So, Direct Colour . . .

[Kirk_Johnston]

41 minutes ago, jeffythedragonslayer said:

That's enough evidence for me to conclude Nintendo messed up in calling direct color a 2048 color mode.  Thanks, @turboxray and @KulorXL.

 

When you have that much blank space on a page in your manual, there should really be some caveats listed, like "some of these are not real visible colors but fake, transparent colors"

The most interesting bit for me is where he says it cannot possibly be used to get more colours, and then he literally mentions a way to use it to get more colours on the screen in the following paragraph. It's kinda similar to how he said you can't fit my 8bpp level into VRAM because you'd have to use two 64x32 tile maps (and bigger if you want to scroll vertically), and then, literally, in the same comment says how you can use 16x16 tile mode, which means you can in fact use two 32x32 tile maps.

Edited December 28, 2023 by Kirk_Johnston

[KulorXL]

3 minutes ago, jeffythedragonslayer said:

Did you notice I edited my last post after you liked it?  I could've made it say anything...

And I can unlike your post at my discretion. I think it was pretty clear what I was responding to when I quoted you immediately after, at any rate.

5 minutes ago, jeffythedragonslayer said:

Yeah, if there is better scene slang we can come up with that will reduce confusion

I think "direct color" works fine; you're still directly specifying pixel colors instead of using palette indices. It just shouldn't be called a "2048 color" or even "2040 color" mode, and people certainly shouldn't be running around trying to use it to brag about color counts.

7 minutes ago, jeffythedragonslayer said:

I really don't like the idea of shutting down research into obscure features like Mode 6 just because they're unpopular.

I feel that. I've been trying for years to convince people that mode 5 isn't totally useless. To that end, my strategy has mostly been to...

1. Mess with it in graphics demos

2. Commission artwork from talented pixel artists to make full use of it

3. Mathematically demonstrate from a VRAM consumption standpoint that it's viable

Some people still insist it's useless, but I think my game is going to provide pretty good evidence that you can get some pretty gorgeous results with it. Similarly though, I think it'd be foolish to go around trying to brag about it just because you (royal) want to beat the H40 Genesis resolution or whatever.

[jeffythedragonslayer]

8 minutes ago, KulorXL said:

And I can unlike your post at my discretion. I think it was pretty clear what I was responding to when I quoted you immediately after, at any rate.

well thank you for not unliking it

8 minutes ago, KulorXL said:

I think "direct color" works fine; you're still directly specifying pixel colors instead of using palette indices. It just shouldn't be called a "2048 color" or even "2040 color" mode,

agreed

8 minutes ago, KulorXL said:

I feel that. I've been trying for years to convince people that mode 5 isn't totally useless. To that end, my strategy has mostly been to...

1. Mess with it in graphics demos

2. Commission artwork from talented pixel artists to make full use of it

3. Mathematically demonstrate from a VRAM consumption standpoint that it's viable

Some people still insist it's useless, but I think my game is going to provide pretty good evidence that you can get some pretty gorgeous results with it. Similarly though, I think it'd be foolish to go around trying to brag about it just because you (royal) want to beat the H40 Genesis resolution or whatever.

The Mana games really aren't enough for people to acknowledge Mode 5 is useful?

[turboxray]

I think it's more obvious that direct color mode is just that.. when you have a need to directly modify the color of the pixel in the tile.. and not a palette entry. Being an 8bit value, you can only fit so many bits into it. 3:3:2 make sense. Having an option to make that brighter or tinted, makes sense too (but more on a global scale.. but implementation via per tile doesn't hurt that). I think the question then is; what application fits that need?

Edited December 28, 2023 by turboxray

[jeffythedragonslayer]

1 minute ago, turboxray said:

I think it's more obvious that direct color mode is just that.. when you have a need to directly modify the color of the pixel in the tile.. and not a palette entry. Being an 8bit value, you can only fit so many bits into it. 3:3:2 make sense. Haven't an option to make that brighter or tinted, makes sense too (but more on a global scale.. but implementation via per tile doesn't hurt that).

To elaborate on what I mentioned last page, having to deal with one extra address space (CGRAM) I think is just one more thing that scares people away from developing on these older consoles.  So maybe it's kind of like bitmap modes on the Game Boy Advance - simpler to teach but you probably won't use it much.

