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Posted: Sat Dec 31, 2022 3:42 am |
The stage background tiles can access all 16 colors. The fighters can technically access all 16 as well. But the last four are reserved for the UI, on the sprite palette. Which is yellow, orange, red, and black. You just have to be careful what you index on the P1 palette, because that affects the P2 palette. I'm sure there are some other rules I'm forgetting. As I haven't had to change palette indexes in some time. Something about the first color has to be black on both palettes, as well, because of how the game merges tiles. So typically there are 2 black colors on each palette. I made some changes, I reworked the floor tiles, and replaced the green. The floor tiles can't be higher than 18 tiles. This is where all the tile savings comes from. I'll remove the moon from WW at a later time. |
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Posted: Sat Dec 31, 2022 7:52 am |
Yes, i like the floor and the house.
In the sky i would replace brown aa5500 by red aa0000, and remove the yellow from the gradient completely, or make it very thin. |
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Posted: Sat Dec 31, 2022 8:11 am |
In your turbo version i find the blue in the diagonal a bit too saturated and/or bright.
In the snes turbo version the diagonals are just the same green as the other roofs. Why did you make it blue? Having that said i find the arcade/snes colors of SF2 Turbo awful, so i would not mind if you deviate from that in the turbo version :). |
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Posted: Sat Dec 31, 2022 10:34 am |
Alrighty, I'll give those changes a try.
In the beginning I based the stage off the SNES New Challenger stuff. In fact, the sprite sheets I was using were also from that game. Ryu's stage was the very first thing I hacked in. I eventually used the more appropriate sheets later. I was a young doey eyed hacker back in those days XD I never changed Ryu's stage colors. Mainly having everything greenish was kinda blah. As you can see from that conversion I did for the SFII demo I recently slapped together. I did try, at least, to make it more accurate when I redid the stage again, it just looked kinda meh, and I went back to the blue. |
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Posted: Sat Dec 31, 2022 11:11 am |
Okay, made those changes, muted the blues to the original colors. See how that shakes.
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Posted: Sat Dec 31, 2022 12:14 pm |
Looks amazing! It's so great seeing this quality on the SMS. It really should have blown the NES out of the water back in the day....if it hadn't been for Ni****do playing dirty back in the day. |
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Posted: Sat Dec 31, 2022 12:21 pm |
In some places it did. I know this thread has moved on since I last checked it, but it is a shame about the Hull on Kens' boat. It's much better than it was overall though. |
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Posted: Sat Dec 31, 2022 3:56 pm |
It's just exceptionally beautiful :) |
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Posted: Sat Dec 31, 2022 10:04 pm |
Seeing where things started, and where they are now. I'd like to give a big thank you, to all that helped make the quality of this project the best that it could be. Something I couldn't have done on my own. Honestly getting in my feels about it. lol
Happy New Years, for you who celebrate it. |
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Posted: Sun Jan 01, 2023 12:05 pm |
Congrats on all your work! Happy New Year! | |
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Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2023 2:44 am |
Thanks, and thanks for helping as well. I couldn't, for the life of me, get Sagat's stage down to 192 tiles without it being completely empty, or the statue losing a lot of detail, or just looking janky. I know there was an example to use the Gameboy approach, but having most of the tiles being dark isn't a good look, and it's not consistent with the other stages. I wound up just using the original Street Fighter stage. It's a bit more doable. I did use the entirety of the 192 tiles though. I placed it within the original ROM size, and changed the pointers to it. Posting images for feedback. |
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Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2023 9:03 am Last edited by segarule on Tue Jan 03, 2023 11:09 am; edited 1 time in total |
Well, first of all i wish you and all members here happy new year! This actual scenario is amazing but by first time i will disagree with you. Because each stage symbolize the country in SF 2. I grown seeing all stages of SF2 in arcade. I think that Ayutthaya Ruins is more remarkable than Vega/Bison stage like a Thailand country. I understand your difficult but i would dont replace it. Of course, is imho, so the hack is yours. Congratulations for hard work. |
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Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2023 9:34 am Last edited by Emrabt on Tue Jan 03, 2023 9:41 am; edited 1 time in total |
It was always going to be an impossible task, a vertical statue that takes up most of the screen with very few repeated tiles. And I fully agree my idea of it being in shadow isn't great. I'm wondering if you can make hybrid of the two stages, so you have enough of the Street fighter 1 stage to fill the screen but keep the main element of SFII, could you reduce the laying Buddha statue in size and detail enough to fit across the top of the stairs in place of those temples? You may even be able to cut it in half vertically as the lower half is hidden by the perspective. |
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Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2023 9:37 am |
Happy New year 2023 all forum members!!!
