Would it be posable to convert Ghouls & Ghost to play on a PCE CD Rom2?

[fragmare]

While I agree that the SGX palette for this game left something to be desired in a couple of places, I would guess that the increased contrast in the main character's sprite might have been done so that it would show up better on a period TV set through composite video.

Also, using fewer colors in general makes the graphics compress better. Daimakaimura isn't a very colorful game anyway, I would think that the people making the port probably thought it was more important to have as many more graphical tiles than the Genesis version as possible. That's what makes the SGX port stand out in a side by side comparison.

I can see increasing the contrast, but not decreasing the color count.  It's all about wise usage of the colors.  Look at the screen shot of the custom-colored version I cooked up.  It uses LESS colors than the SuperGrafx original, but manages to look better.

[Gentlegamer]

I can see increasing the contrast, but not decreasing the color count.  It's all about wise usage of the colors.  Look at the screen shot of the custom-colored version I cooked up.  It uses LESS colors than the SuperGrafx original, but manages to look better.

I've learned that the human factor in game development cannot be overlooked. There's a thread at sega-16 where a member is hacking Genesis games to "correct" the colors, using only the Genesis color palette. The results are amazing!







http://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthread.php?28100-Gabriel-Pyron-s-Color-Hacks!!!-%28Golden-Axe-Street-Fighter-II-Final-Fight-CD-etc%29

[SamIAm]

That's some interesting work, but I still think that a lot of palette choices in those old games were made because of how the graphics looked on old TVs with composite or RF connections.

In an interview with one of the American artists that worked on Sonic 2, you can see how big of a deal this was at the time:

We used a Japanese proprietary system called a digitizer. All the employees at Sega Japan used them. Basically you did the work on a grid like system, and you saw the results on a second screen, then you’d have a TV screen set up for color correction.

I can see increasing the contrast, but not decreasing the color count.  It's all about wise usage of the colors.  Look at the screen shot of the custom-colored version I cooked up.  It uses LESS colors than the SuperGrafx original, but manages to look better.

That's hard to defend, but I still think that when you break down the sub-palettes, you might see some reasons for why they did what they did.

[fragmare]

Of course, there's something to be said about correcting things like color and aspect ratio to look better on a contemporary CRT TV.  My argument is that sometimes the changes they made didn't end up looking any better, and in some cases looked worse.  Also, inferior image conversion software (at least inferior by today's standards), time restraints, skill (or lack thereof) of the individual pixel artist and just plain laziness played their respective roles as well.

I already broke down the sub palettes for the bg tiles in SGX Daimakaimura when I created that custom image.  It's not simply the arcade screenshot converted to 9-bit color.  I put quite a bit of work into seeing how nice I could get it to look without increasing the number of unique sub palettes, which is why a quick little hack might not be out of the question.  Granted, the original pixel artist probably didn't have the leisure of infinite time to work on his conversion, but it's nice to see how nice the SGX version actually and realistically *could* have looked, given just a little more effort.

[Nighttrate]

so is the basics of the code from the SGX Games just PCE coding with extra coding for the second grafix chip in the SGX system

Could the games mechanics (game play) be used with modified (hacked) palettes & sub palettes like Fragmare made (if they Were already in existence)?

[saturndual32]

If the end results of a PCE Super CD2 port of Dai Makaimura would have been as good as Forgotten Worlds, i would have prefered it over the Super Graffx version...mainly because i dont have a SG, hehe.

[fragmare]

so is the basics of the code from the SGX Games just PCE coding with extra coding for the second grafix chip in the SGX system

Could the games mechanics (game play) be used with modified (hacked) palettes & sub palettes like Fragmare made (if they Were already in existence)?

the SGX coding *is* PCE coding, with the addition of being able to code with an extra 24KB of work RAM in mind, as well as the extra graphics chip.

The problem with trying to hack a SGX into a PCE game is that it's difficult to say to what extent the extra work RAM is used without fully disassembling the game into ASM.  Even then, it would still be hard without any kind of notations and pointers in the code.  It would require such a monumental effort, you'd almost be better off just coding it from scratch.  With a game like Daimakaimura, there's no telling how the original programmer interwove the code for the additional work RAM and graphics chips into the code itself.