Anyone care to check something for me. . . .

[TrekkiesUnite118]

14 minutes ago, Kirk_Johnston said:

A whole lot of chatter. Some clearly daft. Much I don't even know what it's about since most of the people doing it are in a little clique mob I don't have to hear anymore now I finally just set them to Ignore--but I can guess it's absolutely about their love of SNES--and in the grand scheme of the Universe it all goes somewhere: 

 

And I'll continue to post predominantly about interesting SNES stuff, my own game ideas and proof of concepts, new indie and homebrew games that excite me, cool SNES tech demos, etc.

Please tell us more about how the people you have on ignore have personally slighted you.

[Mittens0407]

49 minutes ago, Kirk_Johnston said:

A whole lot of chatter. Some clearly daft. Much I don't even know what it's about since most of the people doing it are in a little clique mob I don't have to hear anymore now I finally just set them to Ignore (can't believe I didn't use this feature sooner)--but I can guess it's absolutely about their love of SNES--and in the grand scheme of the Universe it all goes somewhere: 

 

And I'll continue to post predominantly about interesting [at least to me] SNES stuff, my own game ideas and proof of concepts, new indie and homebrew games that excite me, cool SNES tech demos, etc.

 

Here's one for example:

Now, I think that's pretty cool. Would I buy it--not in a bazillion years. Lol

I'm so happy my hardware accurate N64 demo is the thumbnail for that thread ❤️

[WavyGravy]

So he wants to post articles without commentary. What he's describing is a blog. Which he already has.

 

I feel like I'm having a stroke.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

1 hour ago, WavyGravy said:

So he wants to post articles without commentary. What he's describing is a blog. Which he already has.

 

I feel like I'm having a stroke.

It's not that he doesn't want commentary, it's that he doesn't want anyone telling him he's wrong or that he should try learning how the actual hardware works. 

[Tanooki]

That's it @WavyGravy you did it, you cracked the code and figured out what his motive really was -- a blog without a blog, where can ramble, lie, delude himself and hopefully others to his console wars cause that died off decades ago because FAKTZ and no one will take his jorb away from him doing it so NYAH!

 

The thing is, let's be clear, that last turd he baked on page 1 made it very very clear he's still peeking, we're blocked, but his ego won't allow him to ignore so many voided out posts, so with baited nerves and concern his fragile reality might just crack, he peeks, prays for something useful, and then recoils realizing we're carrying on just fine without him in his own threads going in our own direction while at the same time picking apart his infantile rants and disinformation campaign at the same time.

 

Still waiting to see how long he lasts blocking staff...?

[smds]

Here is a screen capture of my current Mega Drive project, as shown on a CRT:

The character in the foreground is only 15 colours and the background is 16 colours, for a total of 31 colours.
Basically, what I'm trying to show here is that "screen colour count" as per specs sheets is not always the best way to judge how colourful a system can look, especially when that system is hooked up and viewed as "intended"...

 

In comparison, this is how the above image looks when viewed using RGB/Emulator:

 

Now, whether RGB or composite/RF is the intended viewing method on the mega drive is an ongoing debate (it outputs both natively). The fact that a lot of games back when the system was still alive used dithering suggest to me that composite/RF was the intended output...

[Kirk_Johnston]

1 hour ago, smds said:

Here is a screen capture of my current Mega Drive project, as shown on a CRT:

The character in the foreground is only 15 colours and the background is 16 colours, for a total of 31 colours.
Basically, what I'm trying to show here is that "screen colour count" as per specs sheets is not always the best way to judge how colourful a system can look, especially when that system is hooked up and viewed as "intended"...

 

In comparison, this is how the above image looks when viewed using RGB/Emulator:

 

Now, whether RGB or composite/RF is the intended viewing method on the mega drive is an ongoing debate (it outputs both natively). The fact that a lot of games back when the system was still alive used dithering suggest to me that composite/RF was the intended output...

And both of those looks very nice for what they are and how they are being displayed.

 

My images are basically just showing raw pixels as anyone could open and view them in say Photoshop right now, so no dithering, no composite/RF, no CRT effect, no emulator filters, and no 2048 direct RGB colours plus 120 CGRAM colours, no 512x224 pseudo/true "high-res" mode for pixel blending, no colour math or HDMA gradients, etc. They're just representative of what would be shown in standard Mode 3 8bpp 256-colour images as viewed in the official "perfect pixel" 1:1 pixel aspect ratio that's available on most systems you can play SNES on in modern times.

 

But it's certainly interesting how much all the other stuff can add on top of the standard raw pixel art.

