How about you sit down and actually read what dithering is before responding in such a matter >.> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dither
Markey essentially said he'd like to see a Sonic fangame that uses the capabilities of modern graphics, instead of trying to force everything to 320x224. Ooh, how controversial.
My turn :v: tl.dr. Its a mixture of a style choice and resource management. When you are going for low resolution graphics not because of hardware or technical limitations, everything goes. Sure, 10 bit per component colours and even 16bit floating point are nice but most displays cant display them. The 256 shades of gray in True Colour are far from enough and you can clearly distinguish between them. You might question the team why are they reusing tiles and not drawing the whole foreground uniquely. While the hardware would allow for it, drawing 2000 tiles is one thing, 2 million tiles would be suicide by most standarts. With that effort they might HD-fy a whole 2D Sonic. Depending on how dithering is done, it can look better or worse. Personally I'd like the game to use full 15-bit colours like on the 32X but I don't have a say in that.
Making a fangame that "uses the full potential of modern technologies" is hard as fuck especially if your "team" consists of like two and a half men (which is not even the case for most fangames since most of them are made by one person). I so wanna use the "don't like it make your own" argument here solely cause I fully understand where Sonic Overture dev team comes from in their choices. It's not solely the matter of choice but rather the matter of how much hard work you already have to put into your game just to make a "simple" classic fangame. If making games that don't play like shit and look at least somewhat tolerable was easy there wouldn't be so many "retro inspired" indie games. And before you say Sonic Fan Remix let me remind you that in the end of the day that fangame didn't go anywhere and even though it looked very good there still were people complaining about Pelikan's design choices.
Yes, of course, of course, that reminds me... People have the tendency to ignore my posts, and the ones that do pay attention, don't pay attention enough and end up missing the vital details that would have cleared the whole situation up in the first place had they only read it carefully. Maybe it's my typing style, who knows. All I know is, I clearly posted that line, and you ignored it. I like dithering, very much in fact, I dither myself quite often when given a palette of colours, I do it so often that someone accused me of running an image of mine through a floyd steinberg algorithm when it was actually done by hand. I was just curious to know why the team went for a dithering appro... this is usually the part where people stop paying attention and just jump in and attack.
I read that part Markey. What makes your post confusing is that you list these things in the form of complaints beforehand. Saying we're "doing this just for nostalgia" and taking issue with our using pixel graphics just because they're not advanced modern graphics that make full use of modern day computers, implies you're unhappy and directing these as criticisms. You can't just say that then say "but I'm not complaining". It's like saying "Ugh the food has vinegar and bread, I'm tired of these things, you chefs only use them to appeal to plebs, why can't a meal use something else for once, but I'm not complaining." You've already crossed the line, it's a criticism and it's being addressed according to what you said, it can't just be declared not a complaint like all that context gets erased.
As in, Holy Christ I've used one of the 16.7 million colours in front of me, I think I'm going to have to lie down!
If we were to use intermediate shades for every dithered portion, this would quickly multiply the colors in every palette. Also, where do you draw the line with graduated dithering? If say, a sprite has graduated dithering that spans 32 pixels, do you include 32 shades to cover that length, or quantize it? If quantized, then how many shades? If only a few, then it has a banded appearance, which begs for dithering again. And, if we were to use multiple shades to replace dithering, this greatly multiplies the demands on the spriters, as it requires them to juggle many more colors and make sure they're all balanced, while drawing forms and textures and lighting and shading with all these colors taken into account. At that point, it might as well be handled via painting, and then this begs for a completely reformed art style that means every other asset needs to be replaced and made from scratch.
You could have always said "it's the aesthetic we're going for" instead of this overly defensive attitude.
Lange , think you and everyone else missed the point of What he's asking/stating. I don't think it's at all a question of Pixel vs Non-Pixel, but instead he's asking "WHY was the choice made to use dithering techniques to imitate a 16bit limitation era when you are fully capable of Modern Full Range Color?" When you remember that the use of dithering in pixel art is to fool the eye into seeing a mid-range color between two colors, and that this technique was necessary back then because the colors and shades needed could not be achieved on the hardware, its only natural to ask why. Nowadays that technique is no longer needed because of full range color available to us now. Just look at titles like Sonic Colors DS, Azure Striker Gun Vault, Freedom Planet, or even say Knuckles Chaotix (which made very limited use of dithering). These games all use modern technology advances of their era These games had no necessary use for the technique One guy can replicate the visuals anyone of them for a fan game if they so choose and still be able to release their product like everyone else YET Overture deliberately choose to "limit" the color rage and implement the technique in its art direction when it isn't necessary. So the question is why? Why did you make that choice? Honestly I'd like to know too. I know majority of the fan base does this but I don't think they put much thought into their game's aesthetic. Why did team overture decide give it a that dithering.
