SpritesMind.Net

Hi I was wondering, what exactly are you limited to when creating sprites for the genesis/megadrive? What is the maximum amount of colors allowed on screen at once, what about maximum amount of colors per sprite? I've read in various places that you are limited to certain colors in your game graphics?

I found this relatively new sprite creation program called Aseprite 0.95, when I attempt to create a new sprite, I am presented with this screen:


When I hover over Indexed with ___ colors, a tooltip says "using a palette of 256 colors (8 bits per pixel)"

When I hover over RGB Color the tooltip says "RGBA Color Mode (32 bits per pixel)"

When I hover over Grayscale, the tooltip says "Value and Alpha (16 bits per pixel)"

Using that information is Aseprite suitable for creating genesis/megadrive graphics, and if so, what would I choose if I wanted to create a character similar to the images below?





Sorry if I seem rather noobish, it's because I've never done these kind of graphics or game programming at all before, so I've decided to begin on older consoles to mimic the style of some of my favorite games.

One single hardware sprite can be from 8 x 8 to 32 x 32 in size, increments in 8 pixel steps. Sprite can use up to 15 colors, index is always transparency and a sprite can use any of the 4 palettes.
If you want bigger sprites or some other kind of uneven size arrangement you need to use more than 1 sprite.
There are total of 80 sprites possible, with additional limits of 20 sprites per line or 320 sprite pixels per line - this in H40 / 320 pixel mode. In H32 / 256 pixel mode the limits are lower : 64 sprites and 16 sprites per line or 256 sprite pixels per line.

TmEE co.(TM) wrote:One single hardware sprite can be from 8 x 8 to 32 x 32 in size, increments in 8 pixel steps. Sprite can use up to 15 colors, index is always transparency and a sprite can use any of the 4 palettes.
If you want bigger sprites or some other kind of uneven size arrangement you need to use more than 1 sprite.
There are total of 80 sprites possible, with additional limits of 20 sprites per line or 320 sprite pixels per line - this in H40 / 320 pixel mode. In H32 / 256 pixel mode the limits are lower : 64 sprites and 16 sprites per line or 256 sprite pixels per line.

Thanks for this info.

I'm going to try making a simple 8x8 grass tile using RGB color and transparent background using aseprite.

I'm not sure you can use Aseprite entirely for making Genesis graphics, as you need to be able to export bitmaps in 4-bit 16 color mode. When I used Aseprite I couldn't find an option to export at any color depth less than 256 colors. You can try it though, if you're using Genres then it will tell you your bit depth is wrong when you compile so that's how you'll know.

Oh and if you are using Genres, you can set the transparent color like this:
SPRITE fun.bmp 16 16 5

That would make the fifth pallete color of a 16 x 16 image transparent. Figured I'd mention as it took me a bit to figure out ^^

I use Graphics Gale for sprite work. It exports to various formats, including 16 color.

superjoebob wrote:I'm not sure you can use Aseprite entirely for making Genesis graphics, as you need to be able to export bitmaps in 4-bit 16 color mode. When I used Aseprite I couldn't find an option to export at any color depth less than 256 colors. You can try it though, if you're using Genres then it will tell you your bit depth is wrong when you compile so that's how you'll know.

Oh and if you are using Genres, you can set the transparent color like this:
SPRITE fun.bmp 16 16 5

That would make the fifth pallete color of a 16 x 16 image transparent. Figured I'd mention as it took me a bit to figure out ^^

I noticed that I couldn't use Aseprite, sucks because i like the interface and it's simplicity.

Does anyone know of any programs that I can use on linux, I've heard of graphics gale before, but I think it's windows only.

teepo wrote:Does anyone know of any programs that I can use on linux, I've heard of graphics gale before, but I think it's windows only.

I think it is. You could see if it runs in WINE.

djcouchycouch wrote:

teepo wrote:Does anyone know of any programs that I can use on linux, I've heard of graphics gale before, but I think it's windows only.

I think it is. You could see if it runs in WINE.

It's running fairly well in Wine, only problem I noticed was positioning the windows without having a picture opened doesn't work.

thanks

Nevermind, as soon as you minimize all the windows disappear..

teepo wrote:Nevermind, as soon as you minimize all the windows disappear..

Then don't minimize.

Chilly Willy wrote:

teepo wrote:Nevermind, as soon as you minimize all the windows disappear..

Then don't minimize.

lol, that would be a pain, but I found a converter program.

What I do is create a sprite in aseprite indexed with 256 colors, then I export to .bmp and then convert them to 16 bit bmp's using the converter..

I'm sure these converted bmp's will work, but I'm too lazy to test it right now.

teepo, I use The Gimp in linux for sprites and tiles. That and Imagemagick. You can setup color maps in the Gimp with 15 colors and export bmp files with the right color density.

When creating a new image go to 'Image'>'Mode'>'Indexed' to turn the image into an indexed image. Open the color map under 'Windows'>'Dockable Dialogs'>'Colormap'. This will allow you to pick the colors to use. I usually just set this up once as my 'palette' image and then do a save-as for a working image.

When saving export this and name with the 'bmp' extension, choose advanced options and choose 'Do not write colorspace information' This will preserve the colormap on save.

Keep in mind that the pain of the few palettes available on Genesis means that many of your images will have to share the same palettes. So even if you work with one image in 256 colors and convert it down to 16, you'll have to make sure that the colors it uses looks good with all the other images brought down to 16 colors and sharing that palette.

Thanks for advice kubilus1, I'll try that out since conversion doesn't work so well due to the problem djcouchycouch stated..

However, I talked to the guy who made aseprite and asked for sega genesis support in aseprite.

his reply was this:
If sega genesis sprites are .bmp files with 4-bits color depth, I can add that feature. I've added it in the issue tracking: https://code.google.com/p/aseprite/issues/detail?id=210

Always good to get another tool in the Genesis toolchain! DjCouchyCouch is absolutely right about the palettes, this will require planning with whatever tool you decide to use.

I know some people use sigflup's MegaHappySprite tool for sprite creation, but I haven't successfully used that in a demo yet.

Another cool tool to keep in mind, especially on the Linux side is Imagemagick. This will allow you to apply palettes to images, resize images, convert them, split images into tiles, etc.