5be8d7 No.18753
Here is the deal. I am curious about something 8bit... or supposedly. The thing is, I am curious to how authentic a game must be when it claims it is 8bit. Would you rather a game look 8bit, by that I mean, adhering to the limitations of the NES, or would you rather it just look nice. Meaning not forcing the limitations for the sake of shoehorning authentication. How do you feel about this /agdg/?
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5be8d7 No.18760
"Retro-style"? Depends. I'll accept anything up to SNESish graphics (broad color palette, maybe you can get away with rotation on sprites) and tracker music (samples are ok as long as they aren't too huge and you're mostly leaning on looping ones), as long as you get the fundamentals right (like "aligning to the pixel grid"/rendering to a lower-res buffer and scaling it up) and the combination of audio and visual features is somewhat plausible (like don't mix 16 color lowres pixel art graphics with multiple background layers or scaled and rotated sprites).
"8bit"? Fuck you. Unless you've actually programmed for the system you're trying to emulate, it's almost a guarantee that you're going to vastly overshoot the capabilities of the system you're trying to emulate and produce something that makes no sense.
Either make an actual retro homebrew game, or do your own thing with limitations you chose and stop cheapening the legacy of these systems.
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5be8d7 No.18763
>>18760
>"8bit"? Fuck you. Unless you've actually programmed for the system you're trying to emulate, it's almost a guarantee that you're going to vastly overshoot the capabilities of the system you're trying to emulate and produce something that makes no sense.
Yikes man, did I sense a bit of hostility there?
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5be8d7 No.18771
>>18763
I kind of understand his reaction. NES limitations are a serious thing and, by current standards, are gruesome. I can't really find the article, but things like screen scrolling only in one direction or blinking sprites were performance optimizations. Your average retro-indie game requires million times greater processing powers than NES could provide. I don't think anyone actually wrote a "true 8-bit" game with an intention to sell it or to show it to wide audience (unless it was a hobbyist NES programming conference or something) in past 10 years.
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5be8d7 No.18772
>>18763
To be clear, I wasn't saying "fuck you" to you. I was saying "fuck you" to indie hipster retards that randomly slap shit together without understanding why the hardware had those restrictions in the first place, then call it "8bit."
>>18771
Pretty much this. I've done some retroprogramming, but not a whole game, so I can answer some questions if anyone is curious.
For example, there is a hard limit of 8 (8x8 or 8x16) sprites per scanline on the NES (with similar limits on most other systems with hardware sprites). It's impossible to display any more than that, no tricks can get around it. If you try, the first 8 sprites on that line in OAM (the sprite descriptor table) will get displayed, and everything else will be hidden.
Sprite flicker is an intentionally programmed effect, so that if (say) too many enemy appear on the same scanline, you can still see all of them instead of having one suddenly disappear complete.
Multi-directional scrolling is more difficult to program than one-directional scrolling on any platform, but the main reason for its difficulty on the NES is pretty NES-specific. The NES's backgrounds are conceptually organized into two screens, that can either be placed to the left and right of each other, or on top of one another. This makes it very easy to create levels than infinitely scroll in one direction: as you scroll past a part of the background, you overwrite it with new tiles, and when you reach the end of the virtual "screen" and wrap back around, the new screen will be there.
But then, how do you implement multi-directional scrolling like this? With only one screen of vertical height, for instance (in horizontal scrolling mode), any vertical scrolling will result in the top part of the screen immediately poking its head out of the bottom. There's no extra room to place new parts of the background.
In practice, your options are to use various hacks to hide these scrolling artifacts (either using timed code to blank out the first and last lines with a 1-screen tall screen, or by wasting sprites to cover the left and right borders on a 1-screen wide screen), hope that no one will notice the artifacts (plausible on NTSC, which crops more of the image vertically than PAL), or include an extra RAM chip in the cartridge for storing 4 "screens worth" of background at once.
Later 2D consoles don't have this problem, because they use background layers that are just slightly larger in both directions than the displayable screen, so that you always have a small amount of room to place new tiles onto. If Nintendo had realized the troubles of multidirectional scrolling before making the NES, they could have done the same and actually saved VRAM (potentially even enough to lift the 2x2 color palette grid restriction) by doing so.
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5be8d7 No.18774
>>18771
Only game I can immediately think of is Battle Kid 1 and 2, and those are actually on the NES
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5be8d7 No.18779
>>18760
>>18771
I think Steel Assault and Shovel Knight did it fairly right. I feel that as long as you make a coherent set of restrictions for the visual aspect of the game and stay true to it, it's okay in my book.
The only thing I don't tolerate is music. Famitracker exists for a reason. If you dump six square synths into a tracker, add real drums and reverb, and call it "retro" you should consider downing a tall glass of bleach.
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5be8d7 No.18784
>>18772
I feel that adhering only having N sprites on screen, or that background tiles can't be animated is artificially limiting yourself.