 

Edit: Also, I can tell you're a very capable actual artist too, as that's both lovely pixel art and legit anime style there.

Edited August 25, 2023 by Kirk_Johnston

[Punisher5.0]

Unbelievable 

[TrekkiesUnite118]

2 minutes ago, Kirk_Johnston said:

And both of those looks very nice for what they are and how they are being displayed.

 

My images are basically just showing raw pixels, so no dithering, no composite/RF, not direct colour, no 512x224 mode for blending, not even any colour math or HDMA gradients, etc.

And they most likely wont look like that on real hardware because you're not factoring in things like reserving enough color entries to have proper palettes for your sprites and 2bpp layer. In 8bpp mode you have one big shared 256 color palette, but your sprites and other layers need to still have their own palettes in the order they expect them to be in. So unless you've meticulously arranged the colors for your 256 color image in a way that parts can still be read as the correct palettes for your sprites and 2bpp layers, you'll most likely get corrupt nonsensical colors for your sprite and 2bpp layer. At the very least you'd need to reserve at least 16 colors for your Alucard sprite, and atleast 4 for the Goomba (may still require a full 16 color palette, not sure) and probably another 8-16 colors for the 2bpp layer.

 

So most likely you'd need to reduce your 256 color layer down to about 216 colors or less in order to reserve enough palettes for your other layer and sprites.

[Kirk_Johnston]

1 hour ago, smds said:

Here is a screen capture of my current Mega Drive project, as shown on a CRT:

The character in the foreground is only 15 colours and the background is 16 colours, for a total of 31 colours.
Basically, what I'm trying to show here is that "screen colour count" as per specs sheets is not always the best way to judge how colourful a system can look, especially when that system is hooked up and viewed as "intended"...

 

In comparison, this is how the above image looks when viewed using RGB/Emulator:

 

Now, whether RGB or composite/RF is the intended viewing method on the mega drive is an ongoing debate (it outputs both natively). The fact that a lot of games back when the system was still alive used dithering suggest to me that composite/RF was the intended output...

By the way, you just made me think of the intro cutscenes for Metal Warriors on SNES that I'd previously bookmarked on my YouTube channel because of how just visually clean and crisp and nice it was, which I think has both great anime pixel art and some lovely use of the system's colours (the scene with the planet in the background looks particularly stunning imo):

 

I think clean cartoon or certain graphic novel style art is a really good way to make something look great with less colours, as you mostly just have to have the base colour for each section and then a shadow and highlight colour with maybe one more in between that for a little extra touch. And you can get lovely art from that approach for anything that's supposed to have that traditional cartoon look and style, which I personally love and would kinda want all games to look like if I had any say, even modern 3D games.

 

Interestingly, this style probably also lends itself quite well to the limited palettes of Mode 0, which only have three main colours (see how they used it for Tom here for example). Although for cutscenes you could layer multiple backgrounds to show extra colours in places if necessary, along with some creative use of the backdrop colour plus HDMA, and then a bit of colour math and some window/shapes masks in some places on top of that if you want a wee bit of transparency or a glow or something. And that's as well as all the 4bpp 15-colour sprites obviously too, which gives you a total of 120 additional colours to mess around with there also. If I ever get back to working on my own game(s) and start to do cutscenes and the like, I might actually try that in some places (I was planning on doing so for the title screen anyway--well, one of them). But I'll probably just stick with the 4bpp art there for the most part to be honest, and maybe even use the 8bpp art for some that I really want to make look just that little extra bit showy (not that I'm even sure I'm a good enough artist to draw something gorgeous with that many colours--but who knows).

 

Thanks for sharing your art, as it's given me some additional ideas to think about and explore.

Edited August 25, 2023 by Kirk_Johnston

[smds]

I'm kind of torn between using lossy signals, such as RF / composite and RGB with pixel perfect representation...

Using a lossy signal is good way to generate more colours, but I also like the clean look of "pixel perfect" (RGB) which in my case above generates an image that looks quite poor imo.

 

Relying on a lossy signal for extra colours is something the SNES for example doesn't really need to do, due to 256 colour mode and/or higher colour depth (15bit vs 9bit RGB).

Or well, I guess it depends on if you have all 256 colours to spend on a single image for example, otherwise you would have the same restrictions with the exception of having a higher colour depth.

 

 

PS; The images I posted above are older shots, I have since bumped the foreground up to 30 colours (using 2 palettes with help from Rildens tiled palette quant. tool). The result is that the RGB version looks a lot closer to the CRT version.