In my opinion it will help if we can see the final design of Sagat´s stage and see the final version of the statue to appreciate both stages. |
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Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2023 9:44 am |
Unless someone comes up with something better, what can I do? Offer the same empty background as the Tectoy original? The original work in progress I did is attached, and it's 239 tiles, it needs to be 192 tiles. It's missing a lot of details that I would consider required for it to be acceptable quality. |
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Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2023 9:54 am |
Hmm, I could possibly try this. Not sure it'll be acceptable either way, or if it does an injustice to the actual landmark it represents. |
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Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2023 10:33 am |
It being at the top of stairs keeps it in the center, the first thing seen when entering the stage and screen filling, while not needing to be as big. While it's not accurate to the actual Wat Lokaya Sutha, it would be a fair adaptation of Sagat's stage given the limitations. There is only a couple of choices really isn't there; 1.Keep it detailed but make it a lot smaller and build new surroundings to fill the screen. 2. Leaving it out / having an empty stage 3. Designing a new stage, maybe one around a nice symmetrical sitting Buddha 4. Removing all detail until it's basically a very simple implied outline. |
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Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2023 12:16 pm |
1. I have actually tried shrinking down to a very small size. You wouldn't believe how many tiles savings this does not bring, even reducing some of the details, and optimizing. Logically, smaller means less tiles, right? Unfortunately, it didn't work so well, overall. 2. This makes me a sad panda. Last resort. 3. This could be an option, but I might as well just use the converted Street Fighter one I already have, since it replaces the original media altogether. Even if what you suggest is based on similar content the original has, it's still a new design. As Segarule has already pointed out, people will have issues with it not being close to the original. Which I suspected going into to this. 4. Not sure if that'd really work, especially with a World Warrior version. Which is typically lighter. I have to keep in mind both versions. I could stand to be corrected. I know this sounds ultimately dismissive, but it gives me something to dwell on, at least. Thanks for the suggestions. |
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Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2023 12:27 pm |
It doesn't sound dismissive, it sounds like you've spend a lot of hours on it and are feeling like you are going nowhere. It's fine to feel like that, you've remained polite on the thread even though you are disappointed. Maybe time for a break from this project, see what others viewing the thread can come up with in the meantime and return with fresh eyes? |
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Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2023 12:34 pm |
Well, 47 tiles is good amount of tiles to eliminate. How many tiles you can gain if you cut the concrete floor? See the picture atached. Who knows a budha ear smaller. I think that others members like slogra can give you better solutions. |
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Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2023 2:24 pm |
This, very much so. I had reworked it about 4 times previously. And 3 more times in the past two months. I'll just move on, finishing up Guile for the time being. There are very few things remaining, and I want to get it past the finish line.
The ground and concrete tiles are a total of 20 tiles total. That's the least of my concerns, tbh. I could possibly shave off 2 more or so tiles without sacrificing perspective, if I really had to. The head and robe is probably the most detailed. Even if I were to get the current tiles down to 192, it would still be pretty empty imo. Without the design on the left arm, it's even more glaring. For now, everything is at least in place to easily insert whatever media that's chosen, in the future. I'm just kinda sick of looking at this thing XD |
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Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2023 3:51 pm |
I can relate. Personally I think using Sagat's stage from SF1 is a very elegant solution and better than both an inadequate version of the SF2 one or a completely new one would be. I also think that your SMS version of that stage looks excellent. Sometimes you just have to let things go. |
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Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2023 6:00 pm |
Ooof, yeah. That's a tough one to replicate on the old SMS. I could definitely see the gameboy approach working well though if it was changed to a sunset level, casting a nice shadow along the horizon. I've never done anything like this but I would be inspired to try mocking it up myself. Are there specific art tools I could use for such a mock up? | |
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Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2023 6:05 pm Last edited by Emrabt on Tue Jan 03, 2023 9:45 pm; edited 3 times in total |
Edit: I had a little play around with your stage and deconstructed it back to the tile-set, plus took a look at the statue myself, I'm not great with these things but the mock up below is using 181 tiles by my count (Hand counted so give or take 106 for the statue, 75 for the rest), it isn't using your Palette as I didn't know what it was, so expect it to be way over 16 colors, the arm is dodgy but it gets the idea across.
when piecing your floor back together I couldn't get the hang of the perspective (It get the point across in the proof of concept as it is), but I love how it worked, a few tiles at the end and it totally changes the angle. Whatever you do will be better than what was there, an empty field. |
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Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2023 6:43 pm |
Well, what i can say? I will share a feeling from a long time ago. In back days when me and my friends bought a magazine when SF2 was announced for SNES and every time when we are in arcade amusement we looked Stage Sagat with the statue and we think: "Can SNES do it?". Well after some years came the Genesis annoucement and 1 time more We question: "Can Genesis do it? ". So i completely understand that SMS is a mission very very complicated. I understood you. Even i dont interested in play SF2 in SMS again because of gameplay. |
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Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2023 10:17 pm |
It's looking more and more that I will just go with what I have.
