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

Hi pyron!
I been playing your hack of golden axe 2, is great! and overall feels like a big improvement over the original. Red skeletons now look beautiful and skin of enemies is perfect. However, I have some little suggestions:

Could you keep white skeletons with their original shades? I liked more the original color for this enemies. Furthermore, some times the new color of white skeletons get confused with the green background on the second stage. Also I prefer the lake on the first stage blue than greenish. Except for that two things all looks better than the original for me.

A thing more, I think that for improve even more the look of the game, maybe you could keep the chikenleg color like one of your first examples, it looked great. And maybe change some dragons to blue, purple or other color instead of only redish and green (something like golden axe 1) I think that this changes could improve the variety of color on the game. But I dont know, maybe you prefer keep the original colors closer to the original game. Or maybe is not possible because limitations of the hack.

Any case, overall golden axe 2 now looks a lot better than original. Great job dude!

Edit: I forgot, in stage 6 on last boss, some color of enemies is the same as the red carpet, and dissapear some parts of their body. Maybe you can fix this by changing the color of the red carpet for a darker red or something.

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Originally Posted by maxxfarras

Hi pyron!
I been playing your hack of golden axe 2, is great! and overall feels like a big improvement over the original. Red skeletons now look beautiful and skin of enemies is perfect. However, I have some little suggestions:

Could you keep white skeletons with their original shades? I liked more the original color for this enemies. Furthermore, some times the new color of white skeletons get confused with the green background on the second stage. Also I prefer the lake on the first stage blue than greenish. Except for that two things all looks better than the original for me.

A thing more, I think that for improve even more the look of the game, maybe you could keep the chikenleg color like one of your first examples, it looked great. And maybe change some dragons to blue, purple or other color instead of only redish and green (something like golden axe 1) I think that this changes could improve the variety of color on the game. But I dont know, maybe you prefer keep the original colors closer to the original game. Or maybe is not possible because limitations of the hack.

Any case, overall golden axe 2 now looks a lot better than original. Great job dude!

Edit: I forgot, in stage 6 on last boss, some color of enemies is the same as the red carpet, and dissapear some parts of their body. Maybe you can fix this by changing the color of the red carpet for a darker red or something.

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Hi maxxfarras, thanks for your nice feedback!

Several of the things you suggested I had talked with the staff and you can even see them on the previous pages. So I will try to answer you and explain in parts.

First, I must say I was very frustrated with GA2. The way they brought the first game was better....
in GA1 you had separate color palettes for enemies, characters and foreground and background scenery.
Even with few colors for each element, I had more freedom to freely edit each plan.
So the end result was much better and much closer than I wanted.

In GA2 the enemies gained more colors shades but to fill a screen with several different enemies they use the same palette.
So I had colored chickenleg the original color and then had to go back after the boss of the fourth stage became completely pink.
And the scenarios use only a palette for all elements of the scenery and colors so they blend with everything and is hard to change something without harming the whole look of the game.

The whites skeletons use the color palette of the characters so I would have to undo the changes I made in the characters.
I actually prefer how it is now .. because Gilius appears to have a more natural beard,
the weapons of the characters look like the swords that I keep here at home and the colors of the skulls also became more natural ...
but unfortunately the game does not have shade for characters and sometimes it seems they are floating on the screen.

Now I'll take a look at this issue you spoke on stage 6,
I tested in the emulator and it seemed ok but on my mega drive strangely unable to test because the controls do not work when I run this game on flashcart.

As I said I would have changed more things but unfortunately I could not, so I apologize if it was not as expected, a hug my friend.

http://s27.postimg.org/iv7u0s0ub/aaa.png

The two screens on the right of this image were slightly green-ish on my Genesis after the patch (assuming this is level 2 or 3). The inside of the caves was purple-ish in the foreground. Overall I thought it all looked very nice. Good job!

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Originally Posted by Joe Redifer

http://s27.postimg.org/iv7u0s0ub/aaa.png

The two screens on the right of this image were slightly green-ish on my Genesis after the patch (assuming this is level 2 or 3). The inside of the caves was purple-ish in the foreground. Overall I thought it all looked very nice. Good job!

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Yes I changed in the last modifications because I have tested and found that everything was very bright and the whole stage had been with a brown and boring tone. So I decided to change .. I made several versions of this piece was hard to pick one.

http://i.imgur.com/nsZc4aK.png

About the cave I tried to leave and darker shades of purple was based on some fantasy artworks I researched on the internet, do you think it did not fit?

