Overlay-Wiki

[BladeJunker]

As I delve into low resolution LCD displays of keypad overlays I think of another possible option built into the modern homebrew cart which is an onscreen reference image of the overlay. What can you say about collecting loose carts and playing without an overlay, sure the interwebs fill that hole now but even your present day human considers it a lot of work to look up anything that isn't Beyonce or porn lol.

A good example would be my cousin who graciously helped me and my nieces progress in Ecco the Dolphin but when it came time to look up a walkthrough he didn't do so with his phone despite him using it at the time to play other games so I went and used my desktop. I'm not calling my cousin lazy but I am demonstrating just how little of an obstacle it takes to prevent people from not looking up things on a regular basis when prompted to IE. apathy, other interests, the "burden" of typing on a tiny touch screen. The sort of same impulses that cause a person to watch bad television when the remote is not within arms reach. ^_^

 

People are lazy especially with leisure activities so having the overlay image to look at in-game is useful and worth the ROM space. These days I wish my loose INTV carts had an in-game reference because I still haven't learned how to print to scale to make my own overlays and I often don't look up overlays online despite flying blind as the alternative lol, I'm lazy too.

 

 

Old Screen VS. Overlay.

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The hardest aspect is the extreme difference between a low resolution display when compared to the high resolution of a silk screened graphic print. The smooth lines, the fine text, the multi-colored illustrations are things the first game consoles wish they could have rendered. Those graphics do serve a purpose though, the assumption is a person's imagination fills in the details not seen in early video game graphics but some people don't have much imagination thus things like cabinet art fill in the blanks.

 

Argh they sure varied the designs and layouts a lot on overlays which makes them hard to approximate into pixel art form. I did my best but some differences have to exist while some designs just can't be replicated within the graphics limitations of the INTV. I guess it doesn't matter since it isn't like I can patch them on to every cart, mostly with the reference examples its been hard to recreate them in few pixels.

 

It could be something added to a flash cart like a ROM onto itself, sort of a demo index of overlays you could display on the actual hardware in compact form.

 

 

Breakdown:

 

There is 16 colors in the system palette and a lot more used in overlays so some color changes and compromises in image approximation are needed as applicable. I experimented with dither mixed colors for more range but that pretty much messes with the kind of border shapes you can produce with 1-bit color tiles.

 

It is pixel art optimized rather than exacting replication so it can't match things like the font styles seen on the printed overlays or the exact shape of the icons. At the very least it matches the aspect ratio better than Intellvision Lives on the DS which had to squash the overlay height severely to fit on the touch screen losing there original appearance in most cases.

 

The best maximum any system can do is maximum resolution in the smallest dimension of the image and for the Intellivision that is 160(159) pixels wide. At 16:10 that works out to an overlay resolution of 160X256. In contrast 96 pixels tall fitted to the screen height you'd have 60X96 which would be useless.

 

As a tall image you pan or scroll up & down to see as much as you can through the window of the screen. You can't see it as a whole but there is enough reference information there to learn what each key is labeled as.

 

Pretty basic bitmap division of width divided by 3 which at 160 wide comes to 48x48 per keypad with a total of 144 wide with 8 wide side strips equalling 160 together.

 

48X48 isn't much but its usually enough for most basic icon graphics seen in many overlays. The "big picture" EG. He-Man images don't make too much of a difference because regardless of similiarities in icons you can't tilemap construct them at such small resolutions and still have a 144X192 bitmap to render any overlay.

 

The keypad graphics are double(triple?) layered to better approximate the real color schemes and despite a vertical stacking layout there isn't enough sprites in width to cover them all with the default of 64 pixels total. It will either have to multiplex/flicker 15 sprites or all 8 are used on one keypad graphic at a time and you just toggle between them for there full color appearance.

 

There is some tile component efficiency in the overall image but not much because of the cramped space for information display, most often the best I could do was stay within 8X8 pixel block border lines keeping at least each piece separate from each other. I think to make it any better I'd have to display one keypad image at a time IE. 96X96 resolution to get the tile components fine enough to construct a complex image with smaller pieces.

 

The only areas I managed to build in some heavier tile reuse was the title banner border plus font, also the trademark copyright text which has clean 8X8 seams. The banner area is fairly tall too so it can handle shorter banner options where legal text is crammed in below it too.

 

Fire button text didn't tile because the width of character needed to fit enough text in doesn't fall between grid map seam lines. Did manage to standardize the Fire button arrows to the center position of the keypad area.

I could have shrank it to legal script size but the font scale contrast seemed to be more visually important IE. Keypad Numerals, Fire Button Text, Legal Script, and Keypad Text at different sizes.

 

 

Options.

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#1

Initial design went smaller as to have some on screen prompts but it seemed like overkill when all you do is scroll, enter, and exit images. Not a bad first try but the text scale contrast was pretty low at this size. Drew it, might as well show it.

 

 

#2

Second version which fills as much screen as it can while still keeping the most relavant information visible which became my default in the breakdown. This came a lot closer to approximating the look of the original printed overlays.

 

*Had some trouble matching the Red Orange of the original print overlay so I tried a few options, Orange, Orange/Magenta dither, and Magenta. Still not sure which looks best but overlays are harder to manage than solid colors.

 

#3

Came up with this after I became concerned about image memory needs for large bitmaps being too high particularily with layers. You got the "mini-map" on the side which you toggle between keys to see the related portion of overlay image.

This is the largest scale possible but it is also the most efficient in terms of tilemap savings as more components repeat especially any text at the center of the keypad images which is large enough to use the GROM characters in most cases. As said bigger so it does more of a bankswitch/streaming approach as you move the view-finder around, loading portions as you move and offloading others outside the viewing radius.

 

*I used Astrosmash as an example but it comes in dark grey or black background thus the split to test both options.

[BladeJunker]

Still messing around with pixel art replication for console display, need the practice for my touch screen concept, probably fairly low res.

 

Dug out what overlays I have and pulled a controller from my non-functioning INTV to keep on my desk for feel reference. Depends on the overlay how close you get, the Orange seems lighter on the overlay but the console palette is close. Tried to a make a Purple with dithered Blue & Black, looks okay but can't get it to overlap with the graphics or text characters. That is always the dilemma of displaying an image of the console on the console, does it have the colors of the console items or not.

 

Haven't tried anything hard yet but I estimate more picture oriented overlays would probably look like ZX Spectrum pixel art without stacking color layers too much. I guess it depends on the overlay, if you got basic key graphic icons then you can spend some sprites to overlap more colors onto any elaborate central art image.

 

Crap the metal came off the Disc, going to have to glue that back on, 30+ year old glue only lasts so long.