/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.11232463]

Why do so many modern artists fail at replicating retro artstyles?

[Anonymous No.11232470]

There's no such thing as the "retro artstyle" and slavishly copying something is pointless.

[Anonymous No.11232476]

>>11232463
Because they don't know how to use a limited pallet.

[Anonymous No.11232501]

>>11232463
The only way for an artist to fully replicate a previous era is to be raised into that era. I don't know if sufficient historical information still exists to replicate the historical era. Maybe it would be possible to create an Island where you raise a bunch of children like its in the 80s, and then have them start developing computer games using period systems and practices.

[Anonymous No.11232506]

>>11232470
fpbp

[Anonymous No.11232515]

i think they might not be trying because it only matters to people like us. Pixel art branched out into new art styles that take inspiration from but aren't really going for historical accuracy but being a new art style. Like Stardew Valley or those hd 2D games. Those are clearly not trying to be "historically accurate" or whatever. Personally I kinda like when they take an old look and then add neat lighting effects

[Anonymous No.11232527]

>>11232463
I think I could draw a retro looking Wizard.

[Anonymous No.11232529]

It can't be the past forever. Be happy with what you have and try to enjoy new shit. Or don't, whatever

[Anonymous No.11232536]

>>11232463
They don't have a lot of knowledge of the subject from a technical point of view.

[Anonymous No.11232537]

Because they are up their own ass, and it's likely they don't make it the same way as it was made back then

[Anonymous No.11232541]

it's influenced by programming and hardware. the NES can't do that animaton and a programmer won't want to put too much effort into coding it

[Anonymous No.11232552]

>>11232463
Because they aren't restricted by the limitations of an older platform.

And most don't even try to replicate, it's just modern games slightly inspired by older games. Kind of like how the TV series Mad Men looked like a mix of late '00s fashion with actual '60s fashion. Or like how the Rococo Revival in the 19th century didn't look exactly like the real Rococo.

[Anonymous No.11232558]

>>11232527
ZX Spectrum Wizard.
He would be in a platformer where you could throw fire, lightning, summon golemns, and fight an evil Knight.

[Anonymous No.11232563]

>>11232558
Anon i... don't think you're even trying to make retro art, at all.

[Anonymous No.11232569]

>>11232563
Best I can do. Ill try again.

[Anonymous No.11232574]

>>11232463
Most fail to create based on the design principles those retro art styles were founded on

[Anonymous No.11232586]

I do not believe the current programs I have available will allow me to properly create pixel art, let alone retro.

[Anonymous No.11232587]

>>11232586
>I do not believe the current programs I have available will allow me to properly create pixel art, let alone retro.
You don't have Paint installed?

[Anonymous No.11232594]

>>11232587
That is Paint. Hmm.
What are the design principles needed to best draw in a retro style?

[Anonymous No.11232607]

>>11232594
Implied details

[Anonymous No.11232609]

>>11232594
Zooming in all the way to do things pixel by pixel would be a start. If I were home right now, I'd make a smaller version of that wizard as an example.

[Anonymous No.11232615]

>>11232607
>Implied Details.
>>11232609
>Pixel by Pixel.
Welp, I best get to it then.

[Anonymous No.11232619]

>>11232463
Too many of them are gay hipsters who never played old games on CRTs and don't understand what the original artists of 2d pixel art were doing.

[Anonymous No.11232631]

>>11232586
Literally just downscaled in PS (the lazy way to do it)

[Anonymous No.11232635]

>>11232631
How do you downscale?

[Anonymous No.11232638]

>>11232470
You're an idiot.

[Anonymous No.11232640]

>>11232635
Image>Image size
Set the resample to nearest neighbor
After downscaling I upscaled again with nearest neighbor so it's easier to see (upscale by integers by using 100% increments)

[Anonymous No.11232643]

>>11232640
Oh! Thats what its called? Amazing. Its a bit crude but its neat.

[Anonymous No.11232706]

>>11232631
Actual ZX Spectrum graphics looked much worse than that. You're only allowed 2 colors per 8 pixel block.

[Anonymous No.11232714]

>>11232706
And those blocks are always in fixed positions, so you can't actually scroll graphics like >>11232706. Most games used monochrome (software) sprites or huge borders around them for this reason.

