soo... what about Final Fight?

[jotd]

the fact that RuffNTumble could be mistaken for an AGA game probably comes from the fact that there are sooooo many ECS 16-color ST conversions around.

Plus, Ruff palette is excellent, and uses 32 colors. How many games actually use 32 color on the amiga, and aren't 16-color ST ports? (for instance other "Renegade" titles like Bitmap Bros ST conversions... which are already good but still 16 colors...)

[Master484]

It would be a fun challenge to try and get everything from the first level into a shared 32 color palette.

Here is my attempt, a 32 color conversion test on the SNES Final Fight graphics:




As you can see, it doesn't look bad at all...Only on the door and the street you can see some small detail loss.

But the characters look great, and I designed this palette so that it works on all enemies and objects in the game.

Also notice that in the palette I reserved 8 colors for the background GFX only. Those 8 colors are never used in the characters. The purpose of this is that in the actual game we could then freely use copper changes for those 8 colors. So for example the 4 cyan colors used in the cityscape could then be copper changed for the street, and this would fix the small quality loss that it now has. Also the greens in the background can be changed later in the level, when some additional colors are needed.

And in addition to this 1 extra color is always reserved for the classic sky copper effect.

So the palette setup is: characters have 22 colors, but background can use all 32 colors, with 8 colors exclusively reserved for it.

[gimbal]

Except for the street tiles the color swaps actually look a whole lot better in the 32 color version, IMO.

[malko]

@Master484 : Whaoo! Really nice 32 colours conversion

[albino]

Originally Posted by RichAplin

Thing I think could be better;
Color palette selection: I did rip _all_ the original gfx with all frames in original palettes, and they looked gorgeous.. but undisplayable on an Amiga. I was as sad as anyone to see how they came out in a shared 16-color palette. :-( IIRC I looked at using 5-plane mode to allow for at least (say) separate palettes for sprites and background, but it slowed everything down, used more ram... etc. Remember this thing _had_ to work in 512k (and on the ST)..

so the game is defenetly not an amiga specific conversion !

[jayminer]

Originally Posted by Master484

Here is my attempt, a 32 color conversion test on the SNES Final Fight graphics:

That looks really good! Very colorful! Great work!

[Master484]

I also made an alternative 16 color palette test for the Us Gold version:



This was much harder to do than the 32 color test, because the background and the sprites now have to share the same colors and there are only 16 colors.

But after a few failed attempts, an OK looking palette was achieved.

In both images the background is from the Amiga version, but in the recolor I used the arcade version sprites. The Amiga sprites are of course from the arcade too, but some of them had some small detail loss due to the originals color conversion. Although even with this new palette some detail was lost, but not much.

I think the main problem of the original Us Gold palette are those 2 greens. The darker green is used to support the dark blue, but the brighter green is only used in one enemy I think, and in the backgrounds, such as in later levels where you have grass and trees. But this basically reduces the 16 colors to 14, because the lighter green is almost never used in the characters, and the darker green only works with darker blue, making it useful only for Cody and that one bad guy.

So I dropped the greens and added some general purpose grays to their place.

But despite the lack of greens this palette would still work in the later levels, because the darker blue and the darkest brown can be swapped to green hues, like this:



Also, both of these palettes only have 15 colors; the transparent color is the 16th color. And that could of course be used as the sky color with a copper gradient. And also the street could have a copper gradient, because in all levels you have clear Y-line where the street starts.

So, something like this could work, although I'm sure that there are many other ways too to make this game look good in 16 colors. And although I like how the recolor looks, I'm not totally satisfied with it...I just have a feeling that it could be even better. But as I now have made it this way, and because it offers an alternative vision to the originals color usage, I thought that I might as well post it here.

[lordofchaos]

@Master484. That's some super duper colour mapping, looks really good for 16 colour. Would look even more awesome with that copper gradient for a skyline and floor. Gives it that special Amiga vibe:-D

[albino]

Mr Aplin that's your chance to enhance your work nearly 30 years later...Why don't you improve your FF version with reworked graphics and IA code...

[viddi]

Originally Posted by albino

Mr Aplin that's your chance to enhance your work nearly 30 years later...Why don't you improve your FF version with reworked graphics and IA code...

Or a colour hack by earok?

[Master484]

I upgraded the colors a little bit.

Here is the updated image with the new palette:



All colors remain mostly the same, I just changed the brightness values a little bit, so that the characters and the background now have slightly better contrast. You can see the changes most clearly in the house and in the legs of Haggar and Cody, which no longer "sink" into the background that much.

Also I improved some small stuff, like the window.

So okay, now I'm satisfied with the palette. You can make the game now.

[d4rk3lf]

That's amazing tests!
What app you are using to play with colors?

[mcgeezer]

Originally Posted by Master484

So okay, now I'm satisfied with the palette. You can make the game now.

I know you're probably not being serious but do you have any idea of the level of effort that would be required to do this game?

Knocking up screen shots in reduced palettes is one thing but trust me, doing whole levels of games is quite another.

What you need to do is show an entire level of the game with all of the colours, then separate out what are used for sprites/backgrounds/foregrounds... the sprite colours in general must always remain the same for the entire game but the background colours can be changed with some restrictions.

