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  • Joined: 09 Jun 2014
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Post Posted: Tue Feb 08, 2022 6:27 pm
Both look fantastic once again.

I'm not sure if i understand what you did with the character select palette.
Tectoy uses 2 palettes in the character screen, right? Are you saying you are using 1 palette for all characters now?

Is it possible to change the Super Street Fighter fonts to the original Street Fighter? This goes for "Player select" and for character names' font.
The arcade and snes fonts are different in the original street fighter, so you can choose which one you like.

In the title screen I would probably go for a grey shadow.
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Post Posted: Tue Feb 08, 2022 7:18 pm
slogra wrote
I'm not sure if i understand what you did with the character select palette.
Tectoy uses 2 palettes in the character screen, right? Are you saying you are using 1 palette for all characters now?


Correct, for the player tilemaps, originally all the greens didn't fit, so I had to split the colors into the bg palette, then assign those tiles to use the BG palette. Now that isn't necessary. Which is nice.

slogra wrote
Is it possible to change the Super Street Fighter fonts to the original Street Fighter? This goes for "Player select" and for character names' font.
The arcade and snes fonts are different in the original street fighter, so you can choose which one you like.


I'll give it a try.

slogra wrote

In the title screen I would probably go for a grey shadow.


Hmm, I don't know why I didn't do that originally lol Consider it done.
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Post Posted: Tue Feb 08, 2022 7:42 pm
xfixium wrote
NewHorizon wrote
In regard to trying to match Blanka to the original. I really wouldn't worry about it too much. There are color palettes to contend with and your original effort looks great. Play to the Master Systems strengths.


I think this will be the approach I will take in the end.

I got around to switching the player select graphics out, as someone suggested earlier. Attaching them for feedback. I made some changes so that I could get all the colors on one palette, instead of dividing them for Blanka specifically.

Thank you to all that have commented, you've helped shape this into a better project.


much better.
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Post Posted: Tue Feb 08, 2022 7:57 pm
[quote="xfixium"]
NewHorizon wrote

Thank you to all that have commented, you've helped shape this into a better project.


Thank you for bringing the project to life! I never dreamed of seeing SF2 looking this great on the Master System. A testament to just how powerful the system truly was.
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Post Posted: Tue Feb 08, 2022 8:16 pm
Each update looks more and more amazing, It's a shame you can't have the country flags next to the characters portraits. Any praise i give is only going to be endlessly repeating what I have already written.

The only thing I don't like is Bison's eyes, I know why you've done them red, because Super Street Fighter 2 had them glowing but Turbo / Champion had his eyes in shadow.

xfixium wrote
slogra wrote
I'm not sure if i understand what you did with the character select palette.
Tectoy uses 2 palettes in the character screen, right? Are you saying you are using 1 palette for all characters now?


Correct, for the player tilemaps, originally all the greens didn't fit, so I had to split the colors into the bg palette, then assign those tiles to use the BG palette. Now that isn't necessary. Which is nice.


Does that mean player 2's selection will display the alternative colors?
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Post Posted: Tue Feb 08, 2022 8:55 pm
Emrabt wrote

The only thing I don't like is Bison's eyes, I know why you've done them red, because Super Street Fighter 2 had them glowing but Turbo / Champion had his eyes in shadow.


Not too concerned about this one tbh, because that's how it's displayed. I didn't purposefully change them. I think they look odd too, but I get it.

EDIT: After playing the arcade game, I will shadow his eyes out

slogra wrote

Does that mean player 2's selection will display the alternative colors


I originally put P2 colored portraits in when I first started thid, but then realized that the P2 colors will always show, regardless if the fighter is P2 or not. Which is disappointing. If it wasn't this way, I would put them back in. I thought with the game having both left and right profiles, that they would put logic in for this.

The counterpoint is, screw it, just put them in and live with it lol
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Broken dreams 😆
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Post Posted: Tue Feb 08, 2022 9:46 pm
Congratulations on all the progress, new graphics looks outstanding !!!

Which is problem? Game is using palette $00-$0F for big portraits (Emulicious Palette 0), and $10-$1F for small portraits (Emulicious Palette 1)
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Post Posted: Wed Feb 09, 2022 12:16 am
BcnAbel76 wrote

Which is problem? Game is using palette $00-$0F for big portraits (Emulicious Palette 0), and $10-$1F for small portraits (Emulicious Palette 1)


Not a problem, I had pretty much everything on Palette 1, except for Blanka's green colors and the text colors, which I moved to Palette 0. This allowed for more colors overall. I just had to set some tiles to palette 0, which was an extra step everytime I made a significant change, and re-imported. So a bit of strategic placement had to be done.

