Hi ho

Mugi

Member
new derp around !

I felt like writing something even though I haven't really gotten started much yet (waiting for 4.1.0 and scrolling!) but nonetheless.
I've been hacking videogames for all my life really, but nes is a new ground for me, been having a blast testing things out and designing some graphics in the meantime.

that said, I wanted to ask if anyone wrote a guide / tutorial on how to approach the multi-palette sprites, I saw that couple people made that work, and while I'm still quite at the beginning of the designs on the game I'll be (attempting) to create,
it is much certain at this point that my game's protagonist will require the 2-palette sprite to look as intended.

the game I'll be going for will be an adventure platformer with an emphasis on adventuring (not too many monsters) and mechanics inspired by my all time favourite nes game, shatterhand.
the MC will be punching everything, and everything she punches will explode spectacularly :p

either way, here's an early design of the sprite sheet of my protagonist (now named Mari.)

mc_sprites_4color_2palette_small.png


I've currently done animation tests by using a 1-palette version of the sprite sheet but i really REALLY need to get the hair color into the play here :)
thanks and be gentle.
 

dale_coop

Moderator
Staff member
Welcome Mugi
Very glad to have you here with us... Your sprite is awesome. You might some difficulties to reproduce the same colors, but you might find a way to make something close.

Every game objects (your Sprite, for exemple) are made of blocs of 8x8pixels. Each bloc can only use 1 sub-palette (3 colors + the transparent color). And you can use only 2 sub-palettes for a game object.
 

Mugi

Member
dale_coop said:
Welcome Mugi
Very glad to have you here with us... Your sprite is awesome. You might some difficulties to reproduce the same colors, but you might find a way to make something close.

Every game objects (your Sprite, for exemple) are made of blocs of 8x8pixels. Each bloc can only use 1 sub-palette (3 colors + the transparent color). And you can use only 2 sub-palettes for a game object.

im aware of the basics of how this works, the idea was to create a second sprite which is the hair, the hair uses 3 colors, and the rest of the sprite uses another 3 colors (+ transparency for both, so total of 7)
i designed this sprite with that in mind, and im willing to sacrifice both of my player palettes for the protagonist to get it to look as intended.

The issue is that im nowhere near skilled enough to pull of the assembly magic required for making the second sprite "attach" to the first one in order to look like one (this is the same idea as how megaman is done.)
both palettes used by the sprite are also compilant with the NES, i took them from nesmaker directly. (actually, hair shades might be a bit off, but they're really close to what the nes can do so i'll adjust as necessary.)

thanks for the comment, i am quite proud of the sprite. Though in all honestly, it took me a literal forever to draw, not to mention that it's only the basic frames here, 4 running, 1 idle, jump upwards, falling, crouch, crouch punch, normal punch 2 frames, damage and death.

here's a mockup of one of the stages made using a tileset im currently working on (working title is golden temple, which is entered from a cavern stage. I'm not sure at the moment if i will use a new graphics bank for the cavern or just reuse the temple assets.) also, my only enemy sprite so far, TEH SLIME BLOB!
mockup ----> actual screenshot
obviously not as vibrant colors but hey, it's NES afterall, im quite happy with the tileset so far.

golden_temple_asset_test.png
actual_screenshot.png

the tileset uses 2 variations of a brown palette, and a 3rd one for the green crystal.
the blob monster will use one monster palette


Tileset:
cavern_temple_tilesheet_test.png



the game's working title is; Dimension Drive, though i quite like the name so it might actually stay, assuming i dont come up with anything better.

here's the title screen:
001.png
 

dale_coop

Moderator
Staff member
You seems to already master the pixel thing....
the rest is the "NESMaker limitations". But if you want to prepare yourself... I could suggest you to install it and use it following the basic tutorials ("let's getting started"), you will learn how to make your graphics assets, and the limitations of the tool.
You will be able to export your assets. And re-import them in the 4.1 that will come very soon.

To make your player more than 3 colors (for a 8x8px block)... CutterCross made it (with the great help of jorotroid) for his "Tower of Turmoil" game:
http://nesmakers.com/viewtopic.php?p=7753#p7753
Soon, they surely will make a tutorial how to realize that (miracle) :p
 

Mugi

Member
Redherring32 said:
Wow, your graphics are top notch, I'm dying to see where you go with this game. :)

thank you!

while I do consider myself decent with graphics in general (been doing translation hacks for over a decade now) I'm actually highly insecure with my pixel-art abilities. Most of the time I work with PSP and there's no 3-color limits there, so feedback, and especially positive feedback is always more than welcome.

im kinda excited myself to see how the game will turn out, and how much it will eventually differ from my initial concepts. That said, as I already mentioned, I'm not actually doing any real work on it just yet, just focusing on designing the world and creating graphics assets while I wait for 4.1.0 to come out, since the thanksgiving video did mention that there might be extra hurles in carrying code over to the new version.

Figured that since I didn't start yet, might aswell wait that out before I do, and save myself from the extra assembly hell.
I do need to learn how to famitracker for this game anyway, so with graphics and that going on, I'll be busy enough.
 
Sounds reasonable, I wish I didn't have to port my game to 4.1, but alas. Anyway good luck in your Nesmaker adventures!
 

Kasumi

New member
Nice graphics. I figure I'll point out that extra, visually similar colors have leaked into your image, though:
c69MGnV.gif

6 Shades of blue, rather than 3. (The two dark blues are RGB(0, 56, 64) and RGB(0, 48, 48).) The top right girl seems to be the only one with the wrong colors.

Not exactly related to the topic at hand, but worth being aware since lots of NES software would complain about it and if the colors are similar enough it's hard to see what the complaint is about.

Edit: When you say you work with PSP, do you mean PaintShop Pro, or PlayStation Portable? My programming journey actually began with Playstation Portable homebrew, so super cool if it's that!
 

Mugi

Member
Psp as in playstation portable. Im currently working on 2 fantranslations, and released one.
Though i actually do use paint shop pro too since you brought that up. (For my nes graphics im actually using graphics software made for ps2 development though, mostly because of the programs intended use, it has really good palette management and an incredible color reduction algorithm)

The sprite has a few stray shades yeah, i just posted a wrong version of the spritesheet, my bad. :)
In any case, the intended version is 3+3 colors + black. I will post a minor update on that once i get to my pc, but i did manage to get a single palette version made last night which im quite happy about so if i never manage the dual sprite, i can still work on the game now :)
Since black is always the background color on my designs, i made the sprite use black for outline, a dark blueish color for base, and a light skintone, which makes it look terrible on the sprite editor but i quite like how it shows up against my level design backgrounds... I will post a little gif out of that later on.

I also finished up the tileset for the cavern temple stages and will start working on those, and a new set for levels and the starting scene for the game that will happen above the ground.


I guess, i should make a thread on the wip section too :p
 
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