Do that for every level and I might be tempted to do a tech demo.

Geezer

[saimon69]

About the US Gold original palette i always thought reds and green were too bright and a bit of tone down would have worked better; that test prove me right, however i would go as far as try to create alt palettes for each stage considered the different environments because an unique palette made things suffer. Some colors might stay the same some others have a little hue variation; the eye will consider them as part of the environment variation.

[saimon69]

my perverted mind is thinking some sprite tricks to have some characters show more colors, like have Roxy/Poison hairs punch a hole in the background and have a sprite with the hair color behind to show it different (if two of it overlap might be a problem, though)

[Master484]

I know you're probably not being serious but do you have any idea of the level of effort that would be required to do this game?

Yeah, I was just joking.

I have attempted a few Amiga conversions myself, but gave up on all of them after I realized how much work they required.

And although a small graphics test demo would be nice, and maybe I could even do such a thing myself with Blitz Basic, but indeed this is such a massive project that it's unlikely that I or anybody else could do more than a one level tech demo, and even that would require one entire year to make.

What app you are using to play with colors?

I use a combination of MS Paint, XnView and GIMP for all my graphics work.

MS Paint is used for drawing and pixel work. XnView is used for image color analysis and to perform automatic quick color reductions, which give me the rough idea of how the images could look in 16 or 32 colors. Although I almost never use the automatic reductions, because they usually do only an average job and cause detail loss.

So mostly I first play around with Paint and XnView, and then GIMP is used for the actual color swapping operations.

---

Usually I first separate the sprites and the background, and then look at the sprite palettes first. Often arcade and console games have individual 16 color palettes for each sprite. So I color pick the palettes for each sprite, until I have all the sprite palettes in front of me. And then I try to figure out how to make a unified 16 color palette that can be used for all sprites, so that there would be no detail loss, and so that it would still look good.

Real problems only start if the background too has to use the same colors as the sprites. And this is the case when we have only 16 colors; there is no other option than to use same colors. And although the end result looks good, what you're actually seeing is just a good looking compromise.

If I had made this in 32 colors, then the background could have it's own separate 16 color palette, and in the actual game any of those 16 background colors could then be freely color swapped and copperized at any time, without worrying about messing the sprite colors. And then this would look great, very close to the arcade, or even better (because Amiga graphics are always superior, even if they have a lower color count).

however i would go as far as try to create alt palettes for each stage considered the different environments because an unique palette made things suffer. Some colors might stay the same some others have a little hue variation; the eye will consider them as part of the environment variation.

Yes, this sort of thing would surely be done in the real game. For example in the factory level with the lava pits, all palette entries could be given a more reddish hue, and maybe the hues could even change every frame, creating a subtle glowing effect. And in the night levels colors could change depending on light sources on screen, such as lamp posts.

my perverted mind is thinking some sprite tricks to have some characters show more colors, like have Roxy/Poison hairs punch a hole in the background and have a sprite with the hair color behind to show it different (if two of it overlap might be a problem, though)

The idea is good, but I think it wouldn't work well in this sort of game. The sprites can either be in the behind of the bitmap or in the front of the bitmap, and so there would be problems when the characters using the sprites would overlap with the normal blitter drawn characters. So for example if the sprite using character was located between two normal characters, then there would be no way how the sprite part could be displayed in the right way.

An alternative way of handling this sort "same character, different hair color" problem would be to simply have two versions of the character: one with red hair and one with blue hair. We just load the red haired character first, and then it is possible to create a blue haired version of it using a simple Blitz bitmap color Remap command. We have both reds and blues in the game palette so this can be done without changing the palette. So two versions of the same character would be held in RAM at the same time; one with red hair and one with blue hair. But this is OK, it just limits the amount of other enemy types that can appear with these hair color swapper enemies.

[d4rk3lf]

Thanks for the detailed explanation
Never used Gimp, and I hear lots of people are using GrapX 2 app.

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by Master484

Yeah, I was just joking.

An alternative way of handling this sort "same character, different hair color" problem would be to simply have two versions of the character: one with red hair and one with blue hair. We just load the red haired character first, and then it is possible to create a blue haired version of it using a simple Blitz bitmap color Remap command. We have both reds and blues in the game palette so this can be done without changing the palette. So two versions of the same character would be held in RAM at the same time; one with red hair and one with blue hair. But this is OK, it just limits the amount of other enemy types that can appear with these hair color swapper enemies.

To save ram you could have a character "bald" and several hair/whatever changes shapes to add and build before display

[sandruzzo]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

the problem is the amount of ram needed to get a good version of this game.

toying with a single screen and with a whole level + sprites is another story.

the A500 is 10 times less powerful than the X68000 for this game, 32 colors in 5 bitplans requires more chip ram than an A500 has to offer.

The X68000 runs Final Fight in 2mb of ram only, but it has tons of hardware assistance to make things easier that the A500 would have to compensate with its CPU......

what about less screen size so bobs? Could be handled by a500

[sandruzzo]

@Master484


What about doing a small test on Amiga 500 with reduced screen size as well as bobs'? I could set-up and exe....