Hi, this is a little demo that I recently put together that handles scaling and rotation. Fantastic list. by Miquel Sat Mar 30, 2019 8:52 am, Powered by phpBB Forum Software phpBB Limited, For anything related to VDP (plane, color, sprite, tiles). Some surprising omissions though. Super Scaler is a revolutionary sprite scaling technology developed by Yu Suzuki and Sega-AM2. That and the 'symphonic' sound thanks to the Sony sound chip or whatever. ghibli99 Member Oct 27, 2017 14,128 Jul 19, 2021 #57 logan_cadfgs said: Originally sprites referred to fixed-sized objects composited together, by hardware, with a background. You must log in or register to reply here. This page does not work well in portrait mode on mobile. It is demonstrable that the SNES could actually display 2-3 times the colors on screen, while the Genesis could display 2-3 times the sprites and independently scrolling 2D planes. The functions in SGDK's sprite engine (in header file ) generally utilize DPLC techniques to cut down on wasted tiles. And, much like Metal Slug, the bosses in Gunstar Heroes are made up of tons of sprites that move and jiggle independently. I'm trying to find a way to make a sprite that I can use on the Genesis, and won't come out with colors that are completely different than the colors I made the sprite with. As each tile can only use the indexed colors from one palette line at a time, taking advantage of a dual-plane image setup like this allows many colors in tight spaces that only a single plane image wouldnt allow enough colors for. Sprites can be flipped horizontally ("hflip'd") and/or vertically ("vflip'd"), as well as have either a low or high priority flag set. Free shipping for many products! By changing frames for sprites over time, the illusion of movement can be achieved and is used to portray walking, attacking, getting hit, etc. Your email address will not be published. Different games deserve different styles of animation, and there are many specific animation tutorials worth checking out online. Enemies, backgrounds, and other changing elements through the game can make good use of different palettes. This hardware is based closely on the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis hardware, with the main CPU, sound processor and graphics processor being the same, . Discover the rarest and more valuable games of all time. Manim 46 yo, and in about 1990, or 89, there was this one, I can I no way remember the title, but it was like, idk if it was motion capture, or what , but the movement of the people was so, so,realistic, and the graphics looked like blocky video,footage..do,I have any idea what Im talking about? Its meant to be some of the best music on the Genesis. you can see the sky), then you reduce rendering time significantly since you only need to render what's below the horizon, not above. You'd probably approximate the levels with these 8 numbers: 0,36,73,109,146,182,219,255. All of which are amazing technical showcases of the machines capabilities. Low priority sprites are displayed behind high priority tiles in other layers. If there was one developer that knows how to push 2D consoles to their limits, its Treasure (the same group that brought you Contra on the NES). Amazing what you can do on the Genesis with a bit of effort. Red Storm I think it was called this! Release Date: March 17, 1994 I have downloaded ProMotion NG, but I'm not seeing any options to set the bit depth, any options? Mega Cat games are NTSC releases, so use these resolutions! Mode 7 sounded cool, but in practice it underwhelmed and did not aid in gameplay outside of F-Zero, Pilot Wings and a few others. Yoshi's Island did for Baby Bowser and Burt the Bashful, and hell it was vital for Mode 7, no? Sprite-scaling was later popularized by Sega's powerful Super Scaler arcade graphics boards, which were capable of scaling thousands of sprites every second; some of Sega's popular Super Scaler arcade games included Hang-On (1985), Space Harrier (1985) and Out Run (1986). (Decompressing compressed art has CPU overhead and takes away too many CPU cycles.) The bosses were all designed around this scrolling technique as well. RECOMMENDED DEBUGGING AND ART TOOLS Finding good software for creating retro graphics, quantizing pixel art into tiles, and reducing the color count to 4bpp can be difficult. Start a new thread to share your experiences with like-minded people. Technically it's something like "flag that indicates any sprites have non-transparent overlapping pixels" but let's stick with the shorter description. Trimming off a bit of the viewport can help improve