 

 

Edited August 25, 2023 by smds

[Kirk_Johnston]

Check it, I just went and did this for a bit of fun:

 

It's just four 2bpp background layers converted using Rilden's tool and as you would be able to use all overlapping with parallax and stuff in Mode 0 for example (I'm not even using four layers from same scene here mind you, Lol). Obviously, no touch up or anything applied, just the images as they were directly converted.

 

I guess this would have been just as meaningful in the "The completely underappreciated possibilities of Mode 0 on SNES. . . ." thread.

Edited August 25, 2023 by Kirk_Johnston

[+Biff Burgertime]

3 minutes ago, Kirk_Johnston said:

I guess this would have been just as meaningful in the "The completely underappreciated possibilities of Mode 0 on SNES. . . ." thread.

Meaningful, meaningless - tomay-to, tomah-to.

[smds]

1 hour ago, Kirk_Johnston said:

Edit: Also, I can tell you're a very capable actual artist too, as that's both lovely pixel art and legit anime style there.

Thanks but I'm actually not good at it... Both background and character image is AI generated 😅

[TrekkiesUnite118]

20 minutes ago, Kirk_Johnston said:

Check it, I just went and did this for a bit of fun:

 

It's just four 2bpp background layers converted using Rilden's tool and as you would be able to use all overlapping with parallax and stuff in Mode 0 for example (I'm not even using four layers from same scene here mind you, Lol). Obviously, no touch up or anything applied, just the images as they were directly converted.

 

I guess this would have been just as meaningful in the "The completely underappreciated possibilities of Mode 0 on SNES. . . ." thread.

There's some pretty hideous color banding going on there. Honestly even with 4 layers that wouldn't really make sense with those images as there's nothing to scroll. Why would you want to use that mode for displaying something like that if you don't have to?

[WavyGravy]

We'll, let's be honest, if Kirk's proving anything about Mode 0, it's that it was about as appreciated as it should have been. Everything he shows just looks like three NES games got into a fight and none of them won. Can you imagine being a developer back in the day, trying to advertise your game in a magazine and the screenshots looked like that?

[Kirk_Johnston]

1 hour ago, smds said:

I'm kind of torn between using lossy signals, such as RF / composite and RGB with pixel perfect representation...

Using a lossy signal is good way to generate more colours, but I also like the clean look of "pixel perfect" (RGB) which in my case above generates an image that looks quite poor imo.

 

Relying on a lossy signal for extra colours is something the SNES for example doesn't really need to do, due to 256 colour mode and/or higher colour depth (15bit vs 9bit RGB).

Or well, I guess it depends on if you have all 256 colours to spend on a single image for example, otherwise you would have the same restrictions with the exception of having a higher colour depth.

 

 

PS; The images I posted above are older shots, I have since bumped the foreground up to 30 colours (using 2 palettes with help from Rildens tiled palette quant. tool). The result is that the RGB version looks a lot closer to the CRT version.

 

 

Yeah, I was kinda curious as to why you never used the full colours and just figured you must be using them for something else there that wasn't in the image. But it seems you're using them now. Cool.

 

That tool by Rilden really is great.

Edited August 25, 2023 by Kirk_Johnston

[Kirk_Johnston]

49 minutes ago, smds said:

Thanks but I'm actually not good at it... Both background and character image is AI generated 😅

Wow, then that AI is dang good!

 

Just be careful if you're planning to go commercial with your game, as they're starting to make certain rules around that AI image stuff to do with copyright and so on due to how it uses source images and what not. But hopefully you're all good there.

Edited August 25, 2023 by Kirk_Johnston

[Tanooki]

@smds Welcome to the site, but as forewarning and a piece of advice, don't engage with Kirk.  He formerly elsewhere went by Inceptional.  He acts like he knows what he is talking about and the so called untapped potential of the SNES. The problem is, beyond fundamentals at best he does not.  Worse, if you point out faults in his crazy photoshop-gamemaker creations he'll get snippy, then argumentative, and if he doesn't further get his way with fantasy based assumptions of the SNES while also taking cheap shots based on fantasy against its competition, you'll get put on ignore, reported to mods etc.  He's toxic and has been brushed off various boards, including the nes/snes dev spaces where most who know a lot about such things got fed up with his antics.  Right now he's engaging you in conversation because no one else will talk to him, and those of us who did he put on ignore, yet still reads the posts anyway acting like he can't.  I'm sure he'll read this and get upset about it, but you should know what you're getting yourself into.  Don't let him con you into any crazy unless he actually somehow lucked into being right.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

