully featured game engine.

 

7 hours ago, agradeneu said:

I can def. see some additional grey pixels on the Link sprite that creates some slight "blur effect". But like I said, I dont see a lot purpose for that regarding 8 bit graphics that look blocky by default (and looking nice because they are!)

It's been used masterfully here to suggest angular lines on Link's ears, and give some shadow under his chin. There's purpose, it's just that you prefer blockier looking graphics. Everybody has their own taste, I guess.

[+Defender_2600]

I didn't think it would be necessary, however here's what I meant by "I've also included anti-aliasing":

 

"Manual anti aliasing, artistic technique done in pixel art graphics to smooth transitions between shapes, to soften lines or to blur edges.

 

Different restrictions are central to pixel art, and these are often traced back to technical limitations of hardware such as Amiga, Commodore 64, NES, and early computers. The two most common restrictions are resolution and palette, and pixel artists often work with a significantly reduced canvas size and number of colors compared to other digital artists. (Lee, p. 276) Examples include Commodore 64 restrictions (320x200 resolution, 16 colors), original ZX Spectrum restrictions (256x192 pixels, 15 colors), and GameBoy restrictions (160x144 pixels, 4 colors).

 

To deal with the various restrictions of pixel art, such as reduced resolution or colors, pixel artists have traditionally employed a number of techniques specific to the artform. One widely used technique is dithering, combining two colors in a repeating pixel pattern, such as checkerboard or stripes, to effectively create a third color when seen from a distance. Other common techniques include anti-aliasing (AA), where strong edges are manually softened by manually placing pixels, and sub-pixelling, changing colors of pixels to create an illusion of movement."

 

So, for the individual tiles I've used more colors than the original version and I've included manual anti-aliasing. I chose this direction not only to get a better aesthetic result but also to not make the original graphics look a bit chunky, as those graphics were born for a small screen (in fact I also increased the vertical resolution in the 7800 version). I've redrawn the player sprite with 12 colors with full anti-aliasing, so "to smooth transitions between shapes, to soften lines or to blur edges".

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 16, 2023 by Defender_2600

[agradeneu]

4 hours ago, Defender_2600 said:

I didn't think it would be necessary, however here's what I meant by "I've also included anti-aliasing":

 

"Manual anti aliasing, artistic technique done in pixel art graphics to smooth transitions between shapes, to soften lines or to blur edges.

 

To deal with the various restrictions of pixel art, such as reduced resolution or colors, pixel artists have traditionally employed a number of techniques specific to the artform. One widely used technique is dithering, combining two colors in a repeating pixel pattern, such as checkerboard or stripes, to effectively create a third color when seen from a distance. Other common techniques include anti-aliasing (AA), where strong edges are manually softened by manually placing pixels, and sub-pixelling, changing colors of pixels to create an illusion of movement."

 

So, for the individual tiles I've used more colors than the original version and I've included manual anti-aliasing. I chose this direction not only to get a better aesthetic result but also to not make the original graphics look a bit chunky, as those graphics were born for a small screen (in fact I also increased the vertical resolution in the 7800 version). I've redrawn the player sprite with 12 colors with full anti-aliasing, so "to smooth transitions between shapes, to soften lines or to blur edges".

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The 2nd shot shows the trade off: less colors for the tilemap, lots of reusing colors as you spend most for the player sprite.

The original has a nicer color balance overall. Purple and grey for the walls and statues for a nice contrast, while you need to reuse green and brown for them.

And you would need some additional colors for other sprites, which are absent in the demo.

A trade of is a trade off, Iam not sure if this "anti alaising" is worth it for an 8 bit game.

 

 

[agradeneu]

8 hours ago, RevEng said:

Collision detection is trivial, as are additional sprites. There's plenty of DMA and CPU time left here, so this could be added just like any old 7800 game. I'd disagree that the demo *needs* those trivial things fully fleshed out to be a proof of concept. A proof of concept isn't the same thing as a fully featured game engine.

