240p test suite

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tokumaru
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Re: 240p test suite

Post by tokumaru »

Palette changes might be a problem if sprites are moving in front of the picture.
tepples
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Re: 240p test suite

Post by tepples »

Good job so far 43110, but tokumaru has a point. I'm fine with dithering the cap, which frees up one palette. Now how can it be done without a palette split? I've marked attribute boundaries in otherwise blank 16x16 areas.
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darryl.revok,tepples,43110 - Gus with dithered cap.png
darryl.revok,tepples,43110 - Gus with dithered cap.png (2.8 KiB) Viewed 13988 times
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darryl.revok
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Re: 240p test suite

Post by darryl.revok »

Coming along well. I see some eye size issues I need to fix. (See how much of the sclera is visible in one eye vs. the other)

Thoughts about palettes: I would have added a second layer of shadow for the rest of the image, had I done it in full color. I just did the shading on the hat during sketching because I felt it was necessary to define the shape. I know we don't have palettes for more colors, but do you guys think the shadow layers in the other colors should be represented through dithering? The tongue color could probably be a decent shadow color for the skin if that's possible.

I think it's going to be inevitable that some colors will have to be removed, right? How can we address this? Perhaps if we use the darker skin tone as one of the main colors for his clothes, and for the other article, we may have to use the color from his hat. Does anyone see any other options? Recycling colors seems to be the only choice.
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darryl.revok
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Re: 240p test suite

Post by darryl.revok »

Okay so I still want to do some more work on it but I wanted to see what you guys thought of the colors I used.

I got it down to four palettes. I don't think there are any palette boundary issues but I didn't check extremely closely.
GusPossibleNewColor.png
GusPossibleNewColor.png (5.48 KiB) Viewed 13926 times
I would say that the torso looks flat in comparison to the head due to lack of shading. Should I dither the arms and hand?
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Drew Sebastino
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Re: 240p test suite

Post by Drew Sebastino »

Honestly I really don't like anime at all (even though I plan on visiting Japan someday... :oops: I've already been to Hawaii so I guess I'm halfway there. :lol: ) so maybe this is "normal" or something, but what would be the right side of his face (left to us) looks really peculiar, as if his cheek was smashed in by a bowling ball, so instead of making it concave, I made it convex like a normal face:
Normal Face Shape.png
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Also, why dither the clothing if the face is hardly shaded at all, save for that one side? (I tried to copy how you had it) The cap looks really shaded, but that's about it
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Re: 240p test suite

Post by tepples »

Good job on palette reduction.

The face needs less dithering for a couple reasons.
  1. We have a dark color, which we reuse for his tongue. This makes two shades: full and shadow.
  2. Subsurface scattering, which dominates the light from human skin, keeps the lighting more even anyway.
In my opinion, what needs to be shaded are inner corners, such as between each arm and the torso, following the principle of ambient occlusion. The less-lit bottom side of his mitten might use some shading as well. (Wind has "windward" and "leeward"; what are the corresponding terms for light?) But in these cases, you might be able to get away with just making the lines thicker to suggest shading.

credit: darryl.revok/tepples/43110/Espozo
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darryl.revok
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Re: 240p test suite

Post by darryl.revok »

Espozo wrote:so maybe this is "normal" or something
There's an indention on the side of your head (well... I haven't seen YOUR head but I'm guessing it's the same) where your eye socket is. Then it puffs out at the cheek and curves down to the chin. Lowering this jawline helps to define a character as a child or female.

Your way may be a bit less typical for anime but everybody has their own styles. I think if we made a bit of an indention for the eye socket, and then curve out to the cheek and down to the jaw like you have it, would be a pretty good middle-ground.
the face is hardly shaded at all, save for that one side
Palette limitations reduced the amount of shading I wanted to have. There should be a shadow dropped under his chin, and the shading on the right side of his face (left side of the picture) had to be simplified to fit into palette boundaries. Nor was I able to shade under his eyebrows as I wanted.

Even just the little bit of shading on the head to me makes the body and arms look flat by comparison. The shading on the head isn't ideal but it still adds a little bit of volume.
tepples wrote:In my opinion, what needs to be shaded are inner corners, such as between each arm and the torso, following the principle of ambient occlusion. The less-lit bottom side of his mitten might use some shading as well.
That's exactly what I was thinking.
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Re: 240p test suite

Post by tepples »

Thanks. Tonight I plan to make a compromise between the cheek bone shapes in the most recent versions by darryl.revok and Espozo, so I can push out 0.03 with code for displaying the portrait. That'll at least give me a chance to see how many tiles I'm dealing with, so we know how much space there is for shading on the body. Any ideas for the 32x32 enemy sprite or the scrolling background?
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darryl.revok
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Re: 240p test suite

Post by darryl.revok »

If you'd like I can whip up a version with some new line-work and shading, or if it helps to wait until you see how many tiles you'll need, that's cool too.