Original
http://s28.postimg.org/7jiko888d/Gol...e_II_W_031.pnghttp://s14.postimg.org/dei26g5m9/Gol...e_II_W_032.pnghttp://s14.postimg.org/kvr9lnv5d/Gol...e_II_W_038.png
Hack
http://i.imgur.com/bOZINjY.png

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Hi maxxfarras, thanks for your nice feedback!

Several of the things you suggested I had talked with the staff and you can even see them on the previous pages. So I will try to answer you and explain in parts.

First, I must say I was very frustrated with GA2. The way they brought the first game was better....
in GA1 you had separate color palettes for enemies, characters and foreground and background scenery.
Even with few colors for each element, I had more freedom to freely edit each plan.
So the end result was much better and much closer than I wanted.

In GA2 the enemies gained more colors shades but to fill a screen with several different enemies they use the same palette.
So I had colored chickenleg the original color and then had to go back after the boss of the fourth stage became completely pink.
And the scenarios use only a palette for all elements of the scenery and colors so they blend with everything and is hard to change something without harming the whole look of the game.

The whites skeletons use the color palette of the characters so I would have to undo the changes I made in the characters.
I actually prefer how it is now .. because Gilius appears to have a more natural beard,
the weapons of the characters look like the swords that I keep here at home and the colors of the skulls also became more natural ...
but unfortunately the game does not have shade for characters and sometimes it seems they are floating on the screen.

Now I'll take a look at this issue you spoke on stage 6,
I tested in the emulator and it seemed ok but on my mega drive strangely unable to test because the controls do not work when I run this game on flashcart.

As I said I would have changed more things but unfortunately I could not, so I apologize if it was not as expected, a hug my friend.

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Thanks so much for elaborate Pyron. I understand. Your fix looks almost perfect for me. Anyway my observations are very minor and as I said before overall your version looks like a big improvement over the original IMHO. So, I prefer it for a long shot :)

Pyron: Sorry if this was asked before, but I didn't see it when combing over this thread; can you post the palette offsets for the rom and what they correspond to - for SF2:SCE?

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Originally Posted by Barone

Pyron, do you think you can improve Blanka's first color choice (green) to make it closer to the arcade/better, like you did with the second color choice (blue)?

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You mean like this? It's the SNES Blanka in the MD 9bit palette. Slightly greener than the original SCE one:
Attachment 9220

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Originally Posted by tomaitheous

Pyron: Sorry if this was asked before, but I didn't see it when combing over this thread; can you post the palette offsets for the rom and what they correspond to - for SF2:SCE?

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Sorry, but I deleted my files and my palettes reference base for this game

Pyron I think Golden Axe 2 looks great. As I'm playing I tend not to notice too much without direct side-by-side comparisons since I didn't play the original game all the time but I liked what I saw! Eventually Game Sack will another hacks and homebrews episode and these will be some good games to show side-by-side! Keep it up with other games as well!

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Originally Posted by tomaitheous

You mean like this? It's the SNES Blanka in the MD 9bit palette. Slightly greener than the original SCE one:
Attachment 9220

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Wow, yep, that's what I'm talking about.
I know you said you're using the MD's palette but is it really doable in terms of patching the existent hack? I mean, it will not ruin other parts of the game or characters?
Thanks a lot for the demo anyway ("You must spread...").

About Pyron's hack details, since he doesn't have the references anymore, probably we would have to differentiate the original and hacked ROMs and use trial and error to build the references again.

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Originally Posted by Joe Redifer

Pyron I think Golden Axe 2 looks great. As I'm playing I tend not to notice too much without direct side-by-side comparisons since I didn't play the original game all the time but I liked what I saw! Eventually Game Sack will another hacks and homebrews episode and these will be some good games to show side-by-side! Keep it up with other games as well!

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That would be awesome.
I can see the Snerds arguing that the flashcarts have some sort of special hardware which allows more colors than the regular carts and other stupid stuff like that in the vid comments.

Pyron do you think developers were lazy with colors or is it that they takes too much time?

The one thing they were not was lazy, at least not with games like Golden Axe (2) or Street Fighter 2. There must have been something else ? Limitations in regards to the tools available maybe ? They were using computers that were equally powerful as the Mega Drive itself.

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Originally Posted by Christuserloeser

The one thing they were not was lazy, at least not with games like Golden Axe (2) or Street Fighter 2. There must have been something else ? Limitations in regards to the tools available maybe ? They were using computers that were equally powerful as the Mega Drive itself.

