Best usage of Hi-Res sprites and graphics?

Oge_user

Which games, to your tastes, makes the best possible usage of Hi-Res for sprites or graphics in general?

To my opinion, two games comes in mind talking about Hi-Res:

Octapolis

Mayhem In Monsterland

Cheers,
Oge
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dink · Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2012 10:58 am Post subject:

It's magic Very Happy

Bago Zonde · Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2012 12:15 pm Post subject:

That's holy true!

And really HUGE sprites in Creatures II for sure:
http://youtu.be/5oXYMx10-d4?t=8m5s
It's a piece of cake, just wait for 8:40. When first time I've seen that boss, I've lost first life just for watching how it's extremely big! Then I spent next life looking for my jaws Wink

. It's not Hi-res as you asked for, but it's Hi-Rate Very Happy

.

And Heartland with very nice Hires sprites and brilliant animation:

Quod Init Exit:

And so on, it's just few examples.

merman · Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2012 3:08 pm Post subject:

For fullscreen displays, I nominate Stifflip & Co.

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llllllllllll · Newbie Joined: 26 Dec 2004 Posts: 17

Can't contribute anything, sadly. But those pictures are very impressive.

flanimal · Groupie Joined: 31 May 2010 Posts: 216 Location: England

Impossible Mission main.
And most main sprites in EPYX sports games for that matter.
I liked the main sprite in Dragon Ninga.

Carlos · Groupie Joined: 08 Feb 2002 Posts: 194 Location: Spain

Also Rocket Ranger

Giana Brother · Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2012 11:23 am Post subject:

For me Untouchables and Target Renegade spring to mind.

Batman The Movie and Robocop main sprite drawings are nice also.

adric22 · Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2012 4:02 pm Post subject:

I never really stopped to think about it. But I guess nearly every game I ever played was either running in multicolor mode, or character mode. So I can't even think of a game that runs in high-res mode.

enthusi · Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2012 5:50 pm Post subject:

Lords of Chaos uses HiRes Bitmap mode quite wonderfully.
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adric22 · Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2012 6:19 pm Post subject:

enthusi wrote:

Lords of Chaos uses HiRes Bitmap mode quite wonderfully.

I looked at the screenshots. I'm willing to bet that is character mode.

enthusi · Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2012 7:04 pm Post subject:

What would you bet? :)
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Hend · Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2012 8:43 pm Post subject:

adric22 wrote:

enthusi wrote:

Lords of Chaos uses HiRes Bitmap mode quite wonderfully.

I looked at the screenshots. I'm willing to bet that is character mode.

Always nice when someone bothers to put the screen shots in their response so you dont need to look them up....

hbhzth · Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2012 4:34 am Post subject:

enthusi wrote:

Lords of Chaos uses HiRes Bitmap mode quite wonderfully.

I was about to mention another Blade title: LAZER SQUAD. Same team responsible for both games.

BTW: Lords of Chaos use all hires mode, no multicolor mode on any of the screenshots.

It might look the same, if not done properly, but multicolor mode and bitmap is NOT the same. Bitmap offers more choice in colors, but uses 10K memory for a graphics-screen (FLI mode req. up to 17K!).

Hires can be used rather well, even if there are the same colors in 8x8 pixel eras. There's some fine example's of hires graphics (both sprites and character mode):
Edd the Duck!
Mountain Bike Racer
Daley Thompson's Olympic Challenge

Multicolour sprites and Hires mode:
3D Pinball
Lovely Denton Designs Bounces

Multicolor graphics and hires sprites:
Scooby & Scrappy Doo
Robin Hood: Legend Quest
Rodland

saimo · Groupie in Training Joined: 29 Oct 2008 Posts: 76

adric22 wrote:

I never really stopped to think about it. But I guess nearly every game I ever played was either running in multicolor mode, or character mode. So I can't even think of a game that runs in high-res mode.

Maybe Slaine.

enthusi · Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2012 7:04 am Post subject:

There are many games out there using bitmap hires mode.
I.e. all/most speccy ports.
Lords of Chaos and Lazer Squad share basically the same engine.
You can easyly see that its real hires as soon as the BG color differs from char to char. That is only possible it Extended Char mode (i.e. H.E.R.O) which is really rarely used and HiRes bitmap. Charmode can mix multicolor and hires chars very well (check Trolls, in particular level2 for awesome charmode gfx, or Rolling Ronny) but in hires mode you always have the same BG-color which is why many RPG-games or such have grass as green_on_black, stones as grey_on_black and so on...
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hbhzth · Posted: Tue May 01, 2012 3:18 pm Post subject:

enthusi wrote:

...
You can easyly see that its real hires as soon as the BG color differs from char to char. That is only possible it Extended Char mode (i.e. H.E.R.O) which is really rarely used and HiRes bitmap. Charmode can mix multicolor and hires chars very well (check Trolls, in particular level2 for awesome charmode gfx, or Rolling Ronny) but in hires mode you always have the same BG-color which is why many RPG-games or such have grass as green_on_black, stones as grey_on_black and so on...

Thanks! I had almost forgot it's term, but as you say it's called Extended Char mode. I tend to put it in the hires mode category.

It's done with fiddling with the bits of register $D011:

Code:

Bits: Mode:
x00xxxxx Standard hires char mode
x01xxxxx Bitmap mode on
x10xxxxx Extended Char Mode

($D016 governs multicolor on/off using Bit 4)

This is info from my head - but it should be valid - if I've still got some braincells left from the old days of C64 programming Very Happy

I remember an old demo trick with the extended char mode:

Putting timed raster colorbars on the registers $D022, $D023 and $D024.
Enabled extended char mode and put the text on the screen where the raster timing occurs.

Chars written in the $00-$40 (normal) will have usual screen color (prefer to set it black, with in inverted charset so that $D021 value would be the charset's color - add $D021 to the other timed raster routine).
Chars from $40-$80 (large letters) would get colors from $D022.
Chars from $80-$C0 (reversed letters) would get colors from $D023.
Chars from $C0-$FF (large reserved letters) would get colors from $D024.

You could get the impression that you could have diagonal raster bars only 8 pixels wide, followed by a different colored bar 8 pixels wide - or 16 or 32 pixels wide - you can do a lot of nice stuff.

A good example would be Galleons intros (clue:crunchers) using this effect. Science 451 had such an intro too.

I'm sure there are newer, more elaborate uses of this routine. If someone can explain - I'd love to hear about it....