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[iidesuyo]

It noticed this while playing through the SNES Classic Mini collection

Take F-Zero for example:

Super Mario World is another offender, which is surprising as it doesn't seem to have that many colors on screen at once.



Obviously the SNES could do much better. Donkey Kong Country for example:

Being able to display 256 colors was one of the selling points of the SNES back in the day. Why did games still use dithering so much? Memory limitations?


Edit: These photos were taken with my iPhone, since taking screen caps with an SNES Mini is hard. I hope you get the point.

 

[TheChewyWaffles]

Isn't that just the source art that has dithering?

 

[Jamix012]

Not a tech expert but you're talking about F Zero and Super Mario World, two launch games, and comparing them to Rare's later efforts. Not saying you're wrong, but without more examples it may have been the easier thing to do in the early SNES days.

 

[Ahasverus]

Doesn't that effect look not dithered on a CRT?

 

[Feep]

The SNES could choose 256 simultaneous colors from a palette of 32,768. However, due to most graphical modes containing layers and the possible use of additive or subtractive blending, you could effectively get much more.

Probably just came down to expertise and experience in the later years, TBH.

 

[JusDoIt]

And why does every Super Nintendo game look so pixelated?

 

[Kyari]

Dithering wasn't something you're ever meant to notice, the games were designed to be put out at low res on a CRT TV at the time. It would look fine if you were running it on the same setups.

 

[120v]

played zillions of hours of snes in my lifetime. it never stuck out in my mind as a thing

 

[iidesuyo]

And why does every Super Nintendo game look so pixelated?

Most games ran in 256x224, only few games used the high resolution mode.

 

[JusDoIt]

Most games ran in 256x224, only few games used the high resolution mode.

And why do all the camera controls suck?

 

[iidesuyo]

Dithering wasn't something you're ever meant to notice

I always did, even back then, for whatever reason...

 

[SovanJedi]

It was to blend colours, since assets had a limited number of colours to them. Launch games were basically coming from the NES so they used the techniques they'd learned from there, but later on companies like Rare could manage to push out more palette swaps and blend techniques.

 

[SoulUnison]

Speaking of dithering, Square Enix has really taken a shine to using it everywhere possible, even in their AAA console games.

It always reminds me of PSP games.

 

[Triforce141]

Don't look at N64 games that have VI-blur and AA disabled then

 

[low-G]

Like the guy said ^ the SNES could only display so many colors simultaneously.

Dithering wasn't something you're ever meant to notice, the games were designed to be put out at low res on a CRT TV at the time. It would look fine if you were running it on the same setups.

You're never meant to notice it, but when the res was so low, it was very visible on even an old CRT at the time.

 

[Sho Nuff]

Limited color depth per tile, sometimes it's easier to tile. 256 is still not a lot.

 

[iidesuyo]

And why do all the camera controls suck?

What the heck are you talking about?

 

[bomblord1]

Uhh, what exactly is wrong with dithering? It's a perfectly valid technique for transitioning between colors in pixel art.

 

[Grakl]

I think dithering looks good tbh

 

[iidesuyo]

Uhh, what exactly is wrong with dithering? It's a perfectly valid technique for transitioning between colors in pixel art.

Maybe on 8 Bit consoles, but everything that can display 256+ colors doesn't need it imo

 

[bomblord1]

Maybe on 8 Bit consoles, but everything that can display 256+ colors doesn't need it imo

You're going by the (IMO) really strange assumption that a transitional color in pixel art will always look better than dithering. And as far as I'm concerned it doesn't.

 

[balladofwindfishes]

Maybe on 8 Bit consoles, but everything that can display 256+ colors doesn't need it imo

SNES games would look very flat without dithering. Especially on backgrounds.

In your DKC example, you didn't post the ground sprites. Which also use dithering.

 

[Ahasverus]

The better question is why does FFXV still use dithering in 2016.

 

[Azelover]

Edit: These photos were taken with my iPhone, since taking screen caps with an SNES Mini is hard. I hope you get the point.

That's clever

 

[Currygan]

What the heck are you talking about?

You ate the bait bro

 

[Danny Dudekisser]

Man, who cares? It looks cool when used properly. Unless we're gonna talk shit about PC-98, too:

And, to be clear, we're not going to be talking shit about that.

 

[mdsfx]

I never knew what that was called, but I personally recognized it as the Genesis effect. I hate it.

Edit: Except in the image above. That's sweet!

 

[LordKasual]

The better question is why do all modern games with taxing graphics still use dithering in 2016.

i dunno

 

[IceMarker]

I agree dithering can be really sexy when used properly.

 

[iidesuyo]

You ate the bait bro

On purpose. I'm not that stupid ;-)

 

[RadarScope1]

And why does every Super Nintendo game look so pixelated?

LOL, exactly.

 

[tsundoku]

I always did, even back then, for whatever reason...

thats because every dither pattern other then 50/50 is bullshit and is totally noticeable

 

[magicalsoundshower]

The interesting thing is that even though the SNES could theoretically display 256 colors at once (or more), the mode most games ran at (Mode 1) actually couldn't, which is most likely due to memory and performance reasons.

