Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length

 
Advanced search

1411273 Posts in 69323 Topics- by 58380 Members - Latest Member: bob1029

March 28, 2024, 01:40:41 AM

Need hosting? Check out Digital Ocean
(more details in this thread)
TIGSource ForumsDeveloperArt (Moderator: JWK5)What is a good way to get that 'retro' look?
Pages: 1 2 [3] 4
Print
Author Topic: What is a good way to get that 'retro' look?  (Read 18393 times)
William Broom
Level 10
*****


formerly chutup


View Profile
« Reply #40 on: April 05, 2008, 01:41:28 AM »

Using scaled views seems to be working pretty well for me so far.
Logged

medieval
Guest
« Reply #41 on: May 02, 2008, 06:51:38 AM »

Photoshop.
Yes... in a perfect world, that's what I would choose. And by perfect world, I mean a world where I have a job Tongue
........ Why stay legal?

I normally just use viewport to scale my game up.
Logged
Eclipse
Level 10
*****


0xDEADC0DE


View Profile WWW
« Reply #42 on: May 04, 2008, 01:23:10 AM »


No, the first one does look better.  It's pixel art.  Pixel art should always be as crisp as you can get it.  The second method is destroying the pixels.

If you want to scale hi-res art, use the second method.  The first would destroy hi-res art.

the first one is wrong too, pixels are intended to not rotate, they are "picture elements", you cannot rotate a pixel.

Anyway the SNES had hardware sprite scaling and rotations and when you scale AND rotate a sprite the look on the snes is similar to that one, but actually on that image every big pixel is made of 10x10 real pixels or more
Logged

<Powergloved_Andy> I once fapped to Dora the Explorer
Eclipse
Level 10
*****


0xDEADC0DE


View Profile WWW
« Reply #43 on: May 04, 2008, 01:45:41 AM »

I thought someone would mention that. The avatar is from Destiny of an Emperor 2, as an aside.

I like stylistic art, and retro pixel art can be stylistic. But there are other forms and styles too. Aquaria for instance was stylistic without being retro or realistic.

I just think it's too easy to fall into the 'retro=good' mindset, when in fact a lot of retro graphics were pretty awful. It's only in retrospect that we find things like a Metroid screenshot aesthetically appealing, even back then they probably wished they had more colors to work with than 16 at once on the screen and 4 per tile/sprite.

i agree at all.
In the 8\16bit era that was cutting edge graphics, all the developers were all for a way to use more colors, faster scrolling, more and more parallax layers etc

so making a 2d game for me it's ok, making it too much low res is almost quite a nonsense...
mainly retro = good is because pixel art is quicker to do instead of big resolution sprites\tiles and also a lot easier

also, fullscreen pixel art even at "high" resolutions like 800x600 looks like shit, mainly because we're not on the amiga era, playing on the TV screen, and low resolutions on lcd screens makes the game blurred.
That's also why now i can't play cave story on the pc but only on my gp2x that fits better the resolution and make me drools for the 1:1 pixel to pixel art ratio :9

if you're gonna do a pixel art game, do it at least at 1024x768, scaling manually your sprites.
Logged

<Powergloved_Andy> I once fapped to Dora the Explorer
Mitchard
Level 1
*


View Profile
« Reply #44 on: May 04, 2008, 02:46:52 AM »

Don't "manually" scale your sprites. Just scale 1:1 without bilinear filtering.

Also a lot of the limitations in old games were due less to a limited amount of colours and more due to a predefined colour palette.

Limited palettes can look good IF you pick colours that suit the image you're making.
Logged
ColossusEntertainment
Level 1
*

Royal Leamington Spa, UK


View Profile
« Reply #45 on: May 04, 2008, 04:39:12 AM »

I think one thing that is often forgotten about when discussing the "retro look", is the fact that everything was running on old TV's back then, and there was significant blurring and bleeding going on which helped smooth things out. Scaling without filtering doesn't give the correct look, but scaling with bilinear filtering is even worse (imo).

I've been experimenting with creating a filter which tries to emulate that look. I'm turning this into a shader now, to make it an integrated part of my little graphics lib/game engine, so I can use it for realtime stuff as well (at the moment it is done in software and way too slow).

Here's an example, it's from HeroQuest on the Atari ST. The picture at the top is just scaled without filtering, the bottom one is with my experimental filter:



Some more images, if anyone is interested, can be found here:
http://www.colossusentertainment.com/Blog/BlurandBleedRunningGameso.html
Logged
Eclipse
Level 10
*****


0xDEADC0DE


View Profile WWW
« Reply #46 on: May 04, 2008, 07:14:16 AM »

cool, maybe a bit excessive
Logged

<Powergloved_Andy> I once fapped to Dora the Explorer
Eclipse
Level 10
*****


0xDEADC0DE


View Profile WWW
« Reply #47 on: May 04, 2008, 07:18:02 AM »

Don't "manually" scale your sprites. Just scale 1:1 without bilinear filtering.

this is scaling manually
Logged

<Powergloved_Andy> I once fapped to Dora the Explorer
basara
Level 0
**



View Profile
« Reply #48 on: May 04, 2008, 08:53:07 AM »

