@GTV reviews the Cosmic Fantasy 1-2 Switch collection by Edia, provides examples of the poor English editing/localization work. It's much worse for CF1. Rated "D" for disappointment, finding that TurboGrafx CF2 is better & while CF1's the real draw, Edia screwed it up...
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Which Sprite/Map/Block/Character editor is recommended?

Started by elmer, 03/19/2015, 07:10 PM

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elmer

I guess that my old editor really isn't going to cut it anymore, without some serious updating ... (see below).

The last that I remember, ProMotion had a good reputation as an editor ... but that was a long time ago.

I thought that I'd ask ... what are people using these days?

Arkhan Asylum

NeoPaint is pretty good for indexed palette mode editing without a ton of extra BS like Photoshop has.

I use a combination of NeoPaint and PaintShopPro for image editing (when I have to), because of their friendly palette editors.

Neither is free, though.    NeoPaint is pretty cheap.   

Free + Indexed Palette support that isn't mental: 
Grafx2 (DOS or Win32.  It's Amiga DPaint style.  You might like it)
GIMP:  Useful for reversing color maps that Photoshop has reversed.

As for map editing, we use Mappy because it's pretty wysiwyg, and pukes out simple blocks of data for the map.   You can barf out CSVs, C style arrays, and stuff.    It's pretty handy and supports 8x8/16x16 tile maps

http://tilemap.co.uk/mappy.php
https://code.google.com/p/grafx2/
http://www.neosoftware.com/npw.html
This "max-level forum psycho" (:lol:) destroyed TWO PC Engine groups in rage: one by Aaron Lambert on Facebook "Because Chris 'Shadowland' Runyon!," then the other by Aaron Nanto "Because Le NightWolve!" Him and PCE Aarons don't have a good track record together... Both times he blamed the Aarons in a "Look-what-you-made-us-do?!" manner, never himself nor his deranged, destructive, toxic turbo troll gang!

touko

With grafx2 you can directly work in 9bit, but it's an old school graphical interface, a bit rustic, but it does the job ..

elmer

Quote from: guest on 03/19/2015, 09:07 PM...
http://tilemap.co.uk/mappy.php
https://code.google.com/p/grafx2/
http://www.neosoftware.com/npw.html
Thanks for the suggestions and the links.

I'll have to take a look  at NeoPaint sometime ... in the meantime I do have PhotoShop for an high-color work, and it looks like there are other alternatives for paletted work.

For the paletted work, as you guessed, I'm most comfortable with a dpaint-style interface. dpaint/danim really ruled the 16-bit world for many years.

It was good to see grafx2, as I hadn't been aware of it. It looks very familiar, and quite powerful, and the hi-res support is very welcome.

It's absolutely as ugly as it's possible for a graphics editor to be ... but it's open-source, so that's fixable if it annoys me enough.

I should give more time to learning to use "ProMotion" (http://www.cosmigo.com/promotion/index.php) since I've had a license to that for years and, at least according to it's website, it's still in use by the pros. It has some very powerful layering and onion-skinning capabilities, and also has map editing.

As for maps ... I'd heard of mappy before ... but had forgotten about it.

It looks really good, and above-all, simple to use, so I just registered it, and will probably end up using it. It's always nice to see someone still exporting in the classic old Amiga-IFF format.

Quote from: touko on 03/20/2015, 06:12 AMWith grafx2 you can directly work in 9bit, but it's an old school graphical interface, a bit rustic, but it does the job
It's very familiar ... and it's still sort-of-active, so it'll be interesting to see how easy it is to compile.

It was funny to see that the author has been doing homebrew work on the Amstrad CPC and Thompson M05.

Hahaha ... there's a Thomson TO8 on eBay right now ... just gotta resist!!!  :wink:

touko

Oh man, you know Thomson's computers ???, very surprising  :shock:
I thought they were only known in France ..

elmer

Quote from: touko on 03/20/2015, 01:33 PMOh man, you know Thomson's computers ???, very surprising  :shock:
I thought they were only known in France ..
Haha ... I can also spell colour and aluminium correctly!  :wink:

A friend did a game on one, but I never got to play with them ... always wanted to (for the 6809).

