Gabriel Pyron's Color Hacks!!! (Golden Axe, Street Fighter II, Final Fight CD, etc)

Yes but I can distinguish between blue and violet.

Again, I appreciate this hard work and enjoy color hacks because those changes are not bad per se, but then, they are also not good per se just because you worked hard on them and surely you know what you are doing. A character hack is an artistic change just as a color hack is, too.

Some color hacks are so faithful either to the arcade original or to very obvious flaws in color choices that they are barely debatable, but others are more open to discussion. The fact that people (at least me) who haven't played Pitfall can't correctly identify which is the original and which is the modified version points less towards the fact that I'm no expert in palette choices and more towards the fact that they are not always obvious visual enhancements.

Games like Golden Axe benefited very obviously from Pyron's hack IMO but with others it is not so obvious. I, for example, don't agree with the sky in Crude Buster being change to pink even if its more faithful to the arcade and more "postapocalipticky" because there is a lot less background, detail and buildings in the MD version so the pink is too present and awkward for my taste, but I reckon it's a nice color hack anyway

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Originally Posted by chilled

Yes but I can distinguish between blue and violet.

Again, I appreciate this hard work and enjoy color hacks because those changes are not bad per se, but then, they are also not good per se just because you worked hard on them and surely you know what you are doing. A character hack is an artistic change just as a color hack is, too.

Some color hacks are so faithful either to the arcade original or to very obvious flaws in color choices that they are barely debatable, but others are more open to discussion. The fact that people (at least me) who haven't played Pitfall can't correctly identify which is the original and which is the modified version points less towards the fact that I'm no expert in palette choices and more towards the fact that they are not always obvious visual enhancements.

Games like Golden Axe benefited very obviously from Pyron's hack IMO but with others it is not so obvious. I, for example, don't agree with the sky in Crude Buster being change to pink even if its more faithful to the arcade and more "postapocalipticky" because there is a lot less background, detail and buildings in the MD version so the pink is too present and awkward for my taste, but I reckon it's a nice color hack anyway

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I don't have to and I don't want to waste my time educating people which don't even bother to play the game prior criticizing anything.
Go learn about the different versions of the game by yourself, make reasonable questions and then you may have your answers.



Moving forward...

http://i.imgur.com/FqEtV4W.pnghttp://i.imgur.com/0wArv6j.png

http://i.imgur.com/ta4YNHE.png
http://i.imgur.com/UmqtsxJ.png

http://i.imgur.com/kabcAID.png
http://i.imgur.com/n47fKzr.png

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Originally Posted by Barone

http://i.imgur.com/ta4YNHE.png
http://i.imgur.com/UmqtsxJ.png

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While all other edits you've made clearly are at least 10x times superior to the original colors, the sky in this edit looks too similar to the water which causes the scene to look slightly less colorful than the original (or actually slightly more lacking in colors than the original).

Hm, maybe I am wrong and it just needs to grow on me, but I felt like posting anyway.

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Originally Posted by Barone

Moving forward...

http://i.imgur.com/0wArv6j.png

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Now is perfect !!!!

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Originally Posted by retrospiel

While all other edits you've made clearly are at least 10x times superior to the original colors, the sky in this edit looks too similar to the water which causes the scene to look slightly less colorful than the original (or actually slightly more lacking in colors than the original).
Hm, maybe I am wrong and it just needs to grow on me, but I felt like posting anyway.

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You're not wrong but there's other things to consider. The splash of water when you fall into the river uses the sky color and it looks quite weird with the original scheme because the tones differ a lot and they were supposed to be animations from the same water.
Furthermore, the SNES scheme is like that and I think it looks better overall. In other parts of the stage the strong blue-ish sky doesn't fit all that well IMO.

The color tones in my scheme are close but not the same though. Oh, and I think the clouds also look worse with higher contrast.
But I may give it a second try, maybe increasing the difference between those tones by one step; IDK. I few like it looks a lot better when you play the whole stage.

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Originally Posted by Pyron

Now is perfect !!!!

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Yeah! Thanks for the heads up. ;)




http://i.imgur.com/a2sEGS2.png
http://i.imgur.com/AMvGWCM.png

Wow, holy damn the difference on that last one.

But... are those really the same screen with just a recolor? O_o!!!

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Originally Posted by Kamahl

Wow, holy damn the difference on that last one.

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Originally Posted by Nightwolf

But... are those really the same screen with just a recolor? O_o!!!

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Yes, same screen.
The background palette actually had FIVE indexes spent on BLACK color.
The code had stuff like 00 01 which is invalid to the VDP palette and always rounded to the lower value, so it was interpreted as 00 00.
The MD palette simply don't have the very dark tones of blue and green which are used in the SNES and Jaguar versions of the stage; and the step from one tone to another is much bigger in comparison.

It has "AUTOMATICALLY CONVERTED AND NOT OPTIMIZED FOR THE MD" written all over it, hehe.
One of the stages had so much overlap in terms of color choices that it went from 25 to 31 unique colors on screen after reworking the palette.
And several enemies had to have their sprite patterns (which palette index is used in which part of the sprite) reworked too in order to make a barely reasonable use of the palettes.

That's the reason I usually play the 32X version instead, although this one has its own share of problems too. The music was badly converted and it's missing a lot of samples compared to the Mega Drive version and there's also some slowdown here and there. Because of this, I will probably move back to the Mega Drive version when this color hack is finished. :)

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Originally Posted by Wesker

That's the reason I usually play the 32X version instead, although this one has its own share of problems too. The music was badly converted and it's missing a lot of samples compared to the Mega Drive version and there's also some slowdown here and there. Because of this, I will probably move back to the Mega Drive version when this color hack is finished. :)

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I'm glad to read that. Because that's why I picked this game.

Jaguar version has probably the best graphics overall but it also has frame rate/scrolling problems and dull music.
SNES version has good graphics in some stages but the controls aren't all that responsive, lots of details were cut, difficulty was dumbed down, etc.
32X version has the extra levels but the backgrounds are exactly the same of the Mega Drive and it has some serious frame rate/scrolling issues.

The music issue in the 32X version isn't due to a poor rendition IIRC. It's exactly the same of the Mega Drive, but it plays slower than normal and it cuts instruments. I think it might be caused by bus contention/concurrency issues, which are probably the source for the scrolling/frame rate problems as well.
It feels too inconsistent to me.

Both the Genesis and Sega CD versions are very good, except for the graphics. I hope to be able to carry these changes to the Sega CD version as well, because I love the CD soundtrack and the ambient sound. The sfx are very well done on the Sega CD IMO.

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Originally Posted by Barone

Yes, same screen.
The background palette actually had FIVE indexes spent on BLACK color.
The code had stuff like 00 01 which is invalid to the VDP palette and always rounded to the lower value, so it was interpreted as 00 00.
The MD palette simply don't have the very dark tones of blue and green which are used in the SNES and Jaguar versions of the stage; and the step from one tone to another is much bigger in comparison.

It has "AUTOMATICALLY CONVERTED AND NOT OPTIMIZED FOR THE MD" written all over it, hehe.
One of the stages had so much overlap in terms of color choices that it went from 25 to 31 unique colors on screen after reworking the palette.
And several enemies had to have their sprite patterns (which palette index is used in which part of the sprite) reworked too in order to make a barely reasonable use of the palettes.

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great stuff, the last screen is like water to wine.. huge improvement!

your last screen looks way more beautiful indeed, but doesn't it loose the nightly setup?. The (almost) monochrome midnight blue made it look like we were at night, and yours is way more colorful and bright.

http://i.imgur.com/jjUQ794.png