Pandora Dev Thread Pandora Panic

[PokeParadox]

This is the development thread for PandoraPanic!
Since we now have a full sub-forum at our disposal, please keep this thread for development problems/issues when trying to use Penjin and not feature suggestions for the game itself.

Getting Started
Go over to the PandoraPanic! Wiki Page and get a feel for what we are doing here. You will need the Penjin base code and the PandoraPanic! framework to be able to start creating mini-games. There are also getting started guides for windows and linux.

If you are an artist/sound creator, etc, please feel free to add yourself to the wiki as a volunteer.

 

[gruso]

Hey team. I've stumbled across a tutorial for turning photos into C64 style graphics, which I thought might be handy for background art. In Jumper for example, a background like this might be more consistent with the sprite art:

That's just a first go, there are plenty of variables you can adjust along the way (custom colour tables being a particularly good one). It's not as good as real pixel art of course, but it's a good cheat for quickly producing a heap of backgrounds.

Tutorial here: http://www.klon2.dk/tutorials/tutorial_commodore64.html

Or if Photoshop isn't your thing, I'd be happy to do some.

 

[JayFoxRox]

If a developer wants to use that effect, that person probably already know how to create this cheap and simple effect using a fragment shader I guess..
Doing it in the fragment shader makes more sense anyway because it would blend with the player character or other dynamic objects.

 

[PokeParadox]

It is quite a neat effect, and good for when a photo alienates the sprites by having too much detail.

I agree with JayFoxRox, it is the sort of thing that would work well as a fragment shader, but not currently for PandoraPanic! since we are currently just using vanilla SDL as a rendering target.

Oh PS I'm not dead... I have been without net access for around 5 days... stupid cable company. I'm trying to figure out if I have enough stuff to merit another snapshot update soon...

 

[gruso]

If a developer wants to use that effect, that person probably already know how to create this cheap and simple effect using a fragment shader I guess..

Then why aren't they doing it? :wink:

 

[JayFoxRox]

Probably because of the reason PokeParadox mentioned, or because they can't write shaders and they think CPU is a waste for this or just because they don't want to
Honestly, I wouldn't want to look my minigame like this. If I was doing some sort of old school style I would with a green / black matrix scroller or ascii art (which can be done nicely in a fragment shader too).
I doubt that any developer who is able to write a game and understands the mechanics behind it isn't able to figure out how to do this palette based color correction and simulated "point-filtering".
It might be a nice effect, but its really simple and not worth a mention imo. Just like other "cheap" effects like cel-shading, outlines, warphole etc. You can easily figure out how its done by just looking at it or by reading it up on the internet if you are really interested and can't figure it out.

 

[PokeParadox]

I'm going to disagree that it's not worth a mention. I think it's a nice effect regardless of how it's done. And it is one angle to make the photographic background fit in better with the sprites in jumper.
Applying the effect directly to the image rather than on the fly, will save some cpu usage(since this would have to be done on the CPU currently in PandoraPanic!s current form.).

Also I think you are being a little bit... um bully-ish(for wont of a better word). If you think it's a cheap effect and don't like image the Gruso posted, then that's your opinion and you are entitled to it, but I want to encourage everyone to contribute to this project so I'd rather you say "I don't like it" instead of "your efforts are futile go home and do laundry".

 

[MarkoeZ]

well, to be honest, i wrote jumper, and i don't have a clue what a fragment shader does or how to implement it
There is a big difference in writing a minigame for an existing framework, and being an all knowing elite programmer

thanks for the tip gruso!

 

[todd]

Ah, I've tracked you guys down.

Other interests, and a failed GP32X bookmark, have caused me to lose track of the project for a few weeks. Not that I've done other than lurk for several months anyhow.

Any luck running on Pandora hardware yet? Last I saw, Poke and Pickle were trying to work out library mismatches. I'm hoping this thing gets released before bit-rot sets in!

--Todd

 

[gruso]

Heh, I've been shot down more viciously than that and gotten over it. Yes it's a pretty basic trick, and probably pretty obvious to anyone who has worked with graphics. But I learned a couple of things from that link, like pixel width doubling and colour tables, and I figured sharing it was in the spirit of this project (even if it doesn't get used).

I "composed" my first snippets of music for Pandora Panic too. Rough around the edges but all in good fun. In the words of Hedonism Bot, I apologise for nothing! ^_^

[edit] Oh hey Todd!

 

[JayFoxRox]

PokeParadox: Yeh, I might sound a bit bitchy at times, but thats just how I am - just ignore that then.
With cheap I actually meant that its simple and easy to do and not bad looking (I also LOVE cel-shading and outlines - but the effect is still really simple).
Therefore linking to the article on how-to-do-it is not worth to be mentioned imo - while the technique might still fit some games.
But most developers probably know which effect they want for their game and if they want C64 style graphics they surely aren't giving up just because they don't know how to do it (which I still doubt), but they will look it up on their own.
MarkoeZ: I don't know how abstract the Pandora-Panic framework is, but I still think you have basic programming knowledge: You could always just treat your framebuffer like an integer array (which it is..) and loop through every pixel, then look up the integer value (which stands for the color) in a color-correction-table (just another array) and use another value from that table to replace the current value. There are better ways of doing this, but this is just one extremly simple way of doing it.

//Edit after beeing informed that new posts were made: Gruso got my point

 

[PokeParadox]

Ok as long as we're all happy, the hatchet is burried and in no one's back/head. :lol:

Ah, I've tracked you guys down.
Any luck running on Pandora hardware yet? Last I saw, Poke and Pickle were trying to work out library mismatches. I'm hoping this thing gets released before bit-rot sets in!

--Todd

It partially runs, it spits out a couple of command line debug messages but the throws a floating point exception, we're still trying to figure out why that is as there is nothing weird like division by zero going on that would be specific to the Pandora build. As soon as we can resolve this and barring any other show-stoppers it's pretty straightforward to release now.