Now, with the new graphics, everything is on palette 1, and only the text is using palette 0. So faster to import if I change a bunch of stuff.

EDIT: Updated things. Decided to personally rip the graphics from both SNES versions, for accuracy. This led to more work than I originally anticipated. Turbo mini portraits weren't wide enough, so some editing, and there were enough differences between the two to rip separate sets of graphics.
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Post Posted: Wed Feb 09, 2022 9:58 pm
Amazing. The fonts look great!

I took the liberty to change the title screen of the turbo edition. I tried to make the gradient better, but it's hard with the sms palette.

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Post Posted: Thu Feb 10, 2022 8:09 pm
slogra wrote
Amazing. The fonts look great!

I took the liberty to change the title screen of the turbo edition. I tried to make the gradient better, but it's hard with the sms palette.


Thanks for giving it a go. I see you edited a bit as well. Looks closer to the source material, color wise, vs the Tec Toy. I like it.

EDIT: Oh, as an update, I fixed the projectiles from being too high
sms_sf2_0084.png (14.8 KB)
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sms_sf2_0085.png (19.88 KB)
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Post Posted: Sun Feb 20, 2022 4:47 pm
Finished Chun Li and M. Bison's graphics. Bison's was actually pretty painless to put together. Ryu is next, and in turn Ken.

Got a brand new laptop. Much better screen, so nothing looks washed out now. I also figured I'd do something different, and show a lil vid I put together. Kinda new to video, so apologies if it looks wack.

https://pyxosoft.com/projects/sms_sf2/videos/sms_sf2_vid_0001.mp4
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Post Posted: Sun Feb 20, 2022 6:29 pm
Nice video! Thankyou

Ummmh, it would be possible to restore shadows when fighter jump???
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Post Posted: Sun Feb 20, 2022 8:28 pm
BcnAbel76 wrote
Nice video! Thankyou

Ummmh, it would be possible to restore shadows when fighter jump???


Possibly, but most likely a major pain to accomplish. The shadow tiles/sprites would have to be bumped up one tile to match the opponent shadow horizontally. Otherwise it will look out of place again.

If that manages to be fixed, then the sprite scanline limitation might be an issue. As shadows are comprised of bg tiles for the core, and sprites for the shadow edges. I'm betting the reason they originally put shadows one tile below the fighters, was to avoid this very issue, and they couldn't double blend bg tiles from the already blended fighter made of bg tiles. Plus, the game has no flicker implementation from what I've seen. A sprite tile simply doesn't get drawn if it overflows the scanline. This shows up for certain instances. Like Bison's Psycho Crusher, when a Bison vs Bison match happens.

So, the solution would be, only show them during jumping. Draw the shadows using the game engine's blending method, and don't make any of the shadows with sprites. The only issue I would see being a problem is if a fighter was jumping over another fighter. There MIGHT be some weird results. Still, this logic seems challenging to implement.
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Post Posted: Sun Feb 20, 2022 9:46 pm
I take a look to shadow engine and control engine.

I see $C049 for Player 1 and $C094 for player 2, ram address is $68 and other value only when jumping, then would possible to restore shadow only if it is not $68 value for shadow player 1 or 2

It is only an idea but I think it would be feasible
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Post Posted: Sun Feb 20, 2022 11:20 pm
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The shadow tiles/sprites would have to be bumped up one tile to match the opponent shadow horizontally. Otherwise it will look out of place again.


I'm not sure it will need to be moved up a tile, if the "old shadows" are only switched on when jumping then the gap will not be noticeable.
In fact the shadow jumping down a tile may actually give the jump some depth.

I'm so glad you continued with this, it looks so much better now.
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Post Posted: Sun Feb 20, 2022 11:47 pm
BcnAbel76 wrote
I take a look to shadow engine and control engine.

I see $C049 for Player 1 and $C094 for player 2, ram address is $68 and other value only when jumping, then would possible to restore shadow only if it is not $68 value for shadow player 1 or 2

It is only an idea but I think it would be feasible


Thanks again for the information. I can always give it a shot and see what shakes.

