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Quick question on Renegade/Target Renegade graphics

Started by sigh, 17:17, 07 December 10

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sigh

Some new ground damage ideas for the next screen:



Going to chop up this screen into the rest of the tiles.

steve

Perhaps you could put holes in the road that characters could fall into, and the characters ought to trip on the cracks in the road as well.

sigh

Quote from: steve on 14:57, 16 February 11
Perhaps you could put holes in the road that characters could fall into, and the characters ought to trip on the cracks in the road as well.

Holes are nice - like the bit in double dragon, though not for this level. No point wasting sprite space for trip animations.

viddi

I love your art, sigh.

Keep up the good work. :)

sigh

@viddi - Thanks!

I've been trying to optimize the background tiles and have had to cut down on the shutter texture, road and pavement (if there's space left I'll add them back in). It's around 84 tiles(8x16) for this screen and takes up around 1/3 of a 160x200 sheet:



I can make different length shutters and windows out of these. Next screen will have a sign, lampost, door(re-usable) and a non re-usable poster. These should probably take 2 rows of tile space. I've never done tiling before and it's a very back and forth process.

MacDeath

#130
QuoteUnlimited sprites on the plus? keep dreaming
Was talking about the palette, 4096 enables a great choice in greys per example... :D

But i also love the challenge to compose on the CPC old palette.


BTW your new Asphalt is incredibly better...

go on keep the good work ! :)


But I continue to tell that you should use a few dots of black (a few...) for the texture in addition to dark cyan.

Not as many as I put in the past mockup (with the old asphalt texure...)
Just a few dots...

There...
those are exemples...
But I must Admit I did it fast, would need to be done more seriously (the black dots on the mockup are done randomly...

also added few Black dots in the brickwall... this adds shadows so more contrast.



just suggestions of course.

The greatness of CPC : no colour attributes... so no limitations  per charazcters compaired to c64...
You can place your 16 inks everywhere you want...

one well placed dot/pixel can make the difference.

sigh

Those black dots still dont work. If you were to blow up the picture to 300% they look very distracting in my opinion and just looks like noise. The cracks are are enough and with the black dots peppered all over the road, again they're just screaming at you. Apart from the cracks, I want the black to only be used in the background only as you get more of a light to dark effect(light foreground to dark background)

For the bricks, I wouldn't use the black in that way. I would use them to differentiate between the height and depth of the bricks which I already have done (bottom right corner). Placing the pixels in the middle of the bricks doesn't give it any more contrast, but making the the black go around the bricks will break up the tiling a bit( however, I know that you did this quickly.)

With the backgrounds on ink styling, you can't overwork them as there's going to be a lot happening when your actually playing the game.

Edit: Attempting to draw an estate in black and blue for screen 3 with as little as 10 pieces.

STE86

hello. i am still watching this one ;)

my advice would be to keep the road fairly bland and just do what you are doing with the cracks. you do not have the luxury of defining spurious numbers of tiles and filling RAM to create "random" looking road detail with dots (this is where character based screen displays tend to win out).

added to the fact that without a darker grey at 2:1 res they do look bloody awful. and please don't resort to a repeating tile pattern which i have also seen suggested on here :) .

you could however add a bit more "street" detail with:

puddles, drains, drainpipes up the side of the buildings, fire escape ladders, newspapers/litter, bins, manhole covers, and if you really want to chuck in a splash of colour....Coke cans.

if you have tile space you could also add things like a street basketball court with chainlink fence etc.

indeed, if you need inspiration (and can search for and download torrents) i would advise watching a couple of movies "the wanderers (1979)" and especially "the warriors (1979)" which would be just what u need to get the juices flowing (fights in parks, streets, trains, even public toilets :) )

best of luck

Steve


sigh

Yeah - there wont be any repeating patterns. I can make different cracks with the tiles I have. Also with the peppered light green/cyan tiles,  I can vary it quite a bit due to the fact that I have a tile that is just plain grey with nothing on it. I can mix that with odd peppered bits here and there.

The inspiration is from the buildings around me and different parts of the city that I'm living in so there is an abundance of things that I can mix match from looking at those. The street I'm living on for instance - just further down the road is a disused power station in the background. There's also some heavy road works going on and a sprawling estate along with a skateboard/BMX park, which would be nice to get in.

sigh

Okay. Everything seems to be going fine apart from one thing that I'm a little confused about. I've been told by some artits that my tile sheet of 160x200 (the one I posted) is actually 80x200 pixels as widepixel is technically a single pixel as far as storage is concerned. I'm a little confused as that would mean I actually have twice as much space than I realized.

Is this true? Shall I just carry on as is? Would this be a programming problem (although I'm sure I would of been told by now...)