 

Sorry i disagree with your sentiment. It is not trivial to balance a color palette over all graphics and sprites that need to be displayed in a game. If you use most colors of your 12 palette for the main sprite, you might run into trouble when it comes to color all the other sprites in a game - and there are a lot ot them!

 

From my expierence, adding collision, sprites and gameplay logic is not a trivial affair. Otherwise games would look like graphics demos. But they are, mostly, not.  But to each their own.

 

We won't see a solution - or proof (!) -  to this as it was already announced that the tech demo won't be developed further, unfortunality.  

 

 

 

 

[+karri]

43 minutes ago, agradeneu said:

Sorry i disagree with your sentiment. It is not trivial to balance a color palette over all graphics and sprites that need to be displayed in a game. If you use most colors of your 12 palette for the main sprite, you might run into trouble when it comes to color all the other sprites in a game - and there are a lot ot them!

This is so true. I have spent hours thinking about how to optimally set up the hw palettes so that just switching the palette could flash the enemy in a nice way. The same is true for changing colours for a dead monster compared to a living one. The most problematic colour is the background colour. It is present in every palette and you cannot paint over anything else with it.

[+Defender_2600]

3 hours ago, agradeneu said:

 

 

The 2nd shot shows the trade off: less colors for the tilemap, lots of reusing colors as you spend most for the player sprite.

The original has a nicer color balance overall. Purple and grey for the walls and statues for a nice contrast, while you need to reuse green and brown for them.

And you would need some additional colors for other sprites, which are absent in the demo.

A trade of is a trade off, Iam not sure if this "anti alaising" is worth it for an 8 bit game.

 

 

3 hours ago, agradeneu said:

Sorry i disagree with your sentiment. It is not trivial to balance a color palette over all graphics and sprites that need to be displayed in a game. If you use most colors of your 12 palette for the main sprite, you might run into trouble when it comes to color all the other sprites in a game - and there are a lot ot them!

 

From my expierence, adding collision, sprites and gameplay logic is not a trivial affair. Otherwise games would look like graphics demos. But they are, mostly, not.  But to each their own.

 

We won't see a solution - or proof (!) -  to this as it was already announced that the tech demo won't be developed further, unfortunality.  

 

 

Please stop.

 

I am not appreciating your continued attempt to devalue our work and you have already done this in another thread , in several consecutive posts.

 

No one is forcing you to follow me. You have already demonstrated enough that you do not have the necessary skills to carry out your useless propaganda.

Edited January 7, 2023 by Defender_2600

[agradeneu]

24 minutes ago, Defender_2600 said:

 

 

Please stop.

 

I am not appreciating your continued attempt to devalue our work and you have already done this in another thread.

 

No one is forcing you to follow me. You have already demonstrated enough that you do not have the necessary skills to carry out your useless propaganda.

Actually I did not devalue your work, sorry you see it that way.

A tech demo is not a game, that is a simple fact. And if you present it as one, you need to check your own propaganda!

 

I just tried to put some of your bold claims in perspective, a realistic account on what I noted when trying your tech demo.

 

You feel the need to dismiss my skills, please do some research before attacking me personally. I have worked on multiple projects that were released as complete games.

 

So far I did not rip off any graphics source of iconic IPs to make a point, mind you.

 

Edited January 7, 2023 by agradeneu

[agradeneu]

36 minutes ago, karri said:

This is so true. I have spent hours thinking about how to optimally set up the hw palettes so that just switching the palette could flash the enemy in a nice way. The same is true for changing colours for a dead monster compared to a living one. The most problematic colour is the background colour. It is present in every palette and you cannot paint over anything else with it.

An honest account on things, thanks! 🙂 

[+Defender_2600]

59 minutes ago, agradeneu said:

So far I did not rip off any graphics source of iconic IPs to make a point, mind you.

 

Well, I removed the ROM.

 

Please, I ask a moderator if he can close this topic, before it escalates further. Thank you.

[+Pat Brady]

2 hours ago, agradeneu said:

A tech demo is not a game, that is a simple fact. And if you present it as one, you need to check your own propaganda!

