The completely underappreciated possibilities of Mode 0 on SNES. . . .

[Kirk_Johnston]

And here are some of the bosses surrounding the brave player and a guest appearance from Sonic (uses Mode 0 with the scenery using one background layer and three bosses using the other layers, plus a couple of sprites for Alucard and Sonic):

 

[Creamhoven]

20 minutes ago, Kirk_Johnston said:

And here are some of the bosses surrounding the brave player and a guest appearance from Sonic (uses Mode 0 with the scenery using one background layer and three bosses using the other layers, plus a couple of sprites for Alucard and Sonic):

 

You are a genious!

[JurassicDope]

On 5/20/2023 at 10:22 PM, jeffythedragonslayer said:

Yes, I am developing my game using PVSnesLib, and a lot of that time is spent developing PVSnesLib itself.

Ahh, so it still has a way to go it seems to be as functional as SGDK. From what I've seen of SNES Eyra, I'm impressed and happy to see it can launch a game of that level.

 

2 hours ago, Kirk_Johnston said:

And here are some of the bosses surrounding the brave player and a guest appearance from Sonic (uses Mode 0 with the scenery using one background layer and three bosses using the other layers, plus a couple of sprites for Alucard and Sonic):

 

Very awesome! 👌 Even though the exact scene itself is repeatable on MD without flicker using sprites for 2 of the bosses (most likely the Eggman and Shinobi bosses), the implications are much more different. As you can have all the bosses move around in 8 way without worrying about sprite flicker at certain elevations in mode 0, and you'd also still have room for lots of projectile sprites. Thanks for the visuals 👍

Quote

And, just to be clear, the real point for me isn't to try and beat the Genesis ultimately.

 

I say definitely design as if you are trying to ultimately smoke the Genesis, because I have quite a lot of really good ideas for MD that I think will really raise the bar🍸😎 

 

 

[Kirk_Johnston]

48 minutes ago, JurassicDope said:

Ahh, so it still has a way to go it seems to be as functional as SGDK. From what I've seen of SNES Eyra, I'm impressed and happy to see it can launch a game of that level.

 

Very awesome! 👌 Even though the exact scene itself is repeatable on MD without flicker using sprites for 2 of the bosses (most likely the Eggman and Shinobi bosses), the implications are much more different. As you can have all the bosses move around in 8 way without worrying about sprite flicker at certain elevations in mode 0, and you'd also still have room for lots of projectile sprites. Thanks for the visuals 👍

 

I say definitely design as if you are trying to ultimately smoke the Genesis, because I have quite a lot of really good ideas for MD that I think will really raise the bar🍸😎 

 

 

I would actually like to see you do nothing more than replicate that scene just as is within Genesis' limits for now, just so people can see how close it can get. . . .

 

Because, I know you could use the Genesis' two background layers to do the main background and one of the bosses and then try to do the other two bosses with sprites, but I think you would hit or pass the Genesis' sprites per scanline limit and probably max the VRAM too just for those bosses and all their unique tiles alone (considering you'll be stuck in 4bpp as far as I'm aware, so you're VRAM would be used up twice as fast as it is for my 2bpp bosses), but then you'd possibly have little to nothing left for even the player, and every sprite extra on any scanline would mean another part of something else wouldn't be visible in the same scanline too due to sprite cut-off, so once any projectiles and the like start getting thrown around as well, then I think the Genesis would be in big trouble. And, with the SNES version, even with all those bosses on-screen already, I'd still have almost the entire scanline worth of sprites free before any flicker as well as just under half a screen's worth of sprite tiles in VRAM to be used on the roughly 100 or whatever unused sprites thus far. I could literally add another large boss using sprites if I wanted, and still not hit the sprites per scanline limit.

 

In fact, I might just go grab a sprite-based boss from a SNES game and add that on top of what's already there, just to demonstrate it. 😛

 

So, in principle I am designing with "smoking the Genesis" in mind, as you can see in most of my examples, especially the shmup ones, where I have a crap-load of overlapping parallax and transparency and stuff before I even start adding all the sprites. I mean, some of the stuff I'm doing is literally technically impossible on Genesis just because of how much full-screen overlapping parallax there is that's achieved by the backgrounds alone, for absolute sure. But then there's some stuff that's possible on Genesis that's impossible on SNES too.

