SNES 256 color mode

How many games actually used one of the SNES's actual 256 indexed color modes other than just for splash screens, and excluding mode 7. (which also uses 256 indexed colors)

It seems likt the vast majority of games (including DKC) use either mode 1 or 2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNES#Video (DKC using mode 1 like Earthworm Jim)
With a few games using modes 3 or 4 for static screens and as the main screen in some of the 3D games.

I'm not sure how many actually even use the 256 color modes in 3D, I'm almost positive Star Fox uses mode 1 for the title screen, but I'm not sure about actual in-game stuff. (everything else apears to use 2 BG layers in that game, so it could be mode 3 -not mode 4 as the BG is definitely not using 4-color tiles)
I also noticed that star fox uses dynamic dithering, optimized vepending what's on screen. (with few colors/objects, almost no dithering at all)

But besides any 3D type games (including doom), did any use mode 3 or 4 for main gameplay? (I haven't checked yoshi's island yet either, but I somewhat doubt that would be one, unless there's a lot of software rendering going on -given DKC uses mode 1, it would seem unnecessary)

I have no idea, but I do know that level 1 of Donkey Kong Kountry puts 400+ colors on the screen at once. That's way better than any wimpy 256 color display.

With mode 7, you're limited to 256 unique tiles. The map is fixed to 128x128 cells ( a 1024x1024 pixel mode). The tiles are stored in single 8byte format. With the exception of it being a tile, it's pretty much close to 256 color VGA mode low res.

Direct color mode is different. SNES stores its tiles normally in what's called composite planar format. That is, the tiles are stored in multiple 2bit tile cells like so:

Byte0: 00000000
byte1: 11111111
byte2: 00000000
byte3: 11111111
.
.
.
byte16: 22222222
byte17: 33333333
byte18: 22222222
byte19: 33333333

For 2bit tiles (for those tilemaps that use 2bit tiles), it only gathers the first 16bytes. For 4bit tiles, it gathers two sets of 2bit tiles - but treats the bit fields of the second tile as bit plane 2 and 3 (instead of 0 and 1). For 8bit direct color mode, it extends this to four 2bit tiles. So the 3rd 2bit tile holds bit planes 4 and 5 and the 4th 2bit tile holds bit planes 6 and 7. 0 to 7 is all the 8 planes needed to make an 8bit tile.

Ok, now that is out of the way - let's talk about the tilemap. The tilemap format is 16bit wide: vhopppcc cccccccc

V= vertical flipping of the tile
H= horiztonal flipping
o= priority of the tile
P= PPP is 3 bits (value 0 to 7) and normally is one of 8 subpalettes of a 4bit tile. But in direct color mode - these bits are added to the direct RGB values of the tile.
C = is the character address (you shift to the left to get the address, depending on the tiles "size" in bitdepth).

As you can see from the 10bit character pointer, it supports more than just 256 tiles. AFAIK, you can't specify a tile in sprite ram, so if the pointer is outside the 32k of the tile address range, it should wrap back over.

The total number of tiles for mode 5/6 also depends on how big you set the tilemaps, as they consume vram - but it does allow *more* than 256 tiles unlike mode 7.

And lastly, the 256 color mode of mode 5/6 is called direct color mode because the values from the accumulated bitplanes are not indirect pixels for a palette like with other consoles, but instead carry direct RGB values:

BBGGGRRR

Notice there aren't all 5 bits of the master palette. So it can't access all of it. But it can access direct RGB. This has it's use. But there is something else that adds to this. The PPP palette data from the tilemap, now becomes the missing bits for the remaining RGB values from the tile:

RRR1x GGG2x BB3xx

The x is the master palette entry set to 0. Notice Blue gets the least amount (that's no coincidence. Blue is the least perceived change in gradient to the human eye). So the tilemap can effect the direct color pixel of the 8bit tile if needed. The only down side to this mode is that there is no true black. Color 0, regardless than it's a direct color mode, is still transparent. But everything is relative and you can easily get away with this (I've done this with video encoding to "compress" colors to appear closer together for 9bit palette use. True black tends to distract in cases.)

Hope this helps.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Joe Redifer

I have no idea, but I do know that level 1 of Donkey Kong Kountry puts 400+ colors on the screen at once. That's way better than any wimpy 256 color display.

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Huh, that mus involve swapping palettes between scanlines. (which I'd think would be applicable to any of the video modes) I don't know if there's any hardware assistance, or if those type of "tricks" need to be software driven. (I know the Apple IIgs has limited hardware support for palette swapping, and Amiga's Copper much more capable at doing things like that)

Not that it's any less impressive mind you. (and DKC is colorful enough to make me think it was using higher colors than it does -the numerous subpalettes and large master palette go a long way though)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by tomaitheous

The total number of tiles for mode 5/6 also depends on how big you set the tilemaps, as they consume vram - but it does allow *more* than 256 tiles unlike mode 7.

