Mockups of games from other platforms

A place for your artistic side. Discuss techniques and tools for pixel art on the NES, GBC, or similar platforms.

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Drag
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Re: Mockups of games from other platforms

Post by Drag »

I think a bigger hurdle would be having a big sprite like Sonic with as many animation frames as he tends to have, plus all of the baddies and their bigness. At least when we're talking about the NES.
Sik
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Re: Mockups of games from other platforms

Post by Sik »

Yeah but Blast Processing was against the SNES and it really didn't show (especially not with Sonic 2, which is the game they used for the campaign, despite being the Sonic game with the most slow down, although admittedly 2P mode is basically running two full copies of the game simultaneously). I think the real processing differences didn't show up until late in the lifetime anyway (see: the weird stuff Treasure and Traveller Tales would do).
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OneCrudeDude
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Re: Mockups of games from other platforms

Post by OneCrudeDude »

Actually it showed up earlier, Gradius III, a launch title, suffers from immense slowdown. Most Genesis shooters did not slowdown nearly as bad, but still suffered from it regardless. Thunder Force III and Thunder Spirits comes to mind. Maybe perhaps sports games could also be used against the SNES, but EA flat out hated Nintendo, to this very day.

Regarding Shantae, I wouldn't be surprised if that game uses 'dynamic lighting', which basically means 'if this sprite is going to a dark area, her sprite darkens, if she gets close to a light source, her sprite brightens'. If it does do that, that might be tricky to pull off on the NES with it's limited palettes, unless the only sprite in said area is Shantae herself. The problem would be, if she's next the light but an enemy (which shares one of her palettes) is not, the enemy in the 'dark' will brighten because Shantae's body had to. Otherwise, just use byte shifting to darken the palette. Now about those day-to-night transitions, I don't think the NES would be capable of doing that.
Sik
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Re: Mockups of games from other platforms

Post by Sik »

The "dynamic lighting" can be seen in the map with the first stone, for what's is worth.

The day and night transition really shouldn't be an issue since absolutely everything gets affected by it. The only issue would be making the fading look smooth, and that's a minor issue =P
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OneCrudeDude
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Re: Mockups of games from other platforms

Post by OneCrudeDude »

That's the thing, smoothness will be an issue. About the only NES game that does 'day-to-night' transitions would be Chubby Cherub, and it shows the NES' limitations with such a thing. Then again, it was a cheapie licensed title made by TOSE in 1986, if they cared enough they probably would do something better.
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tokumaru
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Re: Mockups of games from other platforms

Post by tokumaru »

I've found that color transitions on the NES look smoother if you change fewer colors each step, instead of the entire palette. As long as *something* changes from one frame to the next, the animation looks continuous. However, most games insist on changing the entire palette at once and not changing anything for several frames until the next complete change, making transitions choppy as hell.
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Myask
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Re: Mockups of games from other platforms

Post by Myask »

OneCrudeDude wrote:That's the thing, smoothness will be an issue. About the only NES game that does 'day-to-night' transitions would be Chubby Cherub
Castlevania II:Simon's Quest, though that just fades out to swap palettes, which I presume is not what you're talking about. One of Dragon Quests III and IV (both have day/night) did gradual transitions on the overworld.
surt
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Re: Mockups of games from other platforms

Post by surt »

Would temporal dithering (swapping colours back and forth between frames) be feasible to increase smoothness of transition? Kind of like sprite flickering for semi-transparency.
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thefox
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Re: Mockups of games from other platforms

Post by thefox »

surt wrote:Would temporal dithering (swapping colours back and forth between frames) be feasible to increase smoothness of transition? Kind of like sprite flickering for semi-transparency.
Yeah I thought about that too. Even if it doesn't look that smooth, it might be reusable as a dramatic effect. Hard to say without a demo.
Download STREEMERZ for NES from fauxgame.com! — Some other stuff I've done: fo.aspekt.fi
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rainwarrior
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Re: Mockups of games from other platforms

Post by rainwarrior »

On TVs that interlace 240p to 480i it would appear as stripes.
tepples
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Pokémon shock

Post by tepples »

And on monitors that display 240p natively, such as CRT SDTVs, flashing large areas of the background could be grounds for a seizure trigger lawsuit. Remember the brouhaha about the Pokémon episode "Cyber Soldier Porygon" where Pikachu shorted out a missile, causing most of the screen to turn into a strobe light? It sent almost 700 real people to hospitals across Japan.
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Gilbert
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Re: Mockups of games from other platforms

Post by Gilbert »

In fact, a lot of classic games re-released officially under emulation (such as Virtual Console) have screen flashing effects removed or modified because of this reason.
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OneCrudeDude
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Re: Mockups of games from other platforms

Post by OneCrudeDude »

And because of incident, Porygon and it's evolutionary family were never shown again in the anime. But Pikachu, who was the one who shorted the missile out, and Team Rocket, the people who shot the missile, are still being shown.

@Gilbert: One such game was Recca, correct? I recall Convoy no Nazo having a similar effect, but I'm certain not even it's Kuso-ge status would warrant it being re-released on the VC.

That said, I wonder how a mockup of Two Crude Dudes/Crude Buster would look like on the NES. I hope better than Bad Dudes, and I reckon the graffiti would have to be omitted (or heavily simplified).
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rainwarrior
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Re: Mockups of games from other platforms

Post by rainwarrior »

Video games have routinely carried seizure warnings in the manual for a long time (well before that pokemon episode aired, too). It's part of the standard boilerplate for any GameBoy game, for example. What was different about that Pokemon thing is that it was on a TV show, where there was no such warning or expectation. People with the relevant condition usually know to avoid video games.
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Macbee
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Re: Mockups of games from other platforms

Post by Macbee »

surt wrote:Would temporal dithering (swapping colours back and forth between frames) be feasible to increase smoothness of transition? Kind of like sprite flickering for semi-transparency.
Yes, it works nicely. I'm using this since last year in my own game (another Windows game that tries to simulate 8-bit Nintendo) and I'm very satisfied with this fade + dithering thing.
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