• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Cool visual effects in 16bit console games.

The overworld from Treasure Hunter G.
tumblr_inline_o2nmkwgKGa1ri065t_500.gif

Wow! I'm impressed :eek:
 

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
The Immortal - Sega Genesis

I thought all the animations and death sequences looked so cool.

giphy.gif

I freaking loved this game, lol.

Animations in Flashback, as mentioned before...

Flashback_04_%2528Amiga%2529.gif


And even years before 16-bit with C64 version of Impossible Mission. The run animations were ahead of their time in 1984.

ImpossibleMisson_Animation.gif
 
Too bad it came at the cost of all the fun.

IIRC Actraiser 2 was supposed to have everything AR1 had.
Sim building, discovering things etc but the game was rushed in favor of another title (can't remember which one) so they simply made it an action game with reduced heath abilities and bumped up the difficulty.

We can only dream what a fleshed out Actraiser 2 would have been like.

sigh....

On a side note...
How does one make gifs from these games?

I want to contribute!
 

Soltype

Member
IIRC Actraiser 2 was supposed to have everything AR1 had.
Sim building, discovering things etc but the game was rushed in favor of another title (can't remember which one) so they simply made it an action game with reduced heath abilities and bumped up the difficulty.

We can only dream what a fleshed out Actraiser 2 would have been like.

sigh....

On a side note...
How does one make gifs from these games?

I want to contribute!
I use gifcam, don't know if there is a better immediate option.
 

angelic

Banned
A lot of early SNES ports would leave the sprites 1:1 to their Genesis counterparts, which would either make the SNES sprite look really fat when viewed at 4:3 or make the Genesis sprite look really skinny if the sprite was designed for the SNES hardware in mind. Here is an example that I made from Mortal Kombat 1:

mk1 and 2 were ported by probe on the megadrive, sculptured on the snes, I don't see how this applies at all. 2 different devs ported the game to 2 machines, they will have 'ripped' their own sprites and converted them to the appropriate appearance.
 
Since there are some technically minded...

t4KoDwz.jpg


This is an image from Perihelion on the Amiga, but what interests me is what kind of "dithering" is being used on three of those screenshots.

Because the image on the lower right is standard, without any dithering, whereas the other three are in a different format. The game doesn't look like that, but I think that dithering effect is REALLY nice.

I wonder if it couldn't be made into a shader, for stuff like scalers in emulators.
 

Lord Error

Insane For Sony
Couple of random Amiga GIFs:

Famous bouncing ball demo:
boingball.gif


Even more famous, State of the Art demo:
5274154_happy-30th-birthday-commodore-amiga_e0d8cac6_m.gif
8a2HXBW.gif


Moonstone. The game was so good, and so beautifully brutal.
tumblr_ndbve1t5xv1s7elebo1_500.gif
MasculinePessimisticAphid-size_restricted.gif

Moonstone.gif


Ruff 'n Tumble. Probably the best run 'n gun game on Amiga:
Ruff_%2527n%2527_Tumble_%2528Amiga%2529_11.gif
Ruff_%2527n%2527_Tumble_%2528Amiga%2529_28.gif
Ruff_%2527n%2527_Tumble_%2528Amiga%2529_29.gif


Agony:
Agony_(Amiga)_05.gif


Banshee - a nice steampunk shmup:
_512.png


X-mas Lemmings:
Xmas_Lemmings_(Amiga)_06.gif


Fire & Ice:
Fire_and_Ice_(Amiga)_03.gif
Fire_and_Ice_(Amiga)_05.png


Chaos Engine (intro):
Chaos_Engine_03_%28CD32%29.gif

Chaos_Engine_04_%28CD32%29.gif

Chaos_Engine_05_%28A500%29.png


Lionheart:
Lionheart_%2528Amiga%2529_04.png


Walker
Walker_(Amiga)_08.gif


Flink:
The_Misadventures_of_Flink_%2528MCD%2529_07.png


SOTB:
Shadow_of_the_Beast_10.png


Unused ending animation from Shadow of the Beast:
SOTB_unreleased_ending_sequence.gif


Bonus SOTB fan art (download link for best quality: http://amigamuseum.emu-france.info/Fichiers/sites/sotb/Fichiers/Goodies/tribute_beast_fd.zip)



Always makes me say wow, it was truly spectacular when it released, a graphical showcase like few others. Almost makes me want to buy the new PS4 game just to get the Amiga original.
It is the best emulated version of the game available. No glitches on anything (including the wonderful title screen parallax scroller). It runs at super smooth 60Hz, while the music remains its original 50Hz playback speed (50Hz update video mode is also available as an option).
 

