Some art from my old Sonic project

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psycopathicteen
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Re: Some art from my old Sonic project

Post by psycopathicteen »

I count 9 pixels across the face of red/yellow/white palette.
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tokumaru
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Re: Some art from my old Sonic project

Post by tokumaru »

psycopathicteen wrote:I count 9 pixels across the face of red/yellow/white palette.
Then it's probably not the "final" sprite. =)

Also, IIRC, white was along with the blues. Is the extra pixel white?
psycopathicteen
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Re: Some art from my old Sonic project

Post by psycopathicteen »

tokumaru wrote:
psycopathicteen wrote:I count 9 pixels across the face of red/yellow/white palette.
Then it's probably not the "final" sprite. =)

Also, IIRC, white was along with the blues. Is the extra pixel white?
The extra pixel is red.
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OneCrudeDude
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Re: Some art from my old Sonic project

Post by OneCrudeDude »

I guess the motto should now be 'Genesis does what Ninten-also-does'. While I'm not a fan of expanded audio, maybe this could use the VRC7 audio as well for that Genesis-y sound, but that's for another time.

Still very impressed what a bit of arranging could do with the NES' limited graphics.
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tokumaru
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Re: Some art from my old Sonic project

Post by tokumaru »

OneCrudeDude wrote:I guess the motto should now be 'Genesis does what Ninten-also-does'.
I'll gladly say that when/if I get a playable level! =)
While I'm not a fan of expanded audio, maybe this could use the VRC7 audio as well for that Genesis-y sound, but that's for another time.
I'm not a fan either, mainly because over half of the official consoles ever manufactured (according to Wikipedia) can't play expansion audio without modifications.

Music is not my strong suit anyway, so unless I got some help in that area, the audio wouldn't be up to par with the graphics. But either way I'd still like to stay within the limits of the stock NES audio hardware, just like I didn't want to use MMC5 (or similar) graphical enhancements.
Still very impressed what a bit of arranging could do with the NES' limited graphics.
I'm thinking I should make a complete mockup so we can get a better impression of what an actual game could look like.
Sik
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Re: Some art from my old Sonic project

Post by Sik »

OneCrudeDude wrote:I guess the motto should now be 'Genesis does what Ninten-also-does'.
And then you have stuff like Miniplanets popping up at about the same time.

But yes, the reason I had asked for the pics originally is because I recalled from many years ago that his concept art was attempting to look like the Mega Drive counterparts, so I wanted to see how far that could be (theoretically) pushed.
OneCrudeDude wrote:While I'm not a fan of expanded audio, maybe this could use the VRC7 audio as well for that Genesis-y sound, but that's for another time.
Something that strikes me is that VRC7 remixes tend to sound rather similar to most Mega Drive tunes, which just goes to show how awfully underused 4-op FM was (since VRC7 is 2-op).
tokumaru wrote:I'm not a fan either, mainly because over half of the official consoles ever manufactured (according to Wikipedia) can't play expansion audio without modifications.
Not even including the expansion port? (OK, that would require an extra add-on in addition to the cartridge, but it should work, right?)
lidnariq
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Re: Some art from my old Sonic project

Post by lidnariq »

Sik wrote:show how awfully underused 4-op FM was (since VRC7 is 2-op).
Having used a soundcard with an on-die OPL3 (CM8738) for way too many years, I was struck by how insufficiently different 4-op sounded...
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tokumaru
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Re: Some art from my old Sonic project

Post by tokumaru »

psycopathicteen wrote:The extra pixel is red.
I see what's happening now... You probably looked at the Sonic in the first picture, but that one is horizontally stretched (sloppily, in MS Paint) to be closer to the aspect ratio of the NES (look how weird his right hand is). The image with a bunch of Sonics contains the original sprite, where the blue part is 16 pixels wide and the tan part is 8 pixels wide, for a total of 3 sprites for the head. Right next to it is an anti-aliased stretched version.
Sik wrote:I recalled from many years ago that his concept art was attempting to look like the Mega Drive counterparts
It was never my intention to make a direct port though, so zones would be 100% original (possibly taking cues from existing ones), and sprites would always be created from the ground up, using the originals for reference only.
Not even including the expansion port? (OK, that would require an extra add-on in addition to the cartridge, but it should work, right?)
The fact that you have to break the case in order to gain access to the expansion port is already a big let down for me. Also, I'm not aware of any easily/cheaply obtainable device that can be plugged to the expansion port for this purpose. It appears that there isn't even a consensus about which cartridge pin should be used for the expansion audio.

I'm not terribly against audio expansions, but unfortunately Nintendo didn't make all consoles with the same capabilities, and to me it wouldn't feel right to have my game working correctly only on some units. It's the same reason why I don't think it's right to make use of the extended VBlank time of PAL consoles without a fallback solution for NTSC.

To add to the trouble, recreating these sound chips doesn't seem easy at all, seeing how Flash carts are always struggling to get them to sound right, not to mention mixing issues (I always see people complaining that certain sounds are too loud or too quiet).