[Anonymous No.11232723]

>>11232714
Wait, so if my retard brain understands, you need to use multiple different sprites to fake smooth sprite movement?

[Anonymous No.11232736]

>>11232638
You and the people who make these sorts of threads are beyond retarded. There is literally zero value in slavishly emulating an NES game. Then we get to the "too much animation" garbage from you morons who think that NES games are the only 2d games to ever exist and that because NES and SNES can't have more than like 4 frames of animation, no game has ever done so.

[Anonymous No.11232748]

>>11232723
There are no hardware sprites. Everything is software rendered and smooth movement (as in 50fps, so ugly PAL flicker on a CRT) is basically impossible. If you're targeting an original (non-128K) Spectrum there's no back buffer either, so most games flicker like crazy. There's a fixed grid of 8x8 blocks covering the whole screen, with a maximum of 2 colors per block. Art like >>11232706 is only possible in static images because it's aligned with the grid to fit lots of colors in a small space. In game graphics typically had single color moving objects on plain backgrounds.

[Anonymous No.11232802]

>>11232748
So a character's "sprite" will either use or change the background's color when it's shares the same block?

[Anonymous No.11232805]

>>11232802
Correct. It was called "colour clash".

[Anonymous No.11232820]

>>11232805
Its amazing they could get games to even work at all on that damn thing.

[Anonymous No.11232828]

>>11232820
It was never designed for games. Clive Sinclair was unhappy about it ending up as a games machine.

[Anonymous No.11232839]

>>11232828
Games are an added bonus, I say, but I can see why he was unhappy given that. Wasted potential.

[Anonymous No.11233267]

>>11232463
simply those fags don't have a CRT to playtest their games to see how the final result is.

[Anonymous No.11233271]

>>11232586
just use irfanview portable to make graphics, is kinda the best.
>create image on other software
>open with irfanview
>for GBA you need 8 bits image with 16 colors.
>done GBA sprite.
>call it a day.
image is final result of a pokemon firered sprite.

[Anonymous No.11233276]

>>11233271

[Anonymous No.11233315]

>>11232463

[Anonymous No.11233320]

>>11232470
The term "retro" refers to imitations of the past. How can a new game not imitate the hardware specifications of the past?

[Anonymous No.11233374]

>>11233315
you know it's retro when i'm having a seizure by watching it

[Anonymous No.11233416]

>>11232463
I think its better to draw a pixel at a time or even draw your art on paper and then transfer it. All these tutorials show you how to use tools to slap out art work in seconds but it doesn't turn out that good. During Neo Geo they used computer generation for later games so it not all bad.

[Anonymous No.11233465]

>>11233416
no much need for it with this blender plugin https://www.cgchannel.com/2015/02/this-free-blender-shader-turns-3d-models-into-pixel-art
sadly not many found out about it or use it, well is mostly due to stagnation same thing as mugen communities.

[Anonymous No.11233473]

>>11232587
They didn't use paint. They would draw actual images and try and convert them to pixels and then do touch ups or corrections if possible.

[Anonymous No.11233641]

The reason is that they're TRYING to look retro, so they use other games' art style as reference. While during the actual period, developers just did whatever they could to make it look good under restrictions instead of trying to make their game look like something else.

For example, Donkey Kong Country's art style would probably be deemed "not retro enough" if the game hadn't actually existed.

[Anonymous No.11233673]

>>11233465
Because nobody wanna become another cris

[Anonymous No.11233872]

>>11232463
If you're talking about pixel shart, because they are retarded and don't understand that games didn't choose to be pixely but that they worked with it and tried to create a good visual despite of it and that they used all kinds of trucks which involved CRT blurriness and scanlines

[Anonymous No.11233889]

>>11232476
Are you trying to make me cum

[Anonymous No.11233894]

>>11232501
>Maybe it would be possible to create an Island where you raise a bunch of children-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=3&v=6GhFuTQ68Ak&feature=youtu.be

[Anonymous No.11233904]

>>11232501
>Maybe it would be possible to create an Island where you raise a bunch of children-
https://i.4cdn.org/wsg/1726118612299824.webm

[Anonymous No.11233906]

>>11233889
Mayyyybe

[Anonymous No.11234097]

>>11233872
This is also why stuff like subpixel animation is a lot more prevalent in modern retro-style games than in actual retro games. It still appeared in some retro games but on a CRT details like subpixel animation are easily lost, whereas on modern displays you can see and appreciate the intricate animation work even though it's inauthentic

[Anonymous No.11234196]

>>11232558
Oi me speccy!

