[HN Gopher] How I make graphics for retro systems and retro-styl...
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How I make graphics for retro systems and retro-styled games
Author : zdw
Score : 125 points
Date : 2021-03-14 20:51 UTC (2 days ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (nicole.express)
| trilinearnz wrote:
| It warmed my heart to see Paint Shop Pro mentioned. I always
| found this a much more approachable general-purpose editor than
| Photoshop.
|
| These days I tend to use GIMP for pixel editing, personally,
| which works well enough.
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| Agree! Have some amazing memories using PSP. Glad to hear it's
| still around.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Cool cat sprite!
| edm0nd wrote:
| https://16colo.rs/ is another cool ASCII/ANSI art source from the
| IRC days
| willis936 wrote:
| When I've done this in the past I would make vector images in
| inkscape, then write a script that would use inkscape export a
| low resolution raster image. The script would also pick a color
| palette that would minimize error of the entire sprite map.
| Scripting with vector images is nice because simple animations
| can be made by modifying transforms in svg.
|
| The results weren't amazing, but it's mostly because I'm not a
| great artist and had more fun making a workflow than producing
| actual work.
|
| https://youtu.be/gCO8X6JQAhM
|
| The results felt authentic. Looking up the video capabilities of
| the system you're targeting the style of is an important step
| that a lot of retro style games don't do. For instance: the SNES
| can only have a palette with 256 colors and the colors that can
| be in that palette is 15-bit RGB (64k unique colors).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_game_console_pal...
|
| If I were to pick this back up I'd probably spend time getting
| comfortable with blender to use that instead of inkscape. Many
| games in the 80s and 90s used pre-rendered 3D assets, so it would
| still adhere to some art styles. I know it's not the hand-drawn
| pixel art that many are familiar with, but there isn't much in
| the way of tool development there to interest me :p
| reaperducer wrote:
| Somewhat related: I have on occasion needed to make low
| resolution, pixel-perfect images for various projects. But when I
| export from Photoshop, all of the rough edges get smoothed out,
| no matter what file format I choose. Very frustrating. Does
| anyone know what I'm doing wrong, or if there's a setting I have
| to twiddle?
| teddyh wrote:
| It might be that your image _viewer_ is smoothing the low-pixel
| images before showing them to you.
| anthk wrote:
| Use pikopixel.
| cammikebrown wrote:
| Are you saving as a jpeg? The compression will do that, try
| saving as a png or gif instead. Also, under image settings make
| sure your interpolation is nearest neighbor, not bicubic.
| reaperducer wrote:
| As noted in my comment, it happens no matter what file format
| I choose. PNG, JPEG, it doesn't matter.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Yes, also, make sure (OP) the app you are viewing the saved
| document in is not doing the smoothing (upsampling,
| interpolating).
| andy800 wrote:
| There's an active community at tecmobowl.org, they have been
| releasing updated versions of Tecmo Super Bowl (originally 1991)
| annually. Updated player rosters. Lots of graphics mods. Tons of
| gameplay "hacks".
|
| Mostly focused on the NES original but also SNES and other
| platforms.
|
| As someone who just recently got into this hobby, I agree with
| the author that YY-CHR is essential!
| fuball63 wrote:
| My favorite football game is Madden 95, and my favorite year of
| watching football as a fan was 2003 so I always wanted to
| create an updated ROM. Do you know of any good resources? How
| do you figure out what the data format is for stats, just trial
| and error?
| andy800 wrote:
| asking a Tecmo guy about Madden, that's like asking a
| vegetarian how to cook a great cheeseburger :)
|
| all I can say is that the Tecmo community has been chipping
| away for 30 years at learning all the internals without any
| source code or reference, gaining knowledge little by little,
| and fortunately, sharing it so people can build upon other
| people's discoveries. Don't know if a similar resource exists
| for Madden.
| adamdusty wrote:
| There is a madden modding community at
| footballidiot.com/forum
|
| Might be the place to start. Madden 08 is the biggest target
| as far as I know, but someone there might be able to point
| you in the right direction.
| jandrese wrote:
| That's basically the same thing EA does with their sports
| franchises, except they charge full price for the update each
| year.
| Lucasoato wrote:
| This article explains perfectly why some "modern" approach to
| pixel art may fail on delivering the right retro feel:
|
| https://www.fortressofdoors.com/doing-an-hd-remake-the-right...
|
| Also it's about the best rpg ever released: ffvi <3
| vmception wrote:
| thats a lot of work when all you really have to do is add a CRT
| filter over top of pixel art instead of dealing with this
| sampling mess
| jmull wrote:
| > Personally, I use Terraformer, a buggy and low-feature editor
| that I wrote myself.
|
| This is great!
| vmception wrote:
| Make sure to add the CRT filter
| bitwize wrote:
| Nice!
|
| I use GrafX2 and GIMP to make my game graphics, then when I want
| them munged into some exotic, export them to pnm or xpm and use
| some tool (often written in Guile) to do the munging of the
| source image.
|
| There is also something to be said for _in-engine_ asset
| generation. This especially works well for retro _style_ games
| that run on powerful computers, it 's probably less useful for
| actual retro games. For example, I'm developing a retro
| platformer mechanically based off of one you've all heard of (but
| with a new main character and premise). I thought it might be
| useful to have smooth rotations of character and other sprites
| for an advanced modern graphical effect... but a goal for me is
| to write the game as if it were the actual 90s, using C and Xlib,
| which doesn't offer a native image transform primitive. Then I
| realized... what if I were to precompute the rotated images on
| initialization, cache them in X pixmap atlases and use a simple
| XCopyArea to draw the rotated sprite when I need one, making it
| _look_ like the engine is doing dynamic rotation (with enough
| precomputed rotations)? Ohohoho! Delightfully devilish, bitwize!
|
| Another thing I've experimented and had great success with in
| another game of mine is something I call greeblization:
| procedurally generating interesting looking backgrounds from a
| few different tiles by having a few basic tile types that are the
| same mechanically but vary in appearance. A long narrow strip of
| "ground" tile types could become a bridge, for instance. So the
| level is a JSON file that describes blocks of a certain tile
| type, and the engine generates the tile map by filling in details
| with variants of the tile type for the block. I don't claim
| credit for this concept, however; the way ground tiles work when
| you place them in Super Mario Maker was an inspiration.
| luismedel wrote:
| I still use my old copy of Deluxe Paint II under Dosbox. It's a
| bit rough, because of the LBM format, which adds an extra step in
| a more modern tool to add transparency and convert to PNG, but
| works well for my needs.
|
| Also, the DP2 drawing primitives are soooo easy to use that I
| find any other tool too cumbersome.
| teddyh wrote:
| You might want to investigate GrafX2:
| https://pulkomandy.tk/projects/GrafX2
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