Another eye-melting SNES mockup

[turboxray]

Kirk still doesn't get it; sprites are a single "layer". There are only two points to do color math with: sub and main windows. You set a "layer" to one of these as the destination windows for color math. You don't get to pick and choose this sprite goes to sub and this sprite goes to main, etc. It's all or nothing. The only thing special about sprites, that of the 8 palettes.. half of them are excluded from participating in color math while the other have do participate. But you cannot have a sprite appear as color math over another sprite, simply because you can't have two different sprites set to sub and main. 

 

 So his "shadow" sprites will not work when placed over the sprites used for the giant goomba (and his window mask trick). The shadow sprites, being on top, will literally cut a hole into the goomba sprite overlaps, and just show transparent against the BG layer underneath. This will happen to ANY sprites that overlap like this, and color math is involved. 

[Kirk_Johnston]

There you go, I've updated the details of how I would do the eye melting demo:

 

https://wordpress.com/post/inceptionalnews.wordpress.com/8832

 

So, have a wee look at the updated details if so inclined, and feel free to point out if there are any remaining issues in the eye melting demo as it's done now, as in things that wouldn't work as intended, and I'll address and fix those where necessary. . . .

[Tanooki]

3 hours ago, Biff Burgertime said:

Lost in translation = Kurt-speak for "I was wrong."

 

There's no translation going on here, do you see anyone speaking Esperanto?

I think this is far more accurate (at multiple levels if you think about it):

 

[TrekkiesUnite118]

2 hours ago, Kirk_Johnston said:

There you go, I've updated the details of how I would do the eye melting demo:

 

https://wordpress.com/post/inceptionalnews.wordpress.com/8832

 

So, have a wee look at the updated details if so inclined, and feel free to point out if there are any remaining issues in the eye melting demo as it's done now, as in things that wouldn't work as intended, and I'll address and fix those where necessary. . . .

So I'm not sure thats still going to work the way you think it will. First how are you going to get it to scroll horizontally? Second wouldn't this require a lot of HDMA channels to pull off? Is it really worth wasting them on this? And finally are you sure you'd be able to layer it between BG layers like that and draw sprites over top of it for the eyes and not possibly have layering issues?

 

It just seems like a lot of effort for something that's kind of stupid and pointless from a game design standpoint. On top of that you don't even know will work.

[Kirk_Johnston]

3 hours ago, Kirk_Johnston said:

There you go, I've updated the details of how I would do the eye melting demo:

 

https://wordpress.com/post/inceptionalnews.wordpress.com/8832

 

So, have a wee look at the updated details if so inclined, and feel free to point out if there are any remaining issues in the eye melting demo as it's done now, as in things that wouldn't work as intended, and I'll address and fix those where necessary. . . .

Oops! I've just noticed that link seems to go to edit page for the post, which I presume will break for anyone else who tries to use it, so here's the correct link:

 

https://inceptionalnews.wordpress.com/2023/09/09/how-my-eye-melting-snes-mockup-could-be-done/

Edited October 4, 2023 by Kirk_Johnston

[KulorXL]

6 hours ago, Kirk_Johnston said:

I think I've figured out why some things are getting confused in translation here

The confusion is because you're doing this in Game Maker and then trying to explain how it *could* work. I see what you're trying to explain, it sounds plausible enough like maybe it could work (though still with all those other issues I pointed out: CPU-heavy horizontal scrolling, it eats almost half your HDMA channels, and it still needs overlay sprites), but I remain skeptical because it's ultimately just Game Maker, who knows what else might not be correct?

See, I'm trying to help you here. You're saying that all you want is to inspire people, and you say you've managed to do that a couple times, but what are the fruits of that labor? Have any of those people actually gone out and made real SNES stuff? Are you in the special thanks for any homebrews or the greetz for any demos? I thought someone was working with you on turning that shmup idea of yours into a real SNES game, what ever happened with that? That seems like a way better use of your time than fussing over these not-quite-a-tech-demo mockups.

Also, if you did inspire a few people, at what cost? I saw at least a few responses on these forums saying like "wow these look like garbage, guess that hardware feature wasn't used for a reason" etc., that seems to be the exact opposite of what you want. Even if they were all trolls (they aren't), you should be able to make a compelling argument that makes mere trolls look silly for trying to contradict it.