[Anonymous No.11234231]

>>11232463
Because they don't truly care about the era they only do it because it's hecking hip and trendy.

[Anonymous No.11234347]

>>11232463
because not all pixel art has to be constrained by console limitations they aren't actually subject to.

[Anonymous No.11234361]

>>11234231
t. has never created anything

[Anonymous No.11234368]

No one on /vr/ knows how to make pixel art or even draw at all
This is why /v/ will always better

[Anonymous No.11234413]

>>11233872
>CRT blurriness and scanlines
>pic clearly shows MD NTSC shader
>even the hardware devs said the video output was cheap garbage
Looks like N64, Genesis and PS2 all have something in common.

[Anonymous No.11234416]

>>11233320
that's like saying you shouldn't listen to recordings of classical music because it was impossible to record them in the past

[Anonymous No.11234417]

>>11233872
>CRT blurriness and scanlines
>pic clearly shows MD NTSC shader
>game devs complained about the video output being cheap garbage
Looks like N64, Genesis and PS2 all have something in common.

[Anonymous No.11234429]

>>11233315
It feels like a lifetime since I’ve seen this gif.

[Anonymous No.11234461]

>>11234368
Have you been rid of the bottled drawthread yet?

[Anonymous No.11234470]

>>11232515
>>11232463
This, they're not trying to replicate. If they really wanted to replicate a retro artstyle it would be really easy. A game that actually could have run on a retro system would look like shit to most normies. One of the few devs that actually cares is Yacht Club (Shovel Knight dev) and even they've talked about taking a bunch of creative liberties, there's interviews with them where they go over their own game and point out "oh that wouldnt've worked on NES the sprite size is too big" or "oh we used a few more colors than the NES could".

[Anonymous No.11234495]

>>11234470
I remember the reason was literally because they couldn't get enough shades of brown for their supporters. It was kind of weird but whatever. I don't see any point in believing ex-wayforward people. That studio never had any talent, the style was chosen out of convenience and marketability and it's not a very good looking game. Wanted the glitz and glamour of being a retro thowback "NES" game without actually being one.

[Anonymous No.11234509]

>>11234495
are you trying to make some joke about their supporters having brown skin

[Anonymous No.11234513]

>>11234509
It's not a joke, it's a factual description.

[Anonymous No.11234598]

>>11232515
This!

I remember when putting out retro style games was a newer thing and people were complaining that an NES inspired or SNES inspired game or such was not strictly adhering to the color pallets or other limitations of the system. The games weren't trying to be exactly like a game on those consoles, just have a similar art style. I recall the Shovel Knight devs talking about how even though they did limit their game to some of the NES's visual limits they still ignored the number of sprite limits among others.

The only time I feel it's a problem is when a game uses too many advanced sprite/visual manipulation effects that retro consoles would have had no way in hell of doing at the time. Adventures of Pip is a good example, it has the whole "going between 1-8-16 bit" mechanic, but at every step the sprites can squish and stretch like a flash game as well as have particle effects. Even the lowest form which is literally a single (giant) pixel can do this, which is very nonsensical. (Though IIRC in the original Kickstarter pitch they were planning on having more forms than just those three).

But beyond such blatant examples most of the games that use a pixel art style are either just using their own art style that happens to be pixelated (Narita Boy and Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery comes to mind, pixel graphics but clearly not trying to replicate the look of any specific retro system) or trying to replicate the feel/nostalgia of a specific console without strictly adhering to it's original limits... as long as they don't go too crazy like Pip did.

[Anonymous No.11234619]

A game that strictly adheres to technical limitations of the past is always gonna be more niche than "what if people hadn't stopped making 2D games for current hardware?"

