[HN Gopher] Return of the Obra Dinn: spherical mapped dithering ...
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Return of the Obra Dinn: spherical mapped dithering for a 1bpp
first-person game
Author : PaulHoule
Score : 191 points
Date : 2026-03-16 22:56 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (forums.tigsource.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (forums.tigsource.com)
| jay_sar wrote:
| Actually saw a great youtube video about this recently - very
| cool how they were able to accomplish this.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3qzyAHMoUU
| rokkamokka wrote:
| I gave this game a shot but honestly the art style got in the way
| of the gameplay for me. Fun to read how much effort went into it
| ngokevin wrote:
| Mostly enjoyed it but the art style gave me motion sickness
| during and after each session where I had to stop (playing on a
| TV).
| vova_hn2 wrote:
| Yeah, I also loved the idea, but found that playing it require
| me to strain my eyes too much and abandoned it. One of those
| games that is more fun to read about than to actually play.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Yeah. I've wondered if the game could be a total hit on some
| possibly-not-yet-real eink display that can reproduce the
| intended effect at 60fps without such eye strain.
|
| As a kid I imagined playing Cosmic Osmo on actual magical paper
| at my desk at school.
| bombcar wrote:
| Some of the examples in the post are really bad, but even the
| last one has "flickering" not of the dithering pattern but of
| the edges, which feel "off".
| mattmanser wrote:
| Have you played it?
|
| In the game it's pretty great.
| bombcar wrote:
| I have and wasn't terribly bothered by it, but that may
| have changed if I had done it on large screen (TV).
| rags2riches wrote:
| Interesting. I was really impressed by the art at first, taking
| joy in exploring that as much as the scenes themselves. But it
| soon faded out of focus as I was engrossed in the story and
| gameplay.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Same thing for me, I love the technical aspect in the same way
| I love the demoscene. The visuals are original and very well
| done, so much that it is now almost impossible to talk about
| dithering without mentioning the Obra Dinn at some point.
|
| I am also a fan of puzzle/detective games, and this is an
| excellent one.
|
| Truly a masterpiece in both visual and gameplay, but
| together... not so much. For a game where understanding every
| detail of the scenes is critical, it felt I was fighting the
| game engine. Many times I wished I could turn off the dithering
| effect and see the underlying models with more standard
| shading. At no point it felt unfair, they really did a good job
| making it functional, but it was a distraction.
|
| Not enough of a distraction to stop me from completing and
| enjoying the game and art. But hadn't the art style been
| unique, I would have enjoyed it much less.
| martinknopf wrote:
| I remember following dukope's well-written devlog back then. Even
| tried to reproduce his edge detection for a game jam. Thanks for
| digging this out.
| HelloUsername wrote:
| Previous discussion of " _Stabilizing the Obra Dinn 1-bit
| dithering process (2017)_ " on 08-nov-2024
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42084080 114 comments
| paultendo wrote:
| What a fascinating deep dive. 2x with sphere mapping is my
| favourite - it starts to take on a sort of pointillism-like
| quality which gives all the objects (or maybe my brain) a sort of
| understanding of their texture.
| m12k wrote:
| If you find this interesting, you might also be interested in
| this video of someone diving even deeper into how to make the
| dither surface stable:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPqGaIMVuLs
| dpatterbee wrote:
| This really is a fantastic video. I don't think I'd considered
| many of the ideas behind dithering before seeing how it could
| be extrapolated to this degree.
|
| The video ends in a place where I suspect even further advances
| could still be made.
| m12k wrote:
| There's a follow up video with variations of the technique
| (some of them with color) demonstrated in a game:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzjWBmhO_1E
|
| But yes, there's still the issue of oblique angles looking
| different that still remains open AFAIK.
| whtrbt wrote:
| Very cool! The dither is no longer in screenspace though, which
| kills the retro charm.
| m12k wrote:
| Fair point, though I think that when it's low rez enough, it
| becomes less apparent that it's not in screenspace, and it
| gets closer to a retro look:
| https://youtu.be/EzjWBmhO_1E?t=102
| surfsvammel wrote:
| I absolutely loved this game. I still think about it often, the
| story and the characters. I wish there was more games like it.
|
| Interesting read!
| duncanscomments wrote:
| Agreed. The game is tied together so well with its deductive
| gameplay, art, and music. I also appreciate how difficult it
| is, I was banging my head against it frequently during my
| playthrough - but the "aha" moments are so worth it.
|
| I picked up Blue Prince after - completely different game in
| most respects but hits some of the same satisfying puzzle-
| solving/deduction notes.
| progforlyfe wrote:
| I grew up on the small 6 inch 1 bit Mac SE display so the art
| style has a special place in my heart. Sadly I'm too "dumb" to
| fully enjoy the game as it requires a lot of attention to detail
| -- amazing if you enjoy detective style puzzles! I still highly
| respect it.
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| I got half way through but honestly just don't enjoy the core
| loop enough to finish. And it's the kind of game you need to
| finish in one sitting else you're shit outta luck and need to
| start over.
| abetusk wrote:
| I keep feeling like there's a set of fundamental assumptions that
| can be optimized for, or relaxed and optimized for, in order to
| get at what a better method might be.
|
| For example, stability of dithering under rotation and or some
| type of shear translation. What about stability under scaling?
|
| There's been some other methods that essentially create a dither
| texture on the surface itself but, to me at least, this has a
| different quality than the "screen space" dithering that Obra
| Dinn employs.
|
| Does anyone have any ideas on how to make this idea more
| rigorous? Or is the set of assumption fundamentally
| contradictory?
| tesseractcat wrote:
| If anyone finds this interesting, I'd like to plug my post
| analyzing a similar technique, but generalized for perspective
| pixel art: https://tesseractc.at/shadowglass
| ZeWaka wrote:
| Thanks!
|
| As a retro game dev and pixel artist, this is a lot more more
| preferable than the constant shimmering of other recent
| techniques such as Texel Splatting
| (https://dylanebert.com/texel-splatting). Love how stable it
| is, reminds me of billboarding but is clearly 3D.
|
| Edit: Ah, I didn't finish reading the blogpost - didn't realise
| splatting was based on yours. I actually like your variant a
| bit better, but perhaps that's just due to the choice of
| textures/models.
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