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Author Topic: engine comparison  (Read 6372 times)

sirToad

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engine comparison
« on: February 24, 2008, 12:06:09 AM »



graphics comparison. first image is my old graphics engine. second is something i'm working on now. it is a screenshot taken from within Corel Photo-Paint where i drew the sprites and assembled them. no engine handles these yet. the problem is the old engine would obviously need a big reworking to handle the 24-bit sprites and build maps in high resolution. the old engine is all based around 256 colors, one byte per pixel. so first i want to ask, which of the two images do you think looks better? which style do you favor?

benefits of the second are that it's much easier to draw in professional programs rather than my home-made sprite editor. there's more color too.

if the second is the better way to go, how would you go about loading and storing the images that make up the map? like, the door, window, wall, roof pieces, trees, etc. and what method would be fairly quick enough to print them to the screen? i just don't know exactly how to make the second image come alive, because of the upgrade in graphics. i don't know what kind of graphics-handling functions to use. a gif or jpg reader? because bitmap gets heavy way too fast.

i'm good when it comes to my imagination, but the technical stuff gets rough sometimes.

i almost don't need more than 256 colors. only about double that would be perfect. but that bumps things up to the next level.

phycowelder

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Re: engine comparison
« Reply #1 on: February 24, 2008, 12:22:42 AM »
howdy!

your answer might lay in a second black/white masking image!
black being impassable, white being passable!

you just put the second black/white mask image in say page 3 for collision process to calculate from!

or it looks like an isometric type drawing!
they r easy to tile, and the benefit is when you put a tree/pillar you appear behind it when you really r!

i hope this might have helped!
if not ask a few more questions so we can narrow down your options.

after all every one knows and loves tiled games!

I'm also working on an OpenGL 2d Tile Map Editor! almost done actually! done 4 my standards anyway!
« Last Edit: February 24, 2008, 12:24:15 AM by phycowelder »

cha0s

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Re: engine comparison
« Reply #2 on: February 24, 2008, 01:50:22 AM »
Personally, I love the old style that you showed in your first screenshot, but the second one isn't bad or anything. Regardless of the style of your scrolling engine, I'd recommend moving to 24-bit color. There's not much reason not to in this day and age. (imo)

BadMrBox

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Re: engine comparison
« Reply #3 on: February 24, 2008, 04:53:56 AM »
I'd say the first one kicks the second one's behind all the way from here to sunday. I like the oldschool look :).
The second pic has it problems with angles and it looks a tad flat and never never ever save pixels in the cursed jpg format >.<

You shouldn't ever need more than 256 colors for your tiles/sprites, look at the classics (like FF6, SoM etc,etc) or go to any random pixelforum and check up. A move to 24-bit color is recommend still thought.

There is a couple of png loaders around on freebasic.net, haven't used them myself but I dare to recommend anyway. Do not use jpg whatever you do.

Lachie Dazdarian

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Re: engine comparison
« Reply #4 on: February 24, 2008, 12:26:32 PM »
I agree with BadMrBox here. Perhaps the second one doesn't show clearly what you are trying to do. Maybe something in the sense of 2.5D what Pritchard was experiments with few weeks earlier: http://games.freebasic.net/forum/index.php?topic=68.0

I'm really not experienced with this so can't help you design this sort of engine.

But I think the illusion of 3rd dimension can be relatively easily created with skillfully drawn tiles and well compiled layers (background, foreground, etc). That is, if you don't need your player to move between REAL levels, instead of those you would emulate with well drawn tiles.

Also, you can easily convert you old gfx in 24-bit mode, load them up in some drawing program and spice them up if neccesary. I recommend you to use TileStudio for basic tile/sprites handling after that.

Anyway, check out my screen by screen scrolling engine: http://games.freebasic.net/forum/index.php?topic=12.0

It's 24-bit and features some sprite sorting so those higher appear BEHIND those lower, something you might be interested in.

24-bit is not that much different from 8-bit (well, it doesn't have to be) and sometimes it's simply enough to convert your 8-bit graphics to this mode, and then in your engine/game use only small advantages of 24-bit mode, like millions of colors to use (no 256 straight-jacket), somesort of transparent spells (use ALPHA blending for this), emulated lights, simple day/nigth feature, or transparent menus. Not that you can't do that in 8-bit, but you are much more limited and a certain type of palette is imposed on you.
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sirToad

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Re: engine comparison
« Reply #5 on: February 24, 2008, 01:54:41 PM »
my wife basically said the same as everyone else. so i'm going to use the first one. actually, that picture is a wee bit old. i later added sorting and depth and stuff, tho it looks close to the same. thanks for the feedback! i'm a little rusty with this stuff. now i remember 24-bit is not hugely different than 8-bit, thanks for reminding me Lachie Dazdarian. i started the game over 6 years ago. been returning off and on. but i will finish it. :)

notthecheatr

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Re: engine comparison
« Reply #6 on: February 25, 2008, 12:16:33 PM »
Both look good, but yeah, the first looks better.  You could make the second one better by making the angles better, but I don't know how much you can do with it.  The first one, I recommend making transition tiles so the tiledness of it doesn't show so much;  by masking you can for example make the grass overlap on the brick sidewalk so you don't have everything square like that.
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