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Being a fan of the Sega Genesis, and while probably common knowledge to most fans, I've heard for awhile it could do more than 64 colors. So I decided to play a few games, see how many colors were being displayed. I put up the results, if anybody was interested:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9rjwECf2wQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9rjwECf2wQ&fmt=22 (720p)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9rjwECf2wQ&fmt=37 (1080p)
Do Ranger-X.I heard people say it broke the Genesis color barrier.I am not sure how much truth it holds, but that game is a visual feast.
How did you record those? You shoud be using an emulator set to a window with 1x scaling, or direct integers thereof without stretching. (fusion stretches and filters 256 to 640 when set to "double" mode, but leaves it as 256 in "normal" mode, with 320 wide simply doubled without filtering -filtering/antialiasing from stretching adds false colors) Any (lossy) compression would also skew color counts.
For the polygon portions of VR, it should all be 15 colors, the overlay and BG could use more, but not the polygon portions.
The 64 color limit is more than that though, it's 4 16-color palettes, or practically speaking 4x 15-color palettes plus a solid far BG color, so 61 or fewer per frame without added effects. (usually less than that due to redundant colors in different palettes)
One method for increasing color on-screen is re-loading palettes mid screen (changing palettes between scan lines), this has the side effect of adding graphical garbage on the line where the palette was changed. (hidden with flickering sprites in Sonic -for water level) This still limits color per scanline to 61 or fewer colors.
Shadow/Highlight actually expands the on-screen (per tile and per line) colors as well as increasing the number of colors (shades) available, but it requires tiles to be sacrificed for that purpose. (either sprites combined with BG tiles, or combining GB layers -not sure if you can combine 2 sprites for that purpose)
Using shadow can effectively double the number of colors/shades used on-screen with 2 brightness levels for each palette entry (so 122 colors/shades, I think), highlight triples it to 183 I think, but is more limited than shadow.
Yeah, I've seen some screenshots of Ranger-X, game looks amazing. I would of liked to put it in this video, but ran into youtube time limit. Maybe if i make another....
I recorded these in fusion, window set to 640x480, no render plugins used, 'normal' mode. I compared to "320x240", just to make sure nothing was off, and colors were same on tests that I did.
Settings were kept the same throughout all the games. I also used RGB (obviously) lossless compression.
Try Shining Force II if you get the chance.
Actually I'd be interested to see an analysis of Sonic 3d Blast's intro cutscene. It always seemed to me as if it could have easily used more colors but maybe I'm wrong!
"normal" mode is 320x240 fixed, square pixels. Double mode (default) if 640x480 which simply doubles games running in 320 wide mode h40, but stretches 256 wide h32 games to 640 wide. If there's any interpolation or antialiasing applied, that would skew the colors, if it's straight, unfiltered scaling, color wouldn't be effected though.Quote:
Originally Posted by Balbaroy
Virtua racing would definitely be one of the games in that resolution, not sure about the others though.
It would be really interesting to compare other consoles like this too. (particularly SNES and PC Engine) Digitized stills on the SNES would often be 256 paletized colors, of course, and I know a couple super FX games run in 256 color modes (and mode 7 uses 256 colors for that tile), but almost all other games used 16 color palettes (sometimes 4-color palettes too) -Sprites are always 16-colors, of course. (there are still 256 color entries, but split among 16 palettes which are split into 8 dedicated to sprites and 8 for BG, so without tricks it wouldn't exceed 241 colors -likely a good bit less, and same for 481 colors on the PCE -but even more likely to be less due to the limited master palette of 512 colors)
Probably 61 colors or less, possibly 16 colors. (using a single palette would save a little on color look-up tables and they needed any savings as they could get trying to put that on a cartridge -using compression would obviously would have helped; not sure if they did that though)Quote:
Originally Posted by Sparksterz
Games like Virtua Racing and Eternal Champions aren't exactly known for their colorful graphics...
None of the games you choose look like they'd display more than let's say 20 colors at once to me. - Funny to see that confirmed in the fist level of Toy Story when the color count actually does seem to get stuck at 25.
Personally I'd be interested in games like Super Fantasy Zone, Monster World IV, Thunder Force IV, Eliminate Down, Quackshot, and Sonic, but also Revenge of Shinobi, Castle of Illusion, or even Alex Kidd.
Very interesting!
I also think that the Sonic 3D Blast intro would have a lot of colors.
Which software do you use to make the video (Not to show the colours, but really to make the video)?
It would have been interesting to see the level intro screens for Toy Story as AFAIK they use a lot more than 64 colours.
The short answer is: Yes, sometimes, and it has limitations (doesn't break the original limitations).