speed. There are 2 tilemap planes available for use on the Sega Genesis: a background plane ("Plane B") and a foreground plane ("Plane A"). Man, I really gotta play through MW4 soon! Being somewhat of a Lemmings fan, that really made my day! The window plane is technically a subplane for Plane A; its graphics will not be scrolled with the rest of Plane A. When you're sprite scaling you're pulling a memory hit for every pixel of every sprite on screen. The SNES' Mode 7 could do background scaling/rotate, not sprites. The Super FX chip could pull off sprite scaling and rotation. Full screen rotation, full screen scaling, sprite scaling and various other effects were possible on a stock Megadrive provided you programmed them. I don't think it should be taken as possible performance reference. by bioloid Fri Mar 29, 2019 6:59 am, Post The Sega Genesis was one of the two great 16-bit systems of it's time, the other being the Super Nintendo. Bloodlines on the Genesis keep up this tradition with its ability to do translucency, mirroring, parallax scrolling, cloud effects, transparency, and other graphical feats that pushed the systems powers (the swaying tower, for instance, or the rolling statue head.). The Sega Genesis, also known as the Mega Drive outside of the United States, is a 16-bit game console created by Sega. You made some excellent points about the great subtle effects. The SNES also could scale and rotate one 256 color plane, which could be made to look like large objects such as Bowser in Super . Favorite RSS Play All ABOUT COLLECTION 1,534 RESULTS Metadata Text contents (no results) Featuring a small footprint and a massive library of games, the Sega Genesis Mini 2 is an excellent retro console that has both casual and hard-core appeal. New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast. And have been catching up with various retro anthologys etc. by Cristiano Sword Wed Jan 16, 2019 1:08 pm, Post (20 sprites, 40 patterns in 320-wide mode, 80% that in 256-wide mode.). - Palette swatch slots with import/export. 06.Pitfall A quick and dirty Sega arcade hardware sprite viewer, with optional palette support. Space Harrier II, a Sega arcade classic, originally did get a Genesis port, but M2 said, "Yeah, but what if the Genesis had support for sprite scaling?" and just went ahead and made that a thing, but also added the same sprite-scaling support for the Genesis version of Space Harrier. by Chilly Willy Thu Mar 28, 2019 8:11 pm, Post The designers seem to be heavily experience in how a graphic novel is constructed in order to produce an authentic look and feel. Colors in the Genesis palette are 9 bits, 3 per color channel, allowing a total of 512 colors. The first boss that you encounter in the game, which looks like a fighter plane, is actually implemented in the second scrolling playfield, and they used scroll offsets to make it look like it was rotating. Being a late Genesis title, Comix Zone uses the full visual capabilities of the Genny in order to provide a rich and dynamic experience. Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page. They either started with bigger version shrunk or included both on the cartridge (as NeoGeo in non-CD version works like NES, there is no texture RAM in the system). The Genesis VDP has a feature that tells you whether two sprites have collided recently. Thanks for reading! For hardware sprites, sprite sizes are limited in size to (w x h) sizes, where w is width, and h is height, where each dimension is 1-4 tiles. I took a look through my Genny collection. As Sega was not able to obtain the trademark in the US, the unit was called Genesis there. It'll reduce the vertical resolution to half, but it'll also double the rendering speed. Add in the ability to rip loose chunks of the page itself to make deadly paper airplanes, or the power to punch an enemy through the ink boundaries of the panel and you have a fresh twist to the beatemup genre. How did the SNES do the turtles throwing the foot soldiers at the screen in Turtles in Time? Many times, for detailed sprites (such as the player sprites), the number of tiles utilized for all of the sprite frames will take up too many VRAM tiles. I would love any suggestions on what to do? Most bosses are easy once you know their patterns, but some will keep you on your toes every time you fight them. This composition occurs as each scan line is prepared for the video output device, such as a CRT, without involvement of the main CPU and without the need for a full-screen frame buffer. Genesis could have fared a lot better with its higher computer speed and potentially it could