To use an analogy here, let's say I was a huge fan of the SNES with the goal of getting people to talk about and be interested in the SNES. To that end, I decided that the best way to achieve that is to destroy as many SNESes and SNES games as possible, as well as aggressively report every instance of SNES ROMs directly to Nintendo's lawyers so they could wipe it off the internet; let's also say I have a ton of time and resources to put into these actions to actually succeed at making physical SNES hardware difficult to find, and ROMs impossible to get. Sure, people would talk about it, and possibly some people who otherwise wouldn't care would get FOMO and try to hoard as much SNES stuff as possible, so mission accomplished right? Would I really be doing what I set out to do?

Point is, I don't think your methodology here is effective. You're free to do as you'd like, I'm not gonna stop you, but I think you're actively hurting your (and to some degree, my) cause.

On 10/1/2023 at 3:43 PM, Kirk_Johnston said:

Do you know what they did to achieve that effect then

When I want to know how an effect works in an SNES game, I open the ROM up in Mesen, open the event viewer (or one of the many other debug tools), and figure it out that way. You should check it out if you haven't; familiarizing yourself with the debugger would actually be a great first step to starting to work with the actual SNES hardware.

  

On 10/1/2023 at 3:39 PM, Tanooki said:

What program would you suggest someone use if they wanted to after decades of rust to get back into making sprites and background tiles for the NES, SNES, and GBC? (Seems they're semi-related from your responses I'm reading.)

Uhhhh honestly I'm not too sure! I'm absolutely horrible at drawing pretty much anything, which is why I'm working with the very talented pixel artist klonoz. He uses aseprite, which I believe is a lot of peoples' pixel art editor of choice these days. I use Paint Shop Pro 7 (yes I know it's ancient) and GIMP whenever I'm drawing up my own stuff, or need to make adjustments to something. yy-chr might also be useful? Hope that helps.

[Kirk_Johnston]

1 hour ago, KulorXL said:

The confusion is because you're doing this in Game Maker and then trying to explain how it *could* work. I see what you're trying to explain, it sounds plausible enough like maybe it could work (though still with all those other issues I pointed out: CPU-heavy horizontal scrolling, it eats almost half your HDMA channels, and it still needs overlay sprites), but I remain skeptical because it's ultimately just Game Maker, who knows what else might not be correct?

Given this very specific demo is exactly what it is and no more, I'm not too worried about those particular limits in this particular case since it's not currently going above them as far as I'm aware, just pushing on the door of some of them, which is literally the point of the demo, so I think we're good.

 

And it's not like there's zero more options to explore/consider to optimize things or tricks to do things slightly differently in one way or another that would still end up with the same result for the end user but would be achieved in a different way under the hood, which can be used if necessary. So, again, I'm really not too worried here.

 

Your advice is of course sound though, so hopefully everyone working on SNES or hoping to work on SNES takes it on board when making their own SNES games and demos.

 

1 hour ago, KulorXL said:

See, I'm trying to help you here.

And I thank you for all your genuine help.

 

1 hour ago, KulorXL said:

You're saying that all you want is to inspire people, and you say you've managed to do that a couple times, but what are the fruits of that labor? Have any of those people actually gone out and made real SNES stuff? Are you in the special thanks for any homebrews or the greetz for any demos?

I'm honestly not fussed about quantifying that, so I wouldn't worry about it too much.

 

1 hour ago, KulorXL said:

I thought someone was working with you on turning that shmup idea of yours into a real SNES game, what ever happened with that? That seems like a way better use of your time than fussing over these not-quite-a-tech-demo mockups.

Well, I plan on at least getting the lava cave level test done at some point "soon"-ish. And the shmup game and another idea I have for SNES are still floating around waiting for me to both get down to some more work on them and figure out the best next steps there. So, we can see where that goes in the future.

 

1 hour ago, KulorXL said:

I saw at least a few responses on these forums saying like "wow these look like garbage, guess that hardware feature wasn't used for a reason" etc., that seems to be the exact opposite of what you want. Even if they were all trolls (they aren't), you should be able to make a compelling argument that makes mere trolls look silly for trying to contradict it.

I guess there's still plenty of time for that. . . .