I figured I'd drop this in here as well since there's the discussion about the importance of color depth, FMV quality, etc. that's been bouncing around here. For kicks and giggles I captured the Power Rangers Sega CD game over Composite. This was one of the games to use Cinepak for Sega and you can see there's a noticeable jump in quality over stuff like Night Trap. It's near full screen at a decent frame rate and the colors aren't too bad either since the codec supports swapping in new palette data each frame. While composite video isn't working any miracles here, you can see that it looks noticeably better than it does in an emulator or over RGB. If this were on a cheap consumer grade CRT in the 90s, I'd imagine it would be blending more than this. Overall I think it shows that Sega CD FMV isn't really that bad when you view it over the connections it was most likely intended to be viewed over:

 

 

The major limiting factor here is more the data rate of the 1x CD-ROM drive. At this speed you tend to get more compression artifacts. A lot of the blocky blotches you see from time to time are more from that rather than the color depth. If there was an actual SNES CD released in the early 90s, I honestly wonder if the FMV would really be that much better than what we see here when you factor in the CD ROM speed. Maybe you could have a few more palettes to update per frame at 4bpp, but I think 8bpp would be out of the question. And the real question is if the SNES CPU would be up to the task of decoding something like Cinepak. Sega CD has a 12MHz 68k to help with that after all.

Edited August 26, 2023 by TrekkiesUnite118

[smds]

16 hours ago, Tanooki said:

@smds Welcome to the site, but as forewarning and a piece of advice, don't engage with Kirk.

Thanks!

And yes I am aware of who he/she/it is, as I frequently lurk on both SNES and MD forums/discords 🙂

[TrekkiesUnite118]

On 8/22/2023 at 5:19 PM, Kirk_Johnston said:

Note: Everything was converted using Rilden's Tiled Palette Quantization tool, so all the colours and colours-per-tile limits, bits per channel, etc., should be fully accurate to each of the consoles. And they were all converted using the same settings for the shared colour index, dithering, and the like too, with no touch-up or alteration to the output image quality. If I have it correct, all three games would use one background layer for the main background using the max amount of colours they can display for this as standard. On Genesis the foreground tiles would use the second BG layer and the sprites the sprites, plus everything shares the same 4 16-colour palettes. On PC Engine the foreground tiles and the sprites would use the sprites, plus the main background uses 16 16-colour palettes and the sprites use a seperate 16 16-colour palettes. On SNES the foreground tiles would use the second BG layer and the sprites the sprites, plus everything shares the same single 256-colour palette as I'm using Mode 4 here. And, just in case, it should be obvious these are not supposed to be actual tile maps but just representative images of the total colours, colour per 8x8 tile, colour depth, etc.

 

Also I just want to ask, what did you do to get such hideous results for the Genesis and PC-Engine? When I use the same tool and set it to the correct settings for each system I get substantially better results.

 

Genesis 4 Palettes, No Dither:

Genesis 4 Palettes, Dithered:

PC-Engine, 16 Palettes No Dither:

PC-Engine, 16 Palettes, Dithered:

 

SNES, 224 Colors (assuming 2 Palettes for sprites and other BG Layer), No Dither :

SNES, 224 Colors (assuming 2 Palettes for sprites and other BG Layer), Dithered:

SNES, 216 Colors (assuming 2 16 color and 2 4 color palettes for Sprites and other BG Layer), No Dither:

SNES, 216 Colors (assuming 2 16 color and 2 4 color palettes for Sprites and other BG Layer),Dithered:

Yeah, SNES still tends to look better because it has a larger master palette, the other don't look nearly as hideous as your examples.

Edited August 26, 2023 by TrekkiesUnite118

[OldSchoolRetroGamer]

Weird, having Déjà vu all of a sudden........🤔

Edited August 26, 2023 by OldSchoolRetroGamer

[Tanooki]

6 hours ago, smds said:

Thanks!

And yes I am aware of who he/she/it is, as I frequently lurk on both SNES and MD forums/discords 🙂

Ahh masochist then!  Welcome.

 

@TrekkiesUnite118 Gee, you don't think it's possible bias with fixed results?  Well given his antics, years of them no less, he has a promising career in politics if he decides to go another direction.  His resume is fantastic: Triggers people, but easier triggered, can string an epic line of bullshit well enough to dupe the masses, can pound the same stories even when debunked yet somehow still sound credible to those on the kool-aid iv drip, ehh...you get the idea.

[WavyGravy]

Well, when discussing the Sega CD vs SNES, he conveniently never mentioned that the 32X can use the SCD, and that is indeed Genesis hardware, therefore, the Genesis still beats out the SNES in FMV potential. And has done since 1994.

 

Can't imagine why that wouldn't have been brought up.