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thanks for the reply, I guess they were also limited in time they had on games too, I don't imagine they could fiddle about with things for too long before the boss or manager got angry

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Originally Posted by Joe Redifer

Pyron I think Golden Axe 2 looks great. As I'm playing I tend not to notice too much without direct side-by-side comparisons since I didn't play the original game all the time but I liked what I saw! Eventually Game Sack will another hacks and homebrews episode and these will be some good games to show side-by-side! Keep it up with other games as well!

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Many thanks Joe, and if this really happen would be amazing!

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Originally Posted by Modelboard4

Pyron do you think developers were lazy with colors or is it that they takes too much time?

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Originally Posted by Christuserloeser

The one thing they were not was lazy, at least not with games like Golden Axe (2) or Street Fighter 2. There must have been something else ? Limitations in regards to the tools available maybe ? They were using computers that were equally powerful as the Mega Drive itself.

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Look, I think I'm not sure of anything so I can only stipulate.
There are good example of good use of colors in early life of Mega Drive games as Strider, Phelios, GG, Castle of Illusion and many others do a great job.
Mainly talking about Strider which is almost an arcade perfect with just 8m memory is something amazing and also the sound of it is amazing.

I think like SEGA had no support from third parties such as nintendo and had to produce much alone she hired several people to produce games that do not really know what they were doing.
And what makes me angry is that the excuses for work garbage is always blame the limitations of the platform, which is more than proved that they could do better ..

So if a guy like me who has no knowledge and training to work it could recolor a game in a week so I think they could do better ..

Another thing ... have you noticed how the games produced in Japan sound trillion times better than Westerners?

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Originally Posted by Pyron

Another thing ... have you noticed how the games produced in Japan sound trillion times better than Westerners?

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I think even know the games industry started with Atari in the USA, the west saw video games as a 5 minute form of entertainment where as in japan they see games as an art form, that's why as you say Japanese games have better music.
the Japanese craft their games until there almost perfect where as some western developers simply go for a quick cash in.

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Originally Posted by Pyron

Another thing ... have you noticed how the games produced in Japan sound trillion times better than Westerners?

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That's because the only sound engine available from Sega in America was GEMS, which was honestly quite crap most of the time. Japanese and European developers tended to either use SMPS(perfect for FM, not so much for PCM usually) or develop their own engines.
Of course there are exceptions of American games that sound good.

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Originally Posted by Pyron

Another thing ... have you noticed how the games produced in Japan sound trillion times better than Westerners?

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Debatable. Puggsy, Flink, Mickey Mania, Mega Turrican, etc...

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Originally Posted by Kamahl

Debatable. Puggsy, Flink, Mickey Mania, Mega Turrican, etc...

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in general Japanese games sound better but there are but there are some great western music

This stuff is great, someone should do a feature on these hacks for the front page.

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Originally Posted by Modelboard4

in general Japanese games sound better but there are but there are some great western music

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All of those games were developed by Europeans. That already explains a lot and it's the reason why I said American developers when referring to GEMS.

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Originally Posted by villahed94

All of those games were developed by Europeans. That already explains a lot and it's the reason why I said American developers when referring to GEMS.

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For me this is not enough excuse .. there are several developers who have created their own sound engine as the Data East for example, who did an excellent job.

Some American developers, even using GEMS, made some very good sountracks. Earthworm Jim and Comix Zone for example.

Really, the answer isn't tool problems or laziness, just plain incompetence or rush jobs.

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Originally Posted by Kamahl

Some American developers, even using GEMS, made some very good sountracks. Earthworm Jim and Comix Zone for example.

Really, the answer isn't tool problems or laziness, just plain incompetence or rush jobs.

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And then you have a game like Mazin Saga - made by a japanese dev - with one of the worst music that i've heard on any console.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y6BghesWn0

Awful japanese music you say?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WP31t5-hPi0

I'll take any GEMS soundtrack over this, those intro screeches... ARRRRGGHGHHHHH

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Originally Posted by Kamahl

Some American developers, even using GEMS, made some very good sountracks. Earthworm Jim and Comix Zone for example.

Really, the answer isn't tool problems or laziness, just plain incompetence or rush jobs.

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/\

Thats it!

Demoltion Man has a great soundtrack (never gets its due)

To finish the trilogy took the GA3 to take a look, you think he deserves attention as the orginal or leave it the same?

http://i.imgur.com/SUCqO1q.png

I love Golden Axe 3. It's one of my favorite games on MD. Its background graphics aren't exactly its strong point though. It seems to use very few colors for backgrounds similar to GA2, but color choices are not as strange as GA2 so I doubt you can improve it a whole lot. Maybe you can improve all stages just a tiny little bit by replacing a few colors here and there like you did in your WIP for stage 1, but keep the feel of the original.