 

1 hour ago, KulorXL said:

To use an analogy here, let's say I was a huge fan of the SNES with the goal of getting people to talk about and be interested in the SNES. To that end, I decided that the best way to achieve that is to destroy as many SNESes and SNES games as possible, as well as aggressively report every instance of SNES ROMs directly to Nintendo's lawyers so they could wipe it off the internet; let's also say I have a ton of time and resources to put into these actions to actually succeed at making physical SNES hardware difficult to find, and ROMs impossible to get. Sure, people would talk about it, and possibly some people who otherwise wouldn't care would get FOMO and try to hoard as much SNES stuff as possible, so mission accomplished right? Would I really be doing what I set out to do?

I don't really know. But it's an interesting view of it.

 

1 hour ago, KulorXL said:

Point is, I don't think your methodology here is effective. You're free to do as you'd like, I'm not gonna stop you, but I think you're actively hurting your (and to some degree, my) cause.

If I didn't waste all the time I have wasted with the trolls up to this point, i.e. responding to them beyond one or two normal interactions, I think this would be a very different tale. So, the lesson I'm taking from all of this stuff is to simply ignore the trolls, and this is what I'm doing much better now. I'm still going to continue to post about SNES though, and talk about it and celebrate it, and ask questions about SNES development, and post my own mockups and demos and so on. So that is what it is.

 

1 hour ago, KulorXL said:

When I want to know how an effect works in an SNES game, I open the ROM up in Mesen, open the event viewer (or one of the many other debug tools), and figure it out that way. You should check it out if you haven't; familiarizing yourself with the debugger would actually be a great first step to starting to work with the actual SNES hardware.

Yes, I do this too to a degree, also using Mesen-S. Even some of that is still too programmery looking/reading and convoluted for me personally though, so I take from it what I can, and the rest I leave for now. And sometimes I just ask in a forum hoping to get a quick answer without having to check, because it's always worth asking.

Edited October 4, 2023 by Kirk_Johnston

[TrekkiesUnite118]

Should we start a pool for how long until Kulor is on the prestigious list?

[WavyGravy]

20 minutes ago, Kirk_Johnston said:

And sometimes I just ask in a forum hoping to get a quick answer without having to check, because it's always worth asking.

It's really not, though. Mesen is actually pretty intuitive, you don't need crazy scripts or anything to get the gist of what most games are doing. Like with most of the things you seem to have issues with, you just need to actually TRY a little.

[Tanooki]

6 hours ago, KulorXL said:

 

Uhhhh honestly I'm not too sure! I'm absolutely horrible at drawing pretty much anything, which is why I'm working with the very talented pixel artist klonoz. He uses aseprite, which I believe is a lot of peoples' pixel art editor of choice these days. I use Paint Shop Pro 7 (yes I know it's ancient) and GIMP whenever I'm drawing up my own stuff, or need to make adjustments to something. yy-chr might also be useful? Hope that helps.

It's a start thanks.  I never could get gimp to work for me, but that was many years ago.  I currently have a dated copy of Photoshop CS2 I have for picking away at a few things, but pixel art really isn't its thing, especially in the more classic 8x8 16x16 style of space.

 

Also thanks for explaining again to him what's going on here.  You're right on the nose with that entire post.  Maybe since he loves to use your game clip thats online has his call to attention aside from game maker it might make something stick.  If not, welcome to the ignore list.   and thanks for pointing out again Mesen, I knew the quality of this one for awhile and it's such an invaluable tool for that very specific reason, exposing what's under the hood, in your case, event calls.

[Tanooki]

5 hours ago, Kirk_Johnston said:

If I didn't waste all the time I have wasted with the trolls up to this point, i.e. responding to them beyond one or two normal interactions, I think this would be a very different tale. So, the lesson I'm taking from all of this stuff is to simply ignore the trolls, and this is what I'm doing much better now. I'm still going to continue to post about SNES though, and talk about it and celebrate it, and ask questions about SNES development, and post my own mockups and demos and so on. So that is what it is.

 

Yes, I do this too to a degree, also using Mesen-S. Even some of that is still too programmery looking/reading and convoluted for me personally though, so I take from it what I can, and the rest I leave for now. And sometimes I just ask in a forum hoping to get a quick answer without having to check, because it's always worth asking.

I know this won't be seen unless you click to view, but a little bit of self awareness would go a long way.  *We* are not the troll here *YOU* are and months of posts.  Months of arguing with us.  Months of doubling down.  Months of throwing shade when you clearly still are reading some posts.  That all rolls up with your behavior on multiple forums, chat formats, and other outlets and being tossed off one after another into YOU being the troll.

