Lynx coding contest

[108 Stars]

Good thing you're prepared!

[+Gemintronic]

Good thing you're prepared!

 

You know it brother!

lynxcont.zip

Edited October 19, 2012 by theloon

[108 Stars]

That was quick!

 

I imagine I'd take two decades of learning before I could ever get that done!^^

[+Gemintronic]

Just like spriting it's EASY! Er, I just don't remember what platform we're coding on anymore..

https://skydrive.liv...Ex1qvaqRMPN2H4

Edited October 19, 2012 by theloon

[PAC-MAN-RED]

Spriting is easy because you have a gift for it 108 Stars I'm sure PAC-MAN-RED thinks a drunken baby could make decent sprites

 

So, can we say that the above palette is the standard for our sprite/tile pack? If so, what is our sprite and tile sizes?

 

Firstly... lol

 

Secondly... I'm looking forward to the final specs of the sprites.

Edited October 20, 2012 by PAC-MAN-RED

[+Gemintronic]

Firstly... lol

 

Secondly... I'm looking forward to the final specs of the sprites.

 

I think Karri posted the palette here:

http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/157577-lynx-coding-contest/page__st__100#entry2621712

 

He also suggested 16x16 sprites.

 

I think the palette could use a few more diverse colors hence my post here. Also, maybe any combination from 8x8 16x16 to 24x24 (Boss monsters). Can the Lynx handle 24x24 sprites natively?

[+karri]

Any sprite sizes are ok with the Lynx. They don't need to be a square. 10x51.

[Cammy]

I think you guys really need to read through this thread here - http://www.wayofthepixel.net/index.php?topic=4306.0;all

 

Magenta is the most useless colour you can have in a limited palette, you can use a more useful red with a dark brown for the shadow and pink for the highlight which are more useful colours. Unless your game specifically features pink and purple graphics, you should focus on making more useful colours for a palette intended to be used for a variety of games.

 

Here is an excellent example of a 16 colour palette for use in games - http://www.pixeljoint.com/pixelart/64505.htm

[Cammy]

Arne's Palette

Dawnbringer's Palette

 

Also remember when making a palette for the Lynx to use 12bit colour values. That means the 24bit RGB values need to be:

 

0

17

34

51

68

85

102

119

136

153

170

187

204

221

238

255

Edited October 22, 2012 by Cammy

[+Gemintronic]

Thanks for the links Cammy!

 

Whatever anyone decides is good for me. Just remember it's really 15 colors since the first is used up for transparency. My first color was pure magenta just to emphasize that it was the transparency "color".

 

I'm a -2 Level Spriter so I can't really pose a good argument for my palette. My basic intentions were:

* Follow the rainbow/crayon box color regime.

* Try to have 2 variants of a major color (not just one color and its half-bright)

* Four colors for greyscale including black and white

* Retain unique colors such as pink, purple and brown

 

The "pro" palettes seem to sacrifice some unique colors and seem somewhat washed out to me. Contrast is important for small sizes. Gradients are good too. 15 colors sure is a challenge

Edited October 22, 2012 by theloon

[Cammy]

Here's the 16/15 colour base palette we've been using for a Lynx game I'm helping with. The 0 colour is black and should still be usable for background objects, and there's a very dark purple/brown for use as a black in sprites which will still stand out on top of the background black. This is a 12bit palette made on an Amiga, the original Lynx development hardware.

 

Edited October 22, 2012 by Cammy

[+karri]

Cammys palette is very nice when viewed on the web. But the problem comes from the real Lynx. It is extremely difficult to avoid washed out colors if most of the screen is light. My suggestion is to exaggerate the luminance and try to code with dark colors rather than light. I may be wrong in this. In MegaPak I tried to find good colors for backgrounds and I loved dark-purple theme.

 

 

Black on white works well also.

 

Edited October 22, 2012 by karri

[+karri]

I like Cammys first link where the colors are set up by purpose: sky, water, plants, skin etc. With a setup like this it is very easy to change the mood like day, dusk, night.

 

Personally I like this approach.

[Cammy]

Cammys palette is very nice when viewed on the web. But the problem comes from the real Lynx. It is extremely difficult to avoid washed out colors if most of the screen is light. My suggestion is to exaggerate the luminance and try to code with dark colors rather than light. I may be wrong in this. In MegaPak I tried to find good colors for backgrounds and I loved dark-purple theme.

Could you show us a photo of how my base palette looks on the Lynx screen? Which colours exactly don't show up properly? I don't have a Flashcart yet so we haven't been able to see how it looks on a real Lynx screen. The idea of a base palette is that all the graphics can be pixelled using it, and the palette itself can be brightened or tinted afterwards, perhaps from level to level. It's based on a combination of Arne's and DawnBringer's palette but with black as 0, "white" as 15, with one pen used as an extra black, slightly lighter than the 0 black. Transparent pens are something Arne and DawnBringer didn't take into account when designing their 16 colour palettes, but this revised palette does.

