Random special effects pics

[Sik]

Because I'm bored.

Sprite scaling





Sprite rotation

[BigEvilCorporation]

More.

One thing seriously lacking in all the MD coding resources are general day-to-day gameplay techniques, effects, ways to get the best out of so little. It's all low level hardware stuff.

[Alianger]

Very nice.

[ComradeOj]

I love this sort of thing.
Breaking down a complex looking effect into something simpler to understand.

[Lion]

They used the rotation trick on the big cogs in Stage 4 (the German factory) in Castlevania Bloodlines. It looks quite good there.

[Sik]

Another example (same principle):



And really, just about any Alien Soldier boss (though the individual pieces really needed more angles).

I'm not sure I've seen the scaling effect to that extent anywhere outside Miniplanets, though...

[zyrobs]

Could someone break down the Vectorman title screen like that?
I understand that it uses clever palette cycling and raster fx to manipulate the palette on a per scanline basis, but it does so many things simultaneously that I just can't process how it all works.

From the top of my head it uses: screen stretching (raster fx scroll position manipulation), sprite rotation, lens flare, highlight effect on the text to make it look shiny, the center logo has a shadow that changes as it moves around (probably multiple sprites), and there's an extreme amount of palette changes in the 4 corners of the screen... at one point there's a colour inversion that moves vertically through the screen, I don't know how, since the said background is also animated on top of that.
Then the screen fades to black and white and gets blown off the screen in 8x8 blocks (if the background was a tile then I imagine that tile is changed to black and an identical graphic is used as a sprite so it can move around?).

[Barone]

When is Stunt Race FX MD coming out?

[Yohko16]

That's so cool! I always loved to see the explanations behind special effects

But I'd have a few questions if you don't mind.

These are "software effects"? Respectively software scaling and rotation?

Sprite scaling



Sprite rotation

Also can the Mega Drive do "real scaling"? From what I can tell, the Road Rash games have "software scaling" while the scaling effect during Ex-Ranza or James Pond 3's openings are "real scaling" or whatever it's called.

[Sik]

Could someone break down the Vectorman title screen like that?
I understand that it uses clever palette cycling and raster fx to manipulate the palette on a per scanline basis, but it does so many things simultaneously that I just can't process how it all works.

From the top of my head it uses: screen stretching (raster fx scroll position manipulation), sprite rotation, lens flare, highlight effect on the text to make it look shiny, the center logo has a shadow that changes as it moves around (probably multiple sprites), and there's an extreme amount of palette changes in the 4 corners of the screen... at one point there's a colour inversion that moves vertically through the screen, I don't know how, since the said background is also animated on top of that.
Then the screen fades to black and white and gets blown off the screen in 8x8 blocks (if the background was a tile then I imagine that tile is changed to black and an identical graphic is used as a sprite so it can move around?).

The lens flare is S/H. Also the spinning stuff is sprites peeking through a small gap (reminds me, I should take a pic of how Doom Troopers does the fire in its title screen). And yeah, when the background disappears it places a blank tile and then creates a sprite with the tile that used to be there.

These are "software effects"? Respectively software scaling and rotation?

No, that's kind of the whole point, they're cleverly moving sprites to create the illusion of doing it in a smooth way.

Also can the Mega Drive do "real scaling"? From what I can tell, the Road Rash games have "software scaling" while the scaling effect during Ex-Ranza or James Pond 3's openings are "real scaling" or whatever it's called.

It can do it in software (i.e. have the CPU make the picture manually), the problem is the framerate since the CPU isn't fast enough.


EDIT: Doom Troopers title screen. Turns out the fire is just the explosion sprite lol

[Yohko16]

No, that's kind of the whole point, they're cleverly moving sprites to create the illusion of doing it in a smooth way

Oh, ok! And this works well. Convincing effects

The scaling one is the one used in Super Fantasy Zone? I remember seeing various scaling effects in that game.

It can do it in software (i.e. have the CPU make the picture manually), the problem is the framerate since the CPU isn't fast enough.

So what is the scaling "nature" in Ex-Ranza or James Pond 3's openings? It looks so smooth.

And what the Road Rash games (or Skitchin) do? These games have average frame rate but impressive game engine with many things going on: scaled sprites, changes in height...

[Sik]

You keep missing the point, those examples you gave aren't 60 FPS (especially not Road Rash / Skitchin', those games are playable but they have pretty bad framerate compared to most games).

And yeah, they're plotting pixels manually with the CPU (although I think they work in groups of 2 pixels instead of individual pixels, since each byte holds 2 pixels).

[Yohko16]

@Sik: I was wondering how they were achieve regardless of the frame rate (that I did say that it was average). The Road Rash games or Skitchin remain impressive as far as 4th gen goes. I mean, the Amiga version couldn't replicate the scaling and there's nothing like this on PC Engine or SNES (well, there's a SNES game with a Road Rash-esque stage at some point but it looks very basic compared to Road Rash MD).

And yeah, they're plotting pixels manually with the CPU (although I think they work in groups of 2 pixels instead of individual pixels, since each byte holds 2 pixels).

Interesting, thanks.

[Peeteris]

@Sik: I was wondering how they were achieve regardless of the frame rate (that I did say that it was average). The Road Rash games or Skitchin remain impressive as far as 4th gen goes. I mean, the Amiga version couldn't replicate the scaling and there's nothing like this on PC Engine or SNES (well, there's a SNES game with a Road Rash-esque stage at some point but it looks very basic compared to Road Rash MD).


Interesting, thanks.

Skitchin' is even more impressive because they managed to make surroundings feel more saturated and framerate is miles better than in Road Rash games + OST is amazing.

[Sik]

There's this at least



Somebody needs to hack in support for the FM add-on >_>

EDIT: probably worth noting that the Master System can't change vertical scroll position mid-screen (only horizontal), so that means the hills are actually software rendered. So they ditched software scaled sprites in favor of software rendered hills :​P