SNES style (edit: more generally retro style...) -- what do you think?

[KyriakosCH]

Updated pic:



(older ones...)



?

Edit, and a gif:

[Mandle]

Well...It looks like a photo that you used the posterize filter on to reduce the pallette colours, and possibly some hue and/or saturation fiddling...

Which is fine, but what aspects of the picture were you concerned about and want feedback on?

[KyriakosCH]

^Exactly

I am interested in whether this makes the background look atmospheric - or...crap?

[Danvzare]

It doesn't look very SNES stylistic to me.
It just looks like a badly compressed photograph.
Maybe VGA style?

I suppose it does have some atmospheric qualities to it. But it has too much blurring going on and not enough dithering, to have a proper SNES or VGA style to it.

[KyriakosCH]

Hey, i am new to using pics uv-mapped to planes as background, have patience

A little better?

[KyriakosCH]

And:

[Danvzare]

Yes, they look better.
But if you really wanted to make it look SNES style, you need to go for something more akin to this: [imgzoom]http://orig13.deviantart.net/2924/f/2016/255/2/7/snes_colours_by_danvzare-dahdrg8.png[/imgzoom]
You've got to remember, they rarely used all 256 colours on a single screen, especially since some of those colours were reserved for GUI Elements and Sprites.
And I know the sky looks a bit of a mess, but if I had the full colour version of this screenshot, then it probably would've come out better.
Still, you've got to admit, it looks quite nice, and all I did was apply the palette from a screenshot of Clocktower.

[VampireWombat]

I have to agree that none of them in any way are SNES style at all. Some of them may kind of resemble some FMV games of the mid to late 90s.
If you're wanting to get an SNES feel, you'd be best off tracing the backgrounds with a limited palette and using some game sprites for reference.
But if you're just wanting backgrounds in general, the last one is fine at least. It just doesn't evoke any graphic style.
But if you really want to go the route of using filters or such, you could create or find an image with a color palette that's fitting for SNES games, convert it into an indexed image, and then import/past your background into that image. Then you could use filter - blur - pixelize or the equivalent.

Here's an example using an Altered Beast sprite sheet and then pixelized at a 2x2 pixel setting.

[KyriakosCH]

Clocktower

Hm, yes, i definitely care more about it looking ok, rather than having to resemble Snes; it was just a more generalised allusion to retro (i should have been more careful with that, given where i am posting!!! )

Palette (256 color) can be atmospheric, and i am used to it from making gfx for CivilizationIII, but in an adventure game in AGS it would be way too much trouble and likely not worth it...

[VampireWombat]

I'm not really sure why this forum specifically matters. Many game and sprite related websites would have people assuming you're trying to do an SNES graphics style when you say SNES style...
Also, retro means many things to different people. For some people Atari graphics would be retro. For others it would be NES or Sega, while for some anything more than 10 years old would be retro.

And I'm not sure what makes a 256 color palette that hard to use and not worth it. I'm sure I could find you a proper palette within seconds. And from there all you'd need would be to use it as an indexed image and work on your stuff from that.

It took me about 2 minutes to find a 256 color palette, open it in GIMP, index it, and then paste your background into it.

[KyriakosCH]

^That just isn't the style i am looking for.

For reference, in CivIII the following city set was made by myself and i used a 256 palette:

[VampireWombat]

It would be helpful if you specified what style you're wanting as well as what emotion you're trying to express with the color choices.

But here's your background using the color palette from your CIV III image and then pixelized at 3x3 pixels.

[imgzoom]http://i66.tinypic.com/2h543no.jpg[/imgzoom]

And here's with a custom palette from the image itself and then pixelized at 3x3.

[imgzoom]http://i67.tinypic.com/9lk2n4.jpg[/imgzoom]

[KyriakosCH]

Thanks for your work, but you don't have to do it

I won't be using pixelisation either. I will likely go with the latest pic i posted as the basis of that location

[Danvzare]

Hm, yes, i definitely care more about it looking ok, rather than having to resemble Snes; it was just a more generalised allusion to retro

Well if that's the case, it's perfect already.

[KyriakosCH]

Hm, yes, i definitely care more about it looking ok, rather than having to resemble Snes; it was just a more generalised allusion to retro

Well if that's the case, it's perfect already.

[Mandle]

Everything you did with the background looks 100% awesome!!!

Your CivIII examples of your pallette skills are amazing!!!

Looking forward to your next thread!!!

[KyriakosCH]

Thanks

Well, i am experimenting with fitting foreground 3d models of mine to a plane-uvmapped background. Will get the hang of it. And while the "Start of the Forest" location already looks nice, i will need to standardize results for this new method for myself...