Unfortunately the total count wound up being 227 tiles. The tiles can't be flipped vertically, only horizontally. Not sure if that was part of your calculation. I'll play with it a bit more.
No I get it, I would love to have the original art be closely represented in the SMS. It will be some variant, not sure what yet. |
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Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2023 10:31 pm |
No vertical flipping, I think it's probably where i've copy and pasted bits a together, probably altered the pixels, and of course I hacked in the cloud line after with the paintbrush, it was jut a quick mock up. Here is the tile-set it's made from (sorry it's so scruffy, I think the green around the statue is what is causing your software to see more tiles, I couldn't be bothered to manually remove it for a mock up so the eraser has probably left faint traces) |
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Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2023 2:02 am |
I ran your version through rgb quant. http://www.haroldo-ok.com/RgbQuant-SMS.js/RgbQuant-SMS.js/demo/index.html
It looks to me that you are nearly there. The 192 tiles version does not much worse than the 239 one. If you look at the result of rgb quant and fix the most obvious glitches, then it might work out. I also gave it a shot and started from scratch with the full size snes version. I only used the statue though. Of course a lot of details had to go but i tried to keep the most important ones, and i'm trying to use basic shape tiles. Instead of 45 degree angled shaped tiles, i used some rounded ones, which are very visible in the arm. Not sure if this helps, but perhaps it gives you some ideas. |
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Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2023 2:25 am |
Well, with that it's down to a whopping 171 tiles, which is pretty amazing. I may be able to work on the details to make it a lil nicer. I'm not exactly down with the layout tbh. But maybe I can use it as a base to get closer to the original? I'll give it a go.
I never heard of that software, I'll play around with it, thank you. It looks promising. I still want to capture the original, if possible. There at least seems to be some light at the end of the tunnel. |
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Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2023 5:50 am |
171 sounds more like it + cloudline and human error. I don't like it, it's a weird Mish mash of styles that don't gel, but it does show you that you can a preserve a lot of detail. The problem is the statue looks good but is tiny and cut in half, the set up of the stairs hides it. Making it more in line with SF2 could mean having it on a rectangular pedestal center stage with ruined pillars either side, going towards it. (Think Adon's sf1 stage mixed with Sagat's background and statue.) I'm fine with whatever you do, you've done amazing work. Unfortunately I don't have time today to mess around with the full stage otherwise I'd properly have a crack for you. |
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Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2023 7:58 am |
This is good if you are starting, it's free, lets you reduce colors to 16 and overlays the sheet up with an 8x8 grid. Well worth fiddling around with. https://graphicsgale.com/us/ |
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Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2023 12:22 pm |
Here are the latest versions of the Guile frames. I post them here, which is easier than uploading them somewhere else and then link to it in a PM.
The left arms/fist of most walk frames still needs tweaking, but otherwise they are close to finished. |
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Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2023 12:59 pm |
I'm with Kagesan in that the Sagat SF1 stage looks great and would be a good substitute. It's commendable trying every method to get the statue to work, that should be plan A, but you do have a good fall-back there if you still end up unhappy with it.
Is the way the original Tectoy game handles tiles a pain here, would you have a bigger background budget in a hypothetical homebrew of your own? |
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Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2023 4:45 pm |
190 tiles.
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Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2023 7:41 pm |
It's not too much of a pain, normally, but Guile, Ken, and Sagat stages have been pretty tough. I expanded Ken and Sagat's to 192, which is the maximum this game will handle. I think in the homebrew demo I have, I'm using 320 tiles for the hud and background tile. Not sure that'd work in the end, but it's a bit more than 192.
Very awesome, as usual!