[Anonymous No.11234649]

>>11234598
What are some games besides Shovel Knight that are the closest to their respective consoles theyre attempting to emulate?

[Anonymous No.11234687]

>>11234495
>blowned jpeg

Phone posters need to neck themselves.

[Anonymous No.11234713]

>>11234649
I can't recall any right now off the top of my head, but in general a lot of the ones that mimic Gameboy games tend to feel a lot closer to the original hardware.

[Anonymous No.11234835]

>>11234368
>Fun with a pencil
BTFO

[Anonymous No.11234908]

>>11234470
Shovel knight can be ported to snes/megadrive sadly dev is too lazy to do it and too much of a bitch to allow others to do it.

[Anonymous No.11234920]

>>11234908
>too much of a bitch to allow others to do it
which is why some russian should do an unauthorized port

[Anonymous No.11234923]

>>11234649
Megaman 9/10 are similar to nes games to the point they could be ported, contra and castlevania wii could be ported to megacd due to mega cd having power enough to handle the games (and gamr is close to 16 bit color).
You could port lot of stuff like real bout fatal fury to megadrive (reason some fags are mad is because real bout got ported to megadrive), making it a milestone (runs on gens gs)

[Anonymous No.11235102]

>>11234416
1: You misunderstood the point, all new games with a classic style are "retro" games
2: Contemporary classical music has been and will continue to be composed
3: Music is composed on paper with a score, when stored properly a score can exist far longer than an audio recording

I recently heard Illia Ovcharenko playing Stravinsky in concert, what live classical music have you listened to recently?

[Anonymous No.11235115]

>>11232476
Totally agree. Old systems were limited in cpu / ram / pallet. A good retroviedo game programmer is sober and know how to pack and use the limits.

[Anonymous No.11235259]

>>11235102
Well nope, if you make something trying to pass it as retro it won't be retro just for that.
Take those fake n64 games released last year no matter how much effort got to look as an n6r it will never be one because it uses insane ammount of cpu/gpu/ram (checked a "missing" n64 game and needed quad core 3 ghz cpu, 2 GB gpu and 8 GB of ram), and then you have those "tried to make a ps1 game" yet are cheap and don't have same limitations to be a ps1 one.
As was said "retro is limiting yourself to what was available at that time" not simply make something that look like an old game but needs high end PC.
In this point shovel knight is the perfect example, can be ported to snes/megadrive without issues, the pc game made by capcom of megaman vs street fighter qualifies as one since can be ported to nes.

[Anonymous No.11235264]

>>11233271
could i get a sauce on that

[Anonymous No.11235293]

>>11235264
Is a hack i made, was checking if i could change the sprites on pokemon fire red and wasn't that bad >>11233276
I changed lot of trainer girls to my taste, maybe someday i will release it or maybd i add it to a pack of gba games i shared long time ago.

[Anonymous No.11235328]

They treat suggestions from pixel art tutorials as hard and fast "best practices" that you must follow. You HAVE to tint your highlights warm and your shadows cool. You HAVE to light objects from the top to convey its 3D-ness. You MUST avoid 00 and FF colors, and make the reds rosy, and the greens lime-y, and raise the blacks.

They also approach pixel art from the perspective of "digital art done on a tablet, but shrunk down" so it often has a low detail cel shaded-esque look

[Anonymous No.11235337]

>>11232805
>>11232820

It's easiest to think of it as the Spectrum having a "B&W" resolution of 256x192 and a "color" resolution of 32x24 overlaying it.

[Anonymous No.11235351]

>>11232463
Because a game released today has to appeal to today's audience, not to a handful of retro fetishists.

[Anonymous No.11235395]

>>11234509
I think he's referring to the palette used for the portraits in this level (when lit up): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZfirV2DJg4

[Anonymous No.11235402]

>>11232463
No one wants a new game to deliberately have flickering and the occasional cut-off sprite. The only technical limitation that really has any artistic merit is that of color palettes, and plenty of people make plenty of art using limited palettes.

[Anonymous No.11235409]

>>11232558
>>11232558
You can't just say you
can make a speccy wizard
like this.That's not a zx-spectrum art.