Emrabt wrote


I'm not sure it will need to be moved up a tile, if the "old shadows" are only switched on when jumping then the gap will not be noticeable.
In fact the shadow jumping down a tile may actually give the jump some depth.


I'll give it a shot, but I overall disagree on these points. Might not be noticeable if the players are decently apart, however, when jumping over an opponent or within close proximity, I would imagine it would be pretty ugly when so close to embedded shadows.
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Post Posted: Wed Mar 02, 2022 3:47 pm
Just curious how things are going on this awesome project?
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Post Posted: Wed Mar 02, 2022 5:54 pm
NewHorizon wrote
Just curious how things are going on this awesome project?


Nothing to report on atm. It's all just heads down work at this point. I'm currently finishing Ryu's graphics. I have been playing around with his palette, as the blue one hurts my brain to look at. The problem being is that the white for his Gi, can't be really messed with, as it affects his eyes, effect graphics, and skin as well. Light yellow seems alright as a substitute though.

Here is my internal todo list:

// Stages:
Ryu Stage:
Update clouds and moon
1 tile incorrect

Guile Stage:
Create clouds (WW version only)

Blanka Stage:
Finish floor

Ken Stage:
Finish floor
Optimize a little further for trench coat guy
Finish window portals

Sagat Stage:
Finish statue

// Fighters
Balrog: 40 frames left
Blanka: 38 frames left
Chun Li: Done
Guile: 50 frames left
Ken: 41 frames left
M.Bison: Done
Ryu: 13 frames left
Sagat: 40

// Misc
Continue graphics need updating
Ending Capcom/Tec Toy graphics need updating
Add Sagat stage graphics to end of rom
Look into reenabling shadow code on jump

Ken's graphics shouldn't take too long to do. As they're copies of Ryu's for the most part. My goal is to have half the fighters done by the end of this week. Blanka will be next after that. Thank you for your interest in this project.
sms_sf2_0090.png (23.01 KB)
P2 alt colors
sms_sf2_0090.png

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Post Posted: Wed Mar 02, 2022 6:22 pm
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Thank you for your interest in this project.


Thank you for taking the time to make it! Master System really was a missed opportunity in gaming history. It's so unfortunate Ni****do tied up all the licensees for NES production. It pains me to think what might have been.
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Post Posted: Thu Mar 03, 2022 6:56 pm
I want to tell you that I only registered in this forum to express my congratulations for this great project.

Really fighting games are not my thing, but the graphic detail you have achieved is impressive and beautiful, again congratulations!!!!
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Post Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2022 5:13 am
NewHorizon wrote

Thank you for taking the time to make it! Master System really was a missed opportunity in gaming history. It's so unfortunate Ni****do tied up all the licensees for NES production. It pains me to think what might have been.


Aye, the Master System is a great console, so much potential.

Terwilf wrote
I want to tell you that I only registered in this forum to express my congratulations for this great project.

Really fighting games are not my thing, but the graphic detail you have achieved is impressive and beautiful, again congratulations!!!!


Thank you for the kind words
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Post Posted: Sun Mar 06, 2022 1:29 am
Update, finished Ryu. Finishing up Ken.

Changed Chun Li's vertical offset when she jumps during her victory animation. This allowed the animation look better, as I was able to put a shadow in. Previously, it was a tile too high.

Added in the World Warrior subtitle in the WW version title screen, since there were so many extra tiles. I just have to adjust the star vertical position, when selecting an option.

Noticed the count down when continuing doesn't use the big lightbulb type graphics. So I'm going to replace them, and also display the fighter damaged profile, which aren't in the game.

I'm going to try to make a different player select screen altogether. The plane and world map stuff should be in this game. That will require a bit of actual coding. Which I'm still not that familiar with. But I'll give it a go.

Lastly, I removed the flesh color, and that allowed me to add in another color index for Ryu. So that I was finally able to use a palette for a proper black Gi. Pretty thrilled about that.

Here is a new vid:
https://pyxosoft.com/projects/sms_sf2/videos/sms_sf2_vid_0002.mp4

Thanks again for your support, and critique. Till next time.
sms_sf2_0091.png (16.63 KB)
Mock up of continue screen (Color converted for SMS)
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sms_sf2_0092.png (22.72 KB)
Proposed color palette for black outfit
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sms_sf2_0093.png (16.74 KB)
WW version title screen mockup. I did manage to import into the project with no issues though.
sms_sf2_0093.png

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Post Posted: Sun Mar 06, 2022 3:26 am
Your pixel paint skills are amazing!

