It is why I haven't played the game. Always looked hideous and literally hurts the eyes.
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The Hi-Bit Era ("It looks like a SNES game, but better!")
- Thread starter Robert at Zeboyd Games
- Start date
It is why I haven't played the game. Always looked hideous and literally hurts the eyes.
I know? I was specifically referring to games in the 8-bit style.
Sanctuary
Member
I don't know anything about "we" talking about 8-bit games, only that your reply was following a group of replies that were actually talking about 16-bit games. Your initial comment was this anyway:
Especially since the thread is about 16-bit(ish) games anyway, and a game like Shovel Knight wouldn't fit in this thread.
At the end of the day, Pixel art has become it's own medium. Some developers may want to use it to replicate older games, but others are interested in it from an artistic perspective. Due to it's low barrier of entry, I think a lot of people write off pixel art in general and it bugs me.
I mean, clearly there is a difference between these two images:
But some people lump them together and it baffles me.
I mean, clearly there is a difference between these two images:
But some people lump them together and it baffles me.
UncleSporky
Member
You'd be surprised.
It can be way harder to get a sprite to look good and "read" well while using fewer pixels. Every pixel makes a huge difference to the sprite overall, and placement becomes crucial. Not to mention overall design - does it have a border, is there a defined light source, or would attempting that make the sprite look too busy at that low of a resolution, etc.
I made these for a hobby project that I've since abandoned (3DS SmileBasic game) but it took me a pretty good while to get it looking right. Would've been considerably easier if I had simply drawn it all freehand without having to think about pixel placement.
moltonasty
Member
No mention of Rain World or The Last Night? List is invalid
But seriously, I've loved pixel art since I first saw games with that aesthetic a decade ago. It's great to see the varied and evolving pixel artistry going on within the indie scene
Katana Zero
Megasphere
Djur
Pathway
Path to Die
Fabular
TIL that mods can post hardcore porn without repercussions
OniBarubary
Banned
I love you More_Badass for posting repeated truths in pictorial or typographical form only to be met with "But I don't like it so it's terrible and lazy and here's a meme that proves my point"
I don't see how this is much different from what pixel graphics indie games have always been doing.
The overwhelming majority of pixel art indie games have never accurately reflected the restrictions of older consoles. Games like Shovel Knight, Oniken, Odallus, and Pier Solar are the only outstanding examples I can think of. The designers of pixel art games have really just always been designing what the hardware and their budgets let them get away with. Maybe one recent change is with SOME games like Shovel Knight, Sonic Mania, and Hyper Light Drifter being designed with actual knowledge of the limitations of old consoles and carefully working up from there, but I would say most games still aren't doing that. Most games are still just doing the pixels they can get away with.
The only thing that really makes the difference with these pixel games is art direction. Having more or fewer pixels on screen isn't going to automatically make your art direction look better.
The overwhelming majority of pixel art indie games have never accurately reflected the restrictions of older consoles. Games like Shovel Knight, Oniken, Odallus, and Pier Solar are the only outstanding examples I can think of. The designers of pixel art games have really just always been designing what the hardware and their budgets let them get away with. Maybe one recent change is with SOME games like Shovel Knight, Sonic Mania, and Hyper Light Drifter being designed with actual knowledge of the limitations of old consoles and carefully working up from there, but I would say most games still aren't doing that. Most games are still just doing the pixels they can get away with.
The only thing that really makes the difference with these pixel games is art direction. Having more or fewer pixels on screen isn't going to automatically make your art direction look better.
Ultimadrago
Member
IMO Secret of Mana 2 still looks better than most "hi-bit" games despite a technically smaller number of colors.
How is Seiken Densetsu 3 overall?
Really, really good, although it was a couple of nagging issues that become a little more prominent towards the tail end. The 6 protagonist/freeform party structure is probably both its greatest strength and weakness.
It's great, easily as good or better than its predecessor.
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TriAceJP
Member
Well, yeah. It was an actual fully thought out and completed game, unlike it's predecessor.
I like you.
About that Djur gif you posted..when I google it I can't find anything and google sends me to danish pagesNot sure, but I wouldnt be surprising if quite a few devs use Sprite Lamp. Here's the dev of The Last Night showing off Sprite Lamp
could you lead the way to a developers pagen ~_~? Thanks!Khalifa Jayy
Banned
Subbing. This thread is gorgeous.
More_Badass
Member
http://thesaltuspylon.tumblr.com/About that Djur gif you posted..when I google it I can't find anything and google sends me to danish pages
https://twitter.com/Rognirim
https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=57801.0
D.Lo
Member
The single line of pixels for legs/arms would have signifiant distortion via RF/composite on a CRT, which is how the vast majority of pixel graphics were viewed in the 80s. Even when better connections were available devs still had to develop knowing most gamers would use composite at best.
I'm into this stuff but the Sword & Sworcery look is passe at this point. It's not 2011 anymore, shave your beard, lazer the tattoos, and give your sprites some girth, hipsters.
