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[Sapiens]

If we assume a naive implementation, that's 256*224=57344 pixels. The SNES has a color palette of 32768 colors, which means a color is represented by 15 bits. Let's say 16 bits just so it stores neatly in 2 byte. That's 57344*2 = 112 KiB. Donkey Kong Country had a 32 MiB cartridge (which it proudly advertised) so that's 0.35% of the cartridge size.

32 Megabit = 4 Megabyte = 4000 KB, so wouldn't it be 112 / 4000KB = 2.8%

 

[Zombie James]

If we assume a naive implementation, that's 256*224=57344 pixels. The SNES has a color palette of 32768 colors, which means a color is represented by 15 bits. Let's say 16 bits just so it stores neatly in 2 byte. That's 57344*2 = 112 KiB. Donkey Kong Country had a 32 MiB cartridge (which it proudly advertised) so that's 0.35% of the cartridge size.

That's 32 megabits, not megabytes. The cart is 4MB so the title screen would take up roughly 2.8%.

 

[Chainsawkitten]

32 Megabit = 4 Megabyte = 4000 KB, so wouldn't it be 112 / 4000KB = 2.8%

Right. That's silly of me. And they probably mean mega=1000 and kilo=1000 too (whereas I'm counting in kibibyte), so 112 KiB / 4 MB = ~2.7%

If you don't care about aligning the pixels nicely with bytes you can pack it tighter and store it in 15 bit per pixel and make that 105 KiB instead of 112 KiB.

 

[lazygecko]

DKC also used art compression which was unusual for a SNES title.

 

[Krejlooc]

The SNES has a color palette of 32768 colors, which means a color is represented by 15 bits. Let's say 16 bits just so it stores neatly in 2 byte.

The SNES doesn't use a packed pixel format. You don't have to neatly store it in two bytes.

further, there is no 15-bit color mode for the SNES. At best you have an 8-bit pallete, 256 colors (which is what that screen uses).

 

[Sapiens]

Right. That's silly of me. And they probably mean mega=1000 and kilo=1000 too (whereas I'm counting in kibibyte), so 112 KiB / 4 MB = ~2.7%

The marketing for memory was so wack back then.

"4 megs of power"
"The biggest game ever at 8 megas!"
"Street Fighter 2 is the worlds only 16 meg game!"


It was all about megabits for some reason. I guess it sounded good.

The SNES doesn't use a packed pixel format. You don't have to neatly store it in two bytes.

further, there is no 15-bit color mode for the SNES. At best you have an 8-bit pallete, 256 colors (which is what that screen uses).

DKC also used art compression which was unusual for a SNES title.

So it probably would have been an insignificant amount.

 

[nkarafo]

That title screen alone would take up more than 1/5 of the SMW1 cart...

 

[lazygecko]

That title screen alone would take up more than 1/5 of the SMW1 cart...

At least it's not the equivalent to 25% more than the entire Sonic 1 cart like how Capcom did for the Genesis SSF2 samples. Probably the most wasteful asset use I have ever seen for a 16-bit game.

 

[Chainsawkitten]

The SNES doesn't use a packed pixel format. You don't have to neatly store it in two bytes.

further, there is no 15-bit color mode for the SNES. At best you have an 8-bit pallete, 256 colors (which is what that screen uses).

I suspected there was something like that to consider as well. 32768 colors does sound like quite a lot when the screen is 57344 pixels large. Then you could use each color twice on the entire screen.

 

[Sapiens]

That title screen alone would take up more than 1/5 of the SMW1 cart...

Sonic 1 and SMW being 512kB each - to this day, I can't believe how much they packed in to those games. Such efficiency, even taking into account Sonic team using a 1/4 of memory for the Sega chant.

 

[Krejlooc]

Sonic 1 and SMW being 512kB each - to this day, I can't believe how much they packed in to those games. Such efficiency, even taking into account Sonic team using a 1/4 of memory for the Sega chant.

Sonic uses LZ77 compression

 

[Peltz]

This thread is one of the best "graphics" threads I've seen on NeoGAF. Truly, the 16 bit era was one where developers combined incredible artistic expression with their deep knowledge of hardware to do things that really had brilliant visual impact.

So many different effects and so much variety in this thread. They pushed the hardware in ways that still blow my mind to this day.

These effects have all ages so well, especially when seen on a CRT monitor.

 

[lazygecko]

Sonic 1 and SMW being 512kB each - to this day, I can't believe how much they packed in to those games. Such efficiency, even taking into account Sonic team using a 1/4 of memory for the Sega chant.