I did have an Oric Atmos though, if that helps ... I seem to remember that they did OK in France.

Arkhan Asylum

Grafx2 is what I used for the entirety of Insanity's artwork, including importing a scan of the cover art and dithering it down to 16-color for the title screen. 

What's funny is, if you fuck with the palettes, you can actually change the colors of the buttons in the interface.

To me it's got the most accessible/straightforward way to deal with PCX images, and it is pretty powerful for this sort of thing.  The copy/pasting is a bit odd at first but is pretty good once you figure it out. 

I used the DOS version in an emulator doing 320x240 resolution + scanlines, so I got a fairly decent approximation of what the stuff would look like on a real PCE.    Blues are a royal pain in the dick to get to look nice.

I switched to NeoPaint mostly because it is about the same, but had some other things I was trying and screwing with.

You can also be an ass and use DOSBox + PC Paintbrush.   


The MagicKit/HuC libs function well with PCX + FMP (fmp = mappy files).

So, if you don't stray from that, you'll have an OK time.   

Just make sure you save the PCX as the 4 plane ones, or the libs stroke out.
This "max-level forum psycho" (:lol:) destroyed TWO PC Engine groups in rage: one by Aaron Lambert on Facebook "Because Chris 'Shadowland' Runyon!," then the other by Aaron Nanto "Because Le NightWolve!" Him and PCE Aarons don't have a good track record together... Both times he blamed the Aarons in a "Look-what-you-made-us-do?!" manner, never himself nor his deranged, destructive, toxic turbo troll gang!

touko

Yes oric was popular in france,a very good computer .

Thomson was not bad too, but with his poor graphic capabilities (no hardware sprites or scrolling) , this were not a good choice for a gaming machine ..

but you're true, the 6809 is a cool cpu to work with .

elmer

Quote from: guest on 03/20/2015, 04:50 PMGrafx2 is what I used for the entirety of Insanity's artwork, including importing a scan of the cover art and dithering it down to 16-color for the title screen.
Great ... it's good to know that it is stable.

I took a look at its docs, and it looks like it supports animated layers, lust like danim, so there's really no reason not to use it.

QuoteYou can also be an ass and use DOSBox + PC Paintbrush.
If I want to go that crazy, I can run my old copies of dpaint/danim as well!  :wink:

QuoteThe MagicKit/HuC libs function well with PCX + FMP (fmp = mappy files).

So, if you don't stray from that, you'll have an OK time.   

Just make sure you save the PCX as the 4 plane ones, or the libs stroke out.
I'll just follow the old adage ... "never do at run time what you can do at build time".

Everything will be preprocessed ... no reason to load an RLE-compressed PCX when there's much better compression available.

Quote from: touko on 03/21/2015, 05:53 AMbut you're true, the 6809 is a cool cpu to work with .
CoCo3FPGA
A nice hardware-emulated (or re-implemented, as they prefer to say) 6809 machine with it's graphics enhanced from the original chipset. That's something that I find amazingly cool.

Can you imagine a PCE running at 21MHz with 256-color backgrounds and sprites? That's the kind of thing that could be done in hardware on an FPGA these days.  :shock:

Arkhan Asylum

Yeah, it doesn't do it at run time.   I meant the #include stuff that processes the files. 
This "max-level forum psycho" (:lol:) destroyed TWO PC Engine groups in rage: one by Aaron Lambert on Facebook "Because Chris 'Shadowland' Runyon!," then the other by Aaron Nanto "Because Le NightWolve!" Him and PCE Aarons don't have a good track record together... Both times he blamed the Aarons in a "Look-what-you-made-us-do?!" manner, never himself nor his deranged, destructive, toxic turbo troll gang!

touko

QuoteCan you imagine a PCE running at 21MHz with 256-color backgrounds and sprites?
Of course, and it has a name : PCFX  :P

elmer

Quote from: touko on 03/22/2015, 02:07 PM
QuoteCan you imagine a PCE running at 21MHz with 256-color backgrounds and sprites?
Of course, and it has a name : PCFX  :P
Hahaha ... got me!  :wink:

Gredler

Sorry for the noob intervention here.