This is quite false. As a spriter myself I know, and ask my friends over in the SSF2 development team And you didn't answer my question, your response addresses if you were to change it now. I'm not asking that, I'm asking why initially you went for the dithering look PS: with full range color there is no line to draw
You have taken my query too seriously, I am partly to blame of course considering my literacy is below the average skills of most Retro members here. So I do not blame you for misinterpreting my text from its intended message. However, if we pretend that it is a complaint as you are believing as such (Devil's advocate here), then you are not taking the criticism very well, and are really pushing to prove an opinion wrong. I have no problem with disagreements with my opinions, but your response was very rude, even for you, who of which I have become accustomed to the rudeness you invoke. Back to my initial point, stop taking what I say to heart. I know very little about Sonic fangames, and my opinion and questioning is from an amature player's perspective, not some expert game engineering philosipher. If you disagree, then you disagree, nothing more to it, just ignore me and carry on with the way you've been doing it, there are plenty of others within this thread who appreciate what you guys have done and you should be very proud, it proves that your methods work well, and that my post should be taken as a grain of salt. tl;dr, ignore my post, you exaggerating twit dX
I'm not trying to prove an opinion wrong as much as I'm questioning how ridiculous it and the related criticisms sound. I'm also giving logical reasons as to why we're doing what we do, subjective and objective. I'm sorry if I came across rude, not my intent. The only thing I'm annoyed by really is Pulse's response which amounts to "you're wrong because me and my friends said so".
Honestly, it doesn't really matter what you say in these forums, if there is any possible way for it to be taken negatively, it will be. It doesn't matter how carefully you choose your words, someone will find a way to exaggerate what you said and respond in critical fashion. Rest assured that most people are able to see who the instigator is and there is no need to try an explain what you meant, the respondent will always dig their heels in and become event more indignant.
honestly I didn't bother explaining cause I thought M Jester brought an end to this. But I'll explain all the same. When it comes to Sprites Banding and Dithering are two half's of the same coin one will step in for the other if needed. I asked why did you choose limit the color space in overture and dithering initially you never answered. (but this is a side note) Having wide array of colors to work with isn't a burden for spriters as you put it, it can be very easy to balance out a wide array of colors and at the least getting things looking right all comes down to skill on the spriters part really. Programs like Photoshop, Gimp, and Graphics gale can cut out a ton of the brunt work color correction if you know what to do. Also since you are working with a much wider array of colors you don't always need the same color X when spriting, if it looks good it is good becomes a rule of thumb and you can quickly iron out the details later using the previous mentioned software to tidy up. Yeah, at this point of unlimited color it can be seen as painting, but it doesn't mean you need to reform the style at all, I just means you know how you're using your colors like any other good spriter 8bit 16bit or otherwise. Banding doesn't beg for Dithering either if you quantize my sig sprite you'll notice it doesn't beg for dithering, the colors are in close relation enough to each other that blend effect works naturally, you could have been able to have set up like that but your colors shift to drastically you have banding that needs dithering because you're using an unlimited pallet. as you know I'm not the best at English, I have problems explaining things clearly but this is my attempt at steering you in the direction of what im getting at_ it easyer to show than to explain any way
Excuse me as I cite this article, which is very relevant: Creating full color sprites requires a different approach entirely and spriting techniques go out the window. It involves brushes, transparencies, manipulation tools, and demands more specific details which can be described with the higher color count, otherwise the appearance will be dull or flat in the context of full color. This would place greater demands on the artists, and demand different artistic methods entirely, which means our spriters would have to be replaced with painters or similar. And yes, managing colors this way is messier and harder to maintain desired palettes and subtle relationships. Things can be implied with sprites that have to be carefully specified with full color artwork, and trying to adjust details after they're printed can be difficult and tedious, and often the power of suggestion is lost. It would indeed be a bigger burden on the artists. Unless of course, you're just being lazy about it, which we're not. With limited color sprites, the artwork is more direct, has less demands, and is much easier to manage. On top of this, as I said earlier, going the route you're talking about would also require recreating all the assets from scratch. Sonic's sprites for example would have to conform to this style, which means everything needs to be redrawn and with this higher level of fidelity. That among everything else would demand colossal amounts of work on top of what we're already having to do. And yes I answered your question. It's answered earlier and it's answered in the paragraph above. I don't know what you're not understanding about it. As for banding vs dithering, we're well aware banded shading works when colors are close in relation or proximity. If you look at game's art, we're not using dithering everywhere. It's used selectively where there's large areas and few colors where graduated shades are needed, such as the sky backgrounds. And yes, we like the oldschool sprited aesthetic. A certain appeal tends to be lost when more colors and fidelity are introduced, and artists tend to start using dry and superficial forms and colors because they have the room to do so. I've always hated how Pokemon changed visually once it hit 3rd gen. In this case, the limitations on the game resulted visceral forms and a contrasted color scheme with surreal vibrant hues. Even if this was not the artists' intentions, it teased the imagination and looked very interesting, giving the game a lot of character. Once it made it to Game Boy Advance, they had tons of colors to work with and more room to describe the artwork. The colors turned dull as dishwater and the designs were kept to their most plain and sterile forms. It hasn't changed much at all since.
Christ are you still posting about this. It's a perfectly legitimate argument to suggest that if you're not obeying every single rule established by the Sega Mega Drive hardware, it's odd to then limit your colour palette. To have nearly a dozen colours for the HUD font and then use literally half that amount on foreground scenery is a curious choice. To then go out of your way to in effect, emulate more colours by utilising old television tricks like dithering could be considered time better spent elsewhere. Arguably it's all murky waters these days because we tend to use sharper LCD or LED monitors, but better not tell anyone. But sticking to a set palette is fine too. Whatever floats your boat. It's just not immediately clear which choice you've made?
