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Because they weren't. The exact same art techniques used for 320x200 res games have been used for centuries in other media. Pixel art was most like tile mosaics

by burnte 2y ago

Because they weren't. The exact same art techniques used for 320x200 res games have been used for centuries in other media. Pixel art was most like tile mosaics, which also use dithering, and around for millennia. We designed pixel art that way not because CRTs looked like that, but because we had to pack maximum communication in those pixels. Yes, CRTs had a softening and blurring effect. We didn't really talk about that back then because it was obvious, and it wasn't something we had the ability to turn off or on, it was simply a fact of the technology. No one designed differently for monochrome monitors with higher resolutions, or for the nascent LCD technologies of the day either. Every single article that says what this article says is literally just inventing a story.

nyanpasu64 2y ago
Dithering certainly existed prior to CRTs, but CRTs have a unique property of scanline gaps for vertical sharpening and scanlines/composite video bandwidth for horizontal smoothing. I've found documentation of pixel artists taking CRT television properties into account, even when designing art on higher-resolution (CRT) computer monitors: https://www.tumblr.com/vgdensetsu/179656817318/designing-2d-graphics-in-the-japanese-industry https://www.tumblr.com/vgdensetsu/179656817318/designing-2d-... > we know that many developers, graphic designers as well as programmers, used that technique, from Kazuko Shibuya (Square) and Akira Yasuda (Capcom) to the developers behind Thunder Force IV (1992) who used many CRTs to take into account the specifities of each kind of screen. > “It’s a technique where by slightly changing the color of surrounding pixels, to the human eye it looks like the pixels move by around 0.5 pixels.” explains Kazuhiro Tanaka, graphic designer on Metal Slug (1996). His colleague Yasuyuki Oda adds that "Back in the old days, we'd say [to our artists] "add 0.5 of a pixel", and have them draw in the pixels by taking scanlines into account. But with the modern Full HD monitor, the pixels comes out too clearly and too perfectly that you can't have that same taste."
- nottorp 2y ago
  > I've found documentation of pixel artists taking CRT television properties into account, even when designing art on higher-resolution (CRT) computer monitors Even if they didn't explicitly take the tv properties into account, they drew the graphics on CRTs and saw it running on the target machine. And then adjusted it so it looked "better". Even intuitively.
PhasmaFelis 2y ago
You're missing the fact that many if not most 8/16-bit devs did not make their art on graph paper but on PCs comparable to their target platform. They did that because it was quicker and easier, not out of a specific intention to make better-fitting art, but it had that effect anyway. The pics of Dracula and FF6 Siren from the post--there's no way someone plotted those on graph paper before importing them with no changes.
lomase 2y ago
Did you ever played a ms-dos game in CGA mode? It was not suposed to look like that! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niKblgZupOc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niKblgZupOc Developers did definitly took advantages of everything they could to show more colors on the screen, remember all those demos?

by burnte 2y ago

nyanpasu64 2y ago

Dithering certainly existed prior to CRTs, but CRTs have a unique property of scanline gaps for vertical sharpening and scanlines/composite video bandwidth for horizontal smoothing. I've found documentation of pixel artists taking CRT television properties into account, even when designing art on higher-resolution (CRT) computer monitors: https://www.tumblr.com/vgdensetsu/179656817318/designing-2d-graphics-in-the-japanese-industry https://www.tumblr.com/vgdensetsu/179656817318/designing-2d-... > we know that many developers, graphic designers as well as programmers, used that technique, from Kazuko Shibuya (Square) and Akira Yasuda (Capcom) to the developers behind Thunder Force IV (1992) who used many CRTs to take into account the specifities of each kind of screen. > “It’s a technique where by slightly changing the color of surrounding pixels, to the human eye it looks like the pixels move by around 0.5 pixels.” explains Kazuhiro Tanaka, graphic designer on Metal Slug (1996). His colleague Yasuyuki Oda adds that "Back in the old days, we'd say [to our artists] "add 0.5 of a pixel", and have them draw in the pixels by taking scanlines into account. But with the modern Full HD monitor, the pixels comes out too clearly and too perfectly that you can't have that same taste."

nottorp 2y ago
> I've found documentation of pixel artists taking CRT television properties into account, even when designing art on higher-resolution (CRT) computer monitors Even if they didn't explicitly take the tv properties into account, they drew the graphics on CRTs and saw it running on the target machine. And then adjusted it so it looked "better". Even intuitively.

PhasmaFelis 2y ago

You're missing the fact that many if not most 8/16-bit devs did not make their art on graph paper but on PCs comparable to their target platform. They did that because it was quicker and easier, not out of a specific intention to make better-fitting art, but it had that effect anyway. The pics of Dracula and FF6 Siren from the post--there's no way someone plotted those on graph paper before importing them with no changes.

lomase 2y ago

Did you ever played a ms-dos game in CGA mode? It was not suposed to look like that! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niKblgZupOc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niKblgZupOc Developers did definitly took advantages of everything they could to show more colors on the screen, remember all those demos?