That's no problem as the RAM tiles are still direct video. They can have all possible colors in each pixel.D3thAdd3r wrote:Very interesting, I wonder though how sprites will work? What happens when an overlapping sprite on tile breaks the pair rules?
Upcoming obscure video modes
Re: Upcoming obscure video modes
Re: Upcoming obscure video modes
Reading better, appears I imagined reducing actual ram tile size there
Re: Upcoming obscure video modes
My original idea for this 16x4 video mode was having smoother vertical scrolling and having fewer background tiles because of getting rid of the combinations. It was pure coincidence that it also allows a palette and half the flash size for background tiles, and this all at the original resolution of mode 3 and with only small tweaking to mode 3.
To reflect my feeling about this, I now have to dress up only in a towel, run through the streets and shout EUREKA!
To reflect my feeling about this, I now have to dress up only in a towel, run through the streets and shout EUREKA!
Re: Upcoming obscure video modes
Cool, I'd like to see what quality of graphics can be achieved and how easily within those rules. Are you considering an 8x8 text section like mode 4 has?
Re: Upcoming obscure video modes
I'm halfway through with my PCX->tileset/palette tool. I've used the background tileset of Würgertime for some tests. The statistics for that tileset found out by my new tool are promising:D3thAdd3r wrote:Cool, I'd like to see what quality of graphics can be achieved and how easily within those rules.
Code: Select all
Tileset statistics
==================
128x152px in 8x38 tiles -> 19456 bytes without palette mode.
289 palette entries, 131 color pairs above threshold of 10 occurences.
Coordinates of pairs below or at occurence threshold:
=====================================================
274a
(38|22)px == (2.6|5.2) tile.intile
7f07
(30|27)px == (1.14|6.3) tile.intile
1aa9
(46|51)px == (2.14|12.3) tile.intile
3fa9
(44|55)px == (2.12|13.3) tile.intile
0606
(64|57)px == (4.0|14.1) tile.intile
ff92
(26|73)px == (1.10|18.1) tile.intile
ff5b
(110|87)px == (6.14|21.3) tile.intile
8584
(12|88)px == (0.12|22.0) tile.intile
ff99
(30|147)px == (1.14|36.3) tile.intile
e414
(68|0)px == (4.4|0.0) tile.intile
14e4
(122|0)px == (7.10|0.0) tile.intile
ff3f
(106|5)px == (6.10|1.1) tile.intile
(66|29)px == (4.2|7.1) tile.intile
[...]
E.g. 274a (38|22)px == (2.6|5.2) tile.intile is the dot of the exclamation mark of the "HURRY!" text in the tileset and the background color pixel right of it. That one was accidentially coloured differently than the rest -> hooray, only 287 palette entries left. The next one is the yellow-red pair in the H of OUCH!, which could be colored yellow-yellow or red-red, too, without losing anything in semantics or artwork. And further...
And if you find it too tedious, I can even think of some automatic which tries to find the nearest color existing in one of the more common palette entries.
I think we could make it configureable per tile line if it should be 2 lines of 16x4 or one line of 8x8. That way the game designer can even do a split-screen.Are you considering an 8x8 text section like mode 4 has?
How does the static overlay works in mode 3?
Re: Upcoming obscure video modes
Ok, after one hour of work I'm down to 255 palette entries -> feasible Do you see any important difference to the tileset above?
No? Well, then this mode now saves ~10KB of flash *without* notably reduced colours and *with* selective palette effects for color pairs by writing two palette entries (one for color pairs with two pixels of the same color). That all at the expense of 255 bytes RAM, which we could reduce further by putting more work into reducing seldom used color pairs.Re: Upcoming obscure video modes
Image is a bit brighter(?) but otherwise no difference, great work! I'll have to read the thread again, I don't fully grasp your color-pair concept...
Re: Upcoming obscure video modes
Shouldn't be, must be a side effect of converting from xcf->pcx. I've only changed the colors of ~20 pixels to colors which look nearly the same. Most notable difference is with the spatula, it saved 5 palette entries just to skip the shadow on it. I "don't care".uze6666 wrote:Image is a bit brighter(?)
Re: Upcoming obscure video modes
I have to correct myself, the calculation above was slightly wrong, as I always counted same-color pairs as only one palette entry, even there were more than 16 in the image. With respect to this, the original image needed 318 palette entries, and the one below needs 256. Still no big difference in how it looks.
Re: Upcoming obscure video modes
The direct video to palette video tool is completed . It's a Tcl script taking a PCX file as input and generating a C source with palette array and tiles array. Please see the attachment. Now we'd only need the 16x4 video mode.
- Attachments
-
- pcxto16x4palettedtiles.tcl.gz
- (3.07 KiB) Downloaded 453 times