SMW uses a low color mode for the art tiles, cutting the max amount of colors in half and thus save a lot of space.

The Sega sample taking up 1/4 space thing seems like a myth that was never proven. A PCM sample at ~2 seconds in 11khz 8-bit mono format takes about 18kb of space. To reach 1/4th of the cartridge it would need to be 128kb. Even if it was at a higher sample rate like 16khz (I don't remember exactly how clear it was) it would not be anywhere close to that much.

 

[VNZ]

DKC also used art compression which was unusual for a SNES title.

The majority of SNES titles, from launch and onwards, use graphics compression.

 

[Sapiens]

Sonic uses LZ77 compression

I'm reading about it now. So Cool.

 

[jennetics]

Anybody mention Shinobi 3 for the Genesis? No?

Alongisde the beautiful graphics, you had an amazing soundtrack, tight controls, and really cool bosses. Just an overall achievement of a game.

 

[Sapiens]

I like to think of Shinobi III as a wonderful and artistic application of stuff I'd seen on the MD many times before. Amazing game.

It's also amongst the best sprite work on the system.

 

[Krejlooc]

SMW uses a low color mode for the art tiles, cutting the max amount of colors in half and thus save a lot of space.

The Sega sample taking up 1/4 space thing seems like a myth that was never proven. A PCM sample at ~2 seconds in 11khz 8-bit mono format takes about 18kb of space. To reach 1/4th of the cartridge it would need to be 128kb. Even if it was at a higher sample rate like 16khz (I don't remember exactly how clear it was) it would not be anywhere close to that much.

The entire game has been disassembled, lol, we know the exact size of the Sega PCM, it's 27000 bytes big.

EDIT: And before anyone asks, the Sega logo itself is only 248 bytes big (251 in the jpn version). The entire screen, sound and all, is less than 27 KB total.

EDIT DOS: Whoops, forgot the nemesis format, which makes the Sega Logo 1122 + 248 bytes big (1136 + 251 in jpn version). So total, less than 29 KB lol.

 

[ScOULaris]

Anybody mention Shinobi 3 for the Genesis? No?

Alongside the beautiful graphics, you had an amazing soundtrack, tight controls, and really cool bosses. Just an overall achievement of a game.

Damn. That game is gorgeous. I'm gonna have to check that out soon.

 

[dragonyeuw]

This thread is one of the best "graphics" threads I've seen on NeoGAF. Truly, the 16 bit era was one where developers combined incredible artistic expression with their deep knowledge of hardware to do things that really had brilliant visual impact.

So many different effects and so much variety in this thread. They pushed the hardware in ways that still blow my mind to this day.

These effects have all ages so well, especially when seen on a CRT monitor.

20 years ago, never would have guessed that 16-bit era graphics would age so much more gracefully than early 3d stuff, which looks horrible nowadays on top of wonky control and camera schemes. I've loved going through this thread.

 

[missile]

Like I said, applying a universal color reduction algorithm to a whole image like that pretty much never turns out well, even if you have more colors to work with. And then you have some additional console limitations on top of that, like how you can only use so many colors per tile, which probably confounds the problem even further.

If you want a good result you need to put manual work in to isolate and selectively optimize separate elements of the picture. I'm guessing this is probably what Rare did for the DKC title image.

I also think it's more or less crafted by hand. The better color quantizer
algorithms were develop from the 1990 onward, way after the median-cut color
quantizer (which was used most often for almost everything) was develop
(around 1985).

Unfortunately, the median-cut produces bad results when there are highlights
(few yet important colors) in the image, which is the case for many games. The
median-cut was (more or less) develop to quantize natural images, but does a
bad job for computer generated ones. Perhaps Rare had one of the better
quantizers at hand. Can't say. Anyhow. The better ones were computationally
quite expensive back than and required huge amounts of RAM. And the really
good ones were kept (and are kept) a good secret. I recently wrote an
improvement to the median-cut and an entire new color quantizer which rivals
and surpasses Photoshop's in some departments. My algorithm is able to account
for the highlights (specular components etc.) in an image and produces as such
far better results than Photoshop within this regard. However, this is 2016.

 

[Krejlooc]

I also think it's more or less crafted by hand. The better color quantizer
algorithms were develop from the 1990 onward, way after the median-cut color
quantizer (which was used most often for almost everything) was develop
(around 1985).

