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I really want to go with the middle one, as it matches the SNES color the closest, but I'm not sure how that palette would hold up to NTSC variants. Is that mahogany color value 16?


I know that might be an exaggeration, but if it were RGB, I think it would appear blood red.

I'm definitely leaning towards one of the other two, and they're not far off what the SNES had either. But they are hard to distinguish from one another. What values are you using?

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Ruling the World One Bean™ at a Time...

This is how my mockup (the middle one) would look on NTSC:


I'm using 0F for background color, plus 07, 16 and 27.

Colors of other mockups are:
0F, 07, 17 and 27.
0F, 07, 17 and 28.

And this is my suggestion for the title screen:

Hummer (left) mine (right)

I don't know if it's possible to put this bigger Aladdin logo on screen + Disney signature + copyright screen.
Hopefully it will be possible considering there are many irrelevant graphics on this image bank.

I take that, there isn't any more desaturated red than that? (and then there's the problem of it being used for shading other objects...)

NES doesn't do desaturated.

Each color ($x1-$xC) alternates between the signal level for $x0 (a lighter gray) and $xD (a darker gray). For example, $16 (the red under question here) alternates between $10 in phases close to red and $1C in phases close to cyan. Both $0D and $1D are black, and both $20 and $30 are white. Because all colors other than gray touch either the black rail or the white rail, they are at the maximum possible saturation for the color's lightness level.

You can still take advantage of the relative vibrance of certain colors when compared to others. For instance, brown looks less saturated than pure red, even though they're both technically at max saturation.

Good news! Each stage loads a separate palette for Aladdin's sprites, so if need be, we can change them between stages to match the vibrancy (or whatever the correct graphical term is)... add contrast, there we go. But you probably already expected that.


Great! I'll hard hack those in and test them out with different palette sets/emulators/on my PowerPak. I really want to use that red but I'm skeptical about how it will turn out. By the way, which palette sets are you using?


Great minds think alike. I think the problem is running out of space in hex, but that can be resolved. I'd also like to add Hummer Team to the credits.

My apologies for not having time to do anything else today.

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Ruling the World One Bean™ at a Time...

Yay, good news indeed. It's nice to confirm this.


The red wall background is my favourite since it's the most faithful to the Super Nintendo. But I know it may look horrendous. I'm curious to see how it will look in your Powerpak.
I'm using this image as reference for my mockups:



Nice! I really would like to correct the logo. It looks *almost* the same logo from Hummer - but this one in fact have the correct proportions (Hummer logo is way too stretched).


Take your time, it's just a hobby!

Do you have a .PAL of this? If not, I'll make one myself. Unless this is taken from an emulator?


Anywho, the time has come!

First, value 16 as the backdrop:


Not bad; not bad at all! I can live with this! This is going off the YUV setting on Nestopia. One minor quibble, though: the hue for the blue tarp shares the hue for the sky. Shame, seeing as I found a near exact hue that matches the SNES sky.






Oh God! I was right--RGB looks terrible. Bear in mind this is the same hue for Mario's overalls... right?





Next, the same thing, but I changed the sprite outlines to pink (hey, it worked for Link):



Notably, as you can see on the right, the two hues blend together in RGB (in YUV as well, I guess).




Lastly, 017 as the backdrop:

Looks nice in both cases.





And now... the moment of truth a single instance of an individual's consumer TV settings with arbitrary HSV adjustment that could quite possibly match no one else's:

Value 16 Backdrop:

Looks perfect! The torqouise blue works well for both the tarp and sky as well.



Even my pink sprites kinda hold up well.





Value 17 Backdrop:

Hardly a difference! Which makes me lean towards value 17 seeing as it's not as drastic as a change and works well with most palette sets. But my new concern is changing the sprite palette hue of 37 -> 27. The guard just doesn't have the contrast he originally had.

Either way, I think it's safe to say we can go on ahead with changing sprite tiles; they're not dependent on the palette changes we'll be making. Plus, I want to try this test again with better Aladdin sprites.





By the way, guess what was also on my Power Pak?


Now if you'll excuse me, my computer has politely requested that I restart it for the last hour.

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Ruling the World One Bean™ at a Time...

I think the background palettes here look the best of all the mockups. The best way to feign a colorful image on a console like the NES is to use a lot of colors that stand apart from one another. That said, I think the sky needs to be bluer to stand out better; we're going to have to balance color accuracy with color appeal. I'm not a fan of how the guards look, they practically blend in with the background. I think the standard sprite palettes looked the best.

Silly question: how many NES/Famicoms use RGB output anyway? Also don't most games look horrible with RGB anyway? =P

Sharp's Famicom Titler and Famicom/TV combo units are the only official consoles I'm aware of that take Famicom cassettes and contain the RGB PPU. The Titler produces S-Video; I imagine that the TV's video looks like a PlayChoice.

Let's not forget many people who are now buying the NESRGB kit. I wouldn't say the games look horrible at all, unless they had horrible art and were hiding behind NTSC artifacts.

I know I'm going to be excitedly replied to, provided with a bunch of examples of games' art assets which were designed for NTSC artifacts, but I still think it's comparable to cooking a meal expecting people to eat it weeks later after it has been sitting out. NTSC is a turd.

I like the appearance of 0x16 as the backdrop with the brown outline. If you'd like me to test it on an RGB NES I'd be happy to.

This is the palette for YUV mode in Nestopia. I forgot to mention that, sorry.
And wow, pretty cool post Jedi QM!! Thanks for so many screenshots. Now I think that 17 for the background is best option.

About the guard colors, I'm sure we'll find a nice solution. This is one of my favoite things about hacking (+homebrewing +indie gaming): while these companies had small schedules to finish their jobs we had all the time in the world to make a nice, polished work.

By the way can you put .IPS patches for these latest tests here? I'd like to test them on Nestopia NTSC mode.
Thanks!

True, but as far as I can tell, NESRGB defaults to a YUV-based palette that approximates each of the NTSC NES's solid colors, not the 2C03 palette.


I'll just leave it at an analogy: Beer, wine, and cheese take time to mature.


Yet when George Lucas tried finishing his own Star Wars original trilogy, fans female-dogged incessantly.

Yeah, this is the thing. The problem is that the 2C03 palette is not even remotely similar to the original one (even gray shades aren't safe), so basically everything will look horrible no matter what. If you get RGB with a palette closer to what it should be then that is fine.