I like how the dark red works perfectly with the blacks and greys in the ryu suit. Same goes for the greens in the white suit.

The skin color and brown are indeed almost identical. I'm not sure how the palettes work in this game but I guess the brown was already in the background? Does this mean the white version has an additional color too?

My eyes were a bit drawn to the purple in the World Warrior text. Did you consider colors 55FFFF or 00FFFF for that? Those colors are much like the light blue already there though.
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Post Posted: Sun Mar 06, 2022 4:05 am
slogra wrote

I like how the dark red works perfectly with the blacks and greys in the ryu suit. Same goes for the greens in the white suit.


I'm actually using the dark purple, although the dark red works as well. It just seems to work a smidge bit better with the purple imo. I found that color combo when experimenting with P2 color portraits a while back, and made a mental note of it.

As for the greens, I had a different dark green that works better imo, but the stage didn't look all that great with the that green. So it's a bit of a compromise. It fits better with the blue/green for the stage, and it works decently for Ryu's outfit. Not TOO noticeable.

slogra wrote

The skin color and brown are indeed almost identical. I'm not sure how the palettes work in this game but I guess the brown was already in the background? Does this mean the white version has an additional color too?


Originally, the skin highlights were using the white in Ryu's Gi. So when it changed on the P2 color, I had to stay with a color scheme that was using white, or close to white, because the skin white changed with it. I eventually just used the existing orangish color for the skin color instead, freeing up a color. So I put white as a separate skin color. Allowing me to use 4 separate colors for the outfit, that wouldn't affect the skin highlight white.

slogra wrote

My eyes were a bit drawn to the purple in the World Warrior text. Did you consider colors 55FFFF or 00FFFF for that? Those colors are much like the light blue already there though.


Great point, I had messed with the colors awhile back when I first did the mock up. I see the suggestions you've made work better. I think I'm going with 00FFFF. You got sharp eyes! Thank you.
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Street Fighter II images for SMS
Post Posted: Sun Mar 06, 2022 5:06 am
This was the best image I could come up with using SMS colors only (32 out of 64). It would lose even more if the background had to use only its own colors, leaving the remaining 16 to the sprite layer alone.
street fighter v background small sms.png (70.27 KB)
Street Fighter arcade images using dithering
street fighter v background small sms.png

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Post Posted: Sun Mar 06, 2022 5:18 am
I played around with the colors of the Ryu stage.
I tried to improve the clouds gradient by making the background black (removing a color), and adding a different blue.
In the wood backboard i removed the blue and kept the just bluegreen (removing some of the details).

I had to restore the house in the background and the blue in the foreground by copy and pasting, so the mockup is really messy.

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Post Posted: Sun Mar 06, 2022 7:44 am
slogra wrote
I played around with the colors of the Ryu stage.
I tried to improve the clouds gradient by making the background black (removing a color), and adding a different blue.
In the wood backboard i removed the blue and kept the just bluegreen (removing some of the details).

I had to restore the house in the background and the blue in the foreground by copy and pasting, so the mockup is really messy.


Hold off on that if you could, as I plan on replacing the moon and cloud graphics. Those were placeholders from the original game. I posted a todo list not too long ago, that's on the list of things to update. I also got to make room for another tile as well.
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Post Posted: Sun Mar 06, 2022 9:58 am
Alright, can't wait for your update. I'm also really curious how the WW version will turn out.
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help with development
Post Posted: Fri Mar 11, 2022 8:43 pm
Is there any way I can help out with this game? Artwork, optimizing Z80 code, testing, etc?

My background is embedded software development, so I can drop into Assembly and figure out how to cut cycle counts. I also have professional experience in embedded use of C.
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Post Posted: Sat Mar 12, 2022 3:49 am
maxxoccupancy wrote
Is there any way I can help out with this game? Artwork, optimizing Z80 code, testing, etc?

My background is embedded software development, so I can drop into Assembly and figure out how to cut cycle counts. I also have professional experience in embedded use of C.


Thank you for the offer. I could definitely use a bit of assistance.