First, it's not follows the limits of the
platform.The spectrum has only two
colors per cell - the Background, and
a bitmap, the foreground.Also the you can choose
the only ONE color per bitmap. Even the wikipedia mentions
that a 1 color bitmap overlaid onto this as a grid
of attributes. It can't be a zx-spectrum in every aspect,i am not even talking about you chose a background which of course not in zx-spectrum palette.

[Anonymous No.11235449]

>>11232463
No limits - no artstyle. A lot of modern artists dont know
about what tricks are used in development. Also, the systems are being limited in the hardware(small quantity of colors), and how to achieve more colors in the image. Also,the screen of that time, CRTs, have some interesting "bugs" to increase the
quality of the image. For example, the dithering. If you have a CRT with a composite(usually TV),
the dithering will be a myth for you. If that's a case, a lot of modern artists do not use CRT or any shaders to replicate a screen of that time, and that
of course transforms in the situation when the rules which written to work with old pixel graphics, doesn't always belong to modern artists. Sure,there are some artists who preserving it, but not everyone.

[Anonymous No.11235496]

>>11234368
I certainly try to do art for my Doom mods, and I push myself to improve. I modeled, posed, painted over, and animated the weapon in webm related.

[Anonymous No.11235498]

>>11235496
and the model in question. I did a similiar process for this character's obsidian sword.

[Anonymous No.11235508]

>>11235328
This remminded me of those megadrive homebrew released last year and this year, all of them look made by the same guy.

[Anonymous No.11235509]

>>11235498
and if you want to see that sword, here you go.
I did need help with the smear frames though, first person smear frames trip me up which is aggravating.

[Anonymous No.11235519]

>>11235509
Finally have some swords I've drawn. The basket hilt on the rightmost sword kinda bothers me now, and I should update that.
I'm sure there's other anons that make art here.

[Anonymous No.11235697]

>>11235259
You are arguing for a stance I'm not contesting. I am instead pointing out the misnomer of "retro gaming" when referring to actual vintage hardware and software. "Retro" only ever means "imitation vintage". All those inferior games you were referring to are merely imitating the specifications of vintage hardware, that's exactly what makes them "retro" and not "vintage" games. Yes, Shovel Knight is the best example of an "accurate retro game" whereas something like PsiloSybil is not able to run on an actual PlayStation. Despite that fact, it's still a "retro game" specifically because it is an imitation.

In other words, I think this argument is as dumb as the name of the board. You don't need to be accurate to imitate how vintage hardware displays graphics, and only nerds like us will ever care when it's done properly. Case in point and complete left turn random digression: The D&D episode of Gravity Falls frequently refers to a "32-sided die" despite clearly rolling a dodecahedron. Later in the episode someone rolls a 32 with a d12, seemingly just to irritate pedants. Despite these flagrant errors of logic and reason, it still managed to evoke the idea of tabletop RPGs in a legally safe manner. Aren't rule lawyers annoying?

[Anonymous No.11235708]

>>11235259
You are arguing for a stance I'm not contesting. I am instead pointing out the misnomer of "retro gaming" when referring to actual vintage hardware and software. "Retro" only ever means "imitation vintage". All those inferior games you were referring to are merely imitating the specifications of vintage hardware, that's exactly what makes them "retro" and not "vintage" games. Yes, Shovel Knight is the best example of an "accurate retro game" whereas something like PsiloSybil is not able to run on an actual PlayStation. Despite that fact, it's still a "retro game" specifically because it is an imitation.

In other words, I think this argument is as dumb as the name of the board. You don't need to be accurate to imitate how vintage hardware displays graphics, and only nerds like us will ever care when it's done properly. Case in point and complete left turn random digression: The D&D episode of Gravity Falls frequently refers to a "32-sided die" despite clearly rolling a icosahedron. Later in the episode someone rolls a 32 with a dodecahedron, seemingly just to irritate pedants. Despite these flagrant errors of logic and reason, it still managed to evoke the idea of tabletop RPGs in a legally safe manner. Aren't rule lawyers annoying?