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Originally Posted by Pyron

To finish the trilogy took the GA3 to take a look, you think he deserves attention as the orginal or leave it the same?

http://i.imgur.com/SUCqO1q.png

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just to say well done for doing such a tedious job

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Originally Posted by Christuserloeser

I love Golden Axe 3. It's one of my favorite games on MD. Its background graphics aren't exactly its strong point though. It seems to use very few colors for backgrounds similar to GA2, but color choices are not as strange as GA2 so I doubt you can improve it a whole lot. Maybe you can improve all stages just a tiny little bit by replacing a few colors here and there like you did in your WIP for stage 1, but keep the feel of the original.

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just remember the alternative routes ... maybe this was a bad idea = D

It certainly was. The game is twice as big as Golden Axe 1 and 2. Well, almost twice as big: the first and last stage are the same.

The good thing: You do not need to improve all stages. Most already look pretty nice. Just a few bad ones here and there.

The ugliest stage is the Jungle.

And you don't need to improve all the colors, just a few.

I'd leave it. The game's not an artistic masterpiece by any means but it looks like quite a lot of work for comparatively little gain.

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Originally Posted by Pyron

Another thing ... have you noticed how the games produced in Japan sound trillion times better than Westerners?

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I've got a slightly different theory about this. Europe and Japan seemed to have a much stronger home computer scene than the US, especially musically, and I suspect this is where a lot of the Mega Drive/Genesis composers came from. This led to them being quite skilled in both synth programming and actual computer programming. My suspicion is that more of the American composers came from a "real music" background, leading to them being able to do great things with red book audio but being more limited when it came to sound design and actual low level console synth programming.

I haven't done extensive research but this does seem to fit with the backgrounds of some of the more high profile composers.

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Originally Posted by Pyron

Look, I think I'm not sure of anything so I can only stipulate.
There are good example of good use of colors in early life of Mega Drive games as Strider, Phelios, GG, Castle of Illusion and many others do a great job.
Mainly talking about Strider which is almost an arcade perfect with just 8m memory is something amazing and also the sound of it is amazing.

I think like SEGA had no support from third parties such as nintendo and had to produce much alone she hired several people to produce games that do not really know what they were doing.
And what makes me angry is that the excuses for work garbage is always blame the limitations of the platform, which is more than proved that they could do better ..

So if a guy like me who has no knowledge and training to work it could recolor a game in a week so I think they could do better ..

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To be fair, we have better tools than they did and we have emulators to check the arcade colours against. What did they have? Could they have been colour matching visually? If so, could something like a badly calibrated monitor be responsible for some of the odd colour choices?

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Originally Posted by Barone

Wow, yep, that's what I'm talking about.
I know you said you're using the MD's palette but is it really doable in terms of patching the existent hack? I mean, it will not ruin other parts of the game or characters?
Thanks a lot for the demo anyway ("You must spread...").

About Pyron's hack details, since he doesn't have the references anymore, probably we would have to differentiate the original and hacked ROMs and use trial and error to build the references again.

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I see the palette data in the SF2 rom; it's straight uncompressed (packed 4bit format, 3 of 'em to a WORD). Easy to edit in a hex editor. Looks like the whole palette block for the game starts at 0x5c000 in the rom. Probably do a savestate of the game, then look at the cram data, then do a search for a match in the rom with a hex editor.

Weird that the patch did not take on my copy of the rom; red screen (US? Bin/gen format?). Anyone kind enough to send me a PM to point me to a 'cooked' version? Else, maybe the problem is with Fusion.

I can get you your green Blanka, if I can get a working patched rom up and running.

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Originally Posted by Pyron

Sorry, but I deleted my files and my palettes reference base for this game

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Why not put it into a simple game doc and submit it to RHDN, rather than deleting your stuffs? Information should be made public/accessible to other hackers, especially if you're going to delete it.



EDIT: FYI - the SF2SCE tilemap data for the two layers in each stage, are uncompressed as well. Easy to edit.

You need a proggy called FixChecksum to well, fix the game's checksum after applying the patch.

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Originally Posted by Silanda

My suspicion is that more of the American composers came from a "real music" background

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Yes, and American companies didn't seem to know you'd need someone who knew how to program for the music. In Japanese games these people are credited separately from the composers. Most games developed with close ties to SOA (i.e. Acclaim) just use GEMS which was developed around 1991? Probably for Kid Chameleon. Funny however is that it sounds remarkably similar to other US developed sound drivers. Maybe they used to hang out at the same usenet group, haha.

