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How where when Metal slug sprites made?
- Thread starter dragonzdogma
- Start date
Barrel Cannon
Member
LOL some of these responses. Also Metal Slug is so dam good visually. The series animations blow my mind to this day. It's what made me initially interested in making sprites back as a kid/teen.
I wish a market for that stuff still existed. It would have convinced me to keep doing sprite work as something other than a fun diversion hobby.
I wish a market for that stuff still existed. It would have convinced me to keep doing sprite work as something other than a fun diversion hobby.
If anybody wants to see the games in motion you can play them free online.
Metal Slug X
http://www.neogeofun.com/mslugx
Metal Slug 3
http://www.neogeofun.com/mslug3-2
Metal Slug X
http://www.neogeofun.com/mslugx
Metal Slug 3
http://www.neogeofun.com/mslug3-2
Lord Error
Insane For Sony
Emulated in Flash?! Woah.
And just for kicks, here's the elephant slug. A sprite that appears in only one game, for roughly 3 minutes and is never seen again, but which has the most lovingly crafted detailed animation of stretching and wrinkling elephant skin ever seen in a videogame.
Beautiful!!
What game was this in?
eso76
Member
Click-click-click.
Pixel by pixel, there really isn't a more efficient way to get good results with that kind of graphics at that resolution.
I mention resolution because when you're dealing with 320x240 every dot counts, you really can't afford to misplace any pixel.
You need to carefully pick adjacent colours because of the different ways colors bleed on CRTs, you need to pay attention not to have dark lines that become 2 pixels wide in certain spots (that's why you don't "freehand" your sprites, they are going to need pixel by pixel polishing afterwards anyway) and wisely use your -generally very limited- palette to infer or suggest sub-pixel details that you just don't have the screen estate to actually draw.
Also, like others have said, Photoshop manipulation tools wouldn't really help.
Pixel by pixel, there really isn't a more efficient way to get good results with that kind of graphics at that resolution.
I mention resolution because when you're dealing with 320x240 every dot counts, you really can't afford to misplace any pixel.
You need to carefully pick adjacent colours because of the different ways colors bleed on CRTs, you need to pay attention not to have dark lines that become 2 pixels wide in certain spots (that's why you don't "freehand" your sprites, they are going to need pixel by pixel polishing afterwards anyway) and wisely use your -generally very limited- palette to infer or suggest sub-pixel details that you just don't have the screen estate to actually draw.
Also, like others have said, Photoshop manipulation tools wouldn't really help.
Lord Error
Insane For Sony
Nearest neighbor rotation helps tremendously for stuff like this though. As far as I can see, there's minimal cleanup required, and sure as hell beats rotating something 'by hand', unless you need squish/stretch things elastically while rotating, that is.
eso76
Member
Ah well, pure Z rotation for sure, no reason to do that by hand. Not many instances where you'd want simple, pure rotation around the Z axis though.
That and, to an extent, shear did help at times, though.
Metal Slug 3 in the hidden cave area in the zombie level. (Level 2 I think).
TheRedSnifit
Member
The majority of the "new" units in Defense/Attack are unused sprites from the previous games. The Stone Turtle is the obvious one, but there are others like the R. Shobu v. PM.
There are some new ones, though, but I think they're just edited sprites of existing characters.
They seems to have recently expanded things a bit with a number of mummy-themed units, including one that's apparently a descendant of an NPC from the older games: https://twitter.com/MSDMSAMH/status/745995676996145153
TheRedSnifit
Member
Oh, didn't know that. I had assumed the mummy stuff was a crossover with some other mobile game.
dragonzdogma
Member
You got me all wrong, also thanks to some other post we discovered that indeed they used a scanner with their set up. Its still a mystery ,but I'm confident that it wasn't pixel by pixel.
Nothing wrong with using tools and techniques to speed up the process.
It absolutely was pixel by pixel, having a scanner does not imply machine rasterization. Especially on a PC98.
dragonzdogma
Member
When I say pixel by pixel I mean from scratch. You have to start with some basic drawing. The clean up part I'm sure it was pixel by pixel.
I'm going to side with Krejlooc and say no, just because there isn't any evidence to support this. We have a fair amount of Metal Slug concept art, and almost none of it resembles in-game assets outside a few pieces, such as the False Root Mars, and the Conga's, and even those are still vastly different from their in-game counterparts.
This isn't like Street Fighter III where we have pages, and pages, and pages, and pages of evidence showcasing the hand drawn animation that would be drawn over as pixel art later on.
On an semi-unrelated note, does anyone know what happened to the close-up version of Nona's King of Fighters XII rough sprites? I can only find the zoomed out image and it's killing me. I wanted to show off how good Ryo's original design was back in a King of Fighters XIV thread but I couldn't find the image.
DaCocoBrova
Finally bought a new PSP, but then pushed the demon onto someone else. Jesus.
Is there any way to play any Metal Slug @ 60fps?
KnightimeX_Legacy
Banned
I would like to see a new Metal Slug game that doesn't rehash every asset ever made.
Seriously all 10+ games look exactly the same.
Seriously all 10+ games look exactly the same.
No. The Neo Geo has a set interrupt period at 30 hz. Every neo geo game is 30 fps.
Actually, I guess it might be possible that Metal Slug Advance runs at 60 fps, given the GBA screen refreshes at 60 hz, but I'm not sure off hand.
