nesdev.org

Espozo wrote:I am getting the impression that they are lying down on the ground.

I think they look fine.

Well, it's my opinion anyway. Look at the skeleton on the staircase. Oh wait, I just noticed something. How do you have two different dark grays? Aren't they exactly the same? Oh, and the second to darkest brown doesn't look right. Are you trying to use the NES palette?

Espozo wrote:How do you have two different dark grays? aren't they exactly the same?

The 0 column and D column greys are different, though some emulators use a default palette that has the same colour for them; I'm not sure why this choice was made.

Hmm... Does anyone have a good NES palette they could post? I don't know as to why the colors range from palette to palette so much when they are from the same system.

Because the system doesn't have a fixed palette. It's an NTSC signal, and the actual colour depends on the TV that decodes it (which varies quite a lot).

Bisqwit made a nice palette generator: http://bisqwit.iki.fi/utils/nespalette.php
Drag also made a nice one: http://drag.wootest.net/misc/palgen.html

Both of these give you lots of parameters to decide how to generate the colours.

Espozo wrote:Well, it's my opinion anyway. Look at the skeleton on the staircase. Oh wait, I just noticed something. How do you have two different dark grays? Aren't they exactly the same? Oh, and the second to darkest brown doesn't look right. Are you trying to use the NES palette?

Sprites in here are just placeholder while I test everything out, there won't really be skeletons in the pub, I mean they can't hold their drink for a start. Goes right through em.

My NES palette is combined from various sources, there is no "true" palette for the system as is depended on your TV, region and so on. People argue about it but AFAIK there is no correct answer.

Heres the palette I made anyway (photoshop has it's own way of organising the swatches, not mine):

(click for .aco, .act, .ase & photoshop friendly .pal)

I kinda got used to my one now, some prefer darker palettes or less vibrant ones, but to the best of my knowledge this amount and approximation of colour signals are derived from the hardware output.

Finalised on a 6 colour palette, he is probably all good for animation now. Lot's of layers al-la Arthur style health.

Sprite has changed a lot (new concept art on devlog) and not using NES palette anymore... not strictly anyway.

You know, I ran into the same situation as you while I was making an NES styled pirate game. I didn't like the NES's color palette so I decided to give it a 9 bit color palette. I then made the graphics 4bpp, but I was still frustrated with the 8 sprites per scan line limit, so I increased the overdraw to the width of the screen. I then found I was starting to run out of sprites in general, so I made it to where I had 128 64x64 sprites. I remember BG layers, so I decided to give myself 3 to work with. 9 bit color was starting to look bad, so I then thought I had decided on a 15 bit color palette, but I made it 24 bit and also added an 8 bit alpha channel for the heck of it. I also quadrupled the resolution to 512x480. I then made the graphics 8bpp, and had it to where I had 16 256 color palettes. I realized that I was upgrading the colors more than everything else, so I then added 3 more BG layers and tripled the overdraw. I also doubled the amount of sprites. I was beginning to realize that I didn't even want to have the game be 2D anymore, so I limited myself to 100,000 polygons to work with. This proved to be too restrictive, so I gave myself 100 million. I found that what I had in mind was over the polygon budget, so I made it 1 billion polys, but I didn't like that either, so I raised it to 1 quadrillion and implemented the most advanced shaders to date. I also had the game running at 4K, but gave the option for 16K support if you link 4 TVs together. The limited color depth was really starting show, so I made the game have 48 bit RGB with a 16 bit alpha channel. After all this, I finally finished the game. I have a screenshot right here: (I shrunk the image so it wouldn't mess with the layout of the web page.)

Espozo wrote:You know, I ran into the same situation as you while I was making an NES styled pirate game. I didn't like the NES's color palette so I decided to give it a 9 bit color palette. I then made the graphics 4bpp, but I was still frustrated with the 8 sprites per scan line limit, so I increased the overdraw to the width of the screen. I then found I was starting to run out of sprites in general, so I made it to where I had 128 64x64 sprites. I remember BG layers, so I decided to give myself 3 to work with. 9 bit color was starting to look bad, so I then thought I had decided on a 15 bit color palette, but I made it 24 bit and also added an 8 bit alpha channel for the heck of it. I also quadrupled the resolution to 512x480. I then made the graphics 8bpp, and had it to where I had 16 256 color palettes. I realized that I was upgrading the colors more than everything else, so I then added 3 more BG layers and tripled the overdraw. I also doubled the amount of sprites. I was beginning to realize that I didn't even want to have the game be 2D anymore, so I limited myself to 100,000 polygons to work with. This proved to be too restrictive, so I gave myself 100 million. I found that what I had in mind was over the polygon budget, so I made it 1 billion polys, but I didn't like that either, so I raised it to 1 quadrillion and implemented the most advanced shaders to date. I also had the game running at 4K, but gave the option for 16K support if you link 4 TVs together. The limited color depth was really starting show, so I made the game have 48 bit RGB with a 16 bit alpha channel. After all this, I finally finished the game. I have a screenshot right here: (I shrunk the image so it wouldn't mess with the layout of the web page.)

It only took 31 years!

In all seriousness though, I really think you should stick with the NES's color palette, but you can do whatever you want. I converted your pirate to the NES in 2 different pictures. The first is more close to yours, but I like the second better. (I think it's a bit odd that a pirate would be wearing bright blue, to be honest.)

Espozo wrote:In all seriousness though, I really think you should stick with the NES's color palette,

You're right, on both counts.

I've converted what I was doing back to NES palettes.

Trying out a few colourways. Grey seems to be a favourite, thoughts welcome.

colourways walk cycle


runcycle WIP


And some weapons


Gonna keep experimenting with his palette until it sticks.

This is absolutely fantastic. You've eschewed some of the NES restrictions like in Shovel Knight, but taken the aesthetics of the system to a whole new level. These bigger sprites give so much more room for personality, and the higher framerate has allowed for some fantastic subpixel animation.

With that being said, there's not much C&C I could provide. The designs are great but some of your weapons look a little messy. The dark AA on the edges of the Mega Anchor won't look very good on most backgrounds.

Also, have you considered posting your work over on r/pixelart? The people over there would go nuts for it!

I really enjoy the hot pink one.

You can't be serious.

Pink pirate is hilarious in the same way that pink Captain Falcon is.