Please help consolidate all info for pixel artists for SNES

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iNCEPTIONAL

Re: Please help consolidate all info for pixel artists for SNES

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

lidnariq wrote: Sat May 07, 2022 10:01 pm You didn't read a single thing I said, did you.

If a person plays a game on a CRT TV in the US, pixels are only a little wider than they're tall, 8:7.
If a person plays a game on a CRT TV in 50Hz-land, the pixels are significantly wider than they're tall, 7:5.
If a person plays a game on a stretchy HDTV in the US, the pixels are significantly wider than they're tall, 3:2.
If a person plays a game on a stretchy HDTV in 50Hz-land, the pixels are really wide, 11:6.
And they ALL look fine when the games are played in perfect pixel mode, or they look stretched the exact same amount as the vast majority of real SNES games do if you want to play them in 4:3 mode on whatever on these displays.

To any pixel artists out there, don't screw up your pixel art such that it literally will look crap anywhere else it's used because it will be distorted at the actual pixel level--maybe you want to make a PC version of your game in the future, or port it Genesis, or put it on iPhone, or whatever--for a bunch of overly obsessive geeks.

Make your game look great at 1:1 on a normal PC display and the pixels there, and it will look similarly great on any modern system if you view it in perfect pixel mode and don't stretch it to 4:3 or beyond. But, if you're gonna stretch it all to hell anyway--half the kids playing today stretch SNES games to frikin' 16:9--just stretch it all on the display itself rather than in the art and you'll have something akin to the vast majority of real SNES games stretched on a 4:3 CRT TV.

If you're trying to go all authentic, well, authentic is sticking to what the vast majority of real SNES games did back in the day, what the artists creating the lovely pixel art back in the day did, and that was actually not create distorted art at all--go figure.
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Gilbert
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Re: Please help consolidate all info for pixel artists for SNES

Post by Gilbert »

Obviously I haven't (and won't) read all these mess, but if one really cares about perfect square pixels just make games on PC, or any modern console that displays every pixel 1 : 1 to the grid on a (modern) display panel.

Just leave classic systems alone. PLEASE.
This is not how things work. It's just an insult to the hard working people in the past who managed to create games looking correctly on era-appropriate displays the systems were designed for, and an even bigger insult on the classic systems that you claim can do what the competitors don't.
It's like some people claimed that the 320 x 200 VGA/MCGA resolution was a (16 : 10) wide screen resolution, which was VERY wrong, as it's supposed to be a 4:3 mode with slightly "tall" pixels.
turboxray
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Re: Please help consolidate all info for pixel artists for SNES

Post by turboxray »

iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Sat May 07, 2022 9:46 pm I specifically said to tell me if I am in fact wrong at the bottom. No problem with being wrong. Don't want to read a paper on why SNES pixels are not perfect squares, but, for all intents and purposes are when viewed on a modern system in pixel perfect mode vs stretching them to all hell to fit some ancient 4:3, especially if people are basically trying to make artists think they have to literally squish their art when drawing things to compensate for that niche use scenario.
:lol: Intelligence seemingly isn't your strong point, but entertainment definitely is - so there's that.
turboxray
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Re: Please help consolidate all info for pixel artists for SNES

Post by turboxray »

Gilbert wrote: Sat May 07, 2022 11:01 pm Obviously I haven't (and won't) read all these mess, but if one really cares about perfect square pixels just make games on PC, or any modern console that displays every pixel 1 : 1 to the grid on a (modern) display panel.

Just leave classic systems alone. PLEASE.
^ This.

I think the irony of these "pixel perfect" babbling fools, is that pixel perfect would actually be the corrected with PAR pixel output.. not square. Perfect, as in that's how these old consoles display those pixels back in the day. If they mean "square" then they should say square. I swear, some people's children..
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Re: Please help consolidate all info for pixel artists for SNES

Post by creaothceann »

My current setup:
Super Famicom ("2/1/3" SNS-CPU-GPM-02) → SCART → OSSC → StarTech USB3HDCAP → AmaRecTV 3.10
Fiskbit
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Re: Please help consolidate all info for pixel artists for SNES

Post by Fiskbit »

Inceptional, you're receiving an incredible amount of free help here while explicitly disregarding much of it and expressing unwillingness to even attempt any level of self-sufficiency. You're not willing to read an article that answers your questions and you're not willing to follow simple instructions to use software yourself. You just want to be handed everything tailor-made for you while being rude and dismissive and telling us how we shouldn't expect you to do any of this yourself. We don't work for you and have no obligation toward you, and we expect a higher quality of discourse here than the comments section of YouTube. I think that you do have something to bring to the community if you choose to be a constructive member of it, but we're not just tools for you to use and abuse.

