NES like game for PC - Vampire vs Devil

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Maniek
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NES like game for PC - Vampire vs Devil

Post by Maniek »

I am not sure if I can post it here, but I have found this forum when searching about the NES palettes and other NES restrictions. I am working on a PC game but with NES aesthetics (the game is 2 weeks in development so far). If such projects can not be posted on this forum then I am sorry and please remove my post.

I would like to know what you think about the look of my game. I am making it according to most of the NES rules (I will probably ignore 3 of them: 8 sprites per scanline, 256 tiles at the same time limit, 64 sprites limit), but I will try to stay close to these limits, I will strictly follow the other rules regarding the palettes and the numer of colors per sprite/tiles.

At the moment I think what is on the screenshot could look the same on the NES (tell me if I am wrong). I am mostly interested to hear your opinion if you like the look of it or not.

Video devlog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XG5FmdHmukI (the graphics on the video are outdated, but you can see the main character animation there)

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Dwedit
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Re: NES like game for PC - Vampire vs Devil

Post by Dwedit »

At first glance, the background looks like it follows the limitations perfectly. 3 colors + background color per each 16x16 area.

The sprite looks like it exceeds the 3 color + transparent limit quite a bit. You can overlay additional sprites on top to increase total colors to 6, but they count against the 8 sprite limit. Most famous example of overlaying sprites is Megaman.

Obviously the resolution here, while 240 scanlines tall, is widescreen, and not like a NES. Additionally, the NES has slightly fat pixels (8:7 size), not square pixels.
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Maniek
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Re: NES like game for PC - Vampire vs Devil

Post by Maniek »

Dwedit wrote:At first glance, the background looks like it follows the limitations perfectly. 3 colors + background color per each 16x16 area.

The sprite looks like it exceeds the 3 color + transparent limit quite a bit. You can overlay additional sprites on top to increase total colors to 6, but they count against the 8 sprite limit.

Obviously the resolution here, while 240 scanlines tall, is widescreen, and not like a NES. Additionally, the NES has slightly fat pixels (8:7 size), not square pixels.
Thank you for your post.

The only sprite on the screen is the main character (Vampire), the rest is made with tiles. To make the vampire I have used 2 palettes (red, orange, brown, transparency), (black, gray, bright gray, transparency) placed over each other (like the Mega Man character). According to my knowledge this can be done on the NES. Also like I said I don't want to be strict where it comes to the 8 sprites per scanline, so I can break this one.

I am also not aiming for the NES resolution (I forgot to mention that). The number of vertical pixels will be 240, but the horizontal number will depend on the resolution the game will be played on.
I was not aware that the pixels were not square.
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tokumaru
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Re: NES like game for PC - Vampire vs Devil

Post by tokumaru »

Looks good!
Maniek wrote:The only sprite on the screen is the main character (Vampire), the rest is made with tiles. To make the vampire I have used 2 palettes (red, orange, brown, transparency), (black, gray, bright gray, transparency) placed over each other (like the Mega Man character). According to my knowledge this can be done on the NES.
While it *can* be done on the NES, it typically *isn't*, because it imposes serious restrictions on the amount of objects that can be displayed alongside the player.

If you want to ignore the sprites-per-scanline limitation and stack them freely, that's fine, but the end result will not be very NES-like, on sccount of this technique being very costly on the real console.
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Banshaku
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Re: NES like game for PC - Vampire vs Devil

Post by Banshaku »

There is no problem to post since it's in the general forum. If you want to know more on how to be strict and make it more look like the nes, people will be more than happy to advise you.

As for myself, if the game and music is good, I don't mind that it breaks some limit since what is important is the content: the look is just some artistic decision made by the developer :D
Maniek
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Re: NES like game for PC - Vampire vs Devil

Post by Maniek »

I appreciate your posts. I will try to keep close to the limits, to make the game feels like NES.

Maybe I am wrong, but I think that people who played NES will more likely notice (consciously or subconsciously) the innacuracy in the number of colors/palettes rather that the scanline limit or sprite limit, unless I would make most of the objects from two layers to go around the color limit, but I am going to use it only for the main character.

I really don't like when the game is "almost NES", because I can easily feel that something is wrong there so I will be careful.

Also since the resolution will differ and most of the players will play in 16:9 aspect ratio, the scanline rule to follow should rather be 8 sprites per 256 pixels line rather than per scanline.
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Re: NES like game for PC - Vampire vs Devil

Post by tepples »

Dwedit wrote:Obviously the resolution here, while 240 scanlines tall, is widescreen, and not like a NES.
If it's a flip-screen game on PC, then thefox's port of STREEMERZ proved that scrolling a 256x240-pixel window over a 320x240, 400x240, or whatever field can be made to work when porting it back to NES.

If you want it to be widescreen-centric, you have two options:
  1. 256x176 with 8:7 pixel aspect ratio (PAR) is what you get when you take an NES display and set a widescreen TV's aspect to "zoom". The pixel count is close to that of the Game Boy Advance.
  2. 336x240 with 8:7 PAR is what you get when you set a TurboGrafx-16 to use the 7.16 MHz dot clock on a widescreen TV whose aspect is set to "anamorphic".
My primary quibble is with how close the platforms at the very top and bottom of the playfield come to the picture edges. Parts of the bottom row could end up covered up by the screen bezel if the PC's HDMI out is connected to a TV. (See Overscan.)
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