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In the Legend of Zelda, the envirvonment's color rules were even more strict: You could use one palette for all the tiles at the screen's edge or one tile away,
by raldi 11y ago
In the Legend of Zelda, the envirvonment's color rules were even more strict: You could use one palette for all the tiles at the screen's edge or one tile away, and a second palette for all the tiles in the middle.
That's the reason, if you zoom in on the water in this screenshot, you'll see that the edge of the lake has brown sparkles, and the inner lake has green ones:
https://skoce.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/legendzelda-35.png https://skoce.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/legendzelda-35.png
- Drakim 11y agoNote though, that this extra restriction isn't a technical limitation of the NES, rather, it's a choice by the developers of Legend of Zelda for the purpose of shrinking the amount of bytes needed for each "screen" of the world. By doing this, you only needed to store 2 palettes per "screen", rather than 16 tiles x 11 tiles = 176 palettes per "screen".
- geon 11y agoA clever hack! It exploits the tendency of each screen to have impassable obstacles (rocks, trees, walls) around the 4 edges of the screen, with optional openings. By using a separate palette for the middle area, the screen as a whole looks more colorful.
- benihana 11y ago>the edge of the lake has brown sparkles, and the inner lake has green ones Thank you for answering a question I've had for 26 years or so now
- oso2k 11y agoHahaha...I had always chalked that up to my old CRT TV and the hardware of the time.
- ConnorG 11y agoThis is so fascinating. Thank you for this knowledge bomb. Any chance you are aware of any other hacks from old school video games?
- raldi 11y agoDid you ever notice that every item, human, and non-boss enemy in Zelda is made of one of exactly four palettes, each of which is made of only three colors (plus transparent)? 1. Link's tunic color, his skin tone, and his hair color 2. White, orange, red 3. White, light blue, dark blue 4. Black, dark teal, and red For example, #1 is used for Link, Zelda, the merchants, and the raft, which is why when you get the blue ring or the red ring and your tunic color changes, it also changes the color of the other people's clothes and the binding on the raft. Here's a graphic I made of every sprite in the ROM six times -- one with the three versions of palette #1 (no ring, blue ring, red ring) and one for each of the three other palettes: http://i.imgur.com/omBWovb.png http://i.imgur.com/omBWovb.png It allows you to see that, e.g., Wizzrobes are made of only three colors, and they're the exact same three colors as the red candle, heart containers, tektites, like-likes, octoroks, rupees, the boomerang, the map, fire, the life potion, fairies, and the master sword.
- tibbon 11y agoIt seems this limitation/concept is something that I haven't seen too much in modern pixel-art. We often see modern pixel art using larger pallets, but just low resolutions.
- nsxwolf 11y agoThis is the problem I have with the widespread use of pixel art. Most of it is ignorant of why the old graphics looked the way they did. Like you said it is adopting one of the limitations but ignoring the others. The developers of Shovel Knight actually emulated the way NES graphics work (and added some enhancements to it) and the result is a much more convincing retro feel.
- bhaak 11y ago