[Wayler]

Thanks @KulorXL for trying but as you can see, it again boils down to this with Kirk: "Thanks for the advice but I'll continue to do things my way".

Because he really truly doesn't care what others think or how his way might affect them (or atleast that is what he convinces himself and us, I'm sure he would love people who were agreeing with him sometimes). And while an admirable position in some cases, it doesn't help if it's your main characteristic in human interaction. And this is the way he creates us "trolls" himself: when you realize there is no getting through to a person in any aspect, it's so very easy to just give up and at least have some enjoyment from the discourse. I hope you have the patience of a saint if you plan on conversing with him.

 

7 hours ago, KulorXL said:

You're free to do as you'd like, I'm not gonna stop you, but I think you're actively hurting your (and to some degree, my) cause.

It is like stabbing people to get your house painted. Sure, an effective way to get red color but whywhywhy would you do it like that? Sure, there maybe a couple of weirdos who would appreciate your commitment but it literally hurts the people and the community.

 

[jeffythedragonslayer]

29 minutes ago, Wayler said:

I hope you have the patience of a saint if you plan on conversing with him.

Or, have my advice

[WavyGravy]

7 hours ago, KulorXL said:

Also, if you did inspire a few people, at what cost? I saw at least a few responses on these forums saying like "wow these look like garbage, guess that hardware feature wasn't used for a reason" etc., that seems to be the exact opposite of what you want. Even if they were all trolls (they aren't), you should be able to make a compelling argument that makes mere trolls look silly for trying to contradict it.

 

At least one of those was me, and I stand by it. Mode 0 didn't get used for good reason; it's very difficult to find a situation where the tradeoff in overall fidelity would be worthwhile or even necessary AND you couldn't work with mixing modes or using other tricks to get you what you need from 0's feature set.

Whether he's posting as Kirk or Inceptional or SNES AYE (on snesdev, I very much suspect), all he does is alienate people. Except Jeffy, I guess? This is not a dev forum, but every topic he gets involved in turns into people having to explain the inaccuracies in his tech-talk and hypotheticals that he insists on shoehorning into everything to him and he takes none of it on board, preferring to ignore anyone who tells him he's wrong. How on Earth is he going to be a part of any project that isn't solo? Can you imagine trying to work with someone like this on nearly anything, let alone something as complex as a retro game project? He's completely unmanageable. If he'd come into the scene humble, offered his services for the things he can contribute to (art by the look of it, which actually is something a lot of programmers tend to want help with), joined a team and learned from someone in a mentor capacity, he might have actually gotten somewhere. I suggested as much to him early on. Instead, he constantly asks others to figure everything out for him as he points out how helpless he is with "all this programmer-y stuff" while simultaneously claiming to be an unassailable technical authority on the system despite critically misunderstanding several aspects of the hardware that several of us mere enthusiasts understand.

Bless you Jeffy and Kulor for having the patience to at least try, but I think sooner or later you'll wind up on that list with us and Kirk will be no closer to actually having learned anything and unless the mods do something about him, this forum will still be a mess.

[+Biff Burgertime]

8 hours ago, KulorXL said:

I use Paint Shop Pro 7 (yes I know it's ancient)

You're in good company here at AA!

 

Although some weirdos use PSP6...

[Mittens0407]

11 minutes ago, WavyGravy said:

Whether he's posting as Kirk or Inceptional or SNES AYE (on snesdev, I very much suspect)

Oh wow lol, yeah that's totally him. Wasn't his Inceptional account on there banned or something?

[+Biff Burgertime]

29 minutes ago, Mittens0407 said:

Oh wow lol, yeah that's totally him. Wasn't his Inceptional account on there banned or something?

I noticed that account recently too.

 

Here's what finally did him in... the inconceivably patient people over there merely got tired of him editing his posts ad infinitum (I've seen over 20 times in some cases!), deleting posts after his words were "lost in translation," etc. So they merely placed a limit on those things. They didn't even ban him. In response, he threw a fit and asked for his account to be deleted (hence why it's gray, there's no profile - but all the posts with his name attached remain).

 

Seriously, I can't believe how patient they were with him over there. Endless arguments, derailing other people's threads, asking them to fact-check his SNES vs. Genesis blog posts only to double back and say "actually I'm happy with the way everything's written, thanks anyway" (iirc he tried to claim the Z80 "doesn't count" in terms of sound channels, despite shitloads of games using it), asking questions that were answered with a link to the relevant page on the main NesDev site - to which he replied "no thanks" (as in "Nah I'm not gonna read that page which answers my question"). He'd ask technical questions then get mad when he received back technical answers.