Unfortunately, the median-cut produces bad results when there are highlights
(few yet important colors) in the image, which is the case for many games. The
median-cut was (more or less) develop to quantize natural images, but does a
bad job for computer generated ones. Perhaps Rare had one of the better
quantizers at hand. Can't say. Anyhow. The better ones were computationally
quite expensive back than and required huge amounts of RAM. And the really
good ones were kept (and are kept) a good secret. I recently wrote an
improvement to the median-cut and an entire new color quantizer which rivals
and surpasses Photoshop's in some departments. My algorithm is able to account
for the highlights (specular components etc.) in an image and produces as such
far better results than Photoshop within this regard. However, this is 2016.

You don't need a good all-purpose quantizer depending on a project. I have a quantizer I've written specifically for Sonic 3 that is poor in other situations but fits that specific game and the genesis palettes well, by prioritizing certain colors.

Original graphic

After the conversion, using less than 1/2 the original colors

But yes, the artifacts in the toy story images does point to a poor quantizer. It wouldn't surprise me if Rare had a custom quantizer for DKC, given their nature.

Incidentally, I had no idea I still had these images online. Check this out, this was my first attempt at a software renderer:

 

[jennetics]

Damn. That game is gorgeous. I'm gonna have to check that out soon.

I don't think you'll be disappointed. There are plenty of other big moments that I didn't want to post for spoilers-sake. It's $2.99 on Steam (also available on 3DS, PSP, PS2, 360/PS3)!

 

[nkarafo]

All these Yoshi Island mentions and none of them includes the best effect of all.

Touch Fuzzy get Drunk

It's in crappy gif form but it was always such a neat effect that the GBA version couldn't get right.

Shit, how did i miss this post....

Thanks, i was thinking about posting this effect next. Maybe we could try and find a better gif.

 

[missile]

You don't need a good all-purpose quantizer depending on a project. ...

My modified median-cut isn't all-purpose, it uses different weighting
strategies which can be selected depending on a-priori knowledge of the image.
However, having an all-purpose one is also quite handy while converting many
different images. For a game of mine I want to bring random images (user
images) into the game which should be given a retro touch to fit the aesthetic
of the game. Hence, I can't look at each picture selecting the best strategy.
Having a good all-purpose one is gold.

... I have a quantizer I've written specifically for Sonic 3 that is poor in other situations but fits that specific game and the genesis palettes well, by prioritizing certain colors. ...

Artificially increasing the frequency of some colors (even by picking straight
from the screen) was perhaps the first improvement of the median-cut algorithm.
This improvement was already hinted at in the very same paper about the
median-cut algorithm.

...

Original graphic

After the conversion, using less than 1/2 the original colors

But yes, the artifacts in the toy story images does point to a poor quantizer. It wouldn't surprise me if Rare had a custom quantizer for DKC, given their nature.

Incidentally, I had no idea I still had these images online. Check this out, this was my first attempt at a software renderer:

Nice, nice! What happend to it all?

 

[Krejlooc]

My modified median-cut isn't all-purpose, it uses different weighting
strategies which can be selected depending on a-priori knowledge of the image.
However, having an all-purpose one is also quite handy while converting many
different images. For a game of mine I want to bring random images (user
images) into the game which should be given a retro touch to fit the aesthetic
of the game. Hence, I can't look at each picture selecting the best strategy.
Having a good all-purpose one is gold.

Oh no, I wasn't disparaging an all purpose quantizer, nor was I speaking specifically about modified median-cut, I was merely positing how Rare could have gotten such impressive results back in 1993 when they began work on DKC. I don't doubt rare would be the type of company that would build their own weighted quantizer.

My specific quantizer used a a few different weights, both automatically assumed by examining the image, and also allowing for hand-crafted weights in case the automation came out poorly.

Nice, nice! What happend to it all?

The software rendering stuff was merely an exercise and ultimately went nowhere (although said knowledge is great to have). The quantizer I actually still use - over the past, man, already a decade now, I've built a 2D platformer engine that is cross platform with both PC and Dreamcast. I use the quantizer for art in the engine.

Although those specific pictures I posted are of ancient versions from 2007 lol.

 

[Chitown B]

 

[missile]

... But yes, the artifacts in the toy story images does point to a poor quantizer. It wouldn't surprise me if Rare had a custom quantizer for DKC, given their nature. ...

Would be cool to have the original 24-bit Toy Story image such that we could
run modern algorithms seeing how the image quality could be improved given the
same constrains.

Oh no, I wasn't disparaging an all purpose quantizer, nor was I speaking specifically about modified median-cut, I was merely positing how Rare could have gotten such impressive results back in 1993 when they began work on DKC. I don't doubt rare would be the type of company that would build their own weighted quantizer. ...

