MMC1-5 Graphic Limitations

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WizardBones
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Re: MMC1-5 Graphic Limitations

Post by WizardBones »

tokumaru wrote: Another game that got away with using a lot of sprites per scanline is Felix the Cat... not only Felix can use all sorts of vehicles and attacks that consume a lot of sprites, but the game can only display 7 sprites per scanline instead of 8, because it uses a tall column of solid black sprites on the far right of the screen to hide background scrolling glitches!
Man i love Felix the cat! I was playing it recently actually loll. Gonna take a look at it again with scanlines in mine.
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tokumaru
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Re: MMC1-5 Graphic Limitations

Post by tokumaru »

Be sure to check if your emulador isn't configured to allow unlimited sprites per scanline, sometimes they come like that. It's an "enhancement" that eliminates flickering, but breaks some effects that rely on lower priority sprites disappearing. Felix the Cat is actually an example of this: when Felix goes inside a bag, he's supposed to disappear he moves down, but in many YouTube videos of the game the effect is broken.

Our wiki has a page listing games that have masking effects like this.

EDIT: Koitsu beat me to it.
Last edited by tokumaru on Wed Sep 14, 2016 4:18 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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koitsu
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Re: MMC1-5 Graphic Limitations

Post by koitsu »

Re: sprite overflow / unlimited sprites per scanline: here's a list of games that break if you turn such a feature on, and what the effect is: https://wiki.nesdev.com/w/index.php/Spr ... flow_games
WizardBones
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Re: MMC1-5 Graphic Limitations

Post by WizardBones »

I been wondering about that, if emulators affect the game somewhat. I've seen with a couple games the sprites arnt exactly how they are suppose to look. Minimal but notice things looking stretched almost by a pixel or two.
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tokumaru
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Re: MMC1-5 Graphic Limitations

Post by tokumaru »

WizardBones wrote:I been wondering about that, if emulators affect the game somewhat.
Another common thing they do (also evidenced by YouTube videos) is crop to top and bottom 8 scanlines of the picture, reducing the vertical resolution from 240 to 224. The NES ALWAYS outputs 240 scanlines, but NTSC televisions often hide some of the top and bottom, conveniently hiding glitches that some vertical scrolling games have. PAL televisions usually show the whole picture, though.

Those scanlines never have anything important (developers knew that they could be hidden by the television), so this doesn't affect gameplay in any significant way, but as a developer, I like to see the entire picture that my programs are generating, so I always change this in the emulators I use.
I've seen with a couple games the sprites arnt exactly how they are suppose to look. Minimal but notice things looking stretched almost by a pixel or two.
Many emulators don't simulate the correct pixel aspect ratio of the NES. Computer pixels are usually square (1:1), but NES pixels are slightly wider: 8:7. This means that the correct picture is slightly stretched horizontally (reference).

As an artist, another thing you should take into account are NTSC artifacts. The PPU uses some cheap tricks to generate the video signal, and that results in funny effects depending on the colors of neighboring pixels. Always try to preview your graphics under blargg's NTSC filter (many emulator have it, but if for some reason you can't make a ROM with your graphics, you can use this) or on a real NES to make sure that your colors and patterns aren't doing anything undesirable. In many cases you can use the NTSC artifacts to your advantage, because they can create the illusion of more colors and textures (scroll this page down to the Solstice screenshots and look how the composite shot has much more depth, texture and color than the crispy clear alternatives - the folds on his clothes, the volume of the hands, the texture of the block, etc.).
WizardBones
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Re: MMC1-5 Graphic Limitations

Post by WizardBones »

This is the best forum, you guys know everythinggggg, thanks man.
tokumaru wrote:
Always try to preview your graphics under blargg's NTSC filter (many emulator have it, but if for some reason you can't make a ROM with your graphics.
I haven't tried to make a ROM, I do need to learn. I have worked with other stuff that's irrelevant to this forum, but never with NES or assembler, so I wouldn't know where to start to make a ROM yet. But I should start looking into it. Although I wanna put my focus into the art, getting a ROM up and going just to preview art would be ideal. hmm
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