 

When it comes to background layers and using them to do both normal backgrounds and huge enemies and the like on-screen, the SNES can't be touched by the Genesis when used properly (I could literally have four full-screen-size bosses at once on SNES without using a single sprite, and still have the illusion of a simple background behind them too using HDMA'd coloured rows/lines plus simple window/shape masks for say a gradient sky, distant mountains, the sea, and gradient perspective grass, for example). But what Genesis is good at is throwing a lot of decent-sized sprites without hitting the max sprites per scanline limit as easy as SNES, plus doing a bit more tile variety and animation on those sprites due to the additional VRAM space that can be allocated to them. That's something the SNES really has to faff around too hard with to get similar results or, when the Genesis is used properly, not even as good results in terms of sprite tile variety and amount of them visible per scanline.

 

Interestingly, it's really just the H40/320x224 mode and the free use of VRAM that's Genesis' biggest advantage over SNES imo. If SNES simply had an H40/320x224 mode and the ability to freely allocate the VRAM, I think it would have obliterated the Genesis in pretty much every single way that matters. But, hey, what ifs. It doesn't, and those two things are really huge feathers in the Genesis' cap, and far more so than the whole CPU speed thing that most people get obsessed with imo.

 

Looking forward to seeing your Genesis stuff by the way.

 

Wish I could actually program directly on SNES, because the stuff I'm showing is only the tip of the iceberg of what I would be doing if I could program the other ideas I have on it directly. People don't even know . . .

Edited May 23, 2023 by Kirk_Johnston

[Kirk_Johnston]

OK, just to make the point a bit further (Alurcard, Sonic and the Demon boss are sprites, everything else is backgrounds):

And there'd still be enough VRAM and additional sprite on-screen and per-scanline to have some projectiles and stuff without any flicker too. I could also add a wavy effect to the big red gross, like in the original, and make say the Dracula demon one semi-transparent and similarly wavy for a cool ghost form effect too. 

 

Also, because those background bosses are 2bpp, I have the ability to use up to 1000 unique tiles per layer (double the amount total on-screen than in any 4bpp mode, although not actually quite that much in practice since sprites and tile maps and so on take up VRAM too) and can indeed swap in/out double the amount of tiles than normal for additional animation also.

 

There's a whole lot of potential with Mode 0 that I think most people miss because all they think about is "NES-like visuals" (missing that, while it is indeed 3 visible colours per tile just like NES, it's actually 8 3-colour palettes per layer for a total of 24 visible colours per layer and 96 visible colours total on-screen for all the layers, with another additional 120 visible colours also available exclusively for the sprites too, and all still chosen from that huge 32,768-colour master palette with its huge ranges of shades/tones/hues for every colour).

Edited May 23, 2023 by Kirk_Johnston

[Kirk_Johnston]

1 hour ago, Kirk_Johnston said:

OK, just to make the point a bit further (Alurcard, Sonic and the Demon boss are sprites, everything else is backgrounds):

And there'd still be enough VRAM and additional sprite on-screen and per-scanline to have some projectiles and stuff without any flicker too. I could also add a wavy effect to the big red gross, like in the original, and make say the Dracula demon one semi-transparent and similarly wavy for a cool ghost form effect too. 

 

Also, because those background bosses are 2bpp, I have the ability to use up to 1000 unique tiles per layer (double the amount total on-screen than in any 4bpp mode, although not actually quite that much in practice since sprites and tile maps and so on take up VRAM too) and can indeed swap in/out double the amount of tiles than normal for additional animation also.

 

There's a whole lot of potential with Mode 0 that I think most people miss because all they think about is "NES-like visuals" (missing that, while it is indeed 3 visible colours per tile just like NES, it's actually 8 3-colour palettes per layer for a total of 24 visible colours per layer and 96 visible colours total on-screen for all the layers, with another additional 120 visible colours also available exclusively for the sprites too, and all still chosen from that huge 32,768-colour master palette with its huge ranges of shades/tones/hues for every colour).

Note: Technically, I think I could even have two of those big Dracula Demon bosses on-screen and still not go over the total sprite limit or sprites per scanline limit. I mean, these guys are pretty big and the SNES does just fine and dandy with them as sprites:

 

It's all about making the most of out of what's possible really. I mean, this is where things like VRAM and streaming in new tiles and such starts to become a consideration methinks. And, with my games, I'd definitely want to avoid any black bars at the top and bottom of the screen like in Ninja Warriors, so I'd make sure to design them such that this isn't a requirement. But, for now, none of these bosses are actually animating at all in my example, and the second Dracula demon boss would just be reusing sprite tiles (ideally with a palette swap so it looks a little different), so there's no issue there at all.

 

PS. You obviously know what I'm now thinking of doing next, right. . . .