 

I've lurked NESDev for a few years so I was familiar with the whole fiasco before I noticed him posting here. When I started seeing that all-too-familiar wall of YouTube video spam of GameMaker mockups, I thought "oh no..." but what could I do? "Hey everybody, be careful - this guy's a huge asshole!" Any sort of early warning would make me look like the nutcase or at least someone with an axe to grind. So although it was tough to see Kirk met with encouragement at first, I knew that things only lead in one direction with him, and within a year we'd end up with... our current situation.

 

I've seen a lot of pseudo-technical nuts in my years lurking forums like this. But he's something else.

[Razzie.P]

15 hours ago, KulorXL said:

Point is, I don't think your methodology here is effective. You're free to do as you'd like, I'm not gonna stop you, but I think you're actively hurting your (and to some degree, my) cause.

 

Yeah, I agree completely.  Funny thing is, I recently received a PM out of the blue where someone who said "I'm trying to make Kirk more famous!"    (that's a copy n' paste, not my interpretation or out of context or anything like that)    So that seemed a bit weird to me on a lot of levels, but hey, we all got our hobbies, so I just said "best of luck to ya" and added this --

 

For what it's worth though -- from someone who really doesn't land on either side of the whole back n' forth of all those threads and arguments -- what you're doing isn't working at all and your time would be better spent finding another path for the PR push.    Not enough people seeing that stuff on AtariAge to make anyone famous, and the few who do see it are absolutely coming away with a negative impression of Kirk, so by helping add visibility to it, you're actually impeding your own progress.  Unless you're aiming for infamy instead of fame. 

 

 

So yeah, there's some strangeness to it, I think, but like I said, best of luck to them in whatever they're trying to do.

 

 

[TrekkiesUnite118]

@Biff Burgertime to be clear it wasn't the Z80 he was saying didn't count, he was saying the SN76489 didn't count. The Z80 is the CPU to control the YM2612 and SN76489 as well as run the system in Master System mode.

 

He said the SN67489 didn't count because it was "old" and not what he'd expect from a 16bit system. He first tried to claim it was only used for Master System compatibility. Eventually myself and others showed plenty of games using them including major games like Sonic, Streets of Rage, Thunder Force, and even licensed stuff like Power Rangers. He then demanded it needed to be used by a certain percentage of games to count and eventually he settled for it not counting due to it being old.

 

Why did he make such a big fuss about this? The SNES has 8 sound channels, without the PSG channels the Genesis only has 6. But if we include the PSG channels then the Genesis has 10 channels. He simply can't allow the Genesis to have a higher number than the SNES on a tech comparison chart. That's how petty and childish he is when it comes to his console war.

Edited October 5, 2023 by TrekkiesUnite118

[Austin]

That's hilarious. The PSG adds so much to a bunch of soundtracks on the Genesis that they would never be the same without it.

[OldSchoolRetroGamer]

10 hours ago, Tanooki said:

I know this won't be seen unless you click to view, but a little bit of self awareness would go a long way.  *We* are not the troll here *YOU* are and months of posts.  Months of arguing with us.  Months of doubling down.  Months of throwing shade when you clearly still are reading some posts.  That all rolls up with your behavior on multiple forums, chat formats, and other outlets and being tossed off one after another into YOU being the troll.

Right? But as we both know he will learn nothing, even IF he fully reads your post, he will never "get" it or at least, will never admit to it as we've seen countless times over the years from many members both current and banned. Kirk, like many before him and likely many to still come, has that magical balance of arrogance and self-indulgence whilst being totally incapable of self-reflection and of course is always the "victim", this was apparent if not completely verified the moment he began his ignore list in his public signature, like seriously that is a whole new level of ignorance and arrogance, the fact that anyone would even think to do that is very telling. IF Kirk's claims of the people in his ignore list being the actual "Trolls" were valid he could have simply reported such posts which would have been reviewed and the appropriate action of them being kicked from the thread would have followed BUT HE KNEW nothing said to him to date actually is trolling or against any rules of conduct so instead like a temperamental child he cries and runs to his safety zone. 

