Mode 5 colour limitations?

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iNCEPTIONAL

Mode 5 colour limitations?

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

The only examples I can find, say the that main layer is limited to 4bpp (16 colours) and the secondary layer to 2bpp (4 colours), but it doesn't say if that is 16 colours across the whole main background layer or per 8x8/16x16 tile with multiple different palettes available to be chosen between and used on each tile.

Does anyone know the full amount of colours Mode 5 can show and if that's broken down into various palettes and how?

For example, most sources say Mode 0 is limited to 2bpp (4 colours), but in actual practice that translates to 8 4-colour palettes per layer for a total of 32 colours per layer (actually 24 accounting for transparency in each palette) and a total of 96 visible colours across all four of the background layers combined.

So, yeah, just want to find out how many colours I can actually show on Mode 5's main background layer. If it really is just 16 total then it's not great, but if it's actually 16 per tile with many multiple palettes available then it's an entirely different thing.
Last edited by iNCEPTIONAL on Tue Apr 26, 2022 7:56 am, edited 1 time in total.
psycopathicteen
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Re: Mode 5 colour limitations?

Post by psycopathicteen »

It's 16 colors per tile, 121 colors total.
iNCEPTIONAL

Re: Mode 5 colour limitations?

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

psycopathicteen wrote: Tue Apr 26, 2022 7:48 am It's 16 colors per tile, 121 colors total.
Just as I suspected.

So, Mode 5 really is more capable than most people seem to be aware of (outside of proper SNES programmers and hardcore enthusiasts).

I mean, this clearly isn't doing Mode 5 true justice at all if that's the case:

https://youtu.be/jws2erj7iZ0

And yet, it's literally the only example of any SNES game using Mode 5 during actual gameplay that we have.

I think that's a crime.

We need some more examples of high-res SNES games that actually use the full colour range and show it off in a much better light, methinks.
calima
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Re: Mode 5 colour limitations?

Post by calima »

iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Tue Apr 26, 2022 7:53 am We need some more examples of high-res SNES games that actually use the full colour range and show it off in a much better light, methinks.
Why? Interlaced modes look like crap on most modern TVs.
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dougeff
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Re: Mode 5 colour limitations?

Post by dougeff »

Mode 5 isn't the same as interlaced. The high resolution mode increases horizontal resolution, and interlaced mode increases vertical resolution.

You can turn them both on to double both H and V, or you can use them separately.

Some Japanese games used mode 5 to make Japanese text more readable.

Personally, I haven't tested either thing to see how it looks on a TV, so I don't know.
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creaothceann
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Re: Mode 5 colour limitations?

Post by creaothceann »

My current setup:
Super Famicom ("2/1/3" SNS-CPU-GPM-02) → SCART → OSSC → StarTech USB3HDCAP → AmaRecTV 3.10
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dougeff
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Re: Mode 5 colour limitations?

Post by dougeff »

Seiken Densetsu 3 uses mode 5 for the text screens at the beginning of the game.
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turboxray
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Re: Mode 5 colour limitations?

Post by turboxray »

creaothceann wrote: Tue Apr 26, 2022 10:56 am Interlace looks bad with motion.
If you keep your frame rate at 30hz (or 25hz PAL), it's not really an issue.
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Re: Mode 5 colour limitations?

Post by lidnariq »

It also looks just fine on a CRT. Bad deinterlacers are a modern TV problem.
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tokumaru
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Re: Mode 5 colour limitations?

Post by tokumaru »

Modern TVs won't handle 240p video correctly either, this is not unique to interlaced modes... the combing effect happens even in low-res modes, whenever the screen scrolls or sprites blink. In every HDTV I've personally tested, anyway.
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Nikku4211
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Re: Mode 5 colour limitations?

Post by Nikku4211 »

iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Tue Apr 26, 2022 7:33 am The only examples I can find, say the that main layer is limited to 4bpp (16 colours) and the secondary layer to 2bpp (4 colours), but it doesn't say if that is 16 colours across the whole main background layer or per 8x8/16x16 tile with multiple different palettes available to be chosen between and used on each tile.
On the SNES, 4BPP and 2BPP on background is usually per tile. The only modes that enforce only a single palette are modes 3, 4, and 7, and only for the 8BPP (255 colour) background layer, as the other layer of modes 3 and 4 can still have multiple palettes(shared with the 8BPP layer if the 8BPP layer uses indirect colour).

