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Post by spenoza on Oct 15, 2018 17:55:31 GMT
I remember an old thread somewhere else that had discussed the actual number of colors used on-screen in a variety of games. It was in the context of the system's theoretical maximum number of on-screen colors, that astronomical 481 that is so often bandied about. I seem to recall that the highest color counts witnessed "in the wild", if you will, was 200-something. Does anyone recall some of the numbers we'd come up with, or would care to do some screen-shots and counting for us?
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Post by Black_Tiger on Oct 15, 2018 20:21:29 GMT
Beyond Shadowgate goes well above 100. I think that the old lady scene is 130+.
It is very easy to hit 200 colors without trying to push color counts, if you just to decent shading/detail/color on the tiles and sprites.
SNES games tend to push color with tiles and PCE games tend to push color with sprites.
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Post by lukester on Oct 15, 2018 20:36:24 GMT
Beyond Shadowgate goes well above 100. I think that the old lady scene is 130+. It is very easy to hit 200 colors without trying to push color counts, if you just to decent shading/detail/color on the tiles and sprites. Did any (pre-homebrew) developer hit this target of 200 colors though? Honestly wondering.
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Post by lukester on Oct 15, 2018 20:43:52 GMT
www.gamepilgrimage.com/16bitArcadeComp.htmThis website gives direct color count comparisons for different ports. The Turbo exceeds the genesis but the snes exceeds the Turbo. Why did the Turbo not have a larger palette?
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Post by Arkhan on Oct 15, 2018 20:52:44 GMT
www.gamepilgrimage.com/16bitArcadeComp.htmThis website gives direct color count comparisons for different ports. The Turbo exceeds the genesis but the snes exceeds the Turbo. Why did the Turbo not have a larger palette? 9 bit really isn't that bad of a color palette. The thing PCE loses out on is the lack of layering and all of blending and such you can dick with, so the maximum on screen becomes harder. SNES has a larger palette (15 bits), but still operates in a mode where only 256 of these colors are used. My guess for why is that at the time, the hardware design and cost implications weren't really able to justify the 15 bit color costs. I think the more important question is why didn't the OG PCE just have the VDC capabilities of the SGX. I'd take more layers over more colors.
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Post by spenoza on Oct 15, 2018 20:58:01 GMT
The Turbo might be able to display lots of its available gamut on screen at the same time, but with only 512 total colors available, there are many artistic reasons the system doesn't regularly put 100+ colors on the screen. You don't want your graphics to look garish. So with the SNES there are no technical constraints and enough colors that there are few artistic constraints as well. This is different from the Turbo and the Genesis, where the constraints were probably artistic for the former and definitely technical for the latter.
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Post by Galahad on Oct 15, 2018 22:00:12 GMT
I think the more important question is why didn't the OG PCE just have the VDC capabilities of the SGX. I'd take more layers over more colors. +1
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Phase
Deep Blooper
Posts: 25
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Post by Phase on Oct 15, 2018 23:23:15 GMT
Here is one of the threads from pcefx, talks about the development tools possibly playing a role. www.pcenginefx.com/forums/index.php?topic=22118.0We need a color counting plugin for an emulator. bizhawk will show the palettes being used iirc ..maybe take a screenshot when there are many palettes showing, then use a color counting plugin in photoshop to get the number in the screenshot?
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fragmare
Punkic Cyborg
Posts: 116
Homebrew skills: Graphics, Music, Level Design, Annoying Programmers
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Post by fragmare on Oct 16, 2018 4:43:59 GMT
The PCE's global palette might have been 9-bit (512 color) like the Genesis, but the thing was an absolute sub-palette monster. That's where the insane 481 onscreen color capabilities really stem from, is the ability of the machine to have **32** individual 16-color palettes in play at any given time. That's 2x as many as SNES and 8x as many as Genesis.
