Mockup Genesis ports

Discussion of development of software for any "obsolete" computer or video game system. See the WSdev wiki and ObscureDev wiki for more information on certain platforms.
Pokun
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Re: Mockup Genesis ports

Post by Pokun »

Well MMX2 is a 16-bit game to begin with.

Anyway revealing your source material doesn't change much, the head is a bit smaller in the 32-bit art but it's even smaller in your own version. I'd prefer it to be a bit more proportional to the body. The legs however looks fine, I don't mind the oversized legs Rockman robots have, it's part of the style. The shoulder however makes it look like his torso is facing almost straight into the camera, while the head and legs are facing forward (which is fine). I'd like the torso to be angled a tad bit more forward. Not too much though, the reason fighting stances have the body angled is to make your body a smaller target. The more you angle the torso the smaller the target becomes but it will also be harder to move. When facing an enemy with a weapon, he has longer reach so you will want to become a smaller target than in unarmed combat.

I'm only trying to give you constructive critic, and yes it's my own opinion of course. Feel free to do with it as you please.
Shonumi
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Re: Mockup Genesis ports

Post by Shonumi »

Pokun wrote: Anyway revealing your source material doesn't change much, the head is a bit smaller in the 32-bit art but it's even smaller in your own version. I'd prefer it to be a bit more proportional to the body.
The version lazygecko made has the same proportions (1:3) as the MMX4-6 32-bit ones, judging from the top of the helmet to the chin. Close enough anyway (0.3111 in the original vs. 0.3333 in the edit). Going any larger would make it disproportionate from the 32-bit style, but not close enough to match the 16-bit style.
Pokun wrote: The shoulder however makes it look like his torso is facing almost straight into the camera, while the head and legs are facing forward (which is fine). I'd like the torso to be angled a tad bit more forward.
To me, it already looks as if X is angled forward, but I suppose changing the shading would make this more obvious to others. IMO though, it's very close to the 32-bit style when comparing them side-by-side (except for that one hand...) and I don't have any issues with the X's pose from MMX4-6.
Pokun wrote: I'm only trying to give you constructive critic, and yes it's my own opinion of course. Feel free to do with it as you please.
You know I'm not the one who made it, right? :wink: Hopefully this discussion has given the artist some useful ideas though.
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Bregalad
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Re: Mockup Genesis ports

Post by Bregalad »

Shonumi wrote: Definitely worse in your opinion.
Well, when people state something, it is by default their own opinion, unless explicitly mentioned otherwise.
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olddb
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Re: Mockup Genesis ports

Post by olddb »

I for one like the X sprite. More heroic proportions.
...
lidnariq
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Re: Mockup Genesis ports

Post by lidnariq »

Bregalad wrote:Well, when people state something, it is by default their own opinion, unless explicitly mentioned otherwise.
Nonetheless, it helps civil discourse to stay civil when people mark statements of their own opinion with such.

"$thing is ugly" is an invitation for a stupid argument.
"In my opinion, $thing is ugly" reduces the incentive to engage in the stupid argument.
Shonumi
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Re: Mockup Genesis ports

Post by Shonumi »

Bregalad wrote:Well, when people state something, it is by default their own opinion, unless explicitly mentioned otherwise.
I just brought it up to remind everyone. Using qualifiers such as "definitely" or "obviously" makes it seem like one view is inherently more valid than others when we're talking about subjective material. As lidnariq said, just trying to keep it civil. Like I pointed out, we all probably came here with our own ideas of what these games should look like stylistically.
Pokun
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Re: Mockup Genesis ports

Post by Pokun »

My bad, I guess it was a poor choice of words from my side.
Shonumi wrote:
Pokun wrote: Anyway revealing your source material doesn't change much, the head is a bit smaller in the 32-bit art but it's even smaller in your own version. I'd prefer it to be a bit more proportional to the body.
The version lazygecko made has the same proportions (1:3) as the MMX4-6 32-bit ones, judging from the top of the helmet to the chin. Close enough anyway (0.3111 in the original vs. 0.3333 in the edit). Going any larger would make it disproportionate from the 32-bit style, but not close enough to match the 16-bit style.
Then I'd prefer it to go closer to the 16-bit style. The proportions on this one definitely looks worse than both originals IMHO.
Shonumi wrote:
Pokun wrote: The shoulder however makes it look like his torso is facing almost straight into the camera, while the head and legs are facing forward (which is fine). I'd like the torso to be angled a tad bit more forward.
To me, it already looks as if X is angled forward, but I suppose changing the shading would make this more obvious to others. IMO though, it's very close to the 32-bit style when comparing them side-by-side (except for that one hand...) and I don't have any issues with the X's pose from MMX4-6.
Yeah maybe it's the lightening, but there is something different from the original art that makes it looks like the torso is facing the camera more.
93143
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Re: Mockup Genesis ports

Post by 93143 »

lazygecko wrote:I don't have coding experience, and to my knowledge the smooth gradient layers seen in some SNES games is due to a hardware-supported HDMA feature (enabled by one of the modes?).
HDMA is a CPU feature, not a PPU feature. It's always available, regardless of what the graphics chip is doing. Each one of the 8 DMA channels can be set to activate during HBlank (in between scanlines) and write one, two, or four bytes from a table in ROM or RAM to a location on the B bus. The table includes line counter values that control which lines the writes happen on - it can be every line, or once in a frame, or anything in between.

This can be used for scroll changes, palette changes, BG mode changes, window setting changes, colour math changes - just about every register on the PPU bus can be poked during HBlank with HDMA. You can change Mode 7 settings with HDMA; this is actually how F-Zero-type perspective is done, since Mode 7 on its own can only do 2D affine transformations. You can even stream audio to the SPC700 with HDMA if you're good at writing timed code on the S-SMP, as demonstrated by d4s in N-Warp Daisakusen. It's a very powerful feature.