[turboxray]

19 minutes ago, Kirk_Johnston said:

The best bit for me is where he says it cannot possibly be used to get more colours, and then he literally mentions a way to use it to get more colours on the screen in the following paragraph.

See... and the point made went completely over your head. LMAO.. this guy.

19 minutes ago, Kirk_Johnston said:

It's kinda similar to how he said you can't fit my 8bpp level into VRAM because you'd have to use two 64x32 tile maps (and bigger if you want to scroll vertically), and then, literally, in the same comment says how you can use 16x16 tile mode, which means you can in fact use two 32x32 tile maps. LOL

Seriously.. are you that dense that you have some sort of reading comprehension issue? I think you do.

Edited December 28, 2023 by turboxray

[turboxray]

8 minutes ago, jeffythedragonslayer said:

To elaborate on what I mentioned last page, having to deal with one extra address space (CGRAM) I think is just one more thing that scares people away from developing on these older consoles.  So maybe it's kind of like bitmap modes on the Game Boy Advance - simpler to teach but you probably won't use it much.

I think it would still have to be an issue where having a palette is a downfall.. for whatever you're trying to do. Because you can do still pixel manipulation in indirection mode (which is what PCs did back in the day for VGA), including bitmap stuffs. I was thinking more of a situation where you need to manipulate colors in a tile but don't want to be editing the palette entries. That's still pretty edge case. I'm thinking more of a demoscene effect maybe. And I mean, all the while having a low 256 fixed color limitation not being a limitation for this need.

Edited December 28, 2023 by turboxray

[KulorXL]

9 minutes ago, jeffythedragonslayer said:

The Mana games really aren't enough for people to acknowledge Mode 5 is useful?

Well, they're just menus...the only game to really try to use mode 5 (plus interlacing) like how I'm using it was RPM, and that game looks and runs like shit, so I can understand why people jump to the conclusion that mode 5 is "only good for stills or text".

[turboxray]

5 minutes ago, KulorXL said:

Well, they're just menus...the only game to really try to use mode 5 (plus interlacing) like how I'm using it was RPM, and that game looks and runs like shit, so I can understand why people jump to the conclusion that mode 5 is "only good for stills or text".

And IIRC, someone had an interview with a member of the team where they said the manager or publisher said that they had to use hires mode (so they could claim it in advertising I guess).

[jeffythedragonslayer]

6 minutes ago, KulorXL said:

Well, they're just menus...the only game to really try to use mode 5 (plus interlacing) like how I'm using it was RPM, and that game looks and runs like shit, so I can understand why people jump to the conclusion that mode 5 is "only good for stills or text".

Yeah, when people call it "useless" that's hyperbole.  Seems like an explodable myth.

 

Just now, turboxray said:

And IIRC, someone had an interview with a member of the team where they said the manager or publisher said that they had to use hires mode (so they could claim it in advertising I guess).

malicious compliance?

[Kirk_Johnston]

16 minutes ago, jeffythedragonslayer said:

Yeah, when people call it "useless" that's hyperbole.  Seems like an explodable myth.

 

malicious compliance?

I would like to add here that I'm very confident that's the case with almost every example of certain people claiming certain modes and features are useless on SNES.

 

It took me thinking about it for basically a few minutes and then eventually seeing literally one or two examples to prove beyond any doubt that Mode 5 has a load of untapped potential [in multiple ways]. And I know fine well Modes 0, 2, 3 and 4 are far more capable than most people still to this day believe too. I similarly have little doubt it's eventually going to be a similar situation with Mode 6 and some other features people are still adamant are basically "useless".

 

Now, I'm not claiming some of these lesser-used modes are as worthy as the likes of Modes 1 and 7 for the most common uses, but anyone simply being authentic in here should be fully aware and able to admit at this point that the SNES still has a lot more to give purely from taking genuine full advantage of all of its modes and features.

 

And, given that's now likely going to happen as a matter of course imo, I look forward to seeing SNES shine more and more in the coming months, years, whatever. . . .

