Please help consolidate all info for pixel artists for SNES

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Nikku4211
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Re: Please help consolidate all info for pixel artists for SNES

Post by Nikku4211 »

I'm just going to say this:

There are art programs like GIMP (and Photoshop, apparently) that let you make art for 8:7 pixels, without needing to squish pre-made pre-existing pixel art.

Programs like Aseprite can also be modded to add support for certain non-square pixel aspect ratios by manually editing some of the XMLs in it. Granted, if you do this, watch out, because Aseprite keeps crashing all the time on my computer.

So you don't have to squish art to design for wide pixel ratios, you can use GIMP/Photoshop or mod Aseprite and draw art from scratch with visibly 8:7 shaped pixels.
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iNCEPTIONAL

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

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

Nikku4211 wrote: Sun May 08, 2022 5:10 am I'm just going to say this:

There are art programs like GIMP (and Photoshop, apparently) that let you make art for 8:7 pixels, without needing to squish pre-made pre-existing pixel art.

Programs like Aseprite can also be modded to add support for certain non-square pixel aspect ratios by manually editing some of the XMLs in it. Granted, if you do this, watch out, because Aseprite keeps crashing all the time on my computer.

So you don't have to squish art to design for wide pixel ratios, you can use GIMP/Photoshop or mod Aseprite and draw art from scratch with visibly 8:7 shaped pixels.
Ah, well that is indeed useful to know. If I can just flip a switch in photoshop and I'm working with 8:7 pixels rather than 1:1 pixels, then I can happily give that and go and see how much difference it really makes and whether it's something I ultimately want to bother with when creating the art for my SNES games. Cheers.

PS. No idea why the text has suddenly went all italic. Lol

Edit: Hmmm, it doesn't seem to have that pixel aspect ratio in the version of Photoshop I have (which is the program I use for creating art). :-(

Still, good to know it's an option at all.
Last edited by iNCEPTIONAL on Sun May 08, 2022 6:36 am, edited 1 time in total.
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tokumaru
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Re: Please help consolidate all info for pixel artists for SNES

Post by tokumaru »

If you're too lazy to put any effort into working at the proper aspect ratio if it's any harder than "flipping a switch", I seriously doubt you're ever gonna finish the simplest of SNES games unless you find a clown to do all the heavy lifting for you. Good luck with that.

That being said, yes, Photoshop does have a "switch" that allows you to set the pixel aspect ratio of the image you're working on to any value you want. The image will look slightly blurry at 100% zoom due to interpolation, but the final result on the console will be much more accurate.
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Re: Please help consolidate all info for pixel artists for SNES

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

tokumaru wrote: Sun May 08, 2022 5:47 am If you're too lazy to put any effort into working at the proper aspect ratio if it's any harder than "flipping a switch", I seriously doubt you're ever gonna finish the simplest of SNES games unless you find a clown to do all the heavy lifting for you. Good luck with that.

That being said, yes, Photoshop does have a "switch" that allows you to set the pixel aspect ratio of the image you're working on to any value you want. The image will look slightly blurry at 100% zoom due to interpolation, but the final result on the console will be much more accurate.
Yeah, that "clown" is called a programmer. Although I wouldn't call them a clown. I didn't call the guy who programmed my first iOS game a clown when he worked with me on that. And I will do the design and the art, as per my role in the project. But, I'm not going to go too far into obsessing over things that aren't that huge a deal, imo, like matching the exact pixel ratio. I expect to put this game on other platforms too, so only building it in specific SNES pixel aspect ratio probably isn't a great approach for me. But other people are more than free to obsess over such things.

Unfortunately, the [very old] version of Photoshop I have doesn't seem to have the option.
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Re: Please help consolidate all info for pixel artists for SNES

Post by tokumaru »

iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Sun May 08, 2022 6:39 amUnfortunately, the [very old] version of Photoshop I have doesn't seem to have the option.
I think you have to go View > Pixel Aspect Ratio > Custom.
iNCEPTIONAL

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

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

tokumaru wrote: Sun May 08, 2022 7:17 am
iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Sun May 08, 2022 6:39 amUnfortunately, the [very old] version of Photoshop I have doesn't seem to have the option.
I think you have to go View > Pixel Aspect Ratio > Custom.
Yeah, it's not got that option. Must have been added in a later version. I'm using Photoshop 7.0.
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 4:55 amWhen 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 don't get to ignore the hardware to the point that your questions don't make any sense, and then blame us for not reading your mind. Especially when we did manage to read your mind and answer the question you thought you were asking, and what you're apparently objecting to is being told additional free information you didn't explicitly ask for.

The premise of your question, which (as far as I can tell) is that there are always 128 8x8 sprites on SNES and that larger sprites are necessarily built out of them somehow, is wrong. Everybody on this board besides you understands this, and I've explained it to you twice now.
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].
No, the 64x64 sprites are still "objects" and there can be 128 of them. You're reading the docs wrong.

64x64 sprites (or 32x32, or 16x16) are indeed built out of 8x8 tiles, but there can be 512 of those, and they can be reused by multiple sprites. This has nothing to do with the limit of 128 hardware sprites, which is set by the size of OAM. An OAM entry doesn't care how big the sprite is; it takes 4.25 bytes regardless.