Quite impressive, and not much detail lost. Thanks for your time putting this together! I will try to put everyone in the games ending credits. |
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Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2023 8:53 pm |
That'd be a nice bump wouldn't it, you'd have vertical flipping too right. |
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Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2023 10:15 pm |
Yes, that would be available. Also, with that, Mondo has finished Sagat's frames! Very grateful for the contribution! That's a major step forward. This is looking like a release is very soon. I plan on releasing both the champion edition, and world warrior edition at the same time. I will also update the todo list on the first page. |
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Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2023 10:22 pm |
Thank you but there's really no need to credit me, I'm just giving you a few solutions to help you get past the roadblocks. You could put in 4 tile ruins, which will not only be kind of accurate to the actual stage it'll take up space, kind of like this: EDIT: The scratch pad now uses all 191 tiles with everything included. |
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Posted: Fri Jan 06, 2023 12:18 am |
Just a heads up, the remaining frames are the last two punching frames, the crouching punch frames, the jump punch frames, and kicking frames. That's outside the ones that you said you need to tweek a lil. That's 8 frames total left. I'm still working right to left from the sheet we're using. I brought Mondo's Sagat sprites into the game. I may add black outlining, not sure yet. I'll be more sure when Sagat's stage is complete. His alt colors are a little light, and kinda blend in a bit with his stage. Also, one last kick in the teeth. Sagat's punch is also his jump punch. Which means, when I added the shadow for his punch, it shows up on the jump punch. This is also the case for the crouching kick / jump kick. So there's that. Gotta love it. I'm going to try and put separate graphics where the old stage graphics were, and point to those. Not sure how well that's going to go, however. |
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Posted: Fri Jan 06, 2023 1:34 am |
Yeah I noticed that whilst working on them. I didn't think about the shadow situation though, that's a shame. You can only do what you can though mate, you're still massively improving the original! |
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Posted: Fri Jan 06, 2023 11:31 pm |
Would possible activate original shadow when fighter is jumping??? | |
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Posted: Sat Jan 07, 2023 4:56 am |
Probably, however I'm leaving it for a future version of this hack. |
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Posted: Sat Jan 07, 2023 1:14 pm |
I knew there was probably a reason they had separate shadows in the first place, reusing frames is the answer I guess. This whole thread has been so educational, right from the first or second page when I mentioned using the sprite palette on the background (For fireballs maybe?), of course it wouldn't work because it would screw the color up of the fighter when overlapping, then how the alternative color palette worked in 1 play mode, and so on. While I'm sure it's frustrating for you and at this point you want to get something released, for me it's been absolutely fascinating to follow along even when things haven't worked out. |
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Posted: Sat Jan 07, 2023 11:26 pm |
I find it sorta infuriating. As no other fighter does this in the game XD. It's not even accurate graphics for an air punch. At least the air kick is somewhat accurate. Sagat and Guile have just been the worst. Guile sometimes doesn't show the correct animation when getting hit in the air. So there's a brief moment when he has the shadow displayed midair. I don't care much about that one though. I'm just focusing on getting Guile's frames done, first. I'll deal with this other garbage afterwards. |
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Posted: Sun Jan 08, 2023 7:07 pm |
I suggest a method here for improving the
frame rate (could also apply to other 1 vs 1 fighiting games). In SF2 it is using one character made from entirely from sprite and the other entirely background tiles (ie a software sprite (causes chopiness and low frame rate) . For the one that is made from entirely background tiles it needs to draw the software sprite tiles over some background tile image ( eg grass). A better way to do it would be to use a combination of background tiles and and hardware sprites, this means each player is part software sprite and part hardware sprite, for each player where this combination dynamically changes depending on where a hardware sprite or software sprite tile of some player is drawn over some background tiles (e.g. grass)-this may involve computing part player software sprites on the fly to minimize the number of writes to the vdp. |
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Posted: Sun Jan 08, 2023 10:36 pm |
Sound interesting. Although in the end, might not be worth it. Honestly, this game is pretty responsive for what it is, but it has two major drawbacks, imo. 1. Pulling off moves is near impossible. 2. Tiled movement makes everything choppy. Even with the hybrid approach you've described, number 2 will still be an issue, and because of that, will be perceived as laggy or low framerate. Which honestly, I think this game does very well with the software sprites. It can access a full palette (Unlike Golden Axe, which uses a similar approach), and the number of tiles it creates on the fly is a decent amount. The palette management is very well thought out as well (For the most part). I guess that's why I've brought up the whole "offset merging" thing. It'd have to be tested, but software sprite merging that could be pixel perfect across tiles. It very well may be too process intensive though. This game might be a good start for that process, however. With that, I have finished what was left outside of what Slogra has done thus far with Guile. So about 2 frames left, and any adjustments Slogra wants to do. I have found a place in the ROM to put the extended credits, and implemented it. I have put up a screen cap of that. Please check that I spelled everything correctly. If I missed anyone, please let me know as well. There are a lot of people that commented in this thread, and were helpful, I just picked out everyone that has contributed a resource to this. Also, Calindro, for Emulicious. And my GF. As I'm sure she has wanted to punch me square in the nuts for saying, "Ima hop on and do some frames" way too much. Thanks for taking some time to view this mess |