Are you making a list of games that show more than 64 (61) colors? And if so, are you making a note at which point in said games, where this happens? Also, what method are using to count the colors? And lastly, why is this so important to a lot of Genesis fans?
We've all heard about those games that broke the so called 64 color barrier (technically 61)Quote:
Originally Posted by tomaitheous
Well, I've seen some people say that Eternal Champions broke the 64 color "limit", when it was actually just dithering everything by an extreme amount. Some of the backgrounds actually partly look like a Sega CD video at times (which can be good or bad i suppose..).Quote:
Originally Posted by Christuserloeser
As for Virtua Racing, I thought it'd be interesting to include that. I remember playing it when it first came out, and it being extremely colorfull and smooth. Was actually curious myself to see what it used. The framerate isn't as high as I remember it being however :) .
I wrote a program to get the color count, and palette. And then I put it all together in After Effects.Quote:
Originally Posted by GameX
Those intro/cutscenes are actually in the video. It's at the end, after the main Toy Story part.Quote:
Originally Posted by Silanda
I'm not actually making/going through a whole list of all genesis games, but as the Da_Shocker said, people have talked about those games breaking the "limit" so I was curious to see what they actually used.Quote:
Originally Posted by tomaitheous
The point at which it happens in the video is noted in the thumbnail, and also at the end of the video.
Well, I love the presentation of the videos. Nice work :D What other games do you plan on doing, and what other systems?Quote:
Originally Posted by Balbaroy
Also, it'd be nice to have a horizontal scale showing the frequency of colors per frame (like a waveform). I dunno, just a suggestion.
I think that it looks pretty colorful in that it uses pretty bright colors rich in contrast (red, white, green, etc.). Quite the opposite to games like Eternal Champions, Vectorman, or Toy Story actually.Quote:
Originally Posted by Balbaroy
Not sure about the game's frame rate but you also gotta consider that 3D games of the era used to run at twentysomething fps, even on high end PCs. Quite a contrast to Sonic & co.
Wow, I was not aware the PCE could reach that high.Quote:
Originally Posted by kool kitty89
Thanks! Theres been some good suggestions on other games to do, such as ranger-x, sonic, 3d blast... Probably some of those. And as for systems, I was thinking maybe some cross-platform snes/genesis games. kool kitty89 mentioned the PCE/TG16, and I believe there were a couple of games that were released on all three platforms. So that'd be something interesting to look at.Quote:
Originally Posted by tomaitheous
Can you give us your program?
I'm interested in trying it!
Thanks
Yep, it's got 32 16-color subpalettes split to 16 for sprite and 16 for BG, so double the palette entries as the SNES has, but again limited to 9-bit RGB, like the MD. (having that many entries on the SNES could have been much more useful by comparison, though you can indeed see cases where PCE games have more shading than the SNES versions -but the limited palette also shows more restricted colors than on the SNES)Quote:
Originally Posted by Balbaroy
I'm still not sure about Fusion's resolution modes though, I was comparing and noticed some odd issues when running windowed with some jaggies appearing like it was being scaled (maybe the task bar screws things up). No such problems with Gens, though it clips the screen to 224 lines. (also doesn't stretch in double mode unless that option is selected) Sound is certainly more accurate in Fusion, but that's not an issue here.
I think Pugsy is one of the games that goes beyond the standard 64/61 colors too, and any games using palette swapping of course. (sonic 2 or 3 with water level effects in some stages -like chemical plant or hydrocity)
Games with bright, high-contrast colors wouldn't be indicative of high color-counts necessarily. Those with tons of subtle shading (without dithering) would be though.Quote:
Originally Posted by Christuserloeser
I'll bet the high color count for the crane game maze 3D section is mainly due to the status bar (probably using shadow if not Shadow+HL), the on-screen portion is likely 16 colors (maybe more when you pick up sprites or have an additional BG). Most of the slides/transitions are likely using shadow+HL. (I'll bet the same for Earthworm Jim and EWJ2 -though the limited color is still apparent compared to the SNES version -which uses full paletized 256 color graphics for those slides -based on BSNES, at least) -Same for some intro logos and such in several games and a couple superfx games like Stunt Racer, Doom, and Dirt Trax (all mode 3), which should technically be much more colorful than Virtua racing. (for the polygon portions, at least, same compared to Star Fox or Vortex which render polygons on a 15 color layer -possibly with dynamic palette selection/dithering with a 16 tilemap color BG and sprite ovrlays for status -virtua racing should be limited to 15 colors for polygons too) Those SuperFX games using 256 colors would have similar color limits to most 32x games (256 entries to 15-bit RGB), plus sprites and a 16 color BG tilemap (and genesis layer for the 32x), though the SNES had DMA and VRAM space limitations that restrict framerate and screen size (rendering would also be limited by Superfx speed, of course), but actual color limits would be nearly identical. (Virtua Racing Deluxe might use 15-bit direct color mode, but it's almost certainly the only one, if that)
I'll bet 3D blast is 16 colors per frame, maybe the same 16 color palette for the whole video, but almost definitely 16 colors per frame (or less). It uses a ton of dithering and some flicker (including flickering dithering) to fake more colors. (the flicker effects would work even in RGB)Quote:
Originally Posted by GameX
I'm not sure if it's compressed or not, there is some funky edge artifacting, but that could simply be due to the manner they adapted the CGI to low color.