Mode 1, which is what most games used, can display three tile layers with two of them supporting 16 colors per tile and one of them (mainly used for text boxes and the HUD) supporting four colors per tile. Then there's sprites, of course, which also supported only 16 simultaneous colors maximum.

I think I read somewhere that Super Mario World and other early games mostly use 8 colors per tile in order to save space. Also, Donkey Kong Country uses programming trickery to display that smooth gradient, the graphics layer it is on doesn't support that many colors "out of the box".

 

[Oblivion]

played zillions of hours of snes in my lifetime. it never stuck out in my mind as a thing

Same. Never noticed this sort of thing.

 

[Yusaku]

This should be obvious, 256 is not a lot of colors. You needed dithering to create the illusion of more colors. As people have already mentioned, this works very effectively on CRT TVs of the day. If you didn't use dithering you would just have another problem: banding.

 

[Oblivion]

The SNES could choose 256 simultaneous colors from a palette of 32,768. However, due to most graphical modes containing layers and the possible use of additive or subtractive blending, you could effectively get much more.

It's interesting to see that the Genesis didn't have nearly the same amount of access to colors, but the games looked just as impressive:

The Mega Drive/Genesis used a 9-bit RGB palette (512 colors, 1536 including shadow and highlight mode) with up to 61 colors on-screen at once without raster effects

 

[iidesuyo]

This should be obvious, 256 is not a lot of colors. You needed dithering to create the illusion of more colors.

I googled this picture (better than my iphone picture):

No dithering at all in the background.

 

[Ahasverus]

i dunno

FFXV is especially egregious.

 

[Sir Abacus]

It noticed this while playing through the SNES Classic Mini collection

Take F-Zero for example:

Because even though the SNES can display 256 colors on some background layers it doesn't mean you can always be displaying 256 colors on every layer at all times.

There was a really good video uploaded this week that can show you the limitations of each mode.

tl;dr: most backgrounds are only 2bpp or 4bpp.

 

[Sir Abacus]

I googled this picture (better than my iphone picture):

No dithering at all in the background.

That effect on the background is a line by line raster effect. Every line (on the HBLANK interrupt) the game updates the background color register ($2122) which is the color of the rear most layer. This gives a nice smooth gradient effect because it could use the entire 15-bit palette for the effect.

 

[iidesuyo]

That effect on the background is a line by line raster effect. Every line (on the HBLANK interrupt) the game updates the background color register ($2122) which is the color of the rear most layer. This gives a nice smooth gradient effect because it could use the entire 15-bit palette for the effect.

It looks very nice. And no dithering!

 

[XANDER CAGE]

Also sometimes dithering just fits an aesthetic better than a full blend. IMO the F-Zero background art looks great.

 

[iidesuyo]

Also sometimes dithering just fits an aesthetic better than a full blend. IMO the F-Zero background art looks great.

Really...? I chose that example because in my opinion dithering there made no sense.

Just another color for another horizontal line, that would have looked better.

 

[Freddo]

Maybe on 8 Bit consoles, but everything that can display 256+ colors doesn't need it imo

Pretty much every single PS1 game use it. Well, except 2D games, I guess.

 

[low-G]

The better question is why does FFXV still use dithering in 2016.

Lots of modern games use dithering to reduce fillrate demands for various effects. I've even seen it in some recent high end PC games.

 

[Yusaku]

The dithering you see in modern games is due to the game using deferred rendering.

 

[pottuvoi]

Lots of modern games use dithering to reduce fillrate demands for various effects. I've even seen it in some recent high end PC games.

Modern GPUs also lack easy, fast and memory efficient way to do order independent transperency.
Thus anything that is transparent needs to go trough different rendering pass or use dithering on fully opaque surface for easier rendering.

Pretty sure only hardware that did this properly was the gpu in dreamcast.
It did per pixel sort on all surfaces before rendering, thus not only did it handle transparency, but didnt render transparency behind opaque surfaces.

 

[Painguy]

Modern GPUs also lack easy, fast and memory efficient way to do order independent transperency.
Thus anything that is transparent needs to go trough different rendering pass or use dithering on fully opaque surface for easier rendering.

This and also low precision render targets for some effects to save memory bandwidth.

 

[NYCmetsfan]

Because even though the SNES can display 256 colors on some background layers it doesn't mean you can always be displaying 256 colors on every layer at all times.

There was a really good video uploaded this week that can show you the limitations of each mode.

tl;dr: most backgrounds are only 2bpp or 4bpp.

This is soo cool thanks for this video!

 

[Zubz]

I never minded it. Unless the game was really blatant, it blended perfectly on a CRT. And even when it was blatant, sometimes I just thought it was cool.

Man, who cares? It looks cool when used properly. Unless we're gonna talk shit about PC-98, too:

And, to be clear, we're not going to be talking shit about that.

Ok, now that looks cool.