have allowed for more accurate super scaler ports of Outrun, Space Harrier, and Afterburner, which would have been huge early in the Genesis' life. Also, I seem to remember that The Adventures of Batman and Robin was a special effects tour de force. You may want to allocate 1 or 2 palettes to stay consistent throughout the game, for a particular usage. You can clearly see the steps between them as they abruptly switch size. See Other Entries of the Games That Pushed The Limits Series. There's an option to set bit depth. There are 70 games in this category. See Game In Action. Rouse has been designing games professionally for over seven years and has played a lead design role in the development of games for the PC, Macintosh, Sega Dreamcast, Sony PlayStation, and PlayStation 2. For such a prolific developer that had scaling in so many of its arcade games, and the Genesis being sold as 'The Arcade Experience At Home', it's interesting that they decided to not include this technology. This setting will determine if sprites (which also can have a low or high priority setting) are displayed below or above the tile. I mixed a spell wrong(in the pause menu), using a feather, and two leaves. Entdecke Sonic CD (Sega CD, 1993) getestet & funktioniert! The regular enemies, when theyre around, come at you very fast and from all angles. About the Author Richard Rouse III is a computer game designer, programmer, and writer at Surreal Software (www.surreal.com). See Game In Action. Beyond that, Sprites are no longer counted as individual 8x8 tiles. Tiles on each plane can have priority: low or high. Subscribe to be the first to hear about our exclusive offers and latest arrivals. The limited interval of HBlank limits the amount of sprites and patterns per scanline, which is the part that doesn't scale - otherwise, why have the limit? The Genesis on the other hand only needs to hit memory once for every pixel on the screen. Treasures knack for showing off cool graphical tricks, Graphical effects such as translucency, mirroring, parallax scrolling, cloud effects,& transparency, Some of the best use of color on the Genesis. Tamagotchi Park (JPN), Sonic the Hedgehog CD (Sega CD) (Prototype), The Space Adventure - Cobra: The Legendary Bandit (Sega CD). The Sonic games have bright, contrasting colors that make it easy to perceive Sonics surroundings despite the fast speed. So far I've implemented: - Import tiles/palettes from bitmap (16 colour, indexed only) - Palette editing. This thing is amazing, one of the most visually impressive games I used to play for the genesis. They don't add much, but they were definitely impressive at the time. I would also consider checking out The Misadventures of Flink. some learning from the competition and improvements in technology at the time may have had a big part to play in it too. planned to have scaling and rotation support. JavaScript is disabled. Plus shrinking a sprite means the same work for the VDP to do because each sprite is still guaranteed to be no more than 32 pixels wide. Each tile is 8x8. I finished Disneys Aladdin on the SNES and loved the graphics. so,sorry, Im in a twitch stream and a few of us are trying to,remember it and canti know it was ground breaking/state of the art.how good a game it was, with the critics, I have no,idea..thanks in advance for any knowledge(:(: Maybe flashback? One of the more subtle effects we used was the highlight/shadow mode of the Genesis, which allowed the artists to use more on-screen colors than games typically used. Spanish TVs are brain washing people to be hostile to me. . Intense graphical effects such as warping, scaling, and rotation; Mulit-sprite bosses; Slowdown-inducing combat due to explosions & many character sprites at once; . Much like the Sega CD version of Batman Returns, these were probably implemented to show off the system's fancy scaling effects, which actually looked a bit better than the standard SNES Mode 7. The earliest game on the Genesis I can remember where I saw something resembling sprite scaling was during the ending to. (It's a little more complicated than this, but this is the basic concept in a nutshell), Tiles for a sprite internally rendered in sprite format (transposed, 4x4 tiles), Visualization of priority of plane layers, 4 palette lines, each with 16 color entries, Each color entry has a color depth of 4bpp (4 bits per pixel), 1st color entry is the transparent color for tile art, Palette lines can be rendered to use slightly lighter or darker colors by toggling highlight or shadow modes, respectively. 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