The Mega Drive just has line scroll (and row scroll, which is a subset of line scroll in terms of the actual result). Anything else needs to be done manually in an interrupt.
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Sumez
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Re: Mockup Genesis ports

Post by Sumez »

Shonumi wrote:Do you have the same complaints about the art style Capcom chose when jumping to 32-bit systems?
Absolutely. :) I mostly like the look of the 2D MMX games on PS1, but X himself wasn't really an improvement. I also prefer MM7 Mega Man to the MM8 one.
As people have been saying, it's not bad, it just doesn't fit the style of the game as well.
Shonumi
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Re: Mockup Genesis ports

Post by Shonumi »

Pokun wrote:Then I'd prefer it to go closer to the 16-bit style. The proportions on this one definitely looks worse than both originals IMHO.
Still not sure how the proportions look worse in the mock-up compared to the 32-bit style when they're pretty much the same though. Height-wise, the head to overall body ratio is basically 1:3 in both 32-bit and the mock-up. Biggest difference is width-wise (back of the helmet to the nose), which is a ratio of 0.4 in the 32-bit version and 0.36 in the mock-up. Perhaps you mean that you'd like to see a bigger, more defined face in the mock-up?

I do understand that the 16-bit style has its advantages because the sprite isn't all that large to begin with, and generally Mega Man games in the 90s gave Mega Man an oversized head. Makes sense in the NES and GB versions to give the character something obvious and defining the player can see on-screen. 32-bit could take advantage of much taller sprites, so the head proportions in almost every other 2D Mega Man game shrank (even on the GBA). So maybe one solution a mock-up could investigate is a bigger sprite. But then you'd need to consider my point below about other MMX characters.
Sumez wrote:Absolutely. :) I mostly like the look of the 2D MMX games on PS1, but X himself wasn't really an improvement. I also prefer MM7 Mega Man to the MM8 one.
As people have been saying, it's not bad, it just doesn't fit the style of the game as well.
I guess opinions about the 32-bit versions really are going to determine how one views the mock-up. I basically liked every Mega Man game, stylistically speaking, so I have no preference, and I think it's neat seeing something new. From my perspective the mock-up X doesn't really clash with the BG, but I can totally see where he'd look noticeably different from the bosses, or Sigma, or Zero, unless all of those characters are handled as well. As a stand-alone screenshot, however, it works imo, but tackling all the other art assets would be much trickier.
lazygecko
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Re: Mockup Genesis ports

Post by lazygecko »

Shonumi basically echoes my reasoning for the design. I don't consider myself an actual sprite artist in the first place and worked with the 32-bit sprite as a reference as noted. I tried just color reducing the original sprite at first but the decrease in fidelity just looked too obvious and thought that could be mitgated by presenting something different. Plus, I did find the chibi head to be kinda offputting when I started thinking more about it and generally prefer the more "realistic" style of 16-bit characters with more implicit facial features.

Anyway, I didn't really mean for this thread to turn into a pages long debate on the sprite itself.
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FrankenGraphics
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Re: Mockup Genesis ports

Post by FrankenGraphics »

Btw, you might find it interesting that the prototype version of Super Castlevania IV which existed at *some* point used a very different and more true-to-original character, posture etc. Although the walking cycle doesn't look finished and it lacks final colouring.

Reference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tE_gFGaYSsM

(They also seem to have to recycled parts of that unused "snake man" styled boss as medusa.)
lazygecko
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Re: Mockup Genesis ports

Post by lazygecko »

So, right now I'm in the middle of working on the CPS Punisher game. There was already a Genesis port of this by Sculptured Software (same studio that ported Mortal Kombat 3), but visually it leaves a lot to be desired (the spritework in particular is pretty bad with some poorly downscaled enemies that look like they didn't get any touchup afterwards and some garish coloring choices) so I was wondering if things could be done differently.

Image

Only recolored the floor and tables so far. It's actually the master palette in itself that is way more of a constraint here in making an accurate translation compared to just the 64 color limit. The 512 color palette has some pretty distinct quirks and the main one is how lacking it is for the darker range of colors. You basically only have shades of dark blue, then some magenta and green to choose from and it ends up looking really jarring here. Perhaps shifting the whole thing to a brighter gamma style would make it more flexible.

This is what the stage looks like in Sculptured's official port

Image
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Fisher
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Re: Mockup Genesis ports

Post by Fisher »

lazygecko wrote:Only recolored the floor and tables so far
It's looking a lot better than the original. Good work!
Do you plan to make a ROM patch?
lazygecko
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Re: Mockup Genesis ports

Post by lazygecko »

Fisher wrote:
lazygecko wrote:Only recolored the floor and tables so far
It's looking a lot better than the original. Good work!
Do you plan to make a ROM patch?
Nah. The art isn't 1:1 in size compared with the official port and there are more unique tiles in use for the scene so I don't think it could be shoved in the constraints of the 16mbit ROM (I guess this would be closer to a Sega CD port like Final Fight if you don't want to optimize the tile usage to fit within a sensible ROM size). Kinda funny that this port is the same size as Streets of Rage 2 yet the latter has significantly more impressive presentation in just about every regard. I guess it helps that the latter was made from the ground up with the system in mind.

I actually remember now that there was a hack project in the works that replaced the background art in the Genesis port of Super Street Fighter 2 with new art scaled down from the arcade original at better quality (looks like in the official port some elements like the crowd were redrawn rather poorly).

Original:
Image

Hacked:
Image

Thread on Sega-16
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