EA's driver got better over time though.

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Originally Posted by Silanda

The game's not an artistic masterpiece by any means

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Well it is rather mind-blowing how they squeezed such a gigantic game into 8 Mbit. It's just visually not that appealing, at least regarding its backgrounds in a couple of stages. I cannot imagine how this would have looked with 16 Mbit or on MCD.

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Originally Posted by Christuserloeser

You need a proggy called FixChecksum to well, fix the game's checksum after applying the patch.

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Fusion has an AutoFix for the checksum (in the setconfig page), but I did ran the proggy anyway - fixed, but same result. Either the IPS patcher is geeky, or the target rom is incorrect, or his patch is for the SMD format.

Check your PMs.

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Originally Posted by Christuserloeser

Well it is rather mind-blowing how they squeezed such a gigantic game into 8 Mbit. It's just visually not that appealing, at least regarding its backgrounds in a couple of stages. I cannot imagine how this would have looked with 16 Mbit or on MCD.

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I agree entirely, they squeezed a lot into that 8 Meg. It's just a shame Sega couldn't have waited a bit longer, given it a bigger cart, and then released a smoother, more impressive game that probably would have got a worldwide release.

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Originally Posted by Christuserloeser

Check your PMs.

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Thanks :D

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Originally Posted by Pyron

To finish the trilogy took the GA3 to take a look, you think he deserves attention as the orginal or leave it the same?

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Sorry for the late response.
It deserves some attention IMO. The gameplay is very good, especially in 2P mode and while the initial stage looks OK, there are several BAD ones so your touch would be welcome IMO.

About the trilogy, OK, but you won't be done with GA on the Mega Drive if you forget Dahna: Megami Tanjō. That game is certainly inspired by GA, has great soundtrack and several gameplay elements from the GA series despite being an action side scrolling game.
The artwork is also totally GA style and it has more layers in the stages, so it might have some room for color improvement and it needs it as much as the first GA IMO. It's also a very short game.
I have done a little hack I've never released for it, allowing for more continues and a longer health bar for both easy and normal difficulty settings in order to make the game less painful and more in the lines of GA in terms of frustration level.
Let me know if you want to have a look on it, we could combine the gameplay and color changes in a single patch. I could also have a look in its jumping mechanics, 'cause I think it would play a lot smoother if the jump was a bit more floaty - it descends way too quickly in the original game.

About the negative comments on GAIII, I'm a bit tired of the prejudice against that game in this forum. From the harsh review (which WRONGLY says that it has no gameplay improvements over the previous ones), to the superficial comments from people who never actually played it and some will to despise it for not have been released outside Japan.
The gameplay is faithful to the series and actually there's no competition for it in terms of replay value and co-op gameplay. But just very few people know how to properly play it or have dedicated more than a few minutes to it, very very few have ever played it on real hardware and even less people have played it on real hardware in co-op mode.
/rant


http://i.imgur.com/SUCqO1q.png
The first two screens look quite better now IMO. The chariot's change I really dislike though - the wheels look better but the main platform I disliked. Maybe it's just me though...
And what about that "animal", can you change it to use anything other than purple, please (in the name of God, for Christ's sake, etc...)???

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Originally Posted by Pyron

just remember the alternative routes ... maybe this was a bad idea = D

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Not easy for sure, but if you need screenshots I can give all of them to you.

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Originally Posted by Christuserloeser

The ugliest stage is the Jungle.

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The desert one is even worse IMO.

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Originally Posted by tomaitheous

I see the palette data in the SF2 rom; it's straight uncompressed (packed 4bit format, 3 of 'em to a WORD). Easy to edit in a hex editor. Looks like the whole palette block for the game starts at 0x5c000 in the rom. Probably do a savestate of the game, then look at the cram data, then do a search for a match in the rom with a hex editor.

Weird that the patch did not take on my copy of the rom; red screen (US? Bin/gen format?). Anyone kind enough to send me a PM to point me to a 'cooked' version? Else, maybe the problem is with Fusion.

I can get you your green Blanka, if I can get a working patched rom up and running.

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Thanks a lot for the info and sorry for the late response.
If you're still having problems, let me know.
You need the [f1] version of the original rom in order to apply the patch successfully - it doesn't need a checksum fix with that version either.

"Green Blanka! Green Blanka! Green Blanka! Green Blanka! (...)" :p