Streaming sprites larger than 8x8 is done commonly. 128 16x16 sprites fit in the OBJ VRAM allocation without any repeated tiles, and all of those graphics can be updated in about four frames if nothing else needs a ton of bandwidth. Games often use a combination of 8x8 and 16x16 sprites, or 16x16 and 32x32. Donkey Kong Country uses 8x8 and 16x16, and its sprite VRAM is arranged to allow rapid updates of 1 KB strips of largely 16x16 sprites. My game uses 8x8 and 32x32, and in many scenarios I have a bunch of 32x32 sprites that need to be streamed at 30 fps.
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.
You got the answer you wanted pretty much right away. In the process of giving you that answer, rainwarrior tried to clear up the misapprehension that resulted in your question being phrased the way it was.
If I need to know some other detail, or I don't understand some detail, I'm definitely going to ask.
No, the problem here is that you don't know what you don't know. You can't ask the right questions if you already think (wrongly) that you know the answers. You won't get far if you continually take offense at people trying to help you.

Hardware sprite size on SNES is not a "detail". It's crucial basic information. If you're trying to make a SNES game, particularly one that actually pushes the hardware, you need to know this.
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Re: Please help consolidate all info for pixel artists for SNES

Post by 93143 »

As far as pixel aspect ratio goes, the SNES was designed for the NTSC television standard. And since "pixels" as such aren't a thing in analog TV, even a modern display will interpret the signal from a real NTSC SNES as a ~4:3 picture with 8:7 pixels, because that's what the signal says. The 8:7 PAR on a roughly 4:3 display is correct, and it's not a "tiny minority" who care; I'm pretty certain the vast majority of people who care enough about the SNES in this day and age to play a homebrew game for it are already aware of this and use the correct aspect ratio.

There's nothing magical about square pixels. The Mega Drive didn't have square pixels either; they were 32:35 in H40 mode, or 8:7 in H32 mode. Pretty much nobody used square pixels; there are tons of popular arcade games that use highly non-square PARs and look quite silly with square pixels:

hadouken_squarepix.png
hadouken_squarepix.png (46.56 KiB) Viewed 759 times

Making a game that only works on PAL is a possibility, and it's an attractive one because the much longer VBlank affords you a lot more DMA bandwidth (though porting to NTSC would then require you to make sacrifices). In that case, the PAL pixel aspect ratio would be the correct target, and of course the game would have to be designed to be played at 50 Hz. Most of the PAL library is lazy ports of NTSC games that play too slowly and look too wide, precisely because the developers cared as much as you do about a significant chunk of their audience.

The point I'm making is that the video standard the console was built for is not just an artifact of the available displays - it's part of the hardware design. The NTSC SNES was designed to output 8:7 pixels; it's not just an unfortunate side effect of the type of TV your average person could afford. Artists did take it into account if they knew what they were doing, particularly for large images with easily identifiable shapes:

CT_Magus's_Castle.png
CT_Magus's_Castle.png (20 KiB) Viewed 759 times

Depending on the game, it may not be necessary to devote much effort to ensuring everything looks exactly the way you envisioned it at 8:7 PAR. But if you had (say) a large planet in the backdrop, for example, it might be a good idea to draw it as a 7:8 ellipse (or ~13:18 if targeting PAL) so it looks right when displayed correctly. And if you're going to have (say) a rotating boss or backdrop using Mode 7, the rotation matrix should probably be adjusted to correct the aspect ratio so whatever it is doesn't appear to change shape as it rotates; if any of the other graphics look mismatched when you do this, it might be wise to correct them too.
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Nikku4211
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Re: Please help consolidate all info for pixel artists for SNES

Post by Nikku4211 »

93143 wrote: Sun May 08, 2022 8:01 pm I'm pretty certain the vast majority of people who care enough about the SNES in this day and age to play a homebrew game for it are already aware of this and use the correct aspect ratio.
I actually don't know about this. Most people who play SNES games do so on an emulator, a lot of which default to showing square pixels. While they typically do have the choice to stretch to 4:3 or 64:49, I've seen some people who are aware argue that 8:7 pixels not scaling well on most people's fixed-pixel monitors looks worse than improper square-pixel proportions.
93143 wrote: Sun May 08, 2022 8:01 pm Depending on the game, it may not be necessary to devote much effort to ensuring everything looks exactly the way you envisioned it at 8:7 PAR. But if you had (say) a large planet in the backdrop, for example, it might be a good idea to draw it as a 7:8 ellipse (or ~13:18 if targeting PAL) so it looks right when displayed correctly. And if you're going to have (say) a rotating boss or backdrop using Mode 7, the rotation matrix should probably be adjusted to correct the aspect ratio so whatever it is doesn't appear to change shape as it rotates; if any of the other graphics look mismatched when you do this, it might be wise to correct them too.
I am not sure how many SNES games took the wide pixels into account. Chrono Trigger and Mortal Kombat are commonly cited examples, but I can't tell if they're the rule or the exception.