Either way, if everybody else who worked on it is cool with it, I wanted to make sure whatever rights there are to the image get transferred to tepples so he can do whatever he wants with the program; put it on a dev tool compilation cart or just distribute it online or whatever, without having to ask or anything.
Any ideas for the 32x32 enemy sprite or the scrolling background?
I'd be happy to help with this but it would be fun if somebody else would start the next one out.

How about a character and environment from your character's world? It seems like you've got everything pretty well thought out. Have you considering making a game about it? That's what President was going to be, right?
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tokumaru
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Re: 240p test suite

Post by tokumaru »

Espozo wrote:Honestly I really don't like anime at all
I don't have anything against the current portrait (besides the hand, which is a bit weird), but you can go anime without going chibi/deformed, if that's what bothers you. Just for the record, here's my attempt at a grown-up version of the character:
anime-legless-guy.png
Admittedly, the hand is still a little off...! :lol:
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darryl.revok
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Re: 240p test suite

Post by darryl.revok »

Pretty cool, tokumaru! I dig it.
Espozo wrote:Honestly I really don't like anime at all
Just guessing from your tastes, I have a feeling if you saw some of the darker anime from the 80s/early 90s you might enjoy it.

Are you familiar with Akira or Ninja Scroll?
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Re: 240p test suite

Post by tepples »

I fixed the cheeks and did other tweaks all around. The trickiest part was the boundary between the mitten and the vest. Because there's no black+background+vest+mitten palette, I had to move the mitten to the left by about 6 pixels to get it and the vest to touch at the corner of a 16x16 area. I ended up with 213 tiles and thus a trivial display routine. It can be viewed in "Shadow sprite", which I'll finish once I have the rest of the art.
gus_portrait.png
gus_portrait.png (4.7 KiB) Viewed 13757 times
Go ahead and fix the lines and shading if you think it'll make it look better.

0.03 (2015-11-05)
  • PLUGE: Added choice of gray ($2D) instead of color ($04+$0A) outer bars (requested by lidnariq)
  • PLUGE: Added choice of gray emphasis (requested by lidnariq)
  • IRE: Added bottom level of black on below-black
  • Unified planned Drop shadow sprite and Striped sprite
  • Shadow sprite: Added an anime-style illustration of the mascot by darryl.revok, replacing motoko.bmp
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240pee-0.03.zip
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Drew Sebastino
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Re: 240p test suite

Post by Drew Sebastino »

Wait a minute, this is extremely obvious (although no one ever said anything) but why not also use sprites? Also, the head actually resembles a human's now!
darryl.revok wrote:Just guessing from your tastes, I have a feeling if you saw some of the darker anime from the 80s/early 90s you might enjoy it. Are you familiar with Akira or Ninja Scroll?
Nope. Looked up Akira. Didn't get it. Looked up Ninja Scroll and out if the entire Wikipedia article, this is what I first found...
The only survivor is Kagero, who is captured and is sexually assaulted by a huge stone demon called Tessai. Before Tessai can rape her, however, she is rescued by Jubei, who blinds him in one eye.
Sound exactly like what I'd want to see! :roll:

Yeah...
Rated PG.png
Actually, now that I think about it, there is one anime I like... :lol:

Image
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tokumaru
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Re: 240p test suite

Post by tokumaru »

Espozo wrote:Wait a minute, this is extremely obvious (although no one ever said anything) but why not also use sprites?
I'm pretty sure sprites were mentioned, and tepples said he needed them all for a couple of moving boxes or something that are part of the test.
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tokumaru
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Re: 240p test suite

Post by tokumaru »

If you're looking for anime with more-mature-than-usual stories that don't involve rapist demons, I'll recommend 2 of my favorite anime of all time: the Rurouni Kenshin Tsuioku-hen OVAs (there are 4 parts, it's a sort of prequel to the series, but with a very different tone) and the series (not the movie, which is boring and depressing as fuck!) "X", based on the manga by Clamp. Both have English dubs, but I definitely recommend the originals.
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