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Good looking 8x8 or 8x16 pixels sprite games?

Posted: Sun Jun 10, 2018 2:48 pm
by nesrocks
Are there any good looking games where the characters are 8x8 pixels (a single sprite)? Preferably with a background collisions on single tiles too, even though that may prove computationally expensive. Or maybe a game with 8x16 sprite mode where it's still a single sprite. I've had this on my mind for a while to try and come up with something but I haven't the time for all the ideas I have. I was just wondering if someone already did some game in those lines.

A game on these restrictions could make for interesting designs in gameplay, and also be a challenge to make it look good, which would make it very impressive if it did.

Re: Good looking 8x8 or 8x16 pixels sprite games?

Posted: Sun Jun 10, 2018 3:30 pm
by dougeff
Sly Dog's Snail Maze uses 1 8x8 Sprite. And the Micro Knight games.

Re: Good looking 8x8 or 8x16 pixels sprite games?

Posted: Sun Jun 10, 2018 3:33 pm
by Kasumi
ROM City Rampage looks very good:
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But it's also MMC5.

Re: Good looking 8x8 or 8x16 pixels sprite games?

Posted: Sun Jun 10, 2018 3:37 pm
by nesrocks
Yeah I did a little test here and surprisingly (not) the sprite looked like a lemming and the playfield became a maze. Still far from looking good, and it seems really hard to do that.
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edit: didn't see Kasumi's post. Yeah that looks amazing! I see it does that 8x16 sprites mode. Well done indeed. And yes, mmc5 would be the mapper of choice for this.

Re: Good looking 8x8 or 8x16 pixels sprite games?

Posted: Sun Jun 10, 2018 3:46 pm
by FrankenGraphics
Have you seen this? Morphcat says on twitter it'll go on kickstarter soon.
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really good use of 8x8px actors to help with the 4 simultaneous players-centered design.

Re: Good looking 8x8 or 8x16 pixels sprite games?

Posted: Sun Jun 10, 2018 3:53 pm
by nesrocks
Amazing!!! Yeah I thought that it would benefit 4 players gameplay. The characters are beautiful and the bg art too. Actually way better than I thought possible. Although only some of the elements are 8x8, still, the most important ones are (the players).

Did some sprites:
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Re: Good looking 8x8 or 8x16 pixels sprite games?

Posted: Sun Jun 10, 2018 4:42 pm
by FrankenGraphics
Those are really nice looking! It is clear what they are and what they might do, + i think they have a bit of personality to them despite the low resolution.

This topic reminds me... Someone i know who's actually attended to game design classes and not just winging it from other random fields of experience -like me- made me aware quite recently that players will initially notice colour, then form. It might sound like a basic concept but it hadn't occurred to me before (i tend to put focus into the guiding aspect of animation and timing).

With such a limited resolution to design a character, i'm thinking that using colours to convey messages about function becomes all the more important? Not that it is mandatory, but probably a helpful tool, still.

Re: Good looking 8x8 or 8x16 pixels sprite games?

Posted: Sun Jun 10, 2018 6:05 pm
by Kasumi
Can't believe I forgot about Micro Mages!

Not specifically NES restrictions, but Bitslap does a bunch of very tiny things:
http://pixeljoint.com/pixelart/95253.htm 4x4 run cycle.
http://pixeljoint.com/pixelart/94971.htm Microvania

Edit: Another not specifically NES thing is Minitroid: https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=16085.0
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But I guess it's way easier to come up with not specifically NES things.

Re: Good looking 8x8 or 8x16 pixels sprite games?

Posted: Sun Jun 10, 2018 6:11 pm
by tepples
Smash TV uses 8x16-pixel sprites and doesn't look like complete crap.

Re: Good looking 8x8 or 8x16 pixels sprite games?

Posted: Sun Jun 10, 2018 6:54 pm
by nesrocks
@Frankengraphics: yeah, I think that at this resolution every aspect has to be really well done. When a single pixel is 1/64 of the image (or a lot more because you're probably not using all 64 pixels) you really need to make it count more than ever. I think he is right that the first thing to be noticed is color. It's also what makes us "group" things together.

@Kasumi holy maccaroni that run cycle is godly. Love the Microvania level set and sprites too O_O

@tepples yeah, the characters look so big! Hard to believe that they are 8x16, but I checked, it's true.
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Re: Good looking 8x8 or 8x16 pixels sprite games?

Posted: Sun Jun 10, 2018 7:10 pm
by lidnariq
Huh, that Microvania shot reminds me a tiny bit of Jetpack (video game).

Re: Good looking 8x8 or 8x16 pixels sprite games?

Posted: Mon Jun 11, 2018 8:11 am
by Dwedit
Any decent TI83 game had to make do with monochrome 8x8 sprites, and some of those games manage to look amazing despite that.

Edit: Here's what I did for Bubble Bobble on the TI83:
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8x8 sprites, all monochrome. It helps if you think of them as 10x10 sprites with a forced black outline.

Re: Good looking 8x8 or 8x16 pixels sprite games?

Posted: Mon Jun 11, 2018 8:28 am
by FrankenGraphics
Not that i know of any such game for the NES, but 8x16 hardware sprites without a meta level should do very well in sports games (maybe isometric ones?) where you need to view a large field and/or there are a lot of players. Football, soccer, etc. Maybe also real time strategy games (i guess the former might kind of fall into the later category).

Re: Good looking 8x8 or 8x16 pixels sprite games?

Posted: Mon Jun 11, 2018 10:43 am
by hackfresh
Tecmo Super Bowl uses 8x16 sprites for the players on the field.

Re: Good looking 8x8 or 8x16 pixels sprite games?

Posted: Mon Jun 11, 2018 11:37 am
by nesrocks
hackfresh wrote:Tecmo Super Bowl uses 8x16 sprites for the players on the field.
I don't think that's quite right... More like 2 sprites totalling 16x16 so it's like most games (16x16 characters).
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