My guess as to why they designed the system this way is a.) cute, colorful, anime themed games were all the rage in Japan, and b.) they recognized the lack of parallax scrolling in the system, and knew developers of arcade ports would need lots of sub-palettes to successfully combine multiple bg layers into a single layer, so they put all their eggs in the "color" basket and none in the "extra bg layer" basket. likely due to cost restraints.
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Post by spenoza on Oct 16, 2018 13:37:32 GMT
It is hard to know what their design calculus was. I suspect they were going for a combination of cheap and good enough, and saw themselves very much as the natural successor to the NES. A second background layer might not even have been a consideration, since nobody else was doing that in home hardware at the time. If you think about it, almost every bit of technology and hardware design in the PC Engine is an evolution of stuff already out there. Nothing the PCE did was really new in the landscape of console hardware. It was the same thing that was already out there, just MORE of it.
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Post by soop on Oct 16, 2018 13:54:48 GMT
It is hard to know what their design calculus was. I suspect they were going for a combination of cheap and good enough, and saw themselves very much as the natural successor to the NES. A second background layer might not even have been a consideration, since nobody else was doing that in home hardware at the time. If you think about it, almost every bit of technology and hardware design in the PC Engine is an evolution of stuff already out there. Nothing the PCE did was really new in the landscape of console hardware. It was the same thing that was already out there, just MORE of it. That's the thing that gets me. It seems like a lot of the time, hardware design is more about guessing what developers will like, and then kind of crossing your fingers. I wonder what the reaction was from the hardware team when they saw R-Type for the first time. Probably "Holy shit you guys! Our console plays freaking R-Type!!!"
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Post by Black_Tiger on Oct 16, 2018 18:16:46 GMT
Beyond Shadowgate goes well above 100. I think that the old lady scene is 130+. It is very easy to hit 200 colors without trying to push color counts, if you just to decent shading/detail/color on the tiles and sprites. Did any (pre-homebrew) developer hit this target of 200 colors though? Honestly wondering. I rarely play PCE games in emulation and most who do ignore most of the library. Beyond Shadowgate seems to push 100 colors in some backgrounds alone, so a scene with multiple sprites likely comes close. Maybe the village with fires, aliens and villagers? I think that early screens in Tokimeki Memorial get fairly high.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Oct 16, 2018 23:30:05 GMT
I can't be the only one that found hilarious the number of colors on Strider, with 2x more colors and the arcade card it still manages to be subpar compared to the genny cart lol.
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Post by Black_Tiger on Oct 17, 2018 0:06:55 GMT
I can't be the only one that found hilarious the number of colors on Strider, with 2x more colors and the arcade card it still manages to be subpar compared to the genny cart lol. Tom thinks that the palettes got corrupted. Besides colors that don't make sense, some are invisible.
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Post by Arkhan on Oct 17, 2018 17:53:41 GMT
The Turbo might be able to display lots of its available gamut on screen at the same time, but with only 512 total colors available, there are many artistic reasons the system doesn't regularly put 100+ colors on the screen. You don't want your graphics to look garish. So with the SNES there are no technical constraints and enough colors that there are few artistic constraints as well. This is different from the Turbo and the Genesis, where the constraints were probably artistic for the former and definitely technical for the latter. The thing is, PC Engine games have the same sort of visual aesthetic as alot of SNES games. Look at RPGs like LOXII, or the later CF games. That is on par with SNES RPGs. The real loss is the layering, and all the transparency/visual eye candy stuff that SNES provided as a result. Having a larger selection of colors, but still being locked into a small amount of tiny palettes means you end up with the same kind of end result either way. Your shading will end up being different, but it's one of those "these are both basically the same" kind of things. I can't think of an SNES game where the 16bit colorspace really trumped the PC Engine. Someone should take Super Metroid and reduce to PCE colors and see how it looks. Marida with the Gravity Suit would be a good place to check, or the Brinstar jungle area. I'm guessing it will look about the same.
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