For graphics, I will be upfront on how anal I am with artwork results. I'm not looking for a hot take, or someone's interpretation on what the scaled fighter sprites should look like. I want them to be as close to the source material as possible. In this case, the source material are SNES versions. As there's consistency between it's turbo (normal mode) and world warrior versions, and they look good via emulation, and on my SMS console. Which yes, I test through an everdrive from time to time.

Currently, I have all the remaining fighter sprites scaled down, and color converted. They just need to be cleaned up to look like smaller versions of the original work. I also have the original sprite for each frame, as reference. What I could do is make a small 1 frame kit, and see what you do with it, or anyone with decent art chops for that matter, who is interested. Repeat, I am pretty picky. I'm looking for quality in respect of the source material, I will probably sound like a douche, I'm not looking for perfection, but I am looking for high quality. Something on the level of a Slogra, with regards to attention to detail, and sprite editing chops.

If that doesn't catch your fancy, one of the things on the todo list (I've updated the first post with the current status list), is change the player select screen to act more like the original SFII game, ie world map, flying plane, etc.. etc.. If you could somehow manage hacking/coding that, it would be a big help.

Those are my main points of interest. Although feel free to pick through the list, and let me know what you may be interested in. I would like to wrap this project up within the next 2 months, so I can start on the TMNT project again.

On another note, I have gathered and converted a bunch of screens for the continue, and proposed world map graphics. As always, I made "Champion" and "World Warrior" versions.

I made a small tweak to the title screens, and I have run them through Emulicious for testing. This required doing a small change for the star sprite that selects options. I also moved the star sprite and option sprites up 1 pixel, as that was messing with my OCD and needed to be corrected XD. I still haven't decided on what title screen to use, color wise. I'll post up a comparison image to get feedback on.

I also finished Ken's sprites, currently working through Blanka's sprites, which isn't nearly as taxing as I originally thought. I SHOULD have him done by the end of this week. That would leave Guile, Sagat, and Balrog sprites. If all these sprites get done (about 130 frames worth) by the end of the month, that would be pretty sweet.

Cheers, and again, thank you all for your feedback.
sms_sf2_0086.png (33.82 KB)
Original SEGA genesis version, Aesprite conversion, Slogra version, Tec Toy version. Which to use?
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sms_sf2_0093.png (30.52 KB)
Current title screens, this is in game
sms_sf2_0093.png
sms_sf2_0094.png (15.13 KB)
Bumped up the star and other sprites up one pixel.
sms_sf2_0094.png
sms_sf2_0096.png (47.81 KB)
Player select mock up (SMS converted), for feedback
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sms_sf2_0097.png (24.94 KB)
Continue screen mock up (SMS converted), for feedback
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sms_sf2_0098.png (65.93 KB)
SMS converted continue screen portraits
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sms_sf2_0070.png (34.9 KB)
Tweaked Ken's colors. More like a blue/purple, which matches the source material a little better
sms_sf2_0070.png

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Street Fighter II images for SMS
Post Posted: Sat Mar 12, 2022 4:31 am
Yeah, absolutely. Send me an image or kit that you'd like me to work on with any specifics for what you'd like to see done. I assume that you don't want exact replicas, but as good as possible with the style being used and the limited number of colors available.

I'm pretty sure that I could code the plane for the character selection screen if you've got it in C. Z80, I'm still learning. It's more complicated than it lets on.
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Post Posted: Sat Mar 12, 2022 5:17 am
Last edited by xfixium on Sun Mar 13, 2022 1:48 am; edited 2 times in total
maxxoccupancy wrote
Yeah, absolutely. Send me an image or kit that you'd like me to work on with any specifics for what you'd like to see done. I assume that you don't want exact replicas, but as good as possible with the style being used and the limited number of colors available.


Very well then. I've attached an image, the contents are as followed:

Lime background sprites are the original ones from the ROM, as reference sprites.

Bottom left magenta background sprites are the pre-scaled and color converted ones that need to be refined into the final version. They are already positioned accordingly. Please do not move them from their position, and make sure you're not going over the original tile limit. (38, 43, 41)

The top right sprites are the reference sprites, the target to come close to.

Bottom right is a shadow template to place under the finished sprite, and the finalized palette. The palette is a combo of the fighter, and stage colors.

