Impressive 8-Bit Colour Cycling HTML5 Demo


fusion_power

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Hi,


I just love stuff like this:


http://www.effectgam...os/canvascycle/


Beautiful 8-Bit Pixel-Art animated with the good old Palette Cycling technique. I know this can be a very efficient way to "animate" images. It has saved alot of Memory and rare ressources of the old Console/Homecomputers.


And for 8-Bit graphics, I find the images pretty impressive, whoever did this has talent for sure.


I wonder if this method is still used in games in some way but since there are actualy no "true" 8-Bit Games anymore, it is unlikeley. (AFAIK, even retro looking games like "VVVVVV" have 32 Bit graphics. ) But when I watch these Pix, I could imagine some Adventure with that art style and these Background Animations. :)
 
8-Bit graphics[...]


[...]8-Bit Games

If you're thinking of, say, the NES, there's a HUGE problem with comparing them: the NES didn't use normal 8-bit color (probably not 8-bit color at all, but I can't assert this), but a palette of colors, and not even 256 of them, but 48 colors and 6 grays, at least according to Wikipedia. Similarly, the Master System used two 16-color palettes (i.e. 4-bit color). True 8-bit color is found in old Windows and DOS games, e.g. Lode Runner: The Legend Returns, which were 16-bit or 32-bit binaries. This is a screenshot from Lode Runner Online, which uses 8-bit color mode:


http://entropymine.c...enshots/tlr.gif


The animation of the waterfall uses true 8-bit color, which includes 256 colors, far more than the number of colors famous 8-bit home consoles can output even with special tricks.


Of course, if you already knew this, don't take offense. :p It's just hard to tell from your wording.
 
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8-Bit graphics[...]


[...]8-Bit Games

If you're thinking of, say, the NES, there's a HUGE problem with comparing them: the NES didn't use normal 8-bit color (probably not 8-bit color at all, but I can't assert this), but a palette of colors, and not even 256 of them, but 48 colors and 6 grays, at least according to Wikipedia. Similarly, the Master System used two 16-color palettes (i.e. 4-bit color). True 8-bit color is found in old Windows and DOS games, e.g. Lode Runner: The Legend Returns, which were 16-bit or 32-bit binaries. This is a screenshot from Lode Runner Online, which uses 8-bit color mode:


http://entropymine.c...enshots/tlr.gif


The animation of the waterfall uses true 8-bit color, which includes 256 colors, far more than the number of colors famous 8-bit home consoles can output even with special tricks.


Of course, if you already knew this, don't take offense. :p It's just hard to tell from your wording.
Yupp, I guess the SNES can display full 256 colours of an palette out of uh...many more colours. ^^


Megadrive only could display 64 colours (more with some tricks) at once but the coders managed to make game graphics that look like much more colours. Amiga 500 only had 32 colours at once AFAIK but I could be wrong.


However, making an image looking ood with even 256 colours is hard work, especialy when doing blending the colours. So these Images on the page are even more impressive when you spot all these colour blending pixelart tricks. :)
 
Ok, why did THIS go into other consoles? What does it have to do with any console?
 
Megadrive only could display 64 colours (more with some tricks) at once

Wikipedia says it's 512 colors (9-bit).

Ok, why did THIS go into other consoles? What does it have to do with any console?

Maybe it's a robot? :p I mean, it didn't make much more sense for talk of Lode Runner to go on "other consoles" since Lode Runner (well, Scavenger) is also on the Pandora.


On a more serious note... this trend of putting any topic that even mentions consoles or games on consoles other than the Pandora onto the "other consoles" forum is... silly. It makes "other consoles" a complete misnomer.
 
Maybe it's a robot? :p
I'm pretty sure that I'm the only robot on the staff, and I didn't do it. :p


Seriously, though, I'm not sure who is. I've been asked about things along these lines before, and as mods we can't see who moved what (I imagine that the admins can, though), so I can't shed any further light. Also, unless something is so blatantly misplaced it must have been an error, I almost always make a post to say so, when it's me moving things.


Anyway, these demos are gorgeous. Takes me back to when I used to do spriting. Except I wasn't anywhere near that good. :lol:
 
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^ Producing sprite art for games. :p
 
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Ah ok, thanks~ And sorry, for some reason I first read it as 'spiriting' and thought that you were a Ghostbuster of some sort :lol:
 
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Hahaha... For some reason, that really amuses me, and I have no clue why.


I'll make sure not to cross the streams, anyhow. :p
 
ghostbusters.gif
 
Yupp, I guess the SNES can display full 256 colours of an palette out of uh...many more colours. ^^


Megadrive only could display 64 colours (more with some tricks) at once but the coders managed to make game graphics that look like much more colours. Amiga 500 only had 32 colours at once AFAIK but I could be wrong.

Amiga 500 had many modes. 32 colours was the standard for games, but EHB mode had 64 colours and HAM mode had 4096 (A1200 went far, far higher at 262,144 colours onscreen in HAM8 but that was much later). There was even a game written in HAM mode iirc, but it was very difficult to code for.


D.
 
Yupp, I guess the SNES can display full 256 colours of an palette out of uh...many more colours. ^^


Megadrive only could display 64 colours (more with some tricks) at once but the coders managed to make game graphics that look like much more colours. Amiga 500 only had 32 colours at once AFAIK but I could be wrong.

Amiga 500 had many modes. 32 colours was the standard for games, but EHB mode had 64 colours and HAM mode had 4096 (A1200 went far, far higher at 262,144 colours onscreen in HAM8 but that was much later). There was even a game written in HAM mode iirc, but it was very difficult to code for.


D.

Many later games used the dual playfield which had 8 colours (8 + 8 on two layers I think it was) - but wow - you could not tell, some of those pixel artist could make 8 colours look like 64, plus the rainbow mode helped fool the eye even more:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/gYENr-xscgA?feature=oembed
 
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