Not saying there is anything wrong with using tools and techniques to speed up the process.
What I'm saying is that talent and hard work are the biggest factor here. Why did they produce amazing sprite works? Because they put more effort into it.
Icyflamez96
Member
I don't see the problem with the thread tbh.
This whole time I thought that was sand o_o
sir_kevith
Member
Do you have a link that explains that? Every Neo game except Mslug looks like it's running at 60 to me.
TheRedSnifit
Member
Metal Slug 5
Granted, they did reuse some vehicle sprites. But it was a step in the right direction.
Advance is 30fps. As is 7/XX, despite being made for the DS.
EDIT: Does anybody know why sprites distort when I post them? Small sprites became giant and blurry, big sprites become tiny and blurry. Plz.
Obviously I'm not a technical expert, but my math seemed to be sound, so I'm curious to hear this coming from you, since you seem to have a better grasp on the technical side of things.
EDIT: Disregard this, I just went back to look at Metal Slug 3, and yeah, the game is definitely refreshing every 2 frames, so it IS running at 30fps. Thankfully, my animations are still accurate because I'm counting out every in-game frame, so the numbers even out! Whew!
sorry if I wasn't clear - I mean all the Neo Geo Metal Slug games run at 30 fps.
That shit is mental.
sir_kevith
Member
Ah ok good. I don't think I was following the conversation well enough and missed the context.
Naked Lunch
Member
To my eyes - the Metal Slug games have the best videogame graphics of all time. Im just not as impressed with 3d games. 2d art forever. Seeing the sprites singled out in this thread - you can just marvel over every frame.
I remember letting a younger cousin of mine play Metal Slug and all he did was complain about "how bad the graphics were". Unreal. Different eras - and perspectives.
I remember letting a younger cousin of mine play Metal Slug and all he did was complain about "how bad the graphics were". Unreal. Different eras - and perspectives.
Cow Mengde
Banned
Any slow down in the ports. I know MS2 suffered a lot of slowdown. X was better, but still had the occasional slow down.
TheRedSnifit
Member
They're straight-up emulations. Any slowdown present in the originals are in the Steam versions.
So yeah, stay away from MS2.
Interesting aside but I don't see what the physical memory layout has to do with what you were responding to. Is it not factual that the pixel data was coded by hand? I assume artists must have been working in a higher level tool and their creations were flattened and bit-packed appropriately.
Dreadmoth
Member
I think the wiki site the images are hosted on is causing it somehow:
Wiki site:
Re-hosted on imgur:
PAULINK
I microwave steaks.
this is illegal you know
TheRedSnifit
Member
I think the wiki site the images are hosted on is causing it somehow:
Wiki site:
Re-hosted on imgur:
Ah-ha! Thank you, good sir.
omnislayer
Member
These sprites are so good. I love Metal Slug games.
TheRedSnifit
Member
I hope so much that the success of MS Defense and Attack makes SNK realize that people are still interested in the franchise.
Springfoot
Member
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TheRedSnifit
Member
Iirc, NAZCA is only credited with developing the original Metal Slug. They then either disbanded or were absorbed into SNK proper, who made every mainline Metal Slug game except for MS4. Most SNK staff were rehired when they turned into Playmore, so the post-MS3 games (besides 4) being developed by a different dev team is speculation.
Ignoring the debate of whether there's a huge drop in quality in the recent titles (personally, I think XX easily stands up there with the originals in actual gameplay quality), I think the only real difference is funding. MS5 was originally going to be as "big" as MS3, but only a fraction of what was envisioned actually made it into the game. Run 'n guns and arcade games just don't make the big bucks anymore.
Springfoot
Member
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Not sure this is threadworthy, but VGDensestu has a scan of Garou: Mark of the Wolves 2 sprites:
https://twitter.com/VGDensetsu/status/746431614419410944
https://twitter.com/VGDensetsu/status/746431614419410944
Not sure this is threadworthy, but VGDensestu has a scan of Garou: Mark of the Wolves 2 sprites:
https://twitter.com/VGDensetsu/status/746431614419410944
It came from this interview released today: http://www.4gamer.net/games/317/G031749/20160613002/index_2.html
this fuckin' ruuuules
MrCunningham
Member
One common approach was / is to create concept art for your "character", draw all animation frames and use both as reference when creating your sprites.
Concept
Frames
Sprites
That's really cool. I read somewhere that all of Capcom's CP System games from this era were developed on Sharp x68000 computers which is the reason why the Sharp x68000 ports of Capcom's arcade games were so close to perfect. Though I dunno what drawing software they would have used on those machines. Maybe it also had a version of Deluxe Paint?
DryvBy
Member
The sprites were created on paper, and then refined pixel by pixel using graph paper
from there they would code each pixel in one by one on a grid (I would imagine, going that far back to the first Donkey Kong and Mario Bros. 1).
This is great. If someone wanted to make sprites like this, anyone have any websites or video instructions on how to do this kind of art/animation?
Lord Error
Insane For Sony
I meant if you have one already pixel-perfect frame, you can relatively safely rotate it using the nearest neighbour, and as long as you use that frame as a starting point for all the subsequent rotations, it looks pretty good, and requires minimal amount of cleanup. I could do an animation to prove this, but give it a try with one of the sprites in photoshop.