My entry is a 5scale Axe shoot-'em-up called Revelation. I don't have any information beyond that, so stay tuned!
5 level greyscale? I can't imagine that looks too good in Axe, how are you going about that? Mixing 3scale and 4scale commands or something custom? With the extra sprites that need to be displayed for the extra tone depth, I am eager to see how this all pans out, especially with a sprite heavy game like most shoot-'em'up's are. I look forward to more info and updates!
Basically, 3 sprites, two regular sprites with the areas for the middle grey predithered, and thethird sprite is where the middle grey is. And it shall be displayed using DispGraphrr
Freyaday wrote:
Basically, 3 sprites, two regular sprites with the areas for the middle grey predithered, and thethird sprite is where the middle grey is. And it shall be displayed using DispGraphrr


AS long as you're fine running your game at less than half speed and even then aren't going for any feel of clean grayscale, go ahead with that idea Wink

I think the idea of having levels of gray that aren't powers of 2 is extraordinarily stupid, albeit maybe unless you use 8 level routines for levels 5-7, but just not using certain close colors. It's ugly, slow, and not needed. Also, not mentioning, that having the amount of grayscale levels as the main point of the game (instead of fast/smooth gameplay, crisp graphics, fun concept, etc.) sets you up for focusing on that and coming out with an otherwise crappy game.
Ashbad wrote:
I think the idea of having levels of gray that aren't powers of 2 is extraordinarily stupid


I thought it was powers of 2 plus 1? For example for 5 scale dither patters you would get a nice nibble to work with your dithers

Code:
0000 1
1000 2
1010 3
1110 4
1111 5

Similarly for 9 level greyscale your dither pattern takes up a whole byte. Either way, since this is not native greyscale, I hope you can keep the speed up enough with the extra graphics! Any development on gameplay ideas?
IMO, a whole third buffer for just one more color is just a bad idea. Plus, having tried what you just described with 5 level before, I can tlel firsthand it doesn't come out as well as 4 level and therefore 4 level is much more worth using, since clean grayscale and less space used is more than worth one extra color.
Yeah I guess the size increase of size using 5scale over 4scale pretty much overrides any speed saving achieved by having even-nibble dither patterns when writing your own Greyscale routines.
Actually, I'm using the middle grey for the shots, and maybe the HUD, if there is one, so those third sprites are unnecessary. Yay?
I'm still a bit confused as to how you are achieving 5scale graphics using the 4scale routines. Could you elaborate more? Also, you say the third sprite is unnecessary? Does that mean you are switching back to 4scale?
I must point out, don't share code or ask for help. If you do your entry will be disqualified.
comicIDIOT wrote:
I must point out, don't share code or ask for help. If you do your entry will be disqualified.

*giggles* I won't. Just general concepts.
BBoy, I'm doing the middle grey manually.
So you are doing a manual dither or something? How are you taking into account how the greyscale display routine is going to handle your dither?
Yes, manual dither. And the pixels on both buffers are the same color. I tried alternating between the two greys, and it looked awful.

EDIT: I made a mockup of how it's gonna look. The following screenie shows the player ship firing some shots. The finished game will be able to handle multiple shots at the same time, but this is also a test of clearing it, so...enjoy!

Is this a proof of concept thing? Because I don't really see much point to using 5-scale, especially with processor-intensive games like SHMUPS Razz
leafiness0 wrote:
Is this a proof of concept thing? Because I don't really see much point to using 5-scale, especially with processor-intensive games like SHMUPS Razz


I wholeheartedly agree. In which case I don't really think a proof-of-concept is the best sort of thing to enter into a contest, because AFAIK the contest judges more on gameplay and creativity.
I was looking at it more, and decided that the midgrey just made the shots harder to see, so I'm probably gonna drop it. I'm not gonna use it if I don't have a good reason, and right now it doesn't look like I have a good reason.
On the other hand though, fire moves with you, so if you're moving to the right when you fire, it'll be moving to the right too.
Also, if you were doing middle grey yourself, and then using DispGraphrr for your other greyscale, that wouldn't create an even ramp of colors. It would go from 0 to 33% to 50% to 66% to 100%. That might be by your middle grey was so hard to see, since it wasn't that much more different than the greys around it.
Actually, it was just that it was moving. Thegrey made the shots harder to see than necessary.
  
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