I'm into this stuff but the Sword & Sworcery look is passe at this point. It's not 2011 anymore, shave your beard, lazer the tattoos, and give your sprites some girth, hipsters.
Morrigan Stark
Arrogant Smirk
I like to compare them to Saturn games. Freedom Planet is a Saturn platformer, Cosmic Star Heroine is a Saturn RPG, CrossCode is a Saturn action-RPG, etc. xD
I don't know if these games would actually run on a Saturn, but they're more likely to work on it than on a Genesis or SNES anyway.
Freedom Planet is a Saturn platformer, Cosmic Star Heroine is a Saturn RPG, CrossCode is a Saturn action-RPG, etc. xDI don't know if these games would actually run on a Saturn, but they're more likely to work on it than on a Genesis or SNES anyway.
Yeah, I can't stand it either. Hyper Light Drifter is borderline, I do like the environments and how it looked in motion overall but I'm not a fan of the character design.
Sojiro
Member
Man, off topic, but it fucking KILLS me how disappointing this game was to the previous two gameplay wise, as you say, it "looks" fucking amazing though!
DAREALGUMMY
Member
I was just thinking about this today. I always wanted 16-bit graphics to stay longer than it did. Back in the day, I get why 3D took over, but to me, 32 and 64 bit graphics do not hold up. I would love to see something like the DK games beefed up.
SD3 is one of my favorites...
But when it comes to LOOKS... SD:LoM (Legend of Mana) has got pretty much everything beat.
...
...
That looks absolutely incredible. I had no clue that this series continued past the SNES, so I really have to play this at some point. SD3 is already one of the prettiest 2D games ever made (as seen earlier in this thread, even when upscaled), and I'm really glad they pushed it even further!
Count me as one of the people who doesn't like how a lot of the games in this thread look. The Last Night is an exception, though. Somehow, the modern smooth lighting effects really mesh well there, and all the background details and animations are great. I really hope that "2.5D" GIF isn't real however, it looks very bizarre (check out that helicopter rotating in billboard-style!) The Slain 2 GIF looks good also.
I love threads like this. I wouldn't mind one of the big guys taking on a new AA 2D game. Seems like the Ubi-Art games died down by now, even if they are not pixel art.
Now I have to look for some of these release dates. I've seen quite a lot The Last Night gifs by now, but I've no idea when that will come out.
Now I have to look for some of these release dates. I've seen quite a lot The Last Night gifs by now, but I've no idea when that will come out.
trugs26
Member
I'd imagine that they make a normal map for the sprite, and maybe given a few sample sprites with different lighting directions they could figure out the interpolated pixel value based on the light and normal direction.
cireza
Member
I personally don't like much most of the current output in terms of pixel-art in video games. In fact, it is in no way close to what we had on 8/16/32 bits consoles.
Games that uses the same style as Hyper Light Drifter : microscopic pixel-art graphics. Everything is too tiny for me, and it does not look like what I liked in the past.
I believe that making games similar to Genesis/SNES games requires some advanced skills that is not so common nowadays. Making big ass sprites, with perfect animations and a lot of colors requires a lot of talent and time. Being able to make 1 or 2 beautiful sprites is a thing. Making hundreds of them for the sake of animation is something else.
One game that achieved the right style graphically is Shovel Knight : it really does look like a NES game, but enhanced. But this is still 8 bit graphics. Going for MegaDrive/SNES is where it gets complicated.
There was an example that flew by in the topic of TMNT, trying to prove that it does not look as good as recent games. Well, I will have to disagree on this. TMNT, and most of Konami's 16 bit pixel-art, still looks ridiculously good today.
Also, 240p is an absolute limit for me. If you go beyond that, you will not be able to reproduce the style that we loved before. So 640x360 as OP said will not give appropriate results for me.
Well of course, that's the point of view of a guy who loves 240p pixel-art from the 8/16/32 bits era. If you love pixel-art in general, I can understand that those recent games look amazing to you.
Very happy to see Sega going the 240p pixel-art way with Sonic Mania.
Games that uses the same style as Hyper Light Drifter : microscopic pixel-art graphics. Everything is too tiny for me, and it does not look like what I liked in the past.
I believe that making games similar to Genesis/SNES games requires some advanced skills that is not so common nowadays. Making big ass sprites, with perfect animations and a lot of colors requires a lot of talent and time. Being able to make 1 or 2 beautiful sprites is a thing. Making hundreds of them for the sake of animation is something else.
One game that achieved the right style graphically is Shovel Knight : it really does look like a NES game, but enhanced. But this is still 8 bit graphics. Going for MegaDrive/SNES is where it gets complicated.
There was an example that flew by in the topic of TMNT, trying to prove that it does not look as good as recent games. Well, I will have to disagree on this. TMNT, and most of Konami's 16 bit pixel-art, still looks ridiculously good today.