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Posted: Sun Jan 08, 2023 11:15 pm |
SF2 does not restrict itself to using software sprites only ;
the only way SF2 on SMS can have large sprites without ficker (somewhat like the 16bit versions both player's sprites) is for one player to be made up of background tiles entirely and the other player to be made of hardware sprites entirely (which is what the tectoy SMS SF2 does it does the above). With the hybrid method/algorithm I described (actually the idea is used in another commercial 1 vs 1 8 bit fighting game but I don't recall which game) I think it is a way to improve the chopiness and the framerate of the game but the actual concrete fine low level details of the hybrid algorithm are not that obvious unless it is actually coded in z80 ASM-I merely described it in a high level way on how it is used in another commercial 8 bit 1 vs 1 fighting game (don't recall which one). My guess is why this idea is not used in the original SMS SF2 us because it would take a lot effort to think through (maybe it probably would have needed an at least an extra z80 programmer to do and therefore more cost to make the game) and maybe tectoy thought the game could still sell without using this hybrid algorithm. "2. Tiled movement makes everything choppy. " You would need to compute shifted version of the tile set to avoid this issue inside the hybrid method. My opinion is While graphically the tectoy SMS SF2 is the best impressive looking 8-bit version of the game to my knowledge to me it definetely looks more choppy and less faithful in how the characters are supposed to move exactly compared to the 16 bit console version (SNES or megadrive or arcade). |
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Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2023 12:09 am |
I'd say give it a shot, and see what shakes. My initial thoughts is that there could be potentially more tiles to make software sprites out of, and would take more cycles in the long run, but I may be pleasantly surprised by the output. I think maybe trying the shifted merging first, and see how much of that can be feasible. As the method you described sounds pretty complicated. It'd be pretty exciting if the frame rate was decent enough with the shifting idea, but I'm not holding my breath XD. As I said before, I think figuring out how SMS SFII does the tile merging first, and figuring out the limitations, would be a good start. |
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Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2023 2:15 am |
I've tested this approach on PC-Engine and Megadrive (larger sections of a meta-sprite are actually BG tiles, and the rest are real sprites). You'd think they wouldn't need it, but try having two Samurai Shodown "Earthquake" characters at full Neo Geo size/res on either system.. it's too much for the sprite limit. |
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Posted: Fri Jan 13, 2023 7:49 pm |
Building out of a minimal tile set in a "jigsaw like"
way a typical method used to draw background in sega master system games. An interesting related problem for increasing framerate in sf2 like games is what is the minimum number of tiles required for each character where each character is made from a square of 9 tiles minimum and there need to a animation frame for 1)short punch 2) medium punch 3) strong punch, 4s) Short kick 5) medium kick 6) strong kick 7) kick in air, 9) punch in air, 10) move backwards in air or 11) move forwards in air and two special moves. 12) E.g. Fireball 13) E.g. Spinning kick Need to double above for player facing left or right. Any sf2 like game (doesnt mean it is sf2) has the above 13 elements (just look at MUGEN for example or a retro non-sf2 game. Even if we did it the wrong way (not using the "jigsaw" minimal tile set approach) it would take 9x13x2 (doubled or mirrored for facing left or right)= 234 tiles for each player or 468 tiles all together this is over the 448 tiles allowable by SMS-and we still need more tiles for background AND extra frames of interpolating animation required for smoothness of kicks or punches. A bit of though (e.g. some sprite tiles of the 9 don't change between 1 to 13) shows it is plausible that the 13 minimal requirements can be done for 210 tiles per player, leaving 28 tiles for background (enough to draw interesting backgrounds). The advantage of this method is you can load the tiles and the background in for each player,before each bout, with a minimal number of VRAM writes (since the graphics are already loaded into the VRAM you just need to set the sprite to point to that graphics). This would result in a 2d 1 vs 1 fighting game where each player is made of 9 sprites (which can still look good if drawn properly in it own art style), fast smooth animation and smooth fast sprite movement, and there will probably be no sprite flicker. For me the graphics being made of 9 sprites tiles is acceptable (it would look something GB 1 vs 1 fighting games) as long as the game play is good. The problem here is an artistic (jigsaw type) one-can a good set of 200 tiles be created for each player? Once that is done it makes the coding is straightforward compared to the different approach I described above. |
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