 

The title of the thread clearly states "graphics demo."

[+Karl G]

1 hour ago, Defender_2600 said:

 

Well, I removed the ROM.

 

Please, I ask a moderator if he can close this topic, before it escalates further. Thank you.

I hope you don't let one person's opinions take the joy out of this for you. The demo is amazing, and I'm hoping it inspires RPGs on the 7800 using similar techniques. For my part, I had played around with making a 7800 version of my 2600 RPG (Penult), but seeing this makes me want to redo it in 160B and get help from talented pixel artists to produce something that looks this good. 

 

Also, I think getting mods to remove argumentative people from the topic is a better solution than locking it. 

[RevEng]

On 11/27/2022 at 4:02 PM, agradeneu said:

Sorry I dont buy your story. Until I see a running proof of concept of either SMB3 or Zelda SNES.

13 hours ago, agradeneu said:

 

A tech demo is not a game, that is a simple fact. And if you present it as one, you need to check your own propaganda!

Step aside, guys. Goalposts are moving.

 

14 hours ago, agradeneu said:

Sorry i disagree with your sentiment. It is not trivial to balance a color palette over all graphics and sprites that need to be displayed in a game. If you use most colors of your 12 palette for the main sprite, you might run into trouble when it comes to color all the other sprites in a game - and there are a lot ot them!

Trivial in a technical sense. The point of a proof of concept is to prove out the tech, not to write a fully featured game. I linked a definition of proof of concept earlier, that you really should have a look at.

 

The demo uses 12 colors from one palette set for the tiles, and another 12 colors from the other palette set for the hero. The enemy sprites can use either of those sets of 12 at any time. With a bit of planning that's barely a hindrance, let alone some intractable problem that can only be proven by a fully fleshed-out game.

 

14 hours ago, agradeneu said:

From my expierence, adding collision, sprites and gameplay logic is not a trivial affair. Otherwise games would look like graphics demos. But they are, mostly, not.  But to each their own.

Again, trivial in a technical sense. If there's dma and cpu available, these things can be done in the conventional way. Look around and you'll see the 7800 has games with collision detection and game logic. This isn't the big technical hurdle you seem to think it is.

 

14 hours ago, agradeneu said:

We won't see a solution - or proof (!) -  to this as it was already announced that the tech demo won't be developed further, unfortunality.  

I understand. It will never be a proof of concept, because you'll keep shifting the requirement of what a proof must contain. Just like there is No True Scotsman, eh?

 

[+splendidnut]

Well that escalated quickly.

 

@Defender_2600  I enjoyed trying out your graphics demo ROM.  Please repost it for others to enjoy!

 

[Revontuli]

Thank you for the demo - I had the chance to play through it and I think it does exactly what you wanted it to.  To me, at least, I see what you were going for, and I didn't need to see an entire port of Link's Awakening to see the potential for 7800 games.  

 

This is also making me reevaluate using 160B for backgrounds moving forward - this shows the dynamic of how drawing "a few larger objects" can be faster than "a lot of smaller ones," something that can be very true on the 7800.  A system to optimize a set of 160A display lists might be slower than just calling one big 160B list, and the latter approach is certainly a lot simpler!

 

I was turned off a bit by using 160B in the past due to performance concerns and it effectively halving the amont of graphics I could use (and I found graphics banks tended to fill up before RAM and ROM), but given larger ROM banks and bankset bankswitching, this looks like it will be much less of a problem in the future. 

 

My scrolling engine assumes 160As for the background, with around 5-10 sprites to spare per zone, but seeing this I want to see what I can get away with using 160Bs.  I ran into performance issues with an earlier game, but looking at this demo and how I was doing things, it might be due more to CPU logic than graphic chip limitations.  Regardless, the fact that you can make a full background of 160Bs and have enough sprites to spare for other elements is impressive!