[Anonymous No.11235710]

penis

[Anonymous No.11235896]

>>11235259
>Take those fake n64 games released last year no matter how much effort got to look as an n6r it will never be one because it uses insane ammount of cpu/gpu/ram (checked a "missing" n64 game and needed quad core 3 ghz cpu, 2 GB gpu and 8 GB of ram), and then you have those "tried to make a ps1 game" yet are cheap and don't have same limitations to be a ps1 one.

A modern game will require more resources simply because any modern engine would use a ton of resources compared to years ago even to do something as simple as an NES game, and older ones would be iffy to get working on modern operating systems, the only other option would be to code your own engine.

That being said, I hate it when a game meant to resemble PS1 cranks the texture warping filter way WAY up. No, PS1 games did not have everything stretch to infinity as soon as you got close, the console would have been a colossal failure if it was THAT bad. About as bad as all those games that act as if you are watching an old VHS tape and it's utterly full of every type of defect in the book cranked up to 11. Again, VCRs would have failed if the quality was that bad.

>In this point shovel knight is the perfect example, can be ported to snes/megadrive without issues

Even the SNES would not be able to handle the game as-is (even if we ignore that the game is technically running in 3D).

[Anonymous No.11235905]

>>11235496
>>11235509
This is cool, what's the WAD?

captcha: HAX0R

[Anonymous No.11235920]

>>11235896
>code your own engine
Shoutout to You Have To Win The Game. It's free on steam, go play it. It's like VVVVVV but with shaders.

[Anonymous No.11235927]

>>11235905
That's GMOTA. Been working on a pretty big update for awhile.

[Anonymous No.11235937]

>>11232463
Some people are just really dumb
Like did you ever hear someone read a poem they wrote and they genuinely thought rhyming was the only thing they had to do, paying no attention to rhythm and meter, having syllable counts jumping all over the place with every line? It's the same mindset with retro style games.

[Anonymous No.11235965]

>>11235896
Can be ported, someone made a mock up rom and got part of first level working on snes (got a C&D letter) so is feasible now but not done for mentioned reasons.
Remember with luck is an 8 bit game kinda similar to megaman 9 for wii and ps3, so everything can be done (in assembly as was being done).

[Anonymous No.11236014]

>>11234417
they complained but they still had to work with it. if you're targeting an emulator then you don't have to do shit which is part of why things look like they do.

[Anonymous No.11236019]

>>11234649
honestly just play homebrew if you want the most accurate games

[Anonymous No.11236034]

>>11235896
well remember too that it's being created by people who likely never saw the stuff when it was new. Like how Cuphead makes the game look like filmn that sat in a basement for 60 years, largely because the creators he up watching exactly that, old films found, cleaned as best as possible, and transferred to tape. Or how Schindler's List was in black and white even though obviously the real events were in color and they could have been rendered as such. The artist's own experience with the subject comes from old film and photos since they weren't alive to see it for real, and so their own experience colors the art they make of it.

[Anonymous No.11236250]

>>11233320
"Retro" can mean a lot of things. Are you actually so dumb that you think words can only have one definition? Do you think a retrograde rocket is trying to imitate the past? Learn how to speak English.

[Anonymous No.11236336]

>>11236250
Nobody says "retrorocket games", you're grasping. I invite you to retrospectively consider how "retro" is Latin for "back" or "backwards" and how using "retro" as a prefix doesn't change the denoted meaning of "retro". Retrograde, Retroactive, Retronym, etc.

[Anonymous No.11236997]

>>11235328
>You MUST avoid 00 and FF colors,
Worst advice ever. The best looking game on the PSX makes heavy use of 000000.

[Anonymous No.11237003]

>>11235409
>you can choose the only ONE color per bitmap
Not true. You can set foreground and background separately. Spectrum BASIC has INK and PAPER commands for this. You are probably confusing this with the BRIGHT command, which does apply to both foreground and background. It's not possible to have bright foreground and dim background or vice versa.

[Anonymous No.11237069]

>>11236997
heavy blacks look like shit on most monitors these days. maybe when oled is thoroughly populated...

[Anonymous No.11237093]

>>11237069
invest in an LCD from the past 4 years, VA/MVA panel

[Anonymous No.11237135]

>>11237069
If pure black looks like shit, dark gray will look worse. I'm looking at >>11236997 on an LCD and it still looks great. There's no way you could improve it by reducing the contrast. Use of pure black like this is a classical art technique called "chiaroscuro".