Ok. Got it.

... My specific quantizer used a a few different weights, both automatically assumed by examining the image, and also allowing for hand-crafted weights in case the automation came out poorly. ...

Btw; Is it known whether color quantization is NP complete or not?

... The software rendering stuff was merely an exercise and ultimately went nowhere (although said knowledge is great to have). The quantizer I actually still use - over the past, man, already a decade now, I've built a 2D platformer engine that is cross platform with both PC and Dreamcast. I use the quantizer for art in the engine.

Although those specific pictures I posted are of ancient versions from 2007 lol.

We all have to start somewhere. Have you made any game with that 2D
platformer engine?

 

[Krejlooc]

Would be cool to have the original 24-bit Toy Story image such that we could
run modern algorithms seeing how the image quality could be improved given the
same constrains.

It's probably a frame from the movie, TBH. If someone were diligent, they could probably find the frame and examine it.

EDIT: Off the top of my head, it looks like the scene where Woody tells Buzz that he is "a child's play thing." (wait, that's at the parking lot) a toy.

Btw; Is it known whether color quantization is NP complete or not?

I read an ACM article a long while back on the subject claiming a NP complete for both N and K through a specific method. My phone has been basically losing it's mind for a few days (it's taken me 3 revisions to get this typed up without my phone rebooting) so I can't go digging around, but I'd suggest looking through ACM published articles.

We all have to start somewhere. Have you made any game with that 2D
platformer engine?

I've been making a fan game called Sonic Remix for a long while, yeah. It's a passion project, not for any real specific purpose.

 

[baudelinog]

I'd really LOVE to see a thread like this, but dedicated to the 8 bit machines...

 

[Peltz]

20 years ago, never would have guessed that 16-bit era graphics would age so much more gracefully than early 3d stuff, which looks horrible nowadays on top of wonky control and camera schemes. I've loved going through this thread.

Not to go off topic, but I don't really think it's fair to compare the two eras. Both of them have their share of timeless looking classics with tons of graphical innovation.

I mean, just look at all of the particle effects in Kokiri Forest in OOT, or the cute flat aesthetic in Paper Mario, or the stylish visual flair of the weapon clashes in Soul Blade, or the gorgeous visual consistency assets in Mega Man Legends, or the incredible 2D backdrops in FF9, or the phenomenal visual feedback of smashing your opponent in SSB.

And not to mention, the smoothness of the way that games like Super Mario 64 and Nights Into Dreams were actually animated so early on into the generation....

It definitely had its share of well-aging games that pushed the hardware in magical new directions that still look cool today.

I think a similar thread for that era would be impressive in its own way.

 

[Quaz51]

Afterburner 2, an early Megadrive game with crazy levels of sprite scaling and rotation. So fast and smooth.
https://youtu.be/AcaXbr6l-54

TG16 version have better scaling/visual and 2x genesis framerate.

 

[Krejlooc]

Night Striker on the Sega CD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9p9NfFSCWzc

by comparison, the arcade original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8_1lzWfuEw

And the Saturn version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kc_qWvq9508

The Sega CD version holds up

 

[GoaThief]

Good to see the Amiga recognition in here, the associated demoscene led me into professional music production (different thread though).

Stardust and Shadow of the Beast are undoubtedly sweet, surely some of you lovely people out there have some other meggy gif gems stashed somewhere? Be awesome to see.

 

[petran79]

Anybody mention Shinobi 3 for the Genesis? No?

I did few pages back but I had only played the Mega Play arcade version

 

[VNZ]

The Mega/Sega CD was a spec-wise a very capable addition, but it's too bad the base system didn't provide the mechanism to mix external video via its peripheral or cartridge slots. If the Mega CD would have the luxury of handling it's own frame buffers without the overhead it ultimately needed of transferring each frame to the main VDP, maybe we would have seen awesome "super scaler" style games running at 60fps. The design we got can barely keep up a stable 30 fps refresh with most games utilizing any extensive scaling/rotation effects, unfortunately.

Come the 32X, Sega solved the problem with an analogue genlock... It would be rather amusing if the Mega CD used the same system, so you could have the ultimate Tower of Power 3X genlocking beast.

 

[Shifty]

Sub-Terrania intro (Genesis/ Mega Dive):

Subterrania straight up feels like an Amiga game. There's just something about it.

 

[JaseMath]

Love this.

 

[Krejlooc]

Subterrania straight up feels like an amiga game. There's just something about it.

