3 ms·

Might be a nice way to get into WASM development, but 4 colors sounds very limiting. Ok, I know the original Game Boy made do with only 4 "colors" (but that was

by rob74 2y ago

Might be a nice way to get into WASM development, but 4 colors sounds very limiting. Ok, I know the original Game Boy made do with only 4 "colors" (but that was on a black and white display where you probably couldn't have told the difference if there would have been more "shades of gray"), and the Game Boy Color showed these games using a palette of 4 colors, but actually even that device could show 56 colors at the same time!

rererereferred 2y ago
The idea of the 4 colors and 160x160 screen is, from my pov, to focus on the gameplay more than the graphics. A lot of people get stopped from attempting to make games because their art skills suck, this removes that element from being an issue.
- lucasban 2y ago
  The play date doesn’t even have shades of grey and has plenty of good games, arguably because of similar constraints
  - rob74 2y ago
    OTOH, the PlayDate is a hardware device, so using a monochrome LCD makes sense for cost saving and power consumption reasons. But, even for a hardware device, once you decide you want to have a color screen, in this day and age there is no real (technical) reason anymore to limit the number of colors.
    - lucasban 2y ago
      I agree, I think it’s more of a novelty reason, just a constraint for the sake of encouraging creativity / not just being another place for the same things we already have.
    - tredre3 2y ago
      > so using a monochrome LCD makes sense for cost saving and power consumption reasons The Sharp Memory LCD used in the Playdate is more expensive than a similarly sized IPS LCD. Whilst power consumption was probably a consideration, the main justification was to impose a deliberate game design constraint IMHO.
- rob74 2y ago
  > A lot of people get stopped from attempting to make games because their art skills suck As a developer with no art skills myself, I can sympathize with that. But I think that is already taken care of by the low-res display - making pixel art is (in my experience) a lot easier than higher-resolution art. I don't think having 8, 16 or 32 colors instead of just 4 really makes an impact on the art skills required for a game...
Cthulhu_ 2y ago
4 colors is still 4x as much as the Playdate or games like Return of the Obra Dinn has (or twice if you consider 'off' a color).
- jerf 2y ago
  Heh, citing the Obra Dinn is cheating a bit. Most people aren't going to do this: https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=40832.msg1363742#msg1363742 https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=40832.msg136374...
jamesgeck0 2y ago
It's a little bit more complicated than that. The system is limited to displaying 4 colors at once, but the palette can change at any time. Check out what Phantom Shift does with a dynamic two color palette. https://wasm4.org/play/phantom-shift/ https://wasm4.org/play/phantom-shift/

by rob74 2y ago

rererereferred 2y ago

The idea of the 4 colors and 160x160 screen is, from my pov, to focus on the gameplay more than the graphics. A lot of people get stopped from attempting to make games because their art skills suck, this removes that element from being an issue.

lucasban 2y ago
The play date doesn’t even have shades of grey and has plenty of good games, arguably because of similar constraints
- rob74 2y ago
  OTOH, the PlayDate is a hardware device, so using a monochrome LCD makes sense for cost saving and power consumption reasons. But, even for a hardware device, once you decide you want to have a color screen, in this day and age there is no real (technical) reason anymore to limit the number of colors.
  - lucasban 2y ago
    I agree, I think it’s more of a novelty reason, just a constraint for the sake of encouraging creativity / not just being another place for the same things we already have.
  - tredre3 2y ago
    > so using a monochrome LCD makes sense for cost saving and power consumption reasons The Sharp Memory LCD used in the Playdate is more expensive than a similarly sized IPS LCD. Whilst power consumption was probably a consideration, the main justification was to impose a deliberate game design constraint IMHO.
rob74 2y ago
> A lot of people get stopped from attempting to make games because their art skills suck As a developer with no art skills myself, I can sympathize with that. But I think that is already taken care of by the low-res display - making pixel art is (in my experience) a lot easier than higher-resolution art. I don't think having 8, 16 or 32 colors instead of just 4 really makes an impact on the art skills required for a game...

Cthulhu_ 2y ago

4 colors is still 4x as much as the Playdate or games like Return of the Obra Dinn has (or twice if you consider 'off' a color).

jerf 2y ago
Heh, citing the Obra Dinn is cheating a bit. Most people aren't going to do this: https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=40832.msg1363742#msg1363742 https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=40832.msg136374...

jamesgeck0 2y ago

It's a little bit more complicated than that. The system is limited to displaying 4 colors at once, but the palette can change at any time. Check out what Phantom Shift does with a dynamic two color palette. https://wasm4.org/play/phantom-shift/ https://wasm4.org/play/phantom-shift/