Edit: Imported this into "Mappy Editor" and everything looks as it should be.

andycadley

Quote from: sigh on 22:51, 20 February 11
Okay. Everything seems to be going fine apart from one thing that I'm a little confused about. I've been told by some artits that my tile sheet of 160x200 (the one I posted) is actually 80x200 pixels as widepixel is technically a single pixel as far as storage is concerned. I'm a little confused as that would mean I actually have twice as much space than I realized.
Yes, it is true. Mode 0 on the CPC is 160x200 but the aspect ratio means that pixels are twice as wide as they are high. It's not a problem for your graphics as you're clearly taking that into account, but it does mean that a full screen should be 320x200 'square' pixels wide to end up with the equivalent amount of 'fat' pixels on it.
I shouldn't worry too much about it though, as whatever process is used to convert the images to the CPC can easily accomodate rearranging the tiles in memory in whatever way is most suitable for the code.

sigh

Quote from: andycadley on 03:56, 21 February 11
Yes, it is true. Mode 0 on the CPC is 160x200 but the aspect ratio means that pixels are twice as wide as they are high. It's not a problem for your graphics as you're clearly taking that into account, but it does mean that a full screen should be 320x200 'square' pixels wide to end up with the equivalent amount of 'fat' pixels on it.
I shouldn't worry too much about it though, as whatever process is used to convert the images to the CPC can easily accomodate rearranging the tiles in memory in whatever way is most suitable for the code.
I'm going to ask a silly question here, but does that mean I can/could actually have more animation along with more background graphic tiles without stressing so much about RAM space? If so, then I'm going to add a female playable character in the game. It will also mean that I wont have to compromise the backgrounds so much when making things tileable.

ervin

Hi sigh.

Love your work with those sprites and backgrounds. Absolutely stunning.

Just to clarify, a full mode 0 screen (160x200) takes up 16K of RAM.
It's not 80x200 pixels, but 80x200 bytes. Mode 0 has 2 pixels per byte.

You'd probably get more useful info from more experienced coders around these parts, but I just wanted to clear up that point.

Keep up the excellent work!

andycadley

Quote from: sigh on 11:29, 21 February 11
I'm going to ask a silly question here, but does that mean I can/could actually have more animation along with more background graphic tiles without stressing so much about RAM space? If so, then I'm going to add a female playable character in the game. It will also mean that I wont have to compromise the backgrounds so much when making things tileable.
Well the tilemap you posted previously would've required 8K in total, if you were assuming that was going to need 16K then you have twice as much RAM as you thought.

sigh

So that whole area of the tile map I posted is only 8kb.

So all this time when I've been creating canvas sizes in the art package of 160x200 and placing the tiles and sprite animations(legs/torso) thinking that because 160x200 is 16kb - that was what I had filled up, when in fact I've only used 8kb.
For instance, I have 4 sheets for the sprites and 1 for the background. In my mind I thought I had used 80 Kb, when in fact it looks like I've only used 40Kb.

This means I can add in another playable character with a whole new set of animations. This is good news as I was worried about the stage with the females as they need seperate leg sprites

Mode 0 - 2pixels = 1 byte.

However, having finished animating the main character with the current work method I had employed, I'll just carry on as is.
For the backgrounds, I'll make use of those extra bytes.

sigh

Just thinking - this game looks as though it may end up on more than 1 disk! ;D

Gryzor

That road and that alley looks really great; they could easily come from a best-selling game from back in time...

Nice thing, about how much memory those tiles take :D Until I saw your last post I was wondering what limit you have set. If it's going to be disk only then presumably multiload won't be a problem and the limit is theoretical... so why stress so much? :) You could even have a mid-level 'big fight' sort of thing (like a mini-boss fight, see Silkworm) and load the next half of the level which could have slightly different gfx or different elements... I mean, after all, how long can a back alley be? ;)

MacDeath

#142
You seem right about the 160x200 tilesheet being actually 80x200...

Modern PC don't know what a non-square pixel is...
So yeah we often "double" the pixels in order to have a "as it would look on CPC" display...

But this can lead to a few anoyance or miscalculations...
advantageous in this case...
;)

If you are to get a lot of multiloadings and brand new tileset for even each sublevel...
Then you may get shitton of graphics provided you produce them.

A full 16K of tiles is actually a lot for a CPC.
Quite few CPC "arcade"games used that much for only one level...
Many used 16K for the entire game...

a 160x200 sheet of tiles, if well used, can allow a good creativity in level design.

As your game seem to be quite heavy on sprites, perhaps keeping only 8K for tiles and more place for Sprites could be good, code-wise.
But the more the better... :)

And if you aim the 6128 config... grating 8K of tiles is not a problem... you clearly have enough to put 16K.
Managing all those sprites will be trickier on the other hand.


I'm working on a JimPower remake for the 6128Plus config and we have the same problematic.

We are considering the spliting of levels in 2 parts, separated by the sub-boss...
So each Half levels may get it's specific tiles...

Yes this implies many more loading... but to be fair disc access is not worse than CD access in more modern consoles (before console got HarddiskDrive...)

in the past, it was believed that gamers (-=console gamers) could not handle loading time and wait...
Hence Nintendo did N64 with cartridges...
And Cartridges were a big thing on C64 too...
Even amstrazd used this argument for the Plus' cartridge games...

But to be fair the amstrad computer have good quality DiskDrives...
While "mundane" C64 average shitfest DiskDrive is as slow as 464's tape...
6128's 3" DDrive was quite fast and reliable...
Even solid, minus the drivebelt issues... (once every years...)

