4 ms·

Actually leveraging the power of palletized graphics has been a lost art for well over a decade. Mark Ferrari is the only person I know of that I can call a ma

Actually leveraging the power of palletized graphics has been a lost art for well over a decade. Mark Ferrari is the only person I know of that I can call a master of that art. When I was working on PlayStation 2 games, it was frustrating that all of the artists I worked with were creating textures that would ultimately end up palletized, but none of them had any concept of the techniques presented here even then. These days GPUs are getting powerful enough that I occasionally see kids reinventing these techniques using tricky shaders from first principles without knowing that they used to be the only way to get things done. In the HN circles you have a chance to be familiar with Ferrari's work through [1][2] [1] http://www.effectgames.com/effect/article.psp.html/joe/Old_School_Color_Cycling_with_HTML5 http://www.effectgames.com/effect/article.psp.html/joe/Old_S... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3890267 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3890267 But, in gaming circles, you might be more familiar with his work in Loom, Secret of Monkey Isle and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis.

exlurker 11y ago
Mark Ferrari also teamed up with Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick (et al) to create a new 2D adventure game called Thimbleweed Park[1] (No affiliation!) - awesome backgrounds by Ferrari! https://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/ https://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/
- city41 11y ago
  In this talk he goes into detail about the Thimbleweed Park art he made and how he uses Photoshop to pull off pixel art techniques far more efficiently.
  - tcdent 11y ago
    I think efficiency is the wrong term. Palatte shifting and limited color palates were born from the necessity of effeciency. Now he has to use an emulated DOS program to edit them. He uses an experimental web app to display palate shifting projects he created years ago and looks forward to the upcomming release of a pixel editor from the same author. Additionally, he expresses extensive configuration necessary, mostly disabling anti-aliasing within multiple tools, which makes his process possible in Photoshop. He also has removed the limitation of color palate to make the final product more pleasing, regardless of weight and efficiency, as the concern is minimal on modern hardware. His technique in Photoshop makes heavy use of the pencil tool one pixel at a time and even falls back to antiquated software (or manual technique) when he needs to implement dithered gradients. I did not get the inpression that he was happy to be using Photoshop, but that it is currently the best option he has.
    - city41 11y ago
      I took away something different. He emphasized several times how Photoshop enables him to pull off pixel art style but without having to individually drop in pixels. He said that about the lighting templates, the dithering template, and the anti aliasing technique. I'd argue the mere mention of the word "template" supports this. In all cases, "not having to do one pixel at a time" seemed to be the primary advantage. It's true he also said sometimes he still has to manually put in pixels, but that seemed to exception to me.
      - tcdent 11y ago
        The selection wand is nothing revolutionary, and likely works better for his purposes in the obsolete software. PS anti-aliases selections by default, so there's a specific example of a tool he's had to tune for his style of art. The dithering template only exists because dithering is not a concept in PS; the DOS application has a dedicated dithered gradient tool.
LoSboccacc 11y ago
I'm following this game https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1183462809/paradise-lost-first-contact https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1183462809/paradise-los... Called paradise lost, and the trick the graphic team are using to fit 8bit pixelated graphics to the modern taste are incredible, like having to tweak animations so no parts ever move half a pixel, which influences walking speed and dozen pther things. Their blog is quite informative.
- yxlx 11y ago
  Looks like an interesting game. Reminds me a lot of the 2D J2ME version of Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow by Gameloft. Screenshot: http://www.gameloft.com/common/products/60/us/web/screenshots/176/5.gif http://www.gameloft.com/common/products/60/us/web/screenshot... I attempted to find an official page for the game but couldn't find any. Instead, I found a bunch of documents about the Gameloft business. https://media01.gameloft.com/web_mkt/corporateV2/pdf/en/Reference_document_2005-EN.pdf https://media01.gameloft.com/web_mkt/corporateV2/pdf/en/Refe... https://media01.gameloft.com/web_mkt/corporateV2/pdf/en/Gameloft_Reference_Document_2006_EN.pdf https://media01.gameloft.com/web_mkt/corporateV2/pdf/en/Game... http://media01.gameloft.com/web_mkt/showcase/news_images/news_download/reference-document-2009-EN.pdf http://media01.gameloft.com/web_mkt/showcase/news_images/new... https://media01.gameloft.com/web_mkt/corporateV2/pdf/en/Results_FY_'11.pdf https://media01.gameloft.com/web_mkt/corporateV2/pdf/en/Resu... https://media01.gameloft.com/web_mkt/corporateV2/pdf/en/GAMELOFT-DOCUMENT_DE_REFERENCE_2012_(D13-0478).pdf https://media01.gameloft.com/web_mkt/corporateV2/pdf/en/GAME...
  - Ezhik 11y ago
    J2ME games, that's one hell of a blast from the past.
    - andrepd 11y ago
      Absolutely, just the other day I was reminiscing about playing J2ME games in my little phone while I was growing up. There were some true gems in there.
  - 11y ago