Edited October 5, 2023 by OldSchoolRetroGamer

[KulorXL]

8 hours ago, WavyGravy said:

At least one of those was me, and I stand by it. Mode 0 didn't get used for good reason; it's very difficult to find a situation where the tradeoff in overall fidelity would be worthwhile or even necessary AND you couldn't work with mixing modes or using other tricks to get you what you need from 0's feature set.

I don't disagree with the idea that mode 1 was probably the most used mode because it seems to be the most general-purpose, not to mention the most compatible with making Genesis multiplat assets (along with mode 2). Actually, an interesting thing about the SNES PPU and all those graphics modes is that they exist solely as a consequence of bandwidth limitations. The PPU is 16-bit, and it works in such a way that it can essentially load one 16-bit word for every pixel drawn to the screen, which means that it has to be caching enough data for all the layers every span of 8 pixels. Tile maps are laid out such that each tile definition is 2 consecutive bytes, so one tile layer's map can be loaded in one pixel drawn, and similarly, bitplanes for the tile graphics are laid out so that 2 can be loaded at a time. So if you look at how the different modes break down...

T = Tilemap word loaded this pixel
C = Offset-per-column tilemap word loaded this pixel (no corresponding image data)
D = 2 tile image data bitplanes loaded this pixel
Pixel...01234567
Mode 0: TDTDTDTD
Mode 1: TDDTDDTD
Mode 2: TDDTDDCC
Mode 3: TDDDDTDD
Mode 4: TDDDDTDC
Mode 5: TDDDDTDD
Mode 6: TDDDDCxx

Mode 0 exists because it has just enough bandwidth to load 4 tilemaps and 4 image data slots, which results in 4x 2bpp layers. Modes 5 and 6 are kinda weird because they need twice as much image data due to the 2x higher horizontal resolution, so despite loading 8 bitplanes and 4 bitplanes (just like mode 3), the layers are only 4bpp and 2bpp. And then mode 7 is a complete mess that doesn't follow this reasoning at all: it actually splits the 16-bit read into 2x 8-bit reads, and reads both a tile index and one pixel's worth of image data for every single pixel drawn, hence the limit of 256 different 8bpp tiles.

All of that is to say, the graphics modes were basically just different ways of breaking down the bandwidth, and the existence of some of them was probably more incidental than anything they thought would be really needed by anyone...but I do think mode 0 has some interesting use cases, and I have at least 3 I'm gonna be showing off in my game. One of the more obvious ones that really got me initially thinking about the mode (and which doesn't really apply for my game) was the idea that it can be used to do mock-8-bit stuff with a ton of parallax:

Which, this is the sort of thing I don't think anybody would have thought to do back then solely because they were trying to move away from the "8-bit" aesthetic, not embrace it. But yeah, I think with the right art direction, you can definitely convey a ton of depth with those 4 layers, and it can look really nice, especially when considering that you really don't want to waste any of your very limited sprite VRAM space on background decorations to try to achieve the same results.

[WavyGravy]

37 minutes ago, KulorXL said:

Which, this is the sort of thing I don't think anybody would have thought to do back then solely because they were trying to move away from the "8-bit" aesthetic, not embrace it. But yeah, I think with the right art direction, you can definitely convey a ton of depth with those 4 layers, and it can look really nice, especially when considering that you really don't want to waste any of your very limited sprite VRAM space on background decorations to try to achieve the same results.

Now THAT demo does look very nice, and makes a decent case for the mode. I think you hit the nail on the head with this quote, as well, and that's my point as well. One of the things I said in an earlier thread was that you'd have a hard time advertising and selling a game that looks like an 8-bit game for a 16-bit console, especially the SNES which really traded on its high-colour capabilities. I don't think it was an underappreciated mode, then. Rather, I think back then you had games to sell and you wanted it to look good in magazines so you went for detail and colour because you had to use stills unless your marketing budget was high enough for TV spots. Even with the nice depth effect there, I think that if I'm playing a 16-bit game, I'd prefer the extra colour and detail of 4bpp tiles to the distant layer, but that's a matter of personal taste and the expectation of a certain aesthetic. To me it's not worth the limitation and it also no longer looks like a Super Nintendo game. On the flip side, it still looks really good. I do think that even now with this example, it's a very niche use case. You have to REALLY want that extra layer and have some serious chops artistically to make it work. It's "8-bit plus" but not as much "plus" as a Godot or Unreal project (RIP Unity) while being far more difficult to execute. I suppose that applies to retro homebrew vs "modern retro" pretty broadly, though.

