Design Process

[FrankenGraphics]

That's some really nice work, well done! Love the athletes with their heads on tilt. If i'm to give some feedback at all that isn't just praise, maybe a very careful and light touch of darker pixels here and there on the details, extremes and edges of the title text could make it more legible.

 

[tornotlukin]

Still tweaking shapes to save on tiles, still need to add color details.

 

[dale_coop]

Oh boy, WOW!

 

[functionalform]

daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaammmmmmmmmmmmnnnnnnnnn

 

[tornotlukin]

This is the final. It was fun to design, figure out how to maximize tile space, and apply the palettes. I made two palettes and noticed that they are applied in 16x16 sections. Luckily, the art was laid out so that tiles wouldn't get mistakenly recolored.

So, some questions for those on the programming side:

• Is it best practice to try to maximize the use of the tileset?

• Are there RGB values listed somewhere for NES colors, or will it be fine to screengrab the colors from the NES Screen Tool and eyedrop them?

• (It may have been addressed already) Is there a way to reuse tiles but V or H flip them on the nametable?

 

[Kasumi]

Good final work!

Is it best practice to try to maximize the use of the tileset?

I'd say it's best practice to use the fewest number of tiles possible to get the message across. That is to say don't try to force everything to be 256 tiles if it doesn't need it because you can save space that way, but don't feel bad about using 256 tiles if that's what your art requires.

Are there RGB values listed somewhere for NES colors, or will it be fine to screengrab the colors from the NES Screen Tool and eyedrop them?

Believe it or not, there's no such thing.

Your colors are going to look different on everything, and that's just the way it is. Edit: I realize why you asked! Screen grabbing NES Screen Tool is fine if you're looking for a palette to use for future projects.
edit2: I personally like this palette:

which is the top four rows generated here: https://bisqwit.iki.fi/utils/nespalette.php

(It may have been addressed already) Is there a way to reuse tiles but V or H flip them on the nametable?

Nope. You don't benefit tile count-wise from being symmetrical for the background.

 

[tornotlukin]

Thanks for the feedback, I liked the limitations imposed when creating the design. I am sure it will get frustrating at certain times, but I am glad to see some issues first hand.

I did see that you can re-palette areas of the nametable, but it did so in 16x16 tiles, instead of 8x8. Is that a limitation of palettes on the nametable or just a setting I didn't notice on Screen Tool?

I liked your palette mix, I attached a Photoshop ACO file of it, if anyone uses PS.

Good final work!

[...]everything to be 256 tiles if it doesn't need it because you can save space that way, but don't feel bad about using 256 tiles if that's what your art requires.

edit2: I personally like this palette:

Nope. You don't benefit tile count-wise from being symmetrical for the background.

 

[Kasumi]

I did see that you can re-palette areas of the nametable, but it did so in 16x16 tiles, instead of 8x8.

Yes, background palettes are set by 2x2 tiles on NES. There's one cartridge type from the era that allows 8x8 palettes for the background, but basically 98% of the NES/Famicom library didn't even have the option to do it. I'm not even aware of any games that could have done it that actually did it, at least from the era. ROM City Rampage does it! But it's fairly recent homebrew.

There's also a coding trick to get 16x8 regions, but it uses most of the CPU time.

 

[SeaFoodAndButter]

Big shout out to tornotlukin. So, the game I've been working on is called "The Curse of Pharmakos" and tornotlukin came through BIG TIME with this art/tileset for me. He did a fantastic job to say the least! I recommend anyone looking for graphic design help to speak to him.

Here is a video showing the start screen to my game. (sorry if the music is a bit droning, this is a test song).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUZhvhB8VzI