My opinion is that if you're going to pick and choose what parts of the SNES hardware and experience you're going to respect, you're better off making a PC game in the style of an SNES game. It'll be easier, reach a wider audience, provide you a much larger talent pool to choose from, and let you avoid the parts of SNES development that you don't value.
iNCEPTIONAL

Re: Please help consolidate all info for pixel artists for SNES

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

What I want is simple answers to simple questions, not stuf that goes so nerdy that it defeats the point of asking the question from the position of a designer and artist. But that's just me. And I've made it very clear I am not a programmer.

You guys are so obsessed with exact technical stuff that you're giving bad advice when it comes to something as simple as creating the pixel art for the games. No one needs to draw deformed art just so it looks closer to 1:1 on an ancient 4:3 CRT. Even the damn artists of the time didn't do that in the vast majority of cases. When artists ask these art type of questions or look up this type of info for their SNES ganes, they just wanna make a decent looking SNES game that fits it's limitations, not solve some math problem to fit a pixel ratio that, outside of extreme OCD, is perfectly replicated just using the 1:1 pixels on a modern display. I've made three SNES levels without ever frying my brain with crap like figuring out how to make 1:1 pixels 8:7 pixels or squish art to create that illusion, and they look great as they are. And, I've seem them running in a hacked Super Mario World ROM, a real and official game released by Nintendo itself, and viewed them at both 8;7 and 4:3. And they look fine. Correct when 8:7 and slightly stretched when 4:3, just like the vasr majority of real SNES games. So trying to convince me that 1:1 pixel art doesn't look correct is just gibberish.

Go into super detail regarding all the coding stuff and complexity of creating a SNES game from that perspective. You guys understand that to a genius level, and that's how it needs to be understood to make a SNES game from a coding perspective. You don't need to get artists to create SNES game art through the eyes and minds of programmers too though. Art is not math.

Now, if an artist wants to create literal 8:7 art that gets stretched to just the right 1:1 when viewed on a real SNES playing on an old 4:3 CRT and the like, that's fine. Good for them. But it should be the exception rather that the rule, just like it was on the vast majority of real SNES games back in the day. And that's how it should be explained to artists so they don't go obsessing and wasting time on something that just isn't worth worrying about, unless they really do want to get into the weeds.
Last edited by iNCEPTIONAL on Sun May 08, 2022 4:04 am, edited 1 time in total.
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rainwarrior
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Re: Please help consolidate all info for pixel artists for SNES

Post by rainwarrior »

You treat every thread like your personal space. You ask questions, and people try to give helpful answers, but half the time in utter disrespect you decide you don't want to read it and instead complain and whine for three pages about why you think you're going to make a better game than anyone ever did for SNES.

You did not need to bump a 5 year old thread to append 3 pages of garbage to it. You are littering. Please, stop.

If you're incapable of constructively and respectively contributing to an existing thread's discussion, please, just start one thread of your own and ask everything you want to know there. Don't pollute other threads with your selfishness like this.

We're obviously willing to talk to you, but you're actively corrupting and stifling the conversation of others here. Please either tone it down a lot, or make a topic just for yourself and stick to it.
iNCEPTIONAL

Re: Please help consolidate all info for pixel artists for SNES

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

rainwarrior wrote: Sun May 08, 2022 4:03 am You treat every thread like your personal space. You ask questions, and people try to give helpful answers, but half the time in utter disrespect you decide you don't want to read it and instead complain and whine for three pages about why you think you're going to make a better game than anyone ever did for SNES.

You did not need to bump a 5 year old thread to append 3 pages of garbage to it. You are littering. Please, stop.

If you're incapable of constructively and respectively contributing to an existing thread's discussion, please, just start one thread of your own and ask everything you want to know there. Don't pollute other threads with your selfishness like this.

We're obviously willing to talk to you, but you're actively corrupting and stifling the conversation of others here. Please either tone it down a lot, or make a lane for yourself and stick to it.
No, half the time I literally do not understand what you are saying because it's said from the position of someone who thinks like a programmer rather than just a layman who wants to get some simple direct answers to simple direct questions, like "Can the SNES switch out [stream] all 128 sprites per frame?". It's a real simple question, and it took me days to get a real simple answer. And you might not like that I get annoyed at that. And I dont like that I have to try to work out how to think through the mind of a programmer half the time to interpret what someone is trying to say but in the most complex and convoluted way possible, spending days stuck in the weeds and getting more confused than when I started, only to find out it wasn't really that complex at all. The actual answer was ultimately just "Yes". Look how f'n simple that was!
Last edited by iNCEPTIONAL on Sun May 08, 2022 4:13 am, edited 1 time in total.
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rainwarrior
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Re: Please help consolidate all info for pixel artists for SNES

Post by rainwarrior »

iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Sun May 08, 2022 4:09 amLook how f'n simple that was!
Well how's this for f'n simple: stay out of my f'n threads and don't ask me any more f'n questions.
iNCEPTIONAL

Re: Please help consolidate all info for pixel artists for SNES

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

rainwarrior wrote: Sun May 08, 2022 4:12 am
iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Sun May 08, 2022 4:09 amLook how f'n simple that was!
Well how's this for f'n simple: stay out of my f'n threads and don't ask me any more f'n questions.
No

You don't wanna answer. Don't. It will make it one little bit easier to understand the people in here who do speak like normal human beings rather then robots.