 

And to your above point about methodology, you came in with a well-reasoned, well-explained post, gave a great example of a real thing, and you disagreed with me while being still being respectful. And you know what? You're selling me on this, I have to say. I don't think it would have flown during the console's relevance, I do think Modes 1 and higher are definitely what the consumers even today expect of the machine while being what you want to use to get the best spread of what the system can do and get closer to the ultimate limit, but if you were going to port/homage Shovel Knight to the SNES as closely as possible to the original, Mode 0 is what you'd use to do it for sure and that definitely has value.

[Kirk_Johnston]

2 hours ago, KulorXL said:

Mode 0 exists because it has just enough bandwidth to load 4 tilemaps and 4 image data slots, which results in 4x 2bpp layers. Modes 5 and 6 are kinda weird because they need twice as much image data due to the 2x higher horizontal resolution, so despite loading 8 bitplanes and 4 bitplanes (just like mode 3), the layers are only 4bpp and 2bpp. And then mode 7 is a complete mess that doesn't follow this reasoning at all: it actually splits the 16-bit read into 2x 8-bit reads, and reads both a tile index and one pixel's worth of image data for every single pixel drawn, hence the limit of 256 different 8bpp tiles.

...but I do think mode 0 has some interesting use cases, and I have at least 3 I'm gonna be showing off in my game. One of the more obvious ones that really got me initially thinking about the mode (and which doesn't really apply for my game) was the idea that it can be used to do mock-8-bit stuff with a ton of parallax:

Which, this is the sort of thing I don't think anybody would have thought to do back then solely because they were trying to move away from the "8-bit" aesthetic, not embrace it. But yeah, I think with the right art direction, you can definitely convey a ton of depth with those 4 layers, and it can look really nice, especially when considering that you really don't want to waste any of your very limited sprite VRAM space on background decorations to try to achieve the same results.

 

Yeah, and I'll just add that the whole thing I see with the "8-bit" approach on SNES in Mode 0 is that, while a totally legit stylistic choice, it doesn't actually have to look like a NES game at all. There's absolutely the option to really go all-in on the 8-bit NES aesthetic and play to that, or you can go well beyond that and really quite convincingly demonstrate visuals that would trick most people into thinking they weren't in 2bpp at all if no one actually told them as much. Hence my tests like the ones to recreate some of Symphony of the Night and the loads of bosses examples using Mode 0's specs:

 

And those other examples don't even take advantage of the SNES' row/line scrolling and layer priority shifting much at all, so it can go even further when exploiting that stuff to get some pretty righteous parallax too, as I have shown in my shmup examples:

 

Also, none of the examples above have actually pushed the SNES quite to its full limits yet either. So there really is loads of potential with Mode 0, most of which was and still is largely untapped imo.

 

On that note, I'm very much looking forward to seeing what you've done with Mode 0. And I look forward to seeing what other people might do with it in the future too once they realise/understand just how much it is capable of.

Edited October 5, 2023 by Kirk_Johnston

[+Biff Burgertime]

4 hours ago, TrekkiesUnite118 said:

@Biff Burgertime to be clear it wasn't the Z80 he was saying didn't count, he was saying the SN76489 didn't count. The Z80 is the CPU to control the YM2612 and SN76489 as well as run the system in Master System mode.

 

He said the SN67489 didn't count because it was "old" and not what he'd expect from a 16bit system. He first tried to claim it was only used for Master System compatibility. Eventually myself and others showed plenty of games using them including major games like Sonic, Streets of Rage, Thunder Force, and even licensed stuff like Power Rangers. He then demanded it needed to be used by a certain percentage of games to count and eventually he settled for it not counting due to it being old.

 

Why did he make such a big fuss about this? The SNES has 8 sound channels, without the PSG channels the Genesis only has 6. But if we include the PSG channels then the Genesis has 10 channels. He simply can't allow the Genesis to have a higher number than the SNES on a tech comparison chart. That's how petty and childish he is when it comes to his console war.

Ah that's right, thanks for the clarification. There's been so much Kirk spam the past year or two, I find myself remembering specific moments that were particularly baffling, but can't recall where I might find them (NESDev, YouTube comments, NintendoLife, etc etc). So I very much appreciate not only the overview, but pointing out that it was yet another case of him feigning interest in a topic, only for the veil to be easily lifted: no, he was merely seeking more console war fuel... accuracy be damned.