There's no microblocking indicative of multiple palettes applied on a tile by tile basis (like in Road Rash CD), and shadow would double the data size, so almost certainly not used.
There is some tiny microblocking looking stuff with odd dithering which might point toward compression though. (again nothing to do with color) It seems like intraframe compression only, not interframe (at least no blatent intraframe compression artifacts indicative of such limited compression).
Note Sonic CD's cutscenes are all 16 colors and uncompressed. (unlike the PC version with obvious cinepak-like artifacting -I believe indeo was used)
I would love for you to do the 32X as some of those game have advertisements of over 32,000 colors on screen.
Yeah, I know several use that for splash screens (or at least claim to), but almost all games use 256 color rendering in-game. I thought Shadow Squadron might use the 15-bit color mode, but given the dithering it seems it's also 256 colors.Quote:
Originally Posted by Da_Shocker
I think Virtua Racing Deluxe might use 15-bit direct color, but I'm not sure. (a good one to test)
And obviously it's not going to be 32,768 colors on-screen for all practical uses, just like 256 color games aren't going to be that close to 256 colors a lot of the time: not all the colors will be used at once... (especially for flat shading)
It's far from a complete program or really usable outside this pc, since I needed it just to do one thing, I pretty much just hardcoded everything in. Usually not a good idea to do :p . But I will release it whenever I do get around to making it more complete.Quote:
Originally Posted by GameX
Ok, thanks.
Can you do Flink? It's a PAL game, an okay platformer but it usually gets overlooked.
Took a snapshot using Fusion and the first screen of Stage 1 only has 39 unique colours (no image hosts accept Targa it seems). Psygnosis was quite a talented team.
Sonic 3D Flickies' Island has its intro FMV in Cinepak compression, Sonic CD has completely uncompressed 8FPS videos for intro and endings.Quote:
Originally Posted by kool kitty89
Is it just me or does Kolibri look like it uses much more than 256 colours?Quote:
Originally Posted by kool kitty89
Took a snapshot of the very first screen in-game and the colour count is 139.Quote:
Originally Posted by crazyteknohed
Sonic 3's colourful Carnival Night <40 colours out of water, and around 44-45 under it. Is this method severely flawed? (ie counting unique colours in a screenshot)
I always thought Sonic 2 was very colorful.
But wouldn't 64 colors, dithered could double or quadruple the number of colors displayed on screen.
Unless you're using emulation or an RGB signal.
then dithering can be took for what it is....ugly.
dithering is not so bad. I bet that gif image in your sig is dithered. Cause if it was shown at it's actual color limit 256, it would look ugly.
Oh for sure, I do think colour dithering has its uses, but when you lower it to Megadrive resolution with all of 60 colours, it kinda looks nasty.Quote:
Originally Posted by gamegenie
I still play some games over composite rather than RGB because the illusion is better.
Final Fight CD I think is a good example, Over RGB it looks....awful. Composite it looks like sex.
If it's an unfiltered screen shot, then you're fine.Quote:
Originally Posted by Pulstar
Assuming no limitation with those 64(61) colors (which there are limitations because Genesis isn't a normal bitmap display system), it could come close to double - disregarding the artifacts of it (it will still be "artificial" color). But dithering removes the horizontal resolution detail in the process. For blending (gradients) it's not so much of a big loss though.Quote:
But wouldn't 64 colors, dithered could double or quadruple the number of colors displayed on screen.
In general, it's not bad and if you have the master palette to support it - it can be a great thing. It's just that a lot of Genesis games don't throw a lot of color values in between what they are dithering (they are often very contrast-y too). And it often comes off as harsh. There are SNES games with dithering too, but the master palette makes it blend ooh so much better. I think the dither "style" can be nasty too. Ordered dithering like EC has looks horrible IMO.Quote:
dithering is not so bad.
Those Targas are faithful reproductions of the emulation engine. If I try resizing them the colour count jumps by tens of thousands :DQuote:
Originally Posted by tomaitheous
Still it would be nice to have a utility that can count colours on the fly.
What program are you using to count the colors?
Oh, anything will do.. Tried counting them using PSP9 and Faststone, and it's the same in both.
That was meant to be directed at the OP, sorry. :p