Also, 240p is an absolute limit for me. If you go beyond that, you will not be able to reproduce the style that we loved before. So 640x360 as OP said will not give appropriate results for me.
Well of course, that's the point of view of a guy who loves 240p pixel-art from the 8/16/32 bits era. If you love pixel-art in general, I can understand that those recent games look amazing to you.
Very happy to see Sega going the 240p pixel-art way with Sonic Mania.
the androgyne
Member
I know what you mean... whenever i see that style of pixel art on characters, it reminds me of Atari Lynx visuals.
Obviously the newer game uses more shades, but the impression it leaves is similar to something like this:
What do you mean by that? Is there something wrong with making complex pixel art in 2016?
People have different preferences. I don't like how modern 2D games like rayman have significantly less texture to their graphics. The fact that they're not drawn at the pixel level is what causes this. It takes way more time to make, but I think it's worth it.
way i see it there's two types of "pixel" games. one is where you have a few guys on gamemaker and they don't have the time or resources to do anything else, and that's fine. the other are those that outright try to emulate the nes/snes era.... and the latter feels a little off to me. maybe it's the resolution or presentation in general, but outside of a few games like shovel knight not many games seem to nail it down right
BocoDragon
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
With today's high resolution, 2D spritework can just look like hand-drawn art. Think Vanillaware. It's still "pixel art" in that it's made up of a bitmap image... it's just too high resolution to read as pixel art.
But if I'm specifically making artwork where I intend for the player to see fat pixels, that's me saying "I'm embracing simplicity" or "I'm embracing low resolution". People who make pixel art nowadays want to you see that it's simple and abstracted from a realistic look. It's a design aim to have it be simple.
If they wanted complexity... they could just make it look like a moving painting.
FindMyFarms
Member
Kind of hard to compare an indie effort to a AAA title from one of the largest developers of the era.
Some more:
Unnamed (currently on hold) horror game
I want this in my life...
Link?
You can still make complex pixel art at low resolutions.
If someone spent years making a game look like metal slug at some 300x200 ish resolution, I don't think you would say they were going for simplicity.
I'm a bit of a purist when it comes to pixel art. I can appreciate things that looks reasonably like it'd be on authentic hardware, even if imaginary one, or if the hardware had kept advancing within a generation like Shovel Knight.
I really loathe stuff that's just "pixelly" with different pixel sizes, pixels not aligning to the main axes (aliased rotozoom etc), truecolor lighting effects etc. Of course there's nothing inherently wrong with it, but it looks jarring to me.
I really loathe stuff that's just "pixelly" with different pixel sizes, pixels not aligning to the main axes (aliased rotozoom etc), truecolor lighting effects etc. Of course there's nothing inherently wrong with it, but it looks jarring to me.
D.Lo
Member
Actually yeah this is possibly the main issue.
One reason they look like C64 games is because of the euro-centric development environments of that platform. Back then western development on home computer formats was often amateur bedroom coder stuff. The games sold for cheap so this was viable.
This is compared to the big business professional Japanese studios making Famicom/SNES/Arcade games. Where they had dedicated artists, dedicated musicians, dedicated producers, dedicated testers etc. even mid-period NES games have quite large teams credits. Arcade games had the A teams and they were even more professional.
So even with the much better tools and hardware available today, we should probably be looking to compare the games to your average C64/Amiga/Spectrum games, not million dollar 90s productions like Legend of Mana, or say Sega's arcade efforts.
Sir_Crocodile
Member
None of them, looks fan made, which is why I was saying the colours looked a bit off.
BocoDragon
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
You could, but I'm describing the technical forces that mean people generally aren't.
If you're making pixel art you tend to be consciously embracing retro simplicity. If you're making beautiful complex 2D animation you tend to be embracing high resolution artwork. Rare is the exception.
I'm sure a passion project could come along to suit this specific desire for complex + detailed pixel art games. But as I've said, it doesn't describe the motivation of the typical indie who has tended to embrace the pixel art style in recent years, where the whole point is in adopting a "less is more" aesthetic.
I think it's mostly because they don't have the skills, or time and money. I think most 2D indie devs would love to make games at the same level visually as secret of mana or metal slug.
Why do 99% if the games ITT have the same shitty blocky aesthetic, and yet something like Spelunky which was made by 2 people is one of the best looking games of last gen?
The original Spelunky was also blocky, but at least it had a visual identity, it was also freeware and released in 2008 by one guy.
The original Spelunky was also blocky, but at least it had a visual identity, it was also freeware and released in 2008 by one guy.
BocoDragon
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
Sure, that's probably true. But that's what makes them indie.
As a few posts above have said, the greatest pixel art of the retro era was basically AAA development. The same people that made Secret of Mana would be today plugging away on some 1080p Unreal Engine 4 game. Big development isn't plugging away at the world's best pixelart any more because it isn't the technical ceiling.