 

Edited May 23, 2023 by Kirk_Johnston

[Kirk_Johnston]

OK, there's now five bosses of varying sizes plus Alucard and Sonic on-screen there (same Mode 0 stuff applies as before, with Demon Dracula, Dracula, Alucard and Sonic being sprites and everything else made from backgrounds):

 

 

Dunno if I'm quite making my point yet. 😛

 

[jeffythedragonslayer]

3 minutes ago, Kirk_Johnston said:

Dunno if I'm quite making my point yet. 😛

You could add the SSBM announcer voice to these demos explaining how impressive it is what you're doing to make the point.

[Kirk_Johnston]

26 minutes ago, jeffythedragonslayer said:

You could add the SSBM announcer voice to these demos explaining how impressive it is what you're doing to make the point.

If only I could do SNES sound stuff and program directly for the actual console, I probably literally would. Lol

 

I mean, honestly, right now in terms of mimicking exactly what I'm showing, it would just be taking those background and sprite tiles and putting them on the screen and doing the bare minimum with them to replicate the exact same thing directly on SNES. Only the animation of Alucard and the very basic motion of him and the bosses would require a few hours to implement for any actual SNES programmer. LMPuny got my SNES shmup backgrounds up and running in literally a day using the assets I gave him that were [mostly] SNES ready. So, yeah, a proper SNES coder could duplicate this on an actual SNES in under a week if they really wanted too. And I think people would be blown away by even that as a real demo running directly on SNES that's simply hinting at the potential of Mode 0. Once they saw it running on an actual SNES, I think the needle would drop and their minds start ticking with the possibilities, because then it becomes undeniable.

 

Maybe one day someone with the skillz will feel inspired to do something along the same lines directly on SNES. . . .

Edited May 24, 2023 by Kirk_Johnston

[Kirk_Johnston]

50 minutes ago, Kirk_Johnston said:

OK, there's now five bosses of varying sizes plus Alucard and Sonic on-screen there (same Mode 0 stuff applies as before, with Demon Dracula, Dracula, Alucard and Sonic being sprites and everything else made from backgrounds):

 

 

Dunno if I'm quite making my point yet. 😛

 

Maybe I should take out one of the large bosses and replace them with this guy, just to go hardcore about it (since he's like nearly the size of the full screen):

 

And, note, that is the 2bpp version of him all ready to go.

 

I could even still keep all the other bosses if I wanted and simply remove the main background then use an HDMA's colour gradient to fake a simple background there.

Edited May 24, 2023 by Kirk_Johnston

[jeffythedragonslayer]

38 minutes ago, Kirk_Johnston said:

If only I could do SNES sound stuff and program directly for the actual console, I probably literally would. Lol

 

I mean, honestly, right now in terms of mimicking exactly what I'm showing, it would just be taking those background and sprite tiles and putting them on the screen and doing the bare minimum with them to replicate the exact same thing directly on SNES. Only the animation of Alucard and the very basic motion of him and the bosses would require a few hours to implement for any actual SNES programmer. LMPuny got my SNES shmup backgrounds up and running in literally a day using the assets I gave him that were [mostly] SNES ready. So, yeah, a proper SNES coder could duplicate this on an actual SNES in under a week if they really wanted too. And I think people would be blown away by even that as a real demo running directly on SNES that's simply hinting at the potential of Mode 0. Once they saw it running on an actual SNES, I think the needle would drop and their minds start ticking with the possibilities, because then it becomes undeniable.

 

Maybe one day someone with the skillz will feel inspired to do something along the same lines directly on SNES. . . .

I meant add a voice over to your YouTube demos, not try to do it on the actual SNES yet.

[Kirk_Johnston]

1 hour ago, jeffythedragonslayer said:

I meant add a voice over to your YouTube demos, not try to do it on the actual SNES yet.

Well, if I can get a version of the "Here comes another challenger!" in a format that I know would work on SNES (even if it's then in WAV/MP3 format so I can use it in GameMaker 8.1), like the rest of the stuff in the mockups that is to SNES spec, I might just do that.

Edited May 24, 2023 by Kirk_Johnston

[jeffythedragonslayer]

21 minutes ago, Kirk_Johnston said:

Well, if I can get a version of the "Here comes another challenger!" in a format that I know would work on SNES (even if it's then in WAV/MP3 format so I can use it in GameMaker 8.1), like the rest of the stuff in the mockups that is to SNES spec, I might just do that.

Have you looked at BRR Tools?

 

https://www.smwcentral.net/?p=section&a=details&id=31093

 

It can convert WAV <-> BRR.  Maybe you could convert it from WAV to BRR and back again to SNES-ify it.