However, following a limited palette of a specific resolution is an aesthetic choice that can emulate the feeling of retro-styled games. Seriously, even the SNES gets 32,768 colors to pick from, you can be incredibly liberal with your choices and still have it look old fashioned
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5be8d7 No.19365
>>18753
I want a game to be good and be decently looking.
I'd rather play with simple yet elegantly good looking basic forms than with shitty looking elaborate art.
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5be8d7 No.19368
>>18784
The entire thing is about artificially limiting yourself, ya dingus. Pick limitations that make sense and stick with them.
Someone once said that poetry would be no fun without rhyme and meter. Like tennis without a net.
Doing the best you can within limitations is a very fun challenge.
I used to make S3M music back in the day. 16 channels. I tried making a 4 channel MOD and it was my best song ever. Because I had to think inside limitations, and maximize effect that way.
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5be8d7 No.19371
>>18784
The entire thing is about artificially limiting yourself, ya dingus. Pick limitations that make sense and stick with them.
Someone once said that poetry would be no fun without rhyme and meter. Like tennis without a net.
Doing the best you can within limitations is a very fun challenge.
I used to make S3M music back in the day. 16 channels. I tried making a 4 channel MOD and it was my best song ever. Because I had to think inside limitations, and maximize effect that way.
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5be8d7 No.19420
Why not just make an actual NES game?
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5be8d7 No.19435
>>19420
Assembly programming is hard.
As for OP, if you want to advertise your game as being 8bit you have to adhere to the limitations. If you do not, don't use the term and correct anyone who tries to use that term to describe your game. Simple as that.
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5be8d7 No.19471
YouTube embed. Click thumbnail to play.
>>18753
>>18760
Just make the game you want to me, don't care what other people think. If you need to use minimal art styles, it's fine. Just don't go full hipster or full chinese ripoff like vid related (Alien Swarm / Alien Breed)
If you actually put tons of effort in and have a judgement of quality and style, you won't produce something completely shit. And shitty, retro wannabe non hipster games are still better than producing NOTHING and learning NOTHING for all the time you put in. You will eventually get better but your first 10 games will be shit
http://indiegames.com/2014/01/to_aspiring_indie_devs_-_forge.html
The important thing is learning. The key is to actually accomplish something, APPLY YOURSELF. Stop talking about it and get your hands dirty like that "I was programming since XZ spectrum" programmer story.
Just start producing games. THEN you will get a good feel for what works, what's hipster garbage. By that point it really doesn't matter what it took to get there and what shitty projects you did.
Oh and don't go full AAA either because they don't have a shred of self respect, originality, passion for creating something more than an interactive movie.
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5be8d7 No.24569
>>18779
Can anyone tell me how to pick accurate colors for a palette? Were there any colors the NES couldn't display?
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5be8d7 No.24573
>>24569
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_game_console_palettes#Famicom.2FNES
Three colors + transparency per sprite, four colors per background tile. Most anything you'd really need is there for color data, unless you wanted to go full on accurate.
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5be8d7 No.24575
>>18779
>make a coherent set of restrictions for the visual aspect of the game
This. If you want to go for something that has a believable pre-SNES look even for a semi-casual observer who lived through that time, don't use translucent effects anywhere. Avoid mixels (pixels of variable size).
I don't think there are many fans of sprite flicker, so that's where not being authentic is the most tolerated. That said, I think going the extra-mile and making graphics constrained based on what a specific old console could display is worth it (even if your code isn't an actually compatible rom). Working with hard constraints will make your mind sharper. Necessity is the mother of invention.
If the NES turns out to be too much of a caveman console for you (but try it first), check out what the PC Engine could do.
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5be8d7 No.24581
>>24569
Here is the Sega Genesis color palette.
It allowed for 64 on screen colors at a time. All colors were selected from one of the three palettes, light, medium or dark.
I found pic related where someone tried sorting the colors by hue, saturation and lightness but I think they fucked up and should have done two separate sorts for the hue axis.
Most games only used the midrange color palette not the light or dark. Games that used light or dark typically only did so when remapping the palettes to create a smooth fade out to white or black (and fade in).
Sonic 2 used a trick where it got up to 128 colors on screen by executing a palette swap after a certain scan line was rendered. This is how the tinted water works. Which scan line the palette was swapped on was varied to match the water level on screen, and the transition obscured by some sprites.
Unfortunately most all image editing programs suck at manipulating a 512 color palette. IIRC, the coder wrote a custom program to generate this image for the artist.
I could probably make a better palette organization, but this has worked out OK for me so far.
Personally, I think setting some hard limits such as per-level on screen color count, max sprite size, palette and/or color depth (3 bits per color = 512 color palette), etc. helps "retro styled" games have a cohesive schway look and feel rather than becoming derezzed soycaf* due to mediocre pixel art being marginally easier produce than high res art.
* Cheap Low-Fi Shit
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5be8d7 No.24583
>>24581
>3 bits per color
I mean, 3 bits per channel, R, G, B, which is 9 total bits per color, 512 possible colors.