Notes: Keep in mind the sprite's distinguishing features. Try your best to keep similar facial details, even if it costs an extra pixel height or width.

maxxoccupancy wrote
I'm pretty sure that I could code the plane for the character selection screen if you've got it in C. Z80, I'm still learning. It's more complicated than it lets on.


I do not have it in C. It would be in ASM. I would prefer to reuse most of the established working bits, but if it has to be done on an entirely different screen, similar to a trainer screen, then so be it.

Hang-on has a great article on trainers on this site: https://www.smspower.org/Articles/TrainersDoItYourself

EDIT: Added example image
kit_test_example.png (10.02 KB)
Example: Original, Scale and color conversion, Final result, Reference
kit_test_example.png
kit_test.png (16.28 KB)
Sprite "kit" test
kit_test.png

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Post Posted: Sat Mar 12, 2022 6:32 am
So make the three bottom left Guile images look as close to the upper right reference images, but using the 16-color palette in the lower right hand corner, making the faces look as good as possible.

Got it. I'll see if I can turn around a rough draft this weekend just to be sure that I'm on the right track.

Here's a first effort. I'm spending some time looking at his camouflage pants thinking that I need to replace that one bright, pastel green with a couple of dull, earthy tones... then I read over the color palette and found a couple of colors that I might bring in.

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work lost
Post Posted: Sat Mar 12, 2022 6:01 pm
I've been working on this for hours and just had Pro Motion NG fail to save then close without updating. So I'm starting all over. Good news is that Guile was almost finished--everything but the head (the hard part).

"Bring out the gimp."
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Post Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2022 12:08 am
Could you take a look at this and see if it's good enough? The one on the right is the one that's gotten the most work, including some for the head. The middle and left images didn't get any face work.

It took a total of about 5-6 hours to get this far, but I think I could be more productive if accuracy or precision are less important.

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Post Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2022 1:47 am
maxxoccupancy wrote
Could you take a look at this and see if it's good enough? The one on the right is the one that's gotten the most work, including some for the head. The middle and left images didn't get any face work.


I should have been a little more clearer. You can only use the first 12 colors of the palette, as the last four colors will index the HUD colors when used on the P2 palette. I didn't think you'd replace the converted green color with gray in Guiles pants. Please stick to the green color.

Okay, this is what I observed (For the far right sprite only):

The Good:
The head looks decent

The Bad:
Apart from some color swapping and the head, there has been very little change made to the original scaled sprite.

The sprite overall looks flat. Shading needs to be applied. Mainly in the mid section and arms. Keeping the black for the shirt, then applying green for the shading of the torso, would help. Using crimson (85, 0, 0) for the arms would help for depth, for instance.

The pants pocket looks less accurate than the scaled and source sprite

maxxoccupancy wrote

It took a total of about 5-6 hours to get this far, but I think I could be more productive if accuracy or precision are less important.


Accuracy and precision is key, again, doesn't have to be perfect, but it does have to be high quality, the best that can be achieved.

Overall, it needs some work. For the most part, the scaled sprite is decently accurate, it just can't look flat for the most part, like it is currently.
kit_test_example_0002.png (5.54 KB)
P1 and P2 palettes
kit_test_example_0002.png

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Street Fighter II images for SMS
Post Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2022 4:53 am
First 12 as in the left most 12? And the last four are reserved (not to be used for the sprites?

The reference head is 20 pixels high, while the head for the final is 16, with half of that being hair. The head width is 8 pixels on the final. There are some darker browns used for the sides (cheeks). I can add a couple of highlights to the upper half of the face, if you think that this will help, but that head is already almost the same now as the reference image.

I did replace some of the cartoon-looking black with dark green and dark brown, but the BDU pants needed a lot of time and attention to make them look realistic and to follow the reference style.

To me, the new Guile on the right looks dead on accurate to the reference image when small.

I can go ahead and flip some of the lighter pixels to darker to get more of that rounded, 3D effect. Since I've got GIMP working smoothly, I can put more time into getting new sprites done.
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Post Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2022 6:32 am
lol I guess I'm not really explaining this correctly. Not sure I can at this point. I made an example, probably the best I can do. Basically, I'm trying to avoid making parts flat. Use the colors available to the best of your ability. Is my best advice.
kit_test_example_0003.png (14.13 KB)
Original, My quickly made version, your WIP version
kit_test_example_0003.png

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Post Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2022 9:02 am
Hi xfixium, you are doing such an impressive work with this game. It is always a pleasure to discover new content in this topic.