I have been creating artwork that retains the limitations of # of colors, and resolution. The engine I am using is modern and does not limit these things, so I have to manage this manually.


I only use photoshop, pixel brushes and not anti aliasing on shapes and selections. I am very careful with what colors are in the image, and export them with a limited pallet to ensure there are no extra colors.


Is there a reason I should not be creating my sprite sheets only in photoshop, or is it a convenience thing for porting down to PCE specifically?


Thanks!

ccovell

One reason you shouldn't is that Photoshop saves palette data backwards in PCX images, if I recall, so you might run into headaches when importing them in HuC/MagicKit.

elmer

Quote from: ccovell on 03/24/2015, 08:52 PMOne reason you shouldn't is that Photoshop saves palette data backwards in PCX images, if I recall, so you might run into headaches when importing them in HuC/MagicKit.
Haha ... I hadn't hit that one ... guess that my artists in the Photoshop era always exported in BMP/TGA/PNG ... but thanks, it's good to know that the problem is there.

He can always export in a different format and then use IrfanView or something else to convert it into a PCX if he needs to ... but that's a bit of an ugly work-around.

Quote from: Gredler on 03/24/2015, 05:40 PMSorry for the noob intervention here.
No apology needed ... we all had to start somewhere ... and this seems like a good place to ask.  :)

You said that you're using a "modern" engine ... do you mean that you're doing a "retro" project in something like Unity, or that you're actually targeting real PCE hardware in something like HuC?

QuoteI have been creating artwork that retains the limitations of # of colors, and resolution. The engine I am using is modern and does not limit these things, so I have to manage this manually.
I'm not sure exactly what you mean here about the number of colors ... do you mean the 16-per-character or 256-per-background/spriteset, or maybe the 512-color-3-bit-rgb-palette ?

The PCE has the usual 4th-generation 16-colors-per-individual-character-or-sprite ... but most people at the time used programs like Deluxe Paint or Deluxe Anim in 256-color mode to "simulate" up to 16 different 16-color palettes ... perfect for the PCE's 16-palette backgrounds and 16-palette sprites.

QuoteI only use photoshop, pixel brushes and not anti aliasing on shapes and selections. I am very careful with what colors are in the image, and export them with a limited pallet to ensure there are no extra colors.

Is there a reason I should not be creating my sprite sheets only in photoshop, or is it a convenience thing for porting down to PCE specifically?
Use whatever feels comfortable to you that still lets your programmer get the data in a format that they can use ... that's your only real limit ... and the only thing that really matters.

There's no "absolutely-the-only-way" here ... only things that are easier and harder.

Photoshop was specifically written to do 24-bit "true-color" graphics and replace the old 256-color-or-less paletted graphics programs.

It sort-of handles paletted graphics ... but it's workflow really isn't designed around them.

I know that people have used it to do those ... but I suspect that most artists quickly move on to something else like "ProMotion" or maybe the "grafx2" or "NeoPaint" that have been mentioned, that make it easy to work with and manipulate paletted graphics.

By the 6th-generation (i.e. PS2), Photoshop use was very common ... but often combined with Macromedia (now Adobe) Fireworks, which was one of the few programs at the time (and even now AFAIK) that could handle paletted-alpha.

If you'd be happier with a recommendation, then personally, I'd probably point you at "grafx2" right now ... but it's really up to you (and your programmer).

Arkhan Asylum

Quote from: ccovell on 03/24/2015, 08:52 PMOne reason you shouldn't is that Photoshop saves palette data backwards in PCX images, if I recall, so you might run into headaches when importing them in HuC/MagicKit.
Yeah, you have to use something like GIMP to un-reverse them.  It's pretty annoying.

Photoshop can limit the image and do indexed palettes, though, so you can continue to use it, but will need another program to undo the palette-tarding.