Mode 5 and 6 are no exception. However, they don't use 8x8 tiles, instead they use either 16x8 tiles or 16x16. In terms of proportion, 16x8 tiles roughly look like 8x8 under 512x224/239 progressive, though, but that also means 16x16 tiles look like 8x16 under the same resolution.

16x8 tiles roughly look like 8x4 tiles and 16x16 tiles roughly look like 8x8 tiles under 512x448/478 interlaced, though.
iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Tue Apr 26, 2022 7:33 am Does anyone know the full amount of colours Mode 5 can show and if that's broken down into various palettes and how?
121, plus 120 for sprites(as always).
iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Tue Apr 26, 2022 7:33 am For example, most sources say Mode 0 is limited to 2bpp (4 colours), but in actual practice that translates to 8 4-colour palettes per layer for a total of 32 colours per layer (actually 24 accounting for transparency in each palette) and a total of 96 visible colours across all four of the background layers combined.
I do feel like it is important for documents about the SNES' PPU hardware to clarify that not only does mode 0 have 8 3-colour palettes, but that each layer has its own set of 8 palettes that are all unique and aren't shared between layers.
iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Tue Apr 26, 2022 7:33 am So, yeah, just want to find out how many colours I can actually show on Mode 5's main background layer. If it really is just 16 total then it's not great, but if it's actually 16 per tile with many multiple palettes available then it's an entirely different thing.
The reason people would say modes 5 and 6 aren't great is not really because of the palette thing, which is par for any 2 and 4BPP layer on SNES, but generally more for other reasons, like the increase in how much VRAM tile graphics use.
iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Tue Apr 26, 2022 7:53 am So, Mode 5 really is more capable than most people seem to be aware of (outside of proper SNES programmers and hardcore enthusiasts).

I mean, this clearly isn't doing Mode 5 true justice at all if that's the case:

https://youtu.be/jws2erj7iZ0
Yeah, a lot of people who learn about modes 5 and 6 just see this one game that came out very early in the SNES' life (it's an American game so it's early by USA standards) and assume that modes 5 and 6 must suck simply because this game doesn't look very good.
This is usually without considering the other possible reasons the game doesn't look great, like how video game artists at the time weren't used to drawing tilesets for consoles with high vertical resolutions, or how primitive the tools used by the artists might have been, or how much time the developers had to make the game, or even the fact that it's hard to properly represent 480i on the modern monitor/modern TV today's players of the game are using, etc.
iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Tue Apr 26, 2022 7:53 am And yet, it's literally the only example of any SNES game using Mode 5 during actual gameplay that we have.

I think that's a crime.
Well, if you're talking about in terms of games that don't have a lot of ideographs in their main gameplay, like games that aren't Japanese visual novels, maybe.

It is kind of understandable why plenty of SNES games don't use mode 5, considering the importance of intra-scanline parallax and colour maths to most SNES games.
iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Tue Apr 26, 2022 7:53 am We need some more examples of high-res SNES games that actually use the full colour range and show it off in a much better light, methinks.
I do agree that it would be nice to have more hi-res SNES games that take advantage of the 8 palettes both layers in mode 5 (as well as single layer of mode 6) have.

Even if it could challenge the way modern pixel artists approach art with either its 4:7 pixels (or close to 9:13 pixels if European or an Oceanian) or the way interlacing works if the interlace bit is set.
calima wrote: Tue Apr 26, 2022 8:41 am Why? Interlaced modes look like crap on most modern TVs.
creaothceann wrote: Tue Apr 26, 2022 10:56 am Interlace looks bad with motion.
The modern TVs I've seen typically use weave deinterlacing, so high-motion, high-framerate stuff will look comb-y. For those TVs it then makes sense to have a mode to limit the frame rate to 30 (or 25 if you're a PAL pal) to avoid combs, even if that adds a choppiness that doesn't look or feel so good in video games.