Edited December 28, 2023 by Kirk_Johnston

[jeffythedragonslayer]

5 minutes ago, Kirk_Johnston said:

I would like to add here that I'm very confident that's the case with almost every example of certain people claiming certain modes and features are useless on SNES.

 

It took me thinking about it for basically a few minutes and then eventually seeing literally one or two examples to prove beyond any doubt that Mode 5 has a load of untapped potential [in multiple ways]. And I know fine well Modes 0, 2, 3 and 4 are far more capable than most people still to this day believe too. I similarly have little doubt it's eventually going to be a similar situation with Mode 6 and some other features people are still adamant are basically "useless".

 

Now, I'm not claiming some of these lesser-used modes are as worthy as the likes of Modes 1 and 7 for the most common uses, but anyone simply being authentic in here should be fully aware and able to admit at this point that the SNES still has a lot more to give purely from taking genuine full advantage of all of its modes and features.

 

And, given that's now likely going to happen as a matter of course imo, I look forward to seeing SNES shine more and more in the coming months, years, whatever. . . .

Yeah I think it takes a certain self-centeredness to think "oh this feature isn't useful to me personally, so no one else should use it either"

[turboxray]

9 minutes ago, jeffythedragonslayer said:

Yeah I think it takes a certain self-centeredness to think "oh this feature isn't useful to me personally, so no one else should use it either"

Who exactly is saying this? I don't think I have seen people saying "no one else should use it".

Edited December 28, 2023 by turboxray

[jeffythedragonslayer]

22 minutes ago, turboxray said:

Who exactly is saying this? I don't think I have seen people saying "no one else should use it".

couldn't tell you - I usually stop talking to those kinds of people pretty quickly

[Kirk_Johnston]

36 minutes ago, jeffythedragonslayer said:

Yeah I think it takes a certain self-centeredness to think "oh this feature isn't useful to me personally, so no one else should use it either"

Yeah, it's quite disappointing when I see anyone basically saying they can't figure out any interesting ways to use some of these SNES modes and features, which to some translates into these SNES modes and features must therefore be useless. I personally don't interpret that as these SNES modes and feature being useless. I just think, well, these modes and features are certainly there to be used on SNES, so I wonder how they might in fact be used, especially when I see they've been sitting there for literally decades barely touched. And I get real curious as to whether they may even have some uses that would actually be considered pretty cool ultimately. But, I guess when it comes to SNES I just approach things from a different angle than some, which is that of positivity and a possibility space. Some people in here it seems don't look at SNES that way though, which is a little strange to see [actually a lot] in the SNES sub-forum. But, horses for courses. Each to their own.

[jeffythedragonslayer]

4 minutes ago, Kirk_Johnston said:

Yeah, it's quite disappointing when I see anyone basically saying they can't figure out any interesting ways to use some of these SNES modes and features, which to some translates into these SNES modes and features must therefore be useless. I personally don't interpret that as these SNES modes and feature being useless. I just think, well, these modes and features are certainly there to be used on SNES, so I wonder how they might in fact be used, especially when I see they've been sitting there for literally decades barely touched. And I get real curious as to whether they may even have some uses that would actually be considered pretty cool ultimately. But, I guess when it comes to SNES I just approach things from a different angle than some, which is that of positivity and a possibility space. Some people in here it seems don't look at SNES that way though, which is a little strange to see [actually a lot] in the SNES sub-forum. But, horses for courses. Each to their own.

It's basically "I'm smarter than Nintendo" thinking.  The designers would not have put all those features in there if they thought they were useless.

[Cris1997XX]

Honestly, I'm glad guys like Kulor and Turboxray are in this community...they can and will shoot down any sort of stupid claim Kirk/Inceptional likes to make for his "beloved" SNES' hardware, and they've even got the facts to back it up. If it weren't for you and other people, the Super Nintendo would be seen in a different light (AKA a community with overzealous, toxic rotten apples)

[Kirk_Johnston]

30 minutes ago, jeffythedragonslayer said:

It's basically "I'm smarter than Nintendo" thinking.  The designers would not have put all those features in there if they thought they were useless.

