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questions about sprites

Discussion in 'Engineering & Reverse Engineering' started by Linaru, Oct 30, 2015.

  1. Linaru

    Linaru

    Member
    hi guys, I am a pixel artist and have started working with another individual on a sonic hack and due to palette changes decided to new character sprite sheets from scratch.

    here is a couple of bits of my work in progress:
    [​IMG]
    [​IMG][​IMG]


    as I am new to hacking and still working out the quirks of mega drive pixel art I was wandering whether there was a pixel size limit to sonic's frames?
    I know all most everything is split into 8X8 tiles and the character frames shown above are a little bigger than the standard sonic sprites.

    I would hate to finish spriting a full sheet complete with story related animations only to find out he's 2 pixels too tall
     
  2. Zeoinx

    Zeoinx

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    I don't know the measurements myself, but I will say nice job on them sprites, Pretty good detail on it for the scale.
     
  3. MotorRoach

    MotorRoach

    Member
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  4. Linaru

    Linaru

    Member
    these animation frames are my from my own WIP sprite sheet and had to be drawn from scratch to match the colour palettes we are using in the hack.

    although I will admit there are some similarities, I have looked at allot of different references for drawing sonics sprite.
     
  5. Crappy Blue

    Crappy Blue

    Knuckles' Chaotix is a perfect game with no flaws Member
    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]

    There's nothing wrong with admitting you're editing someone else's sprite, dude. Unless by "from scratch" you mean you literally remade the entire sprite from scratch while using it as a pixel-for-pixel reference.
     
  6. Sparks

    Sparks

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    Sondro Gomez / Kyle & Lucy
    ^I feel like I'm in the days of Mystical Forest Zone again.

    Also, that skin palette for Sonic is not very pleasing looking, looks too orange.
     
  7. Linaru

    Linaru

    Member
    we moved knuckles colours from line to onto line 1 to make room for other things(which forced us to drop the green and make knuckles socks yellow like his sonic 3 npc sprite), as a result the skin tones are partially sharing palettes with tails colours, among other things.
    its been a real pain to move everything to line 1 and free up line 2.. I have already redrawn custom item capsules, rings, springs, checkpoints and even eggman so that they will all use the same line 1 colour palette.


    I just need to know if making characters sprites taller and wider is going to cause problems, don't know if sonic is limited to a certain number of 8X8 tiles or something strange
    its very different drawing pixel art for the mega drive from my usual indie game jobs.
     
  8. MainMemory

    MainMemory

    Kate the Wolf Tech Member
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    That depends on which game you're hacking, and whether you're able to rearrange the VRAM layout.
     
  9. runde

    runde

    Using Plan "B"... Member
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    Deep in the gut of Texas
    What was I was supposed to do again?
    Usually the default limit is in the ball park of 16-20 tiles without getting into the guts of the game. It also depends on which game you adopted as a base.
     
  10. Linaru

    Linaru

    Member
    we are hacking sonic 3 & knuckles altough I am told they are re-writing the engine a fair amount.
     
  11. MarkeyJester

    MarkeyJester

    Original, No substitute Resident Jester
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    The Mega Drive's sprite system is able to display a chained system of up to 80 sprites on screen at any one time. Each sprite can display up to 16 tiles in a rectangle/square in order from the set pattern address. These sprites can display tiles from anywhere within VRAM. This means, that if arranged correctly, you can fill the entire screen with sprites, without breaching the "per line" limit or sprite limit.

    ...in conjunction with a Sonic game and its engine/software however, limits are intentionally imposed (and usually for the purpose of saving space or time). The sprites are usually built via a system tied to objects, where each object controls a set number of sprites and positions them together in relative clarity. For Sonic 1, the width and height are limited to a relative size of 128 pixels left/right/up/down from the object. Sonic 2, the height is limited to 128 pixels up/down from the object, but the width is limited to 32768 pixels left/right from the object (though this is wrapped to a 512 pixel range thanks to both the software and the nature of the hardware). Sonic 3 & Knuckles, this appears to be identical to Sonic 2, however, there do appear to be some variency differences between different routines (I don't know the exact details, I won't attempt to dive into it, but I'm sure someone else can clarify), one thing to note, is that regardless of the software, the hardware will wrap the sprite within the 512 pixel range on both X and Y where evident). Your actual sprite limit (regardless of game) cannot be defined as several other objects will be taking up some of the sprite space. Though you should have quite a modest enough amount to display the character the way you need to display him, without disrupting the rest of the game.

    Summary, raising the height/width of the character will likely mean using more sprites, that won't cause you a problem though. What will be a problem, is available VRAM space for the character's (now larger) artwork, which will take up more tiles and now needs to somehow fit into the allocated/reserved VRAM space. My advice is to just go with it, try it out, and find out what walls you hit, so you can understand and find a way to fix them. In other words, cross that bridge when you get to it.
     
  12. Zeoinx

    Zeoinx

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    Wow, thats......not right man, I thought you made those. Just admit your using someone else's sheet. Also, props for the original artist, I like his pallet 1000000% more. Really pops more.
     
  13. Linaru

    Linaru

    Member
    Thank you this has helped me allot