I only want to add that It would be fantastic if maxxoccupancy could fix/hack/improve the playabability of the game. This game is broken in terms of playability as everybody know.

Thank you for your time and patience working on my favourite videogame console.

Regards from Spain.
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Post Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2022 3:00 pm
Aranya wrote
Hi xfixium, you are doing such an impressive work with this game. It is always a pleasure to discover new content in this topic.

I only want to add that It would be fantastic if maxxoccupancy could fix/hack/improve the playabability of the game. This game is broken in terms of playability as everybody know.

Thank you for your time and patience working on my favourite videogame console.

Regards from Spain.


Xfixium is doing better pixel art than I am, that's true. I didn't realize that there were playability issues with this version of the game. I'm not an expert in the Z80 ISA, but I went to college to learn computer architecture and am pretty good at optimizing assembly.

IIRC, the Brazilian TecToy version of this game used background tiles exclusively, and it only ran around 10fps.
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How Brazilian SF2 works
Post Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2022 4:01 pm
Just for reference, for anyone who hasn't seen how Tectoy's version of SF2 is able to draw such large characters onto the screen without flicker.


They had to make a lot of compromises, but redrawing certain tiles at runtime was a pretty impressive feat back then.
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Post Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2022 6:15 pm
maxxoccupancy, if you play the game you will find out that there are some issues with the speed(characters move to fast) and the hit detection.

This game is not very playable.

Combining the graphic hack with the engine hack would produce the ultimate fighting game for the sms.
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Post Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2022 7:13 pm
maxxoccupancy wrote
Just for reference, for anyone who hasn't seen how Tectoy's version of SF2 is able to draw such large characters onto the screen without flicker.

They had to make a lot of compromises, but redrawing certain tiles at runtime was a pretty impressive feat back then.


Whoa, what is Jang Pung 3? That looked VERY impressive, for a fighter. I'm going to have to investigate that one.

IMO it's not really worth trying to hack SFII's engine. It's probably not ever going to be very accurate with the collision detection. As everything is a tile, and snaps to a grid, from what I understand. The BG real time tile blending technique used is very processor intensive, from what I understand. A Jang Pung 3 sprite based engine would probably be a better experience. Even with the amount of flicker. Which doesn't seem horrible tbh. Very interesting.
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Post Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2022 8:29 pm
Dunno about 3, but I made a playthrough of Jang Pung 2 some time ago: http://youtube.com/watch?v=q0Ualg3uJ_A

Don't hold your breath, though. The game is barely playable. Recording that video was a pain.
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Post Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2022 9:20 pm
A "burnt in" tile engine could save some of the CPU time by precomputing the tiles and using a huge ROM. Alternatively, Phantasy Star does it (albeit without moving "sprites" by using sprites only for the edges of the enemies and other items. Both ways limit you to 8px movements though. Personally I think it's not worth it.
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Post Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2022 10:57 pm
Maxim wrote
A "burnt in" tile engine could save some of the CPU time by precomputing the tiles and using a huge ROM. Alternatively, Phantasy Star does it (albeit without moving "sprites" by using sprites only for the edges of the enemies and other items. Both ways limit you to 8px movements though. Personally I think it's not worth it.


That's been considered elsewhere. Obviously, every possible character tile merged with every possible background tile would be utterly massive--probably somewhere well beyond 4MB (32 megabit) limit.

There is another way, though: Run the game in 256x224 mode, using the SNES sprite sheet pixel-for-pixel. Afterall, the SNES runs most games at that resolution. This will only work on SMS2 and emulators, but that's most of the players out there, to be honest. That would also shrink the screen area of the one-color or one-pattern band across the screen behind the two fighters.

The characters would be drawn as background tiles except that hands, head, feet, and opponent-facing sprites are drawn individually as sprites in order to take advantage of the VDP's built-in collision detection. That would save us from having to write code that runs every frame and slows down the frame rate. Since the sprite drawing hardware only draws at most 4 sprites per line under this approach (6 for the boots), we get away without any flicker and can simply stream character tiles onto the VRAM at the maximum rate without extra Z80A cycles being used up. We've only got 60,000 cycles per frame anyway, and the music, sound effects, control inputs, redrawing tile locations, etc, eat those right up.