And that's an interesting point, because in the time I've been trying to learn about SNES and looking for examples of these various modes in use over the last couple of years, I've found that Nintendo itself every now and then pretty obviously [to me at least] made a specific point of using them in their games even if just in one or two places, which, to me, was clearly intended to demonstrate that these other modes can indeed be used and indeed how they might be used. The first time I caught onto that was when I discovered Yoshi's island used the largely ignored Mode 0 for the four overlapping backgrounds in World 6-8 King Bowser’s Castle pillar level (even though it didn't do anything particularly mind boggling and they could have just used normal Mode 1 for a similar effect with less overlapping parallax but more colours), and I immediately thought the message there was intended to be "Okay, it seems almost no one is using this mode, possibly most people think it's just a useless low-colour NES-like feature that was maybe going to be used for backwards compatibility or whatever so that's all it was good for, but here's a simple example of it being used right here in a proper and indeed awesome SNES game, just to show it's not actually completely useless at all". And then I started learning of similar examples with the use of Mode 0 in Yoshi's Island again (most of the intro scenes), Super Mario Kart (the big position numbers) and Earthbound (the backgrounds in the battles scenes), Mode 2 in Tetris Attack (the scrolling columns of blocks) and Yoshi's Island (Touch Fuzzy, Get Dizzy, the wavy lava in one of the levels, the rippling floor during the Bowser Jr boss battle), Mode 3's 8bpp 256 colours along with palette cycling on the Rare logo at the start of Donkey Kong Country, Mode 5 for the faux transparency in some of the levels in Kirby's Dreamland 3, and so on. And I started to get the message that the limitation here is not really the particular modes. So now I'm fully open to the potential there on SNES. And I still think many of these SNES background modes and other features have yet more to give.

Edited December 28, 2023 by Kirk_Johnston

[jeffythedragonslayer]

13 minutes ago, Kirk_Johnston said:

"Okay, it seems almost no one is using this mode, possibly most people think it's just a useless low-colour NES-like feature that was maybe going to be used for backwards compatibility or whatever so that's all it was good for

I think it's probably safe to say that crown belongs to HVCMODE.

[Kirk_Johnston]

10 minutes ago, jeffythedragonslayer said:

I think it's probably safe to say that crown belongs to HVCMODE.

Aye, the SNES is a quirky beast at times. lol

[Wayler]

4 hours ago, jeffythedragonslayer said:

and where exactly do your posts fit into that sequence?

Oh no no, there is a whole other sequence for them. You can find it in the crossroads of vapid oneliners and my waning sanity, right behind the credibility vacuum of a person who decided to be a PR-clown for a tapeworm. 

[Kirk_Johnston]

5 hours ago, jeffythedragonslayer said:

A direct color screenshot from the maker of those palette diagrams:

 

https://www.smwcentral.net/?p=viewthread&t=125133&page=1&pid=1625490#p1625490

Here's the Direct Colour image from the article for anyone who can't be bothered clicking the link:

 

A simple but effective example image right there imo (even though it's literally only using 56 unique colours across the whole image), because it's showing an actually pretty nice direct colour picture (although trust me when I say you could draw way more impressive images on the direct colour layer, especially if you consider how to use far more colours and multiple palettes across the full image), and, as we all know, that's still in addition to the separate 120 visible 15-bit CGRAM colours of BG2 and the additional again 120 visible 15-bit CGRAM colours for all the sprites (for a potential total of well over 2200 colours on screen there, before any colour math or HDMA backdrop colour gradients are applied)--again, all useable during full actual gameplay too--which is an interesting aspect of this particular mode and feature imo.

 

I like to think of the possibilities there. . . .

Edited December 29, 2023 by Kirk_Johnston

[Mittens0407]

22 minutes ago, Kirk_Johnston said:

(although trust me when I say you could draw way more impressive images on the direct colour layer, especially if you consider how to use far more colours and multiple palettes across the full image)

Show, don't tell. Do what Kulor suggested, and make a mockup. If this thread is just going to be paragraphs of parroting, why should anyone care?

[jeffythedragonslayer]

18 minutes ago, Mittens0407 said:

Show, don't tell. Do what Kulor suggested, and make a mockup. If this thread is just going to be paragraphs of parroting, why should anyone care?

I care.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

3 minutes ago, jeffythedragonslayer said:

I care.

You're not helping, you're just making this situation worse.