So, this is why I'd just use a different program altogether.
This "max-level forum psycho" (:lol:) destroyed TWO PC Engine groups in rage: one by Aaron Lambert on Facebook "Because Chris 'Shadowland' Runyon!," then the other by Aaron Nanto "Because Le NightWolve!" Him and PCE Aarons don't have a good track record together... Both times he blamed the Aarons in a "Look-what-you-made-us-do?!" manner, never himself nor his deranged, destructive, toxic turbo troll gang!

Gredler

Quote from: elmer on 03/24/2015, 09:49 PMNo apology needed ... we all had to start somewhere ... and this seems like a good place to ask.  :)


You said that you're using a "modern" engine ... do you mean that you're doing a "retro" project in something like Unity, or that you're actually targeting real PCE hardware in something like HuC?
Thanks so much for the understanding and open welcoming to my ignorance :P

Yes, exactly. I am not a programmer, but I am trying to learn as much as I can. I've been doing art for various engines, Unity and Unreal included, but also proprietary engines at places I've worked, for about 7 years now. My personal project is being made in Construct 2(http://www.scirra.com), a cheap and simplistic HTML5 based engine that has drag and drop scripting to replace most coding requirements, but I would love to eventually learn enough about programming to make an actual platform specific game such as TG-16, or Genesis. Right now I have a VERY basic idea of C#, and a few other languages, but that is the one I've studied the most, so I an unable to tackle projects with such low level coding requirements :(

QuoteI'm not sure exactly what you mean here about the number of colors ... do you mean the 16-per-character or 256-per-background/spriteset, or maybe the 512-color-3-bit-rgb-palette ?

The PCE has the usual 4th-generation 16-colors-per-individual-character-or-sprite ... but most people at the time used programs like Deluxe Paint or Deluxe Anim in 256-color mode to "simulate" up to 16 different 16-color palettes ... perfect for the PCE's 16-palette backgrounds and 16-palette sprites.
I've only been limiting my sprites to be 16 colors per sprite, but have not been paying attention to platform bit-rate specifications (worded correctly?). I have not been keeping track of the 9-bit, 3-bit, color palette restrictions. Just picking colors in photoshop, but only 16 per sprite or 256 per background. Do I need to be restricting the entire screen to 256 colors, or 512? or can each background have a different palette?

I found this link, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_monochrome_and_RGB_palettes , while researching to respond to your post. Is this accurate? On there it suggests using a 9-bit rgb palette if I were to emulate the look of TG-16 (and genesis). Is that because there are 3 3-bit channels to work with?

QuotePhotoshop was specifically written to do 24-bit "true-color" graphics and replace the old 256-color-or-less paletted graphics programs.

It sort-of handles paletted graphics ... but it's workflow really isn't designed around them.

I know that people have used it to do those ... but I suspect that most artists quickly move on to something else like "ProMotion" or maybe the "grafx2" or "NeoPaint" that have been mentioned, that make it easy to work with and manipulate paletted graphics.
Awesome, this makes perfect sense to me. I am so familiar with photoshop I just jumped straight to it and tried to manage the palet manually. I am actually curious, and will experiment today, with setting photoshop up to limit the pallet.

I am doing all of the "coding" right now, so it's really up to me what I use, and I'll probably download grafx2 and do some comparisons and tests later :) Thanks for the recommendation and help! I really appreciate you taking the time.

Quote from: guest on 03/24/2015, 09:49 PM
Quote from: ccovell on 03/24/2015, 08:52 PMOne reason you shouldn't is that Photoshop saves palette data backwards in PCX images, if I recall, so you might run into headaches when importing them in HuC/MagicKit.
Yeah, you have to use something like GIMP to un-reverse them.  It's pretty annoying.

Photoshop can limit the image and do indexed palettes, though, so you can continue to use it, but will need another program to undo the palette-tarding.

So, this is why I'd just use a different program altogether.
This makes complete sense. Yes I have been saving them as 16 color indexed pallets, but because I am not actually creating this art for PCE/TG-16 I do not need to reverse the palettes. Great to know if I did actually get to where I can start doing work on a PCE/TG-16 game, though, so thank you!

Arkhan Asylum

If you're going to do art for a specific machine, you do need to know the specifics of the machine, or you may risk giving image files to the programmer in a way that's a royal pain in the ass to deal with.