Lord Error

Insane For Sony
This is an image from Perihelion on the Amiga, but what interests me is what kind of "dithering" is being used on three of those screenshots.

Because the image on the lower right is standard, without any dithering, whereas the other three are in a different format. The game doesn't look like that, but I think that dithering effect is REALLY nice.

I wonder if it couldn't be made into a shader, for stuff like scalers in emulators.
What you see there is manual dithering, which was very popular in the pixel art of that time (particularly in demo scene)

Take a look here for example, this picture only uses 32 colors:
arte.png


Dither patterns are custom tailered to the art style and shapes on the image, which makes it really artful and part of the art, rather than just a byproduct of having to work with fewer colors than you'd ideally want. I'd be hesitant to say this wouldn't be possible to do in shader today what with all the deep learning algorithms, but back then it was for sure done manually and thoughtfully.
 
What you see there is manual dithering, which was very popular in the pixel art of that time (particularly in demo scene)

Nope. Three of those images have those tiny white dots all across. The fourth doesn't have it.

If you load the game in the emulator you see it exactly as in the fourth image. Instead that kind of dithering in the other three must be something due to rescaling or something like that. But I've never seen that kind of effect.
 

Lord Error

Insane For Sony
Nope. Three of those images have those tiny white dots all across. The fourth doesn't have it.

If you load the game in the emulator you see it exactly as in the fourth image. Instead that kind of dithering in the other three must be something due to rescaling or something like that. But I've never seen that kind of effect.
Well the first three images are scaled down or too much jpeg compressed or something... Just look how blurry the text looks on them. I don't remember it being like that at all in that game, but I'll have another look.

*edit* I did look it up upclose now, and I still think it's manually dithered pixel art. It's just hat first three images are for whatever reason slightly blurred compared to the fourth one - even though they are all part of one big image.

*edit* here are some Perihelion screens with no weird scaling artifacts, direct framebuffer:

Perihelion-The_Prophecy_%2528Amiga%2529_19.png

Perihelion-The_Prophecy_%2528Amiga%2529_30.png

Perihelion-The_Prophecy_%2528Amiga%2529_31a.png

Perihelion-The_Prophecy_%2528Amiga%2529_29.png
 
*edit* here are some Perihelion screens with no weird scaling artifacts, direct framebuffer:

Yes, I want to know how the hell that effect in the *images* was produced, because the game looks different. As in your screenshots the pixels are "square".

See this enlargement:

o002CMG.jpg


These two are taken from the above image, they are the exact same sprite. On the right you see what the game looks like, on the left you see this weird dithering that I think looks exceptionally good. Instead of using that default matrix of a big square made by four pixels, it instead uses a 1x2 pixels kind of cell, with two horizontal pixels one next to the other.

I wonder how the hell it was achieved, because it's the best dithering effect I've seen and it greatly improves the look (outside of blurry text).
 

Shaneus

Member
You can tell that Zyrinx came out of the European Amiga/ Atari ST demo scene, because their Genesis (and later Saturn/ PC ) games were like pure tech demos.

Sub-Terrania intro (Genesis/ Mega Dive):
http://i.imgur.com/Omz37K6.gif[IMG]

Red Zone intro (Genesis/ Mega Dive):
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/z4hqvXx.gif[IMG]

I still enjoyed the few titles that they did release though. The Jesper Kyd soundtracks are glorious in these games.[/QUOTE]
I wonder if the reason their MD titles were so solid was due to the perfect storm of the MD being very close to an MD in terms of development (IDK why, but that's what I hear) AND them being involved in the demoscene.

Which gives me a good excuse to post [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOWZbydnlZE]this[/url], the Zyrinx tech demo for the 32X.

Jesper Kyd is god-tier, too. Crazy to think that he went on to do some incredible work for the Hitman games (and others).
 

Lord Error

Insane For Sony
These two are taken from the above image, they are the exact same sprite. On the right you see what the game looks like, on the left you see this weird dithering that I think looks exceptionally good. Instead of using that default matrix of a big square made by four pixels, it instead uses a 1x2 pixels kind of cell, with two horizontal pixels one next to the other.
Wow, you are right. It gives images very nice analog fuziness.That does look pretty great. Maybe some kind of CRT filter variation is used.

*edit* my first instinct after actually knowing what to look for now, is that these images are upscaled using bilinear (or similar) vertically, and then simple pixel duplication horizontally.
 