I will ask whatever I want to know.

End of.
93143
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Re: Please help consolidate all info for pixel artists for SNES

Post by 93143 »

iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Sun May 08, 2022 4:09 amThe actual answer was ultimately just "Yes".
No, it wasn't.

The answer to the question you thought you were asking was "yes".

The answer to the question you actually asked was "it depends on the size of the sprites".
iNCEPTIONAL

Re: Please help consolidate all info for pixel artists for SNES

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

93143 wrote: Sun May 08, 2022 4:25 am
iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Sun May 08, 2022 4:09 amThe actual answer was ultimately just "Yes".
No, it wasn't.

The answer to the question you thought you were asking was "yes".

The answer to the question you actually asked was "it depends on the size of the sprites".
No, the problem was some people reading too much into what I asked. I said 128 sprites, which to almost everyone is going to be interpreted as the 128 8x8 sprites that every single SNES guide on the internet mentions. And most people are going to know I wasn't asking about larger sprites formed out of smaller objects and so on. It was a real simple question, worded without any ambiguity or hidden meaning. And the answer was ultimately real simple. That's all I was looking for. If I wanted to dive into things in more detail or discuss the nuances and caveats at that time, I would have asked. You've seen me ask lots of questions, right? If I need to know some other detail, or I don't understand some detail, I'm definitely going to ask. I'm not a complex puzzle to work out, honestly.
Last edited by iNCEPTIONAL on Sun May 08, 2022 4:37 am, edited 1 time in total.
93143
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Re: Please help consolidate all info for pixel artists for SNES

Post by 93143 »

I already explained this in the other thread, but I'll do it one more time.

Your impression that the "sprites" the SNES can display 128 of are necessarily 8x8 is WRONG.

The SNES can display 128 sprites, and they can be 8x8, 16x16, 32x32, or 64x64, with any two of those sizes being available at a time. These are hardware sprites - "objects", as Nintendo puts it. The "sprites" in the artist sense are sometimes referred to as metasprites, and they are built out of these basic blocks, but the basic blocks are not necessarily 8x8.

This means your question was indeed ambiguous.
iNCEPTIONAL

Re: Please help consolidate all info for pixel artists for SNES

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

93143 wrote: Sun May 08, 2022 4:36 am I already explained this in the other thread, but I'll do it one more time.

Your impression that the "sprites" the SNES can display 128 of are necessarily 8x8 is WRONG.

The SNES can display 128 sprites, and they can be 8x8, 16x16, 32x32, or 64x64, with any two of those sizes being available at a time. These are hardware sprites - "objects", as Nintendo puts it. The "sprites" in the artist sense are sometimes referred to as metasprites, and they are built out of these basic blocks, but the basic blocks are not necessarily 8x8.

This means your question was indeed ambiguous.
But, see, right here is the problem:

When someone who has very clealry stated they are an artist and not a programmer, asks if 128 "sprites" can be switched out per frame. It should be real easy for anyone else to know they mean the 128 8x8 "sprites" that are likely to ever actually be used in any real scenario.

You show me a single SNES game that has ever loaded up 128 64x64 sprites into the game "(flickering and disappearing all over the place), never mind then tried to switch them out every frame.

And all the SNES guides online say the SNES can display up to 128 8x8 sprites/objects onscreen, with the number being less anytime you get into bigger sprites made up of multiple smaller sprites [objects].

I would think it would be patently obvious what I was referring to when I asked "Can you switch out [stream] 128 sprites every frame?", especially when the question was asked in a thread where we'd been talking about a character made up of 8x8 background tiles and how all the tiles were being switched out [streamed] every frame, so the correlation with me asking about switching out 128 sprites in that context should be even more obvious.

If I had asked, "Can the SNES switch out say 32 64x64 sprites every frame?" then that really would have needed all the extra clarification in the answer so I would know that even though it's apparently technically possible, it just would not be done. So you could say "Well, yes, but you wouldn't actually be able to see 32 64x64 sprites, so I wouldn't really recommend it.". And so on.

But, whatever. I eventually got the answer that it can indeed switch out all 128 [8x8] "sprites" [objects] every frame, which is what I wanted to know.

Sorted.
Last edited by iNCEPTIONAL on Sun May 08, 2022 5:14 am, edited 2 times in total.
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