[Yuji Sakai No.11237143]

>ctrl-f grid paper
>0 results

the whole way they used to do sprite work is to hand draw it on grid paper and then manually enter it pixel by pixel into the data using however many colored pens they needed for its pallette, and because a sprite was 16x16 or 32x32, this was doable

[Anonymous No.11237753]

>>11232463
Checked this pack https://sharemods.com/c02j663gj5lp/ and is not that hard to realize.
For example the homebrew coffee crisis was reviewed as "great gameplay like streets of rage" yet it sucked as hard as those taiwanese unlicensed games.
Most retro indie games fail because they try to be something else instead of be their own thing hence the overall crap the good part of games, foccusing on pixel art while neglecting gameplay means gameplay will crap your good pixel art.

[Anonymous No.11237772]

>>11237143
They used grid paper because they had to literally TYPE in pixel art so graph paper was just a way of planning.

[Anonymous No.11237795]

>>11237753
It's ironic that you bring up Coffee Crisis, not because it isn't a bad game mind you (or at best, mediocre with an annoying difficulty) but because that's not just a game meant to look retro, that game literally does run on a Genesis. So it actually is adhering to all of the Genesis's original limits.

[Anonymous No.11237860]

>>11237795
The point was while pixel art looks fine, gameplay tried to be streets of rage and failed really bad crapping the game itself.
It felt similar to top fighter 2005 or soul blade (in that pack) graphics look fine but fails in the gameplay, i didn't even knew if i was hitting the enemies, the movement felt so clunky.

[Anonymous No.11237887]

>>11232463
Because you actually have to have the intention of replicating a specific retro artstyle in the first place.
"Specific artstyle" is especially important. Even on primitive systems you have a lot of choice on how you allocate resources and how you actually draw/render assets.

[Yuji Sakai No.11238057]

>>11237887
i've never played mega man at all in any series and i'm not sure why

[Anonymous No.11239192]

>>11232586
i didn't read the console specs i just wanted to make a tiny wizard in Paint today

>captcha:GJ4PM

[Anonymous No.11239212]

>>11232463
They use too many colors in general and/or colors per sprite

[Anonymous No.11239267]

>>11232463
because they do not have the actual skill to work within limitations. Have you not seen the amount of pixel art software? All you need is good old ms paint, but people need to feel special for attributing their work was done on special software.

[Anonymous No.11240189]

>>11232586
Aseprite, son. The UI is kinda cancer and you have to purchase it, but it has all the functionality you need and it's dirt cheap.
I also knew a guy who used Adobe Fireworks for their pixel art animations, he gave me it and showed me how to work it. It was okay, surprisingly, but I think you could probably do the same stuff in Photoshop nowadays.
>>11232631
Something interesting about old games is that you would have to split sprites into tiles and there were strict limitations to doing so, which is why so few games had large characters. My memory isn't so good and I'm not the best at explanations, so here's a youtube talking head guy who looks obnoxious but does a great job explaining how NES graphics work.
https://youtu.be/7Co_8dC2zb8
I don't know how much of this applies to ZX Spectrum but it's a good jumping point. From here you'd want to look for information on ZX Spectrum limitations.

[Anonymous No.11240894]

>>11240189
>Aesprite.
ive heard of that, and I have been curious.
I may consider retaking that, but I use pixels so little already, cant justify it.

[Anonymous No.11241205]

>>11237135
yeah fucking chiaroscuro. That my bigga Caravaggio?

[Anonymous No.11241230]

>>11240189
Libresprite is an offshoot of Aseprite that's free, though I think you can just compile Aseprite yourself for free. There's also Pixelorama.

[Anonymous No.11241351]

as a sidenote, i really do like however the hell they're doing exactly what they're doing with the FF Pixel Remastered Series. i know this isnt exactly retro, but it kinda sorta is, because it's a remake of a retro game. it's definitely not a 256 color pallette anymore, but it seems like every individual sprite has some kind of limited number of colors to it still

i wonder if they still had the original grid paper designs on hand and just touched them up super hardcore

[Anonymous No.11242573]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKSQryLmqlA