For project "Borscht", a new NES game in the making.
@FrankenGraphics Absolutely beautiful! That's the same kind of vibe I want to work towards with Castle Titania too, a stark twilight silhouetted by trees and stained glass
@FrankenGraphics picking up on the colour discussion in the thread, I was thinking of aiming for a sort of SMS/GG/A500 style with my game, with its more unbound 4-bit palette indexes and RGB gamut. have any thoughts on that vs. the NES?
@elfi I feel an aesthetic "problem" (up to each and everyones' taste really) from those days was precisely that most game studios didn't consciously define an aesthetic profile; much less a colour profile. It was just "the more different colours, the merrier" as a sales argument, without stopping to wonder why.
Some games, like Yoshi's Island, stand out for having a comparatively strong colour profile for its time.
@elfi So, uh.. i think my best tip for a 4bpp styled game is to work very actively and consciously with designing effective, versatile and theme reinforcing palettes.
@FrankenGraphics Yeah, I suppose I'm thinking more about the limitations of having only the one 4bpp palette for each plane in this case--the SMS, GG, and A500 are still together limited to a total of 32 colours. I will definitely have to brush up on my palette studies though, for sure
@elfi I think that if i worked on a 4bpp game right now, i try to be very careful adding too many shades straight away.
You can for example zone in a couple ramps (and decide the colour count in each), one or a few signature colours for specials, leave some slots for animated colours, and some more reserved for special needs that are difficult to know beforehand before the game comes together. Many ways to go about it.
@elfi Basically as soon as you go 4bpp, most "hard" considerations of a retro system are dropped and you can draw nearly "anything" you could want for 2D graphics. It can be hard to meaningfully differentiate free form pixel art from that conforming to a system with 4bit patterns and a definable RGB palette; especially combined with colour cells and subpalette systems, like on the SNES. Which may be precicely what one wants. Gives lots of space to define a framework for oneself.