[+karri]

Ok. I can draw some stuff on my Lynx and try to get screenshots.

 

Another thing is that transparent sprites cannot use color index 0. I would prefer 15 colors + transparent.

[Cammy]

Obviously, which is why it's a 15 colour palette, with 0 being transparent...

 

Oh, one thing. Please put black in index 0 and white as index 15. There are lots of cases where the code assumes this behaviour. It helps in defining transparency of sprites. If black is also used as a color we may need two blacks in the palette.

-

Karri

 

That is exactly how my palette is arranged.

 

Oh, and here's an adjusted palette for Little Green Quak-Quak using 12bit colour values instead of 24bit. I don't know why the palette uses 24bit colour values if the game is intended for a system with 12bit colour.

 

Edited October 22, 2012 by Cammy

[+karri]

Obviously, which is why it's a 15 colour palette, with 0 being transparent...

 

That is exactly how my palette is arranged.

 

Oh, and here's an adjusted palette for Little Green Quak-Quak using 12bit colour values instead of 24bit. I don't know why the palette uses 24bit colour values if the game is intended for a system with 12bit colour.

 

 

Thanks.

 

Yesterday I started to look into this color LCD problem. The graphics we had problems with was the Songbird logo. The logo of the bird using light blue and white became totally white on the Lynx while it was very nice in Handy.

 

The solution is to have two palettes in the tgi-driver. The Handy palette that shows the optimum Cammy palette on Handy and the real palette that tries to do the best mapping on the Lynx LCD. It is easy to check if we run on a real Lynx or not at initialisation time and choose the correct palette based on that.

 

Cammy, I hope that it is ok to use your palette as the default palette in cc65.

 

I am currently writing some code for finding out the real color values generated by the Lynx. I have access to a modern, pretty expensive color calibrator at work. Let's see if this baby is worth anything.

 

--

Karri

Edited October 23, 2012 by karri

[+karri]

Here is a minimal program that displays Cammy's palette.

 

 

If someone has a good camera and a Lynx flash card nearby you could run the program and take a picture and post it to this thread.

 

The lnx file to run is here:

palette.zip

 

--

Karri

[+karri]

Or in a little different layout.

 

 

game.zip

Edited October 23, 2012 by karri

[Michael David Morsette]

If no one gets around to it by then,I'll try it after work and post the pics.

[TailChao]

The solution is to have two palettes in the tgi-driver. The Handy palette that shows the optimum Cammy palette on Handy and the real palette that tries to do the best mapping on the Lynx LCD. It is easy to check if we run on a real Lynx or not at initialisation time and choose the correct palette based on that.

That's quite elaborate! Some GBA games did similar things to account for the different color reproductions on the various models.

 

Honestly my solution to the Lynx issue has always been just to draw everything on my old laptop with a matte LCD. Then close the lid slightly to change the viewing angle and wash out the colors.

It's a little less high tech, but If everything still pops well, then it probably works on the real thing.

[+Gemintronic]

So, Cammy palette and sprites/tiles around 16x16? Do people think this is a good starting point? If so, do we need to define categories for a asset library? Space, Fantasy, Urban, etc..

[GroovyBee]

You probably need to to specify how many colours in the background tiles and how many colour in the player/enemies/dhots. That way you can mix and match characters from one tile set to the background tiles of another.

[Cammy]

I don't mind if anyone uses the palette I uploaded, they can change the shades if they like to match their own game, just remember to use the 12bit colour values I posted above when you're adjusting the RGB sliders. That means you need to skip from 0 to 17 to 34 and so on, not using any numbers in between or the Lynx won't be able to display the colours properly.

 

As an example of the idea I had of using some graphics from OpenGameArt.org at least as placeholder graphics until a pixel artist comes along, I took some of the tiles from this sheet and adjusted them from the old EGA palette to the base palette I'm using: http://opengameart.org/sites/default/files/monsterboy_assets.png

 

[sage]

The solution is to have two palettes in the tgi-driver. The Handy palette that shows the optimum Cammy palette on Handy and the real palette that tries to do the best mapping on the Lynx LCD. It is easy to check if we run on a real Lynx or not at initialisation time and choose the

 

Sorry Karri, but thats just bull... ehm perkele.

It just did not make sence to correct imperfect emulation in software.

If you think that the emulation is not giving the correct color impression, one can use a lookup table (16 values for each color) to map the lynx value to real RGB in the emulator.