That's because it was literally made by a demoscene group. Zyrinx was made up of prominent Amiga demoscene coders.

 

[lazygecko]

Subterrania straight up feels like an amiga game. There's just something about it.

Probably partly inspired by the Hardwired demo

 

[Krejlooc]

Probably partly inspired by the Hardwired demo

More than inspired, the same people worked on both.

 

[dragonyeuw]

Not to go off topic, but I don't really think it's fair to compare the two eras. Both of them have their share of timeless looking classics with tons of graphical innovation.

I mean, just look at all of the particle effects in Kokiri Forest in OOT, or the cute flat aesthetic in Paper Mario, or the stylish visual flair of the weapon clashes in Soul Blade, or the gorgeous visual consistency assets in Mega Man Legends, or the incredible 2D backdrops in FF9, or the phenomenal visual feedback of smashing your opponent in SSB.

And not to mention, the smoothness of the way that games like Super Mario 64 and Nights Into Dreams were actually animated so early on into the generation....

It definitely had its share of well-aging games that pushed the hardware in magical new directions that still look cool today.

I think a similar thread for that era would be impressive in its own way.

I should have put a disclaimer in that post that I have a hard-on for 2d sprite-based graphics in general, so that may color my opinion somewhat.

 

[s_mirage]

Night Striker on the Sega CD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9p9NfFSCWzc

by comparison, the arcade original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8_1lzWfuEw

And the Saturn version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kc_qWvq9508

The Sega CD version holds up

In terms of gameplay, yeah, but that game is so low res it literally makes my eyes go funny. It probably would have looked better being played on a 14-inch portable, like the one I had when my Mega CD was new.

 

[Shifty]

Probably partly inspired by the Hardwired demo

That was dope. I want some of whatever these guys were smoking.

 

[MrCunningham]

More than inspired, the same people worked on both.

And they were going to name their second game HardWired...

Before they changed the name to Red Zone.

 

[GoaThief]

Probably partly inspired by the Hardwired demo

So. Good.

Always makes me wonder what the computing landscape would look like had Commodore not gone to the wall.

 

[dr. apocalipsis]

Love this.

I know I always say the same, but that effect can be done on 8 bit systems. It isn't scaling, just a pretty basic zoom effect with no transition in between.

 

[RAIDEN1]

Its all well and good Sega wanting to take the 16 bit platforms forward with the advent of their Mega CD, but how could they overlook it's abysmal fmv/video playback quality, with washed out colours and grainy footage.....the minute you saw a screenshot or a video with not close to crystal clear quality, you'd know you are looking at a Mega CD game....

Case in point from a presentational point of view games like Night-trap/Rebel Assault looked a lot better on PC/3DO than they would on the Sega CD, especially as FMV was meant to be the next BIG thing in gaming...

 

[FyreWulff]

It's so simple but one of my favorite tricks SMW used to save space is that the color of a pipe is determined by which screen number the pipe is on. Each level is made out of 'screens' (increasing in ID number going from left to right) and what subscreen a pipe in is in determines if it's green, yellow, blue, etc.

If you edit the ROM and put a pipe across a screen boundary, the left side and right side will be different colors.

Its all well and good Sega wanting to take the 16 bit platforms forward with the advent of their Mega CD, but how could they overlook it's abysmal fmv/video playback quality, with washed out colours and grainy footage.....the minute you saw a screenshot or a video with not close to crystal clear quality, you'd know you are looking at a Mega CD game....

Case in point from a presentational point of view games like Night-trap/Rebel Assault looked a lot better on PC/3DO than they would on the Sega CD, especially as FMV was meant to be the next BIG thing in gaming...

Back then, digital FMV of near any quality was impressive just for being FMV. Full video playback being a thing without a big honkin' laserdisc player inside a cabinet was extremely recent. Up until Quicktime's release in 1991, there were people at Apple that thought realtime video playback was impossible with even the beefiest Mac of the time. Once the breakthrough occurred it was "HOLY CRAP SO THAT HOW IT WORKS" and everyone started having it.

There were FMV games back to the early 80s (including ones made by Sega themselves) but those were laserdisc which is actually an analog format.

Imagine putting 3D Blast into your Genesis and seeing this after a whole generation of still image logos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JO0mnkHpT3A

 

[Lord Error]

Stardust and Shadow of the Beast are undoubtedly sweet, surely some of you lovely people out there have some other meggy gif gems stashed somewhere? Be awesome to see.

I'll give you one better:

http://www.oldgames.sk/docs/sotb/index.html

It's an interactive Shadow of the Beast scrolling scene.