 

[Kirk_Johnston]

7 minutes ago, jeffythedragonslayer said:

Have you looked at BRR Tools?

 

https://www.smwcentral.net/?p=section&a=details&id=31093

 

It can convert WAV <-> BRR.  Maybe you could convert it from WAV to BRR and back again to SNES-ify it.

 

I'll have a look. But if it's a major pain in the butt like almost all the other SNES dev stuff I've tried to use to date, I'll skip the sound stuff for now. 😅

[Creamhoven]

Some people are still unaware of the lower of mode 0. If you would do example scenarios and explain how they work in mode 0 I am sure other developers would jump on this tech in an instant.

 

BTW can you do speech boxes?

[jeffythedragonslayer]

20 minutes ago, Kirk_Johnston said:

I'll have a look. But if it's a major pain in the butt like almost all the other SNES dev stuff I've tried to use to date, I'll skip the sound stuff for now. 😅

Ok, I'll look into it too.  I think these demos will really bring a lot of people into the scene because you stirred up so much discussions on the SNES's limitations.

[Kirk_Johnston]

33 minutes ago, Creamhoven said:

Some people are still unaware of the lower of mode 0. If you would do example scenarios and explain how they work in mode 0 I am sure other developers would jump on this tech in an instant.

 

BTW can you do speech boxes?

Well, the semi-transparent boxes themselves can be done using window/shape masks and colour math so they look just like on PlayStation, and the headshots and fonts would obviously be on the sprite sheet (possibly just dynamically streamed in as and when needed if necessary). So, yeah.

Edited May 24, 2023 by Kirk_Johnston

[Kirk_Johnston]

OK, enough now! That's six bosses of varying sizes plus Alucard and Sonic on-screen there (same Mode 0 stuff applies as before, with Demon Dracula, Dracula, Alucard and Sonic being sprites and everything else made from backgrounds, except for the secret sixth boss, which would be done with the SNES' colour window feature and a little HDMA):

I think I can stop there.

[Creamhoven]

1 minute ago, Kirk_Johnston said:

OK, enough now! That's six bosses of varying sizes plus Alucard and Sonic on-screen there (same Mode 0 stuff applies as before, with Demon Dracula, Dracula, Alucard and Sonic being sprites and everything else made from backgrounds, except for the secret sixth boss, which would be done with the SNES' colour window feature and a little HDMA):

I think I can stop there.

Wow I didn't expect the foot! This si a great technical piece!

[Kirk_Johnston]

17 minutes ago, Creamhoven said:

Wow I didn't expect the foot! This si a great technical piece!

Thanks. Just trying to add a little bit more each time to show the sheer untapped potential here.

 

Technically, there's likely still enough VRAM left after arranging all the sprites on the tilesheet to have say a little bat flapping around too, and then duplicated as many times as possible depending on how many sprites are left over from the SNES 128 max on-screen after using the ones required for the rest of the characters and bosses in the demo so far (and they'd be strategically placed to avoid any potential sprite flicker too).

 

I may add some of those bats later just for fun, but I don't know precisely how the tiles would be arranged on the tilemap or how many sprites of the two available sizes [probably 16x16 and 32x32] it would take to create all the current characters I have on-screen already, so I don't want to get too carried away there or I might accidentally go over the SNES' max on-screen sprite limit, and that might upset some people as it would no longer be sticking to the actual real capabilities and limits of the system.

 

But I think we can imagine what that might be like.

Edited May 24, 2023 by Kirk_Johnston

[Creamhoven]

2 minutes ago, Kirk_Johnston said:

Thanks. Just trying to add a little bit more each time to show the sheer untapped potential here.

 

Technically, there's likely still enough VRAM left after arranging all the sprites on the tilesheet to have say a little bat flapping around too, and then duplicated as many times as possible depending on how many sprites are left over from the SNES 128 max on-screen after using the ones required for the rest of the characters and bosses in the demo so far (and they'd be strategically placed to avoid any potential sprite flicker too).

 

I may add some of those bats later just for fun, but I don't know precisely how the tiles would be arranged on the tilemap or how many sprites of the two available sizes [probably 16x16 and 32x32] it would take to create all the current characters I have on-screen already, so I don't want to get too carried away there or I might accidentally go over the SNES' max on-screen sprite limit, and that might upset some people.

 

But I think we can imagine what that might be like.

This is awesome! Do you think a visual noval would be possible with this technique, like the intro sequence of 'Creamhoven and the Evil Nooker'?

 

What are your thoughts on using the Msu1 chip for 4gb storage as well as CD-quality audio and low res video output? I could produce a CD-Quality soundtrack and we could use video in the rare cases mode 0 is not enough to make a certain cutscene.