And lastly, the 256 color mode of mode 5/6 is called direct color mode because the values from the accumulated bitplanes are not indirect pixels for a palette like with other consoles, but instead carry direct RGB values:

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Wait, why are you mentioning modes 5 and 6, I thout those were the 16-color tile modes supporting 512 pixel width and interlacing. With modes 3 and 4 supporting 256 indexed colors.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNES#Video

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Mode 3: 2 layers, one using the full 256-color palette and one using 16-color palettes. The 256-color layer can also directly specify colors from an 11-bit (RGB443) colorspace.
Mode 4: 2 layers, one using the full 256-color palette and one using 4-color palettes. The 256-color layer can directly specify colors, and each tile can be individually scrolled.
Mode 5: 2 layers, one using 16-color palettes and one using 4-color palettes. Tile decoding is altered to facilitate use of the 512-width and interlaced resolutions.
Mode 6: 1 layer, using 16-color palettes. Tile decoding is as in Mode 5, and each tile can be individually scrolled.

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Hope this helps.

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Yeah, interesting stuff, but I was more asking if anyone know of games actually using those modes. (and, again, I'm not even sure about the super FX games -well Doom is almost definitely 256 colors)

Opps, sorry. Yeah, mode 3 and 4.

Use this doc as a reference instead of wiki: http://www.pcedev.net/snes_dev/snes_regs.txt

Note: IIRC, I think Charles Macdonald told me that there was something funky with mode 4 that doesn't work correctly - in relation to the 256 color mode.

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Yeah, interesting stuff, but I was more asking if anyone know of games actually using those modes. (and, again, I'm not even sure about the super FX games -well Doom is almost definitely 256 colors)

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There's an easy way to find out. Find a copy of BSNES with the debugger (special version, but at the same site). When you're in an area that you think is using direct color mode, open the debugger and look at the tile viewer. Select the bitdepth and see if any data in vram matches/looks correct for that bitdepth. You know, 4bit tiles won't look right in direct color mode or mode7, and the same with 2bit tiles.

OK, so which version of BSNES do I need? http://byuu.org/bsnes/
Do I need the bsnes v0.059d binary?

OK, it is that latter one I needed.

Hmm, the properties viewer lists the BG mode currently being used, Star Fox and Star Fox 2 apear to be all mode 2 in-game, with SF using mode 1 for the title screen as I thought. (so all 16-color tiles, maybe toggling between aptimal palettes with varying dithring to the models on-screen -the way the graphics are rendered, all the polygons should probably be sharing a single palette per frame, the 2D BG layer and sprite layer would be separate matters)

Doom uses mode 3 in-game, as does Stunt Racer FX. Earthworm jim 2 uses mode 4 for its splash screens and intro/title sequence for whatever reason (opposed to mode 3). So I was right about that one's splash screens as well.

However, DKC doesn't use one of the 256 color modes for static screens as I'd though, pretty much everything seems to use mode 1. Mode 3 is used for the beggining of the intro when the Nintendo logo appears, but the title demo then switched to mode 1. (with the far BG clouds being the 4-color tile layer)

I've more to chech though. (Wolfenstein 3D, Wing Commander, Race Drivin' Yoshi's Island, Dirt Trax FX, and Vortex at least)


Edit:
OK, so I tested all of those, Yoshi's Island runs in mode 1 (though the intro runs in mode 0 interestingly), VOrtex uses mode 2 like Star Fox, Dirt Trax uses mode 3 like Stunt Racer, Race Drivin' uses mode 1 in-game (mode 3 for the title splash screen), wind commander also apears to use mode 1 in-game (hence the drop in quality compared ot the PC version, almost looks liek they adapted the EGA graphics, Sega CD does look better I think).

However, the weirdest thing was Wolfenstein ... it runs in mode 7! I guess the low resolution facilitated that (or it facilitated the low resolution maybe, while still using a large viewing window), but I suppose the use of chunky pixel organization could have something to do with it as well.
That one surprised me though. Given how smoothely it runs, I kind of wonder why Wing Commander didn't do that, for in-game stuff at least. (hell maybe even Doom could have used it for the gameplay window, probably not much of a drop in resolution from what it is, then again, I don't know if it would have helped -if doing so could have improved framerate, then that would definitely be good -scaling the viewing screen larger wouldn't hurt either)

Looking at it some more, Wolf3D apears to be using a mode 7 display of 14 tiles wide by 12 tiles high (112x96 pixels) and scaling that to 2x the size on the screen. (apearing as 224x192), everything in-game is rendered on the mode 7 layer, only sprites are used for the player's weapon and status display.