PCE uses indexed palettes.   9-bit RGB.   You have 16 palettes for the sprites, and 16 for the background.  Color 0 is shared in all BG palettes, and color 0 is transparent for sprites.

So, you ideally want to do all your work with the paint program set to indexed mode.  Every 16 colors is a new palette.   

So, if you do something like using colors 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,and then all of the sudden you use color 28 all on one sprite, you've now got problems.    You're mixing colors from various palettes.   This won't always work.

It's a bit goofy.  But, for example (pardon the color names, it's just an example):

Palette 1
0: blue
1: red
2: green
3: yellow
4: pink
5: magenta
6: dinosaur
7: polka dot
8: neon black
9: light urple
10: teal
11: gray
12: black
13: white
14: yellowey green
15: orangey red

PALETTE 2:
16
17
18
19
20
21
22: green
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31


Now, a sprite always has colors 0-15 on it, and simply uses whatever palette you set to it.  This is what indexed means.   Everything is just an index into a color palette.   

So, lets say you drew a sprite with Palette 1, and in your paint program, you decided for some reason to add the green that is in Palette 2. (Remember, every 16 colors will be a new palette on the PCE)

Rather than seeing green when you run it in the game, you will actually see DINOSAUR.

This is not what you want.   Maybe it is.   Probably isn't.
This "max-level forum psycho" (:lol:) destroyed TWO PC Engine groups in rage: one by Aaron Lambert on Facebook "Because Chris 'Shadowland' Runyon!," then the other by Aaron Nanto "Because Le NightWolve!" Him and PCE Aarons don't have a good track record together... Both times he blamed the Aarons in a "Look-what-you-made-us-do?!" manner, never himself nor his deranged, destructive, toxic turbo troll gang!

Gredler

Quote from: guest on 03/26/2015, 12:45 AMIf you're going to do art for a specific machine, you do need to know the specifics of the machine, or you may risk giving image files to the programmer in a way that's a royal pain in the ass to deal with.

PCE uses indexed palettes.   9-bit RGB.   You have 16 palettes for the sprites, and 16 for the background.  Color 0 is shared in all BG palettes, and color 0 is transparent for sprites.

So, you ideally want to do all your work with the paint program set to indexed mode.  Every 16 colors is a new palette.   

So, if you do something like using colors 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,and then all of the sudden you use color 28 all on one sprite, you've now got problems.    You're mixing colors from various palettes.   This won't always work.

It's a bit goofy.  But, for example (pardon the color names, it's just an example):

Palette 1
0: blue
1: red
2: green
3: yellow
4: pink
5: magenta
6: dinosaur
7: polka dot
8: neon black
9: light urple
10: teal
11: gray
12: black
13: white
14: yellowey green
15: orangey red

PALETTE 2:
16
17
18
19
20
21
22: green
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31


Now, a sprite always has colors 0-15 on it, and simply uses whatever palette you set to it.  This is what indexed means.   Everything is just an index into a color palette.   

So, lets say you drew a sprite with Palette 1, and in your paint program, you decided for some reason to add the green that is in Palette 2. (Remember, every 16 colors will be a new palette on the PCE)

Rather than seeing green when you run it in the game, you will actually see DINOSAUR.

This is not what you want.   Maybe it is.   Probably isn't.
Yes, this makes sense and explains a lot.

I am somewhat familiar with using CLUTS and 3DLUTS, so initially I thought I could create CLUTS and use them to limit which colors are available while working in photoshop. This however created very weird results, as described by your dinosaur example, but now it makes so much more sense when you break it down in text. Visually I was like wtf is going on, why are my blues turning red, etc.

This is so incredibly helpful, and explains so much why my art is close, but still off, and even more so why so many indie "retro" games look nothing like the platforms they're trying to resemble.

Today I am going to try and setup these CLUTS more carefully, knowing which colors are assigned to which index, and see what kind of photoshop workflows I can come up with. I may end up posting my results to see what you all think if I find anything I feel is useful :)

Thanks!





Edit: I'll say one thing, photoshop is not easy to assign which color is which index... lol but this has been fun today, trying to set this up