Downside you say? It will look like Space Harrier 3D you say? There's a solution to that: The background would simply have a single pattern (or even one color or a bunch of 4x8 pixel bricks) per stage from the knees to the shoulders of our characters. Not only that, but when they jump into the air, they bring their one-color or one-pattern tiles with them, and everyone will see what we did there. With each character eating up at least 60 tiles, we'd have a bit over 300 tiles left for backgrounds--and about 50-60% of the background has nothing in the Tectoy version.

The upside to all of this is that we'd no longer face background tile contention, a problem that forced the Tectoy version to create anemic backgrounds and drop the frame rate to 10fps just to redraw character tiles into background tiles at run time.

Another upside is that drawing all of the feet and heads as sprites allow us to limit the amount of background lost to make this effect work. A massive 400x64 pixel swath of bricks or patterns isn't going to look great right behind our characters, but nothing will look arcade perfect with the SMS's limited bandwidth and 448 tile VRAM.
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Post Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2022 11:25 pm
This would also increase the number of free cycles to produce HiFi sound on the SMS (since those samples have to be pumped over to the VDP to be played out) as well as using the line counter to replicate that smooth parallax scrolling effect that we see in the arcade and SNES versions. This HiFi audio requires some CPU cycles and is only 21KHz 8-bit samples, but it sounds better than the FM chip and as good as some arcade hardware of the day:


What's more, this approach leaves two more vertical rows of sprites that can be drawn inside this one-pattern background box, letting us get some detail into it without flickering. We're limited to 8 8x8 sprites in a line, afterall.

Finally, since both the characters and brick/fence/pavement are drawn as background tiles, we give the character tiles draw priority over sprites, while the brick/fence/pavement tiles are given lower priority. That way, if we are drawing the plane's landing gear, crowd, etc, as vertical sprites, the two fighters will automatically be drawn over them as they move.

We may even be able to reserve a few colors for that large, wide background box for color cycling to get some extra detail into that box--like the F-16 grays from the Guile stage, but this would have to be figured out after we have one or two playable stages testing out the smooth motion of the game at 60fps.

IOW, make it work, then make it look better.
street fighter 2 background large.jpeg (469.35 KB)
entire wall and structure behind them replaced with gray bricks
street fighter 2 background large.jpeg

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Post Posted: Mon Mar 14, 2022 1:17 am
That sounds like a lot of extra work when the progress already made looks outstanding. At this point it would be more than acceptable just to potentially squeeze a little more performance out of the game if possible but no need to completely change it. Haha. Might as well start from scratch at that rate. lol I also must be honest and say that I'm not happy about the idea of not being able to play it on my original SMS 1. Haha. I've never seen an SMS 2 anywhere where I live.
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Post Posted: Mon Mar 14, 2022 1:41 am
Tom wrote
Dunno about 3, but I made a playthrough of Jang Pung 2 some time ago: http://youtube.com/watch?v=q0Ualg3uJ_A

Don't hold your breath, though. The game is barely playable. Recording that video was a pain.


lol I quite enjoyed that. I love how they named Red Ryu "Can" XD

Personally, I'm not concerned with changing anything with the fighting engine. I will make some minor adjustments here and there. This is primarily a graphics update. As usual, I will share as much as I can. Maybe the materials will be helpful to someone that is looking to take it even further.
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Post Posted: Mon Mar 14, 2022 2:30 am
NewHorizon wrote
That sounds like a lot of extra work when the progress already made looks outstanding. At this point it would be more than acceptable just to potentially squeeze a little more performance out of the game if possible but no need to completely change it. Haha. Might as well start from scratch at that rate. lol I also must be honest and say that I'm not happy about the idea of not being able to play it on my original SMS 1. Haha. I've never seen an SMS 2 anywhere where I live.


That's a good point. I've always thought, though, that 256x224 would make it easier to port Megadrive, SNES, and PlayStation games, since that (other than 320 wide for Megadrive) was pretty much the number of lines for everything back in the day.

As far as just improving the underlying code a bit to get a better frame rate, the Tectoy version was only playing at just under 11fps. It's up to the individual player whether that's a high enough frame rate for them. I sure wouldn't mind working on the Z80 code to push that up a bit. I just haven't seen the code yet.

Although it's not pipelined, programmers have seen 2-4 times speedup from the Z80 in removing unnecessary instructions and replacing long sequences with shorter ones. That really is my forte.
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