Then again, the same modern TVs that I have seen in person also treat 240p as 480i, misapplying weave deinterlacing to something that was never meant to be interlaced to begin with. So I guess it'd look like crap either way.

If you can't see combs on the 240p Test Suite's flashing sprite test on your modern TV, and you're not using an external scaler, you're lucky.
dougeff wrote: Tue Apr 26, 2022 11:13 am Seiken Densetsu 3 uses mode 5 for the text screens at the beginning of the game.
Holy crap even the official English-localised version in SquEnix's official ROM collection (of Mana) retains this 512x224 mode 5 menu(and also mode 5 dialogue boxes), the emulator used actually showing it in full detail, too.
turboxray wrote: Tue Apr 26, 2022 12:00 pm If you keep your frame rate at 30hz (or 25hz PAL), it's not really an issue.
Granted, if you do that, the game will look a bit more like trash on an actual CRT than if it was at the full 60FPS (or 50FPS if your SNES outputs oddly letterboxed video), so perhaps the best way to approach it is to have an option in-game to select if you want 30FPS for weave deinterlacing or 60FPS for real CRTs as well as Robert's deinterlacing.
lidnariq wrote: Tue Apr 26, 2022 1:08 pm It also looks just fine on a CRT. Bad deinterlacers are a modern TV problem.
Interlacing looks just fine on a CRT. What might not look fine on a CRT is small text, if you're using RF or composite.
tokumaru wrote: Tue Apr 26, 2022 1:54 pm Modern TVs won't handle 240p video correctly either, this is not unique to interlaced modes... the combing effect happens even in low-res modes, whenever the screen scrolls or sprites blink. In every HDTV I've personally tested, anyway.
I have never seen an HDTV that natively treats 240p as 240p in my life, but I am sure that they do exist somewhere...

At the very least, you might want a line-doubler like a RetroTINK 2X-MINI (if you can find one) or an OSSC if your modern TV has a case of making a weaved basket out of your 240p signals.

I don't know what you can do about interlacing, though.
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Catyak
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Re: Mode 5 colour limitations?

Post by Catyak »

Nikku4211 wrote: Tue Apr 26, 2022 3:52 pm
Yeah, a lot of people who learn about modes 5 and 6 just see this one game that came out very early in the SNES' life (it's an American game so it's early by USA standards) and assume that modes 5 and 6 must suck simply because this game doesn't look very good.
This is usually without considering the other possible reasons the game doesn't look great, like how video game artists at the time weren't used to drawing tilesets for consoles with high vertical resolutions, or how primitive the tools used by the artists might have been, or how much time the developers had to make the game, or even the fact that it's hard to properly represent 480i on the modern monitor/modern TV today's players of the game are using, etc.
IIRC, one of the credited programmers on this game (Rebecca Heineman) has gone on record stating that this game was made without access to the official SNES dev kit (because Interplay was basically broke at the time), was developed relatively quickly to be released around the time the SNES was released, and the use of the hi-res mode was primarily a marketing decision so the game could (in theory) better support a split screen 2 player versus mode by using interlacing.
calima
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Re: Mode 5 colour limitations?

Post by calima »

dougeff wrote: Tue Apr 26, 2022 9:35 am Mode 5 isn't the same as interlaced.
Oh indeed, thanks for the correction. However nocash writes
"The TV picture is so blurry, that the result will look quite similar to Color Addition with Div2"

Which makes me question the utility of this mode still.
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Re: Mode 5 colour limitations?

Post by creaothceann »

It depends on what outputs, cables and TVs you use.
My current setup:
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iNCEPTIONAL

Re: Mode 5 colour limitations?

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

Nikku4211 wrote: Tue Apr 26, 2022 3:52 pm
iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Tue Apr 26, 2022 7:53 am And yet, it's literally the only example of any SNES game using Mode 5 during actual gameplay that we have.

I think that's a crime.
Well, if you're talking about in terms of games that don't have a lot of ideographs in their main gameplay, like games that aren't Japanese visual novels, maybe.
So, are there some Japanese interactive novel style games that use Mode 5 then? And, if so, do you have some links I can check out? :)
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