[Kirk_Johnston]

33 minutes ago, Creamhoven said:

This is awesome! Do you think a visual noval would be possible with this technique, like the intro sequence of 'Creamhoven and the Evil Nooker'?

 

What are your thoughts on using the Msu1 chip for 4gb storage as well as CD-quality audio and low res video output? I could produce a CD-Quality soundtrack and we could use video in the rare cases mode 0 is not enough to make a certain cutscene.

A visual novel type of experience would be entirely possible with around at least 50 full-screen 8bpp 256-colour images as I recall based on my prior research into this very thing and discussions with some of the people in SNESdev and the like around it, but that would be if basically the entire cart was dedicated to showing only a bunch of the images and little else. It could be rather stunning though, especially if combined with this palette swapping method I also suggested in those same conversations and the guy in the following video finally coded on SNES after our talks:

 

And you can see below the kind of quality the SNES can get in 8bpp:

The last one here would actually be two screens high and scroll up the screen, updating tiles on the fly as and when necessary.

 

I have a whole idea for an interactive visual novel that has all the typical stuff you might expect from such a thing but with the battles playing out like matches in Super Punch-Out!! rather than the typical luck-based dice rolling you usually get. I think that would be a lot more fun and make the whole visual novel concept blend in much better with the interactive video game concept.

 

Also, just in case people aren't aware, you can also have two-layer parallax plus sprites in Mode 3 (one layer in 8bpp and the other layer 4bpp, with the sprites in 4bpp as per usual), and during actually full gameplay if you like too. It's all just a matter of managing things carefully.

 

Well, my goal is to not have to use anything other than the stock SNES for all the stuff I'm doing, as I want to prove a point that it's more than capable of blowing people's minds even without enhancement chips and the like. Other than making sure that it's running in FastROM and the biggest cartridge available is used, I'd like to stay as bare bones as possible.

 

It's cool if people want to use all that other stuff though.

Edited May 24, 2023 by Kirk_Johnston

[Creamhoven]

8 minutes ago, Kirk_Johnston said:

A visual novel type of experience would be entirely possible with around at least 50 full-screen 8bpp 256-colour images as I recall based on my prior research into this very thing and discussions with some of the people in SNESdev and the like around it, but that would be if basically the entire cart was dedicated to showing only a bunch of the images and little else. It could be rather stunning though, especially if combined with this palette swapping method I also suggested in those same conversations and the guy in the following video finally coded on SNES after our talks:

 

 

I have a whole idea for an interactive visual novel that has all the typical stuff you might expect from such a thing but with the battles playing out like matches in Super Punch-Out!! rather than the typical luck-based dice rolling you usually get. I think that would be a lot more fun and make the whole visual novel concept blend in much better with the interactive video game concept.

I hope to see it, when it's done.

8 minutes ago, Kirk_Johnston said:

Well, my goal is to not have to use anything other than the stock SNES for all the stuff I'm doing, as I want to prove a point that it's more than capable of blowing people's minds even without enhancement chips and the like. Other than making sure that it's running in FastROM and the biggest cartridge available is used, I'd like to stay as bare bones as possible.

 

It's cool if people want to use all that other stuff though.

I see. The Msu1 chip allows for 4gb, so I assume its much lower with standard chips? I have to learn the workflow for SNES music production, and don't know if it is plausible yet. The Msu1 with 44kHz 16bit audio would be much easier to produce music for and it would sound quite good.

[Kirk_Johnston]

38 minutes ago, Creamhoven said:

This is awesome! Do you think a visual noval would be possible with this technique, like the intro sequence of 'Creamhoven and the Evil Nooker'?

Ah, I just got what you meant there properly: Yeah, if you use Mode 0 and create scenes with multiple layers and characters and so on, and then have some scrolling and simple movement and stuff during those scenes, you could totally build a visual novel out of this style. Think of that intro for Yoshi's Island, which was done in Mode 0, but that for a full game, and just go more to town with it: 

Edited May 24, 2023 by Kirk_Johnston

[Creamhoven]

3 minutes ago, Kirk_Johnston said:

Ah, I just got what you meant there properly: Yeah, if you use Mode 0 and create scenes with multiple layers and characters and so on, and then have some scrolling and simple movement and stuff during those scenes, you could totally build a visual novel out of this style. Think of that intro for Yoshi's Island, which was done in Mode 0, but that for a full game, and just go more to town with it: 

It is a very sweet intro. It did, however, use the SuperFX2 chip.