I think the reason why I like pixel art and low resolutions is that, in a way, it lets the viewer's brain create details that are not there.
When looking at a high resolution and detailed image everything is given, if the details look bad the image looks bad.
If the resolution is low the brain will fill those detail-gaps with usually nice-feeling stuff.
High resolution images can look as good as pixel art, but they need to get all the little details right.
Logged
joshg
Level 4
****



View Profile WWW
« Reply #49 on: May 04, 2008, 09:07:37 AM »

Here's an example, it's from HeroQuest on the Atari ST. The picture at the top is just scaled without filtering, the bottom one is with my experimental filter:



Awesome, I love it!  The bottom image totally made me feel like I was looking at old arcade game.
Logged

these are from an actual radio shack in the ghetto
moi
Level 10
*****


DILF SANTA


View Profile WWW
« Reply #50 on: May 04, 2008, 09:14:54 AM »

I think one thing that is often forgotten about when discussing the "retro look", is the fact that everything was running on old TV's back then, and there was significant blurring and bleeding going on which helped smooth things out. Scaling without filtering doesn't give the correct look, but scaling with bilinear filtering is even worse (imo).

I've been experimenting with creating a filter which tries to emulate that look. I'm turning this into a shader now, to make it an integrated part of my little graphics lib/game engine, so I can use it for realtime stuff as well (at the moment it is done in software and way too slow).

(...)
Nice, I think you perfectly captured the feeling.The pics become a lot brighter but I think it was like that with the real thing. I'm also looking forward to your retrobox.

BTW I remember creating a filter for a similar effect in mame (in the latest versions you can create PNG patterns to use as filters). I just put a semi transparent black dot in a transparent 2x2 pixel grid. And it did the trick more or less.
« Last Edit: May 04, 2008, 09:17:57 AM by moi » Logged

subsystems   subsystems   subsystems
Mitchard
Level 1
*


View Profile
« Reply #51 on: May 04, 2008, 11:06:19 AM »

Don't "manually" scale your sprites. Just scale 1:1 without bilinear filtering.

this is scaling manually

It's not very manual. Manual scaling sounds like resizing all of the images beforehand rather than a runtime process.

Also, I'm loving that filter ColossusEntertainment.
Logged
Eclipse
Level 10
*****


0xDEADC0DE


View Profile WWW
« Reply #52 on: May 04, 2008, 01:17:03 PM »

Don't "manually" scale your sprites. Just scale 1:1 without bilinear filtering.

this is scaling manually

It's not very manual. Manual scaling sounds like resizing all of the images beforehand rather than a runtime process.

Also, I'm loving that filter ColossusEntertainment.

scaling the stuff on photoshop it's pretty stupid so the only manual manner is scaling on loading\runtime.
the "automatic" manner is just setting a lower res than your rendering window\screen Tongue
Logged

<Powergloved_Andy> I once fapped to Dora the Explorer
increpare
Guest
« Reply #53 on: May 04, 2008, 01:25:15 PM »

Don't "manually" scale your sprites. Just scale 1:1 without bilinear filtering.

this is scaling manually

It's not very manual. Manual scaling sounds like resizing all of the images beforehand rather than a runtime process.

Also, I'm loving that filter ColossusEntertainment.

scaling the stuff on photoshop it's pretty stupid so the only manual manner is scaling on loading\runtime.
the "automatic" manner is just setting a lower res than your rendering window\screen Tongue
Surely if you're going to go to all that trouble, might it not be worth considering the purchase of one of these items instead:


Or, what about buying a pantograph?

Logged
Eclipse
Level 10
*****


0xDEADC0DE


View Profile WWW
« Reply #54 on: May 04, 2008, 02:55:41 PM »

Surely if you're going to go to all that trouble, might it not be worth considering the purchase of one of these items instead:

Or, what about buying a pantograph?

ah-ah.


if you were supposed to do a funny post, you failed! (note the red color of fail)
Logged

<Powergloved_Andy> I once fapped to Dora the Explorer
increpare
Guest
« Reply #55 on: May 04, 2008, 04:35:13 PM »

if you were supposed to do a funny post, you failed! (note the red color of fail)
Cry
Logged
Annabelle Kennedy
Awesomesauce
Level 8
*


♥Android Love♥


View Profile
« Reply #56 on: May 04, 2008, 04:57:13 PM »



huh.. thats accually really cool.

i like it.
Logged
ColossusEntertainment
Level 1
*

Royal Leamington Spa, UK


View Profile
« Reply #57 on: May 05, 2008, 11:29:33 AM »

thanks for all the nice comments :-)

Yeah, I agree it's maybe a bit too bright, but that will be easy enough to tweak...
Logged
moi
Level 10
*****


DILF SANTA


View Profile WWW
« Reply #58 on: May 05, 2008, 01:25:55 PM »

No it's not really too bright, it's okay as it is.
Logged

subsystems   subsystems   subsystems
ColossusEntertainment
Level 1
*

Royal Leamington Spa, UK


View Profile
« Reply #59 on: May 13, 2008, 06:48:43 AM »

OK, I have a first shader version running now. It's not quite there yet, and I'd like to look at optimizing it a bit more, but thought I'd share what I have so far:

http://www.colossusentertainment.com/forumref/EvenEasterCRT.zip
Logged
Pages: 1 2 [3] 4
Print
Jump to:  

Theme orange-lt created by panic