CRY Mode "Which would you choose?"

[philipj]

If you had to choose between using "CRY mode" to do all of your 3D shading versus making your own shading scheme, which would you choose to do and why?

[Matthias]

Hello!

 

If you had to choose between using "CRY mode" to do all of your 3D shading versus making your own shading scheme, which would you choose to do and why?

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The alternative would be to use RGB-videomodes, which would (IMHO) make it

harder to implement a shading-system. I think the developers of the Jaguar

did implement the CRY-mode especially for the benefit of easy shading,

the chipset of the Jagaur has a lot of supporting functionality built in for this purpose.

So go with CRY if you need to shade a lot of objects.

 

Regards

Matthias

[philipj]

Did you or anyone else every have any complications or problems when using CRY mode?

[Starcat]

Hi!

 

The most obvious limitation or problem (if you want to call it that way) of cry is, the limited colors.

As Matthias said, cry is optimised for easy access to the brightness values, which means 8-bits are used for brightness, leaving only 8-bit for color.

So you have 256 colors with 256 brightness levels.

Of course 16-bit color (cry) is 16-bit (rgb) color you might say.

The problem is, that the cry colors are different to those of rgb.

And they can look quite different if your original graphics are optimised for rgb, which is what most screen graphics are.

So if I were you, I would only use cry if I really need easy access to the brightness values of the graphics or when I want to do shading.

If you have prerendered graphics or in general graphics with a lot of colors and you want the colors to be as close to the original colors as possible on the Jag, then rgb is the only option.

 

Just an example to illustrate the problem, I once had a water background in a level of a game and while it looked great on PC, the dark blue turned into a very ugly purple, almost dark pink when using Jag cry.

So it can happen that you really end up with quite different colors, if you happen to choose one that cry just doesn't have.

 

However if you don't care about those differences that might appear, then cry is fine too. It's just a matter if you want your graphics to be exactly the way you created them.

 

Btw, early Eerievale versions actually used cry, however the graphics just looked awful compared to rgb, so I switched to rgb quite fast.

 

Regards, Lars.

[Matthias]

Hello!

 

 

Did you or anyone else every have any complications or problems when using CRY mode?

991692[/snapback]

 

 

As Starcat already said, it's the limitation of the palette of colours you can choose from.

In CRY you only have 256 different colours (i am not even

sure that you do have a real White!), but for the benefit

of having 256 shades (of brightness) of each of these colours.

In 16bit-RGB, you have 5 bits of Red, 5 bits of Blue and 5 or 6 bits of Green (usually you use the version with 6bits).

This leads to a broader range of colours, but to less opportunities to have different brightnesses.

 

An example:

You want to use a pure Red, in CRY you can (luckily) have this, and in 256 shades!

In 16bit-RGB you can also have it, but only in 32 shades (5bit).

 

To sum it up: A darkened Red in CRY can never become a certain Brown which you can have in RGB!

 

 

Bye!

Matthias

[philipj]

Thanks for your input... This will certainly help in my decision making.