The first time this happened

tumblr_m9osu5RiwN1qjdj3mo1_500.gif



Also when FF4 opened with the scrolling map

Final_Fantasy_IV_(SNES)_02.png


and when this happened in game near the end

could only find a wsc version

25-Gif_4.gif
 

Lord Error

Insane For Sony
These two are taken from the above image, they are the exact same sprite. On the right you see what the game looks like, on the left you see this weird dithering that I think looks exceptionally good. Instead of using that default matrix of a big square made by four pixels, it instead uses a 1x2 pixels kind of cell, with two horizontal pixels one next to the other.
Wow, you are right. That does look pretty strange / great. Maybe some kind of CRT filter variation is used.
 

Lord Error

Insane For Sony
Here's the two side by side and 200%:

I just wish I knew how that effect on the left was produced :)
My first instinct after actually knowing what to look for now, is that these images are upscaled using bilinear (or similar) vertically, and then simple pixel duplication horizontally.

But no. I have tried applying that method to a right image from your post and the result looked decent, but simply not as good as the left image. The left image has much better sharpness and half-size detail due to that dither than what my technique could not reproduce.

Where have you found that image?
 

@MUWANdo

Banned
Huh, I've somehow never seen Lionheart. Looked up some videos and that's some nice pixel art. Sort of reminds me of the detailed work in The Misadventures of Flink.

They're both Henk Nieborg games, that's why! That same team also did The Adventures of Lomax (a Lemmings platformer) for PSX, and Henk has done a lot of work for WayForward in recent years--his stamp is all over Contra 4, the more recent Shantae games, etc.
 

Noogy

Member
They're both Henk Nieborg games, that's why! That same team also did The Adventures of Lomax (a Lemmings platformer) for PSX, and Henk has done a lot of work for WayForward in recent years--his stamp is all over Contra 4, the more recent Shantae games, etc.

Oh nice, never knew his name! Yeah, there was certainly something there that I recognized.
 

@MUWANdo

Banned
Okay, so, this is a personal and somewhat complex web of nonsense involving a highly unstable individual I was friends and briefly FWBs with, but I can only assume there will be a never-ending clusterfuck on gaf now until the end of time, which inevitably involves you guys and gals on the mod team in some way, so I'm an open book here. The woman in question ended up being completely psychotic and held a grudge against me after a bizarre love triangle situation developed a few years ago between me, her, and another girl (the other girl I ended up in a long-term relationship with shortly thereafter). This NOLA story she apparently just put up on social media is a delusion of a deeply disturbed person who had a total psychological breakdown as a result of me and the other girl getting together, because she (phew, yeah...) became obsessively infatuated with the other girl (she's bi) on sight when the three of us met up. I wanted to just stay friends with the girl making the accusation and made it super super clear ahead of time that me and the other girl were interested in each other romantically and that could play out as such when we met up. Supposedly this was not a problem for her from accusation, but in reality she uhhh wanted me to die painfully after seeing me and the other girl interact. Plus she became infatuated with the other girl simultaneously to this (she's bi), which created the aforementioned bizarre love triangle that ended up causing her to implode and have an apparently very intense and long-lasting grudge. The whole story about how that love triangle thing played out is, frankly, nuts and scary, and involves this girl bringing us to a compound of dangerous scientology spinoff cultists on that same trip, who roofied us, attempted to recruit/scam me and attempted to abduct/rape the girl I ended up dating, in what was a fucking scary situation that resulted in me and the other girl and the rest of my friend circle never speaking to this girl from the accusation again.
 
15RVGv4.gif


Well, look at Batman's clock and decide for yourself how long a second should take to render if the footage is sped up :p

I recorded the gif at 30FPS, but the game may be running at 25FPS. I think Soul Star runs at the same frame rate as well.


mk1 and 2 were ported by probe on the megadrive, sculptured on the snes, I don't see how this applies at all. 2 different devs ported the game to 2 machines, they will have 'ripped' their own sprites and converted them to the appropriate appearance.

They were ported by different teams, but just by looking at the character sprites for MK1 on the Genesis and SNES, the character sprites may have actually been converted by Acclaim/ Midway and handed off to both groups to keep a consistency between ports.

The sprites for both the Genesis and SNES game are identical to each other in pixel resolution, but much smaller in resolution to the original Arcade game:

7xphx9u.png


The person(or people) responsible sprite conversion to the SNES didn't take into account that the lower horizontal resolution would make the sprites look very wide on a standard 4:3 aspect ratio which would also affect the screen playing field. Something that was corrected for the MK2 port. There were quite a few early SNES ports that had the wide sprite issue.
 
Wow, that's pretty amazing.
Gotta look into this one.

It's a pretty fun game. I somehow managed to get to the last boss back in the day before there was a translation or even a walkthru on Gamefaqs. I did it while not knowing how to get money buy selling frogs that you can catch.
 
Top Bottom