And with "only" 128Ko inbuilt Ram max... it's not like on 16bit (Atari St or PC or Amiga) who had to fill 512K or 1024K of Ram with 720K disks (or 800K (amiga) or even 360k disks...
Even a PC1512 from Amstrad had 360K disks and 512K RAM to fill...

Some AtariST or Amiga Games were quite long to load, because...well...
1024K to read...while playing music.

on a CPC you can expect 180Ko DiskSides...to fill "only" 128K. You never have to read the entire disk...
It is not like it would take more than 30-45seconds...
Just the right time to get a fresh drink.

And on modern CPC with a custom disk drive... a good 720K 3"1/2 disk drive is like having a HDD for the purpose of one action game... concerning Data storage.

sigh

Quote from: Gryzor on 08:56, 22 February 11
That road and that alley looks really great; they could easily come from a best-selling game from back in time...

Nice thing, about how much memory those tiles take :D Until I saw your last post I was wondering what limit you have set. If it's going to be disk only then presumably multiload won't be a problem and the limit is theoretical... so why stress so much? :) You could even have a mid-level 'big fight' sort of thing (like a mini-boss fight, see Silkworm) and load the next half of the level which could have slightly different gfx or different elements... I mean, after all, how long can a back alley be? ;)

It's just that I'm trying to be aware about how much data that the CPU will have to shift. There's going to be quite a lot going on and I was trying desperately to be very resourceful with the sprite animations without compromising the quality. I spent a good while trying to figure out how to use colours in a clever way in order to have multiple enemies. For instance - I designed a character with sunglasses and managed with a lot of trial and error to convert that whole head into him wearing a baseball cap, just by switching some colours around. I wont need to do this anymore. Even though it looked "okay" I wasn't happy with the results. I don't know when I'll ever create a beat em up like this again as it's a lot of work which is why I'm going all out.

Mid bosses - I was thinking of the larger sprite, with few moves but powerful:)

Quote from: MacDeath on 11:29, 22 February 11

A full 16K of tiles is actually a lot for a CPC.
Quite few CPC "arcade"games used that much for only one level...
Many used 16K for the entire game...


...it looks like the renegade games used 8Kb tiles per level.

redbox

Quote from: sigh on 15:01, 22 February 11
It's just that I'm trying to be aware about how much data that the CPU will have to shift.


But this doesn't factor here... all having more tiles or frames of animation means is that you'll use more memory, it doesn't have an effect on the CPU strain.  The CPU will only have to display X number of tiles a frame (if you scroll) and 1 frame (or maybe less if it's 25hz) of animation per sprite.


So a more realistic situation is the programmer will say; you can have X amount of animated sprites (but this is not the number of frames) on the screen at one time and the playing area can be X * Y (but this is not the number of tiles in your sheet) in tile size.  They will probably then say my code is X amount in size and therefore you have X amount of space (in which you do have to fit all your frames of animation and all your different tiles) for your tile/sprite sheets.


sigh

Quote from: redbox on 16:31, 22 February 11

But this doesn't factor here... all having more tiles or frames of animation means is that you'll use more memory, it doesn't have an effect on the CPU strain.  The CPU will only have to display X number of tiles a frame (if you scroll) and 1 frame (or maybe less if it's 25hz) of animation per sprite.


So a more realistic situation is the programmer will say; you can have X amount of animated sprites (but this is not the number of frames) on the screen at one time and the playing area can be X * Y (but this is not the number of tiles in your sheet) in tile size.  They will probably then say my code is X amount in size and therefore you have X amount of space (in which you do have to fit all your frames of animation and all your different tiles) for your tile/sprite sheets.

Okay. Understood:)

STE86

i have to ask this now...

what app are you doing this with?

and are you actually drawing this by plotting 2 square pixels next to each other on all of your stuff to get the 2:1 aspect ratio?

Steve

sigh

Quote from: STE86 on 19:52, 22 February 11
i have to ask this now...

what app are you doing this with?

and are you actually drawing this by plotting 2 square pixels next to each other on all of your stuff to get the 2:1 aspect ratio?

Steve

Using PSP. Yes-I pixel with a 2x1 grid.

Roughly - how much space should one leave for sound for music and sound effects?

STE86

ok...

something to think about...

unless you are totally in love with PSP, you may want to check out GIMP (which is free) or Photoshop cs2 and above (which isnt)

either of those 2 apps will allow you to draw in 2:1 pixel aspect ratio with a document size of 160x200 pixels.

now i am not a GIMP expert, but i am experienced with making photoshop draw in c64/amstrad res and can point you at a c64 forum thread which explains how to set up Gimp and PS to do exactly that.

i returned to doing c64 art after a break of 21 years in September and would not have even considered it without the 2:1 pixel ratio in photoshop :)

Steve

Sykobee (Briggsy)


Yeah, even GrafX2 maybe - primitive UI but handles 2x1 aspect ratios just fine. Just messing about with it now - it's nowhere near the old DPaint on the Amiga, but good for doing some CPC graphics, which I am now, for the first time in an age.

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