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[z84c00]

Hi Everyone!

For all you pixel artists out there, I was wondering if you know of any good examples (or if you're interested in whipping something up) with 2 bits/component. So basically RGB222 which would give you a whopping total of 64 colors on-screen. The Sega Master system used this as did most arcade games, barring the extra 2 bits for red/green (rgb332).

It looks like most EGA games at the time just color-reduced the higher bit-art which ended up with some really crappy art and garish colors. That said, 'poppy' games like Drop Wizard and the like should make for excellent candidates and shouldn't really suffer.

Just curious if better tools and experience makes it easier these days to do pixel art at that level..

-Z8

[Jondog]

This is what you want http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_monochrome_and_RGB_palettes#6-bit_RGB

Basically what you do is create the RGB222 (each colour goes 0, 85, 170, 255) palette and then only ever use those colours. I don't really know of any examples though.

[z84c00]

This is what you want http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_monochrome_and_RGB_palettes#6-bit_RGB

Basically what you do is create the RGB222 (each colour goes 0, 85, 170, 255) palette and then only ever use those colours. I don't really know of any examples though.

Yeah, the problem with those kinds of examples is that they're just color reductions rather than being done with RGB222 from the start. A lot of games just look awful because they started out with a higher color resolution and then just downsampled them and put them in a box. If you look at some of the later SMS system games (James Pond for instance), there's a HUGE difference.

-Z8

[Jondog]

I found some examples here http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=32477.msg869511#msg869511

[surt]

It looks like most EGA games at the time just color-reduced the higher bit-art which ended up with some really crappy art and garish colors.

Most EGA games (very nearly all) just used the default EGA palette (CGA global palette). This was apparently because using a custom palette wasn't supported by all EGA cards. Some games that also supported VGA did just nearest-fit the VGA graphics into the default EGA palette.

I've done a bit of SMS spec stuff: http://opengameart.org/sites/default/files/space_merc.png, http://opengameart.org/sites/default/files/monkeylad_mockup.png, http://opengameart.org/sites/default/files/plastic_shamtastic_mockup.png
Really not bad to work with once you accept the limited greys and lack of low-saturation dark colours.

[Sik]

EGA enforced the default palette in 200 lines modes, for the sake of compatibility with CGA monitors. Since that's the resolution nearly every game used, games were stuck with the default palette.

[z84c00]

It looks like most EGA games at the time just color-reduced the higher bit-art which ended up with some really crappy art and garish colors.

Most EGA games (very nearly all) just used the default EGA palette (CGA global palette). This was apparently because using a custom palette wasn't supported by all EGA cards. Some games that also supported VGA did just nearest-fit the VGA graphics into the default EGA palette.

I've done a bit of SMS spec stuff: http://opengameart.org/sites/default/files/space_merc.png, http://opengameart.org/sites/default/files/monkeylad_mockup.png, http://opengameart.org/sites/default/files/plastic_shamtastic_mockup.png
Really not bad to work with once you accept the limited greys and lack of low-saturation dark colours.

Thanks for that! That's exactly what I tried to say.. There's a huge difference between handcrafted RGB222 art than just scaled down ones.. The 16-color palette is very interesting too btw!

-Z8