Still, I'd prefer wide pixels even for games that ignore it just for authenticity reasons. After all, they had to at least playtest it this way and say 'That looks OK.'.

I know some CRTs can be adjusted for proportions, but I can't imagine a lot of people adjusting CRT TVs a specific way for specific SNES games.

Sadly, I've never seen a single SNES game that actually corrects the rotation matrix for 8:7 pixels.

And I've never seen a SNES game made for PAL that actually takes ~18:13 pixels into account either, because drawing on computers with different pixel aspect ratios has been pretty common.
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Re: Please help consolidate all info for pixel artists for SNES

Post by 93143 »

Nikku4211 wrote: Mon May 09, 2022 6:57 amSadly, I've never seen a single SNES game that actually corrects the rotation matrix for 8:7 pixels.
You will, if I ever get my game done.

I noted that point specifically because D-Zero (which is a PAL demo) doesn't correct it, and the result is very obviously distorted on a PAL TV.

Taking the aspect ratio into account is obviously more important if you're targeting PAL.
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Re: Please help consolidate all info for pixel artists for SNES

Post by Nikku4211 »

93143 wrote: Mon May 09, 2022 1:24 pm You will, if I ever get my game done.
Sweet. I'm hype.
93143 wrote: Mon May 09, 2022 1:24 pm I noted that point specifically because D-Zero (which is a PAL demo) doesn't correct it, and the result is very obviously distorted on a PAL TV.

Taking the aspect ratio into account is obviously more important if you're targeting PAL.
Yea, it is important, especially if you're targeting real European (and Australian) consoles and not just emulators running in PAL mode.

I guess the artists that worked on D-0 either weren't aware of the wide pixels, didn't care, or was not able to get used to designing 8BPP (or 4BPP) graphics for such wide pixels.

Or it was possible they were specifically asked not to take advantage of the wide pixels but that seems pretty unlikely.
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Re: Please help consolidate all info for pixel artists for SNES

Post by 93143 »

Nikku4211 wrote: Mon May 09, 2022 1:54 pmI guess the artists that worked on D-0 either weren't aware of the wide pixels, didn't care, or was not able to get used to designing 8BPP (or 4BPP) graphics for such wide pixels.
No, I mean specifically the Mode 7 rotation parts. The transform matrix isn't something the artist needs to worry about really.

Though it is true that the art itself is not drawn to correct for the distortion, and correcting a static graphic with the matrix would result in ugly scaling artifacts. Correcting the matrix when rotating a circular graphic distorted to PAL aspect ratio (so it looks the same as in the next scene where it's not rotating) would make it very clear that it was actually an ellipse.

On the other hand, the background graphics in those segments do look prerendered, which again would remove the load from the artist; you'd simply have to render the graphics in the target aspect ratio.

On the other other hand, who says you have to do a specific effect a specific way in a demo? It's not like it's supposed to be a representation of a hypothetical physical reality, like in a game. The distortion almost has a vibe of its own...
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Re: Please help consolidate all info for pixel artists for SNES

Post by Oziphantom »

Nikku4211 wrote: Mon May 09, 2022 1:54 pm
93143 wrote: Mon May 09, 2022 1:24 pm You will, if I ever get my game done.
Sweet. I'm hype.
93143 wrote: Mon May 09, 2022 1:24 pm I noted that point specifically because D-Zero (which is a PAL demo) doesn't correct it, and the result is very obviously distorted on a PAL TV.

Taking the aspect ratio into account is obviously more important if you're targeting PAL.
Yea, it is important, especially if you're targeting real European (and Australian) consoles and not just emulators running in PAL mode.

I guess the artists that worked on D-0 either weren't aware of the wide pixels, didn't care, or was not able to get used to designing 8BPP (or 4BPP) graphics for such wide pixels.

Or it was possible they were specifically asked not to take advantage of the wide pixels but that seems pretty unlikely.
The Artist on D-zero is a professional artist from the era with shipped SNES titles, the art was made on an Amiga ( mostly, few PC renders here and there as well ) a few of the art pieces where adjusted for PAL pixels, but its not always possible with pixel, colour and coverage limits to adjust every piece. Mode-7 stuff was stretched so much anyway.
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Re: Please help consolidate all info for pixel artists for SNES

Post by Nikku4211 »

Oziphantom wrote: Tue May 10, 2022 2:36 am The Artist on D-zero is a professional artist from the era with shipped SNES titles, the art was made on an Amiga ( mostly, few PC renders here and there as well ) a few of the art pieces where adjusted for PAL pixels, but its not always possible with pixel, colour and coverage limits to adjust every piece. Mode-7 stuff was stretched so much anyway.
Ah, then yeah, can't really get used to drawing for the SNES' wide PAL pixels if the Amiga's pixels in PAL are nowhere near as wide.

Though I'm not sure if you're talking about adjusting pieces after they're made, or making new pieces from scratch for the wide PAL pixels.
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Re: Please help consolidate all info for pixel artists for SNES

Post by psycopathicteen »

iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Sun May 08, 2022 4:55 am
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].
What "guides" are you talking about? The only places I've seen people saying that are Sega-16 forums and youtube comments.
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