Sega Genesis / Megadrive was 16 bit. Besides having a smaller palette, its graphics were less advanced than SNES (namely, Megadrive did not support arbitrary sprite rotation or additive blends in system hardware as the SNES did).
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5be8d7 No.24602
>>24583
SNES does not support arbitrary sprite rotation. It has a single transformable background layer when in mode 7, that's it.
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5be8d7 No.24606
i am tired of seen cube in everthing.
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5be8d7 No.24901
>>18779
Fuck those guys though. They completely changed their concept to a Genesis title after everything they've already done.
Another kickstarter did the exact same thing. First itt was a nes game now it's a damn arcade game.
I hope someday we get a proper game like this.
The NES version looks fine too.
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5be8d7 No.27775
>>18753
My biggest pet peeve in "retro-style" games is inconsistent pixel size and interpolation. I can't fucking believe these things are so prevalent.
Rotating sprites can be okay if they're going 16-bit-esque, but I feel like it ought to be avoided more often than it is.
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5be8d7 No.27776
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>>18753
GMT put it nicely; with 8bit games, you're appealing to the audiences rose tinted sense of nostalgia, which has a lot of wiggle room. no one actually cares if the game is technically 8bit.
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5be8d7 No.27788
For me, it's about obeying the spirit of the law instead of the letter- clear and simple screens, simple, bright colors, and music that's focused on the melody instead of 'epic' backing since it's only going to play on one or two channels. This thread keeps bringing up Shovel Knight and for good reason- the article they wrote on their deviations from the NES is a pretty good answer to this question. http://archive.is/UTWWH
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5be8d7 No.27789
YouTube embed. Click thumbnail to play.
>8bit computers
>pic vaguely related to today's world
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5be8d7 No.27831
I started writing an SMS game once. Programmer art doesn't look so bad when compared to the rest of the garbage library on that machine.
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5be8d7 No.27848
>>18779
>I think Steel Assault and Shovel Knight did it fairly right.
That's really funny.
>>24569
Here's what colors you have to work with. The overall brightness and saturation can be up for interpretation because of the way televisions display color.
Also if you are going for an authentic aesthetic familiarize yourself with the Nes PPU. Specifically, look into shit like CHR (Pattern) tables, attribute tables, metatiles, and even to a degree memory mappers. There's so much shit that you have to take into account. Also there's no real good guide out there for this shit because fucking nobody gets it right. I might actually try to make one at some point
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5be8d7 No.27849
>>27848
Fuck my ass, this is what I meant to upload.
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5be8d7 No.27973
>>27848
>>27849
The most important part of making an NES-style game is to only use 3 colors per sprite (+ transparency). So choose any 3 colors from the NES palette table, and make a sprite.
Note that you can only use 4 palettes of 3 colors each at a time. So choose the colors carefully. You can swap palette colors to do fade in/out. This was a common NES technique. Same for screen flashes, etc.
Same goes for the backgrounds. You have 4 palettes of 3 colors each for each 16x16 tile. If you choose black that counts as a color. Note the palette for Metroid here. You can count only 3 distinct colors in each sprite, plus the transparency color.
It's an interesting exercise in self-limiting. Try making sprites and backgrounds using only 3 colors, 16x16. You'll find it's pretty difficult to convey what you want to. But it's a good challenge. Then, if you decide to add more colors, you'll have a much better idea of how you can use them.
https://wiki.nesdev.com/w/index.php/PPU_palettes
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5be8d7 No.28006
>>27831
Are there any resources for SMS development still?
That looks really neat actually.
How far did you get?
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5be8d7 No.28011
>>28006
>Are there any resources for SMS development still?
Check out SMSpower.
>How far did you get?
I got a character on-screen, moving, colliding with walls, jumping. I had platforms that were one-way (jump up through them and land on them). I had ladders. I wasn't scrolling the screen, though - I just flipped it to the next background when the player hit the edge. I had a utility to convert a 256x192 bitmap into a set of tiles for the background, and a utility for defining which tiles were solid/empty/ladders/doors.
Writing everything in straight assembly was sort of neat. Every trivial little thing turns into a puzzle. A one-liner 2D array access in C becomes its own little routine.
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5be8d7 No.28134
Is making an actual homebrew NES game a viable option for a solo developer?
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727b3e No.30560
use the ppu and apu core from a nes emulator but with modern control logic sans fpu arithmetic.
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727b3e No.30561
>>28134
nasir did it 30 years ago on an apple IIl
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426e18 No.30603
Don't forget to include a scanline filter, faggot. Sprite art doesn't look right without it. Basic lines are bare minimum, bonus if you can simulate the color bleeding effect.
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c11458 No.30607
>>18753
I would accept 8 bit for art style, but I would avoid imposing limitations of the 8 bit era if it meant a game would be worse off.
However, there can be things learned about keeping code compact in genreal by learning why nintendo programmed games the way they did in the 8 bit era.
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3cc775 No.31557
>>28134
Yes, in fact it looks like all modern NES development is done by one-man teams
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