exlurker 11y ago

Mark Ferrari also teamed up with Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick (et al) to create a new 2D adventure game called Thimbleweed Park[1] (No affiliation!) - awesome backgrounds by Ferrari! https://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/ https://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/

city41 11y ago
In this talk he goes into detail about the Thimbleweed Park art he made and how he uses Photoshop to pull off pixel art techniques far more efficiently.
- tcdent 11y ago
  I think efficiency is the wrong term. Palatte shifting and limited color palates were born from the necessity of effeciency. Now he has to use an emulated DOS program to edit them. He uses an experimental web app to display palate shifting projects he created years ago and looks forward to the upcomming release of a pixel editor from the same author. Additionally, he expresses extensive configuration necessary, mostly disabling anti-aliasing within multiple tools, which makes his process possible in Photoshop. He also has removed the limitation of color palate to make the final product more pleasing, regardless of weight and efficiency, as the concern is minimal on modern hardware. His technique in Photoshop makes heavy use of the pencil tool one pixel at a time and even falls back to antiquated software (or manual technique) when he needs to implement dithered gradients. I did not get the inpression that he was happy to be using Photoshop, but that it is currently the best option he has.
  - city41 11y ago
    I took away something different. He emphasized several times how Photoshop enables him to pull off pixel art style but without having to individually drop in pixels. He said that about the lighting templates, the dithering template, and the anti aliasing technique. I'd argue the mere mention of the word "template" supports this. In all cases, "not having to do one pixel at a time" seemed to be the primary advantage. It's true he also said sometimes he still has to manually put in pixels, but that seemed to exception to me.
    - tcdent 11y ago
      The selection wand is nothing revolutionary, and likely works better for his purposes in the obsolete software. PS anti-aliases selections by default, so there's a specific example of a tool he's had to tune for his style of art. The dithering template only exists because dithering is not a concept in PS; the DOS application has a dedicated dithered gradient tool.

LoSboccacc 11y ago

I'm following this game https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1183462809/paradise-lost-first-contact https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1183462809/paradise-los... Called paradise lost, and the trick the graphic team are using to fit 8bit pixelated graphics to the modern taste are incredible, like having to tweak animations so no parts ever move half a pixel, which influences walking speed and dozen pther things. Their blog is quite informative.

yxlx 11y ago
Looks like an interesting game. Reminds me a lot of the 2D J2ME version of Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow by Gameloft. Screenshot: http://www.gameloft.com/common/products/60/us/web/screenshots/176/5.gif http://www.gameloft.com/common/products/60/us/web/screenshot... I attempted to find an official page for the game but couldn't find any. Instead, I found a bunch of documents about the Gameloft business. https://media01.gameloft.com/web_mkt/corporateV2/pdf/en/Reference_document_2005-EN.pdf https://media01.gameloft.com/web_mkt/corporateV2/pdf/en/Refe... https://media01.gameloft.com/web_mkt/corporateV2/pdf/en/Gameloft_Reference_Document_2006_EN.pdf https://media01.gameloft.com/web_mkt/corporateV2/pdf/en/Game... http://media01.gameloft.com/web_mkt/showcase/news_images/news_download/reference-document-2009-EN.pdf http://media01.gameloft.com/web_mkt/showcase/news_images/new... https://media01.gameloft.com/web_mkt/corporateV2/pdf/en/Results_FY_'11.pdf https://media01.gameloft.com/web_mkt/corporateV2/pdf/en/Resu... https://media01.gameloft.com/web_mkt/corporateV2/pdf/en/GAMELOFT-DOCUMENT_DE_REFERENCE_2012_(D13-0478).pdf https://media01.gameloft.com/web_mkt/corporateV2/pdf/en/GAME...
- Ezhik 11y ago
  J2ME games, that's one hell of a blast from the past.
  - andrepd 11y ago
    Absolutely, just the other day I was reminiscing about playing J2ME games in my little phone while I was growing up. There were some true gems in there.
- 11y ago