 

Making a full game would be a lot of work, of course, particularly design-wise, but technically adding things like collision, etc. would be pretty straightforward in that the processes to do so are known (PEEKing the screen data would be fine for a game like this, for instance)  I'm already integrating some of the ideas here into my own prototypes for future projects, so I've gotten quite a bit of value out of it.  This is a technical demo, and criticizing it on design grounds is like criticizing a speed-record-breaking sports car because you don't like its color

 

Wonderful work, and thank you again for posting!

Edited January 7, 2023 by Revontuli

[+saxmeister]

Fantastic work! Thanks for making the old gal shine the way she should have years ago. That is some great pixel work, planning, and coding.

[+TwentySixHundred]

Looks like i miss out.. Always someone comes along and spoils it for the rest. Anyway the screenshots look great and Marco does great work on pixel art. He helped with my project which transformed the look from rather average NES like to TG16 quality.

[Jinks]

I was hoping someday I could try this out on a real 7800.  😟

This is great work. This drama stuff happens too often and should never happen. 

 

 

Edited January 8, 2023 by Jinks

[Ecernosoft]

*sees super duper awesome demo*

OMG.... We need to make this work in a game. ASAP.

*sees drama*

Since when did this turn into the first ICT3 thread?!?!? What the heck happened??????

 

Dude, your project was awesome. It was. It was really, freaking awesome. I'm sorry to see that it went down like this though. Best of luck for the future. 

 

(... what about amstrad EGX on the 7800?...)

On 1/7/2023 at 7:55 PM, Jinks said:

I was hoping someday I could try this out on a real 7800.  😟

This is great work. This drama stuff happens too often and should never happen. 

On 1/7/2023 at 4:00 PM, TwentySixHundred said:

Looks like i miss out.. Always someone comes along and spoils it for the rest. Anyway the screenshots look great and Marco does great work on pixel art. He helped with my project which transformed the look from rather average NES like to TG16 quality.

Nope, no rom this time. 

Sorry guys.  

On 1/7/2023 at 3:33 AM, Defender_2600 said:

 

 

Please stop.

 

I am not appreciating your continued attempt to devalue our work and you have already done this in another thread , in several consecutive posts.

 

No one is forcing you to follow me. You have already demonstrated enough that you do not have the necessary skills to carry out your useless propaganda.

Whoever is ruining it for all of us, please, I am humbly asking you to go ruin someone else's forum. Leave this alone

I Was SO EXCITED for this project to get updated, sometime, and now I see that it's been cancled because of HATE. 

What a shame..... @TwentySixHundred

On 1/7/2023 at 4:52 AM, Defender_2600 said:

 

Well, I removed the ROM.

 

Please, I ask a moderator if he can close this topic, before it escalates further. Thank you.

I want to say this:

From a little wimp like me, don't give up. 

I left 7800 programming on Atariage because ahem, I don't mix well with it, and right as I left people like you did awesome things. 

Don't take my route..... don't......

Don't take down your awesome projects because people hate on it. No. Not happening.

Did I request that ICT3 be cancelled because I (accidentally) got a little internet rage, made a huge mess, and had to fix it? No!

No I did not. (despite doing that later, but that was for the reason of I'm not in 7800 dev anymore for the most part.)

 

I was so happy that you did this. I had been literally thinking about full screen 320C when I found this and You did it. 

I'm glad that I got the ROM, thank you for posting it (before you took it down)  

Edited January 12, 2023 by Ecernosoft

[+Biff Burgertime]

On 1/2/2023 at 4:35 PM, Defender_2600 said:

Thanks, I'm glad you like it. But as I said, the demo is considered done and there will be no further development, for obvious reasons related to intellectual property (IP). However, the exercise done with this could lead to something original for 7800.

45 minutes ago, Ecernosoft said:

I Was SO EXCITED for this project to get updated, sometime, and now I see that it's been cancled because of HATE. 

how to read

[+splendidnut]

46 minutes ago, Ecernosoft said:

Send me a PM, I have the ROM.

Please be respectful of the author's wishes.

[Ecernosoft]

5 hours ago, splendidnut said:

Please be respectful of the author's wishes.

ok.

I will NOT be giving the ROM to anyone.

 

My bad.