I'm not an audiophile, I'm actually much more interested in the melodies than in the instruments being used to play them, and to me the 2A03 is capable of producing very interesting sounds by itself.
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Re: Some art from my old Sonic project

Post by Sik »

tokumaru wrote:It was never my intention to make a direct port though, so zones would be 100% original (possibly taking cues from existing ones), and sprites would always be created from the ground up, using the originals for reference only.
Well I meant art style-wise.
tokumaru wrote:The fact that you have to break the case in order to gain access to the expansion port is already a big let down for me.
Huh, I thought it had a lid to open it or something =| (I never had a NES, only Famicom/clones)
tokumaru wrote:It's the same reason why I don't think it's right to make use of the extended VBlank time of PAL consoles without a fallback solution for NTSC.
At this point I'm not allowed to make games that don't account for the speed difference either =P (by general rule it's better to make the game for NTSC and then use the extra vblank time in PAL to perform game logic (sans-drawing) twice every 5 frames)
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tokumaru
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Re: Some art from my old Sonic project

Post by tokumaru »

Sik wrote:Huh, I thought it had a lid to open it or something =|
I'm not 100% sure, but I think you have to break/cut it.
At this point I'm not allowed to make games that don't account for the speed difference either =P
I'm not forbidding anyone else from doing whatever they want, I'm just explaining the reasoning behind my own decisions. =)
(by general rule it's better to make the game for NTSC and then use the extra vblank time in PAL to perform game logic (sans-drawing) twice every 5 frames)
That's one way to do it, but while 70 scanlines is a lot of VBlank time, it's still much less than the 240 that the game logic normally has, and skipping drawing for a frame might have disastrous consequences for the background.

I never got around to solving this problem, but my intention was to adjust the physics parameters to account for the lower frame rate, but that wasn't so high on my list, specially considering that most commercial games from back in the day didn't do anything about it and nobody seemed to care (Europeans probably didn't notice anything until they saw footage of games they were familiar with running on NTSC hardware).
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thefox
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Re: Some art from my old Sonic project

Post by thefox »

tokumaru wrote:
Sik wrote:Huh, I thought it had a lid to open it or something =|
I'm not 100% sure, but I think you have to break/cut it.
Yes, there's a lid, and under it is a piece of plastic that has to be cut (comes off fairly easily though).
Download STREEMERZ for NES from fauxgame.com! — Some other stuff I've done: fo.aspekt.fi
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tokumaru
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Re: Some art from my old Sonic project

Post by tokumaru »

thefox wrote:Yes, there's a lid, and under it is a piece of plastic that has to be cut (comes off fairly easily though).
Ah, so it's both! =)

Such a weird choice Nintendo made... Cutting/breaking plastic is not something ordinary consumers do.
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Re: Some art from my old Sonic project

Post by Sik »

tokumaru wrote:I never got around to solving this problem, but my intention was to adjust the physics parameters to account for the lower frame rate, but that wasn't so high on my list,
This is what Project MD does, and it's awfully hard to get right. Besides being forced to use good subpixel accuracy, there's the issue that acceleration is non-trivial to adjust and you'll most likely resort to trial and error to tweak the values until they seem correct. Also, since practically none of the values is integer anymore (even dumb stuff like a silly animation counter) you have to account for the fact that a variable may never pass through a given value, ruling out equal / not equal comparisons.
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Re: Some art from my old Sonic project

Post by tepples »

Sik wrote:[Adjusting physics for 50 or 60 Hz machines is] awfully hard to get right. Besides being forced to use good subpixel accuracy, there's the issue that acceleration is non-trivial to adjust
It's not that hard. Accelerations need to be 44% greater on a 50 Hz console. The duration of the time quantum of a 50 Hz console is 1.2 times that of a 60 Hz console, and the acceleration unit contains that unit squared.
Also, since practically none of the values is integer anymore (even dumb stuff like a silly animation counter)
Unless it's a counter derived from 10 Hz. Animations of walking characters in Thwaite and RHDE are based on a variable counting from 0 to 5 on NTSC or 0 to 4 on PAL. So is missile spawning and cooldown. Clocking a 10 Hz animation on a particular value or clocking a 20 Hz animation on 0 and 3 or 1 and 4 can produce good results.
you have to account for the fact that a variable may never pass through a given value, ruling out equal / not equal comparisons.
Defensive programming likely ruled out non-equal in the first place.
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OneCrudeDude
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Re: Some art from my old Sonic project

Post by OneCrudeDude »

tokumaru wrote: Such a weird choice Nintendo made... Cutting/breaking plastic is not something ordinary consumers do.
A good guess would be that Nintendo was planning on putting the FDS out for the United States, but saw literally no reason for it since cartridges superseded the only advantage the diskettes had. So Nintendo likely had the audio lines cut out so that they could be re-connected just for the FDS, and not for anyone else. It sounds kind of odd putting it that way, but considering Nintendo was very controlling of their console, it wouldn't be surprising that Nintendo did that so that they could maximize their cartridge profits.
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