True 8-bit Color Cycling with HTML5
effectgames.com
effectgames.com
An HTML canvas has no palette. And in fact, for didactic emphasis, I just tried this on my phone -- where it works -- that has no color palette hardware at all. This code can only do what it does by doing what the original did not: modifying all the changed pixels every frame. It's emulating the original hack, not duplicating it.
The point was that the programming technique required to make this work is not the same as the one used on palette hardware, so calling it the "true" effect is going to be confusing to people who don't know exactly how this works.
This one does. You can see it in the lower right.
I just tried this on my phone -- where it works -- that has no color palette hardware at all.
This is HTML. It's a software palette.
So, this isn't even 8-bit art, it's more likely 32-bit art. :-)
Maybe we should do palette rotation tricks with (WebGL) shaders running on the GPU h/w to get a similar effect without the CPU hit.
I don’t think that drawing 1920x1080 (or larger!) images pixel-by-pixel will ever be practical, and it probably wouldn’t even look like pixel art to the eye at that point.
That said, once you switch over to more advanced scaling, the artist loses a lot of the fine control over the result that can really make pixel art shine.
(I would also like to play old adventure games like Full Throttle & Grim Fandango on the browser.)
Hopefully he'll jump in and comment.
The thing that unfortunately gets a little lost in the demo is the way in which the color cycling (along with clever color palette fading and some sprite animation) was used as a means to create a world that looked like it was really alive for the whole month long… When you started the app up in the morning, you saw the sunrise. If you tuned in at night, you could see the fireflies. Each day the moon progressed in its cycle. Some days it was sunny, others it rained. Clouds slowly marched across the sky. The whole effect was quite enchanting. Regardless of if we use color cycling or not, I'd love to do something like that again.
http://www.effectgames.com/effect/article.psp.html/joe/Old_S...
FAQ with artist (quite fascinating):
http://www.effectgames.com/effect/article.psp.html/joe/Q_A_w...
I would love to play a game with these artworks!
1. http://www.effectgames.com/effect/article.psp.html/joe/Old_S...
I turned it into an OS X screensaver using https://github.com/tlrobinson/WebSaver
So they shut it down and started a game development company: http://www.goldcartridge.com/
I wonder what they're up to?
As far as Gold Cart is concerned, we're working mainly on some short "experiments". By way of a preview, http://itsmin.com/portfolio/goldcart/gbasp/ Again, thanks for remembering us.
EffectGames is something I'm really familar with. I worked on the open sourced version, fixing bugs and adding features over the last 8 months as part of a school project. I've added libraries, fixed up the online text editor, and learned a lot. Now that the project is over I'm debating whether I should keep up the work and get a webgl rendering pipeline working or if my time is better spent on other things.
Well, ok. Maybe it was just me.
DPaint III is where my animation skills took off. All animations where of a ball that launched off ski slopes onto trampolines, through conveyer belts, and other Rube Goldberg type contraptions.
I still have my A1000 in a closet. I should dust that thing off and see if it still works...
Pretty cool demos
Not to be a smartass but if you'd give anything, why not buy some art books and put in a few hundred hours of practice?
Although I pretty much gave up on trying to improve years ago. I switched focus to creating things with code, and have been faaaar more successful. So your comment is fair, in that I certainly could put time in to learn to draw and animate well, but I have a lot of other focuses for my life right now that can't spare that kind of time.
But, it doesn't stop me from dreaming :)
Well, mostly the fact that most people lack "a certain artistic eye" until they develop it, including people who later become competent artists.
>So your comment is fair, in that I certainly could put time in to learn to draw and animate well, but I have a lot of other focuses for my life right now that can't spare that kind of time.
A valid choice. So when you said you'd "give anything" what you really meant was not that you would actually give anything, but rather that you just wish that you could draw well.
Have a look at this before/after (a 5-day workshop) gallery: http://drawright.com/gallery.htm
Actually, I boggle at anyone who thinks they're at 'mastery' at just ten thousand hours in. That's the point that you're competent, really. Masters are people who are in it for the long haul, the folks over on ConceptArt clocking in twenty+ years are masters.
Working in reduced resolution and color constraints is actually something rather challenging. Lesser artists are going to particularly suffer because they won't have experience to fall back on when they need to find workarounds, especially if their color theory is weak. You aren't going to hit Ferrari's level unless you've already got a solid foundation in place. That's easily five years to be competent at, then you can learn to work within those limitations.
I personally oversee a number of artists around five years in and I wish could get that quality of work out of them consistently.
Why I suggested you see his other work is because I don't think you're actually qualified to assess just how difficult the work is and you should see whose work you're dismissing as amatuer/entry level.
I don't think that you'd qualify as a "true master" with 5 years of experience.
1. The concept of "mastery" is both relative and subjective, so if a skill is particularly common, then an aptitude which could be considered "masterful" in another field might simply be considered "experienced". In addition, for some skills there is not that much difference between competent work and masterful work; as a result, we'd be unlikely to consider someone a "master" of, say, bussing tables.
2. Most jobs are "unskilled", and those who have them are not practicing what they do with an eye toward improvement. They are completing the task to get their paycheck.
3. Jobs that do involve some skill typically also involve a fair amount of unskilled work (note that "unskilled work" in this sense can still require education and experience). They also tend to involve splitting one's time between multiple skills. Working full time as a lawyer for 5 years does not mean that you have spent 10,000 hours in a court room, much less arguing in front of a jury.
Now, with all that said, it's true that practice doesn't scale linearly such that you can simply say "you need x hours of practice". The human brain stops responding well to practice in the short-term and needs time to incubate, so practicing 40 hours a week for 5 years is probably not as effective as practicing 20 hours a week for 10 years.
Still, if you actually did practice the same small set of significantly overlapping skills full time for 5 years, you would be extremely good at those skills.
[1] http://www.effectgames.com/effect/article.psp.html/joe/Q_A_w... [2] http://www.iangilman.com/software/seizetheday.php [3] Free and available for download here: http://everonward.webs.com/seizetheday.htm (OSX OS9 XP)
Link from the bottom of a technical interview about the pics: http://www.effectgames.com/effect/article.psp.html/joe/Q_A_w...
Anyways, after 5 minutes of searching, I found this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZ7UDnJF3kk (Jim Sachs Time Crystal demo)
Funny how warped my memory of this is. Still an awesome demo for it's time. I always wanted that to be a real game...
[edit] To clarify I did not do the drawings on this page. Also if you want to see a good example of slightly fancier effects than just shimmering, look at the "swamp cathedral - Day" sample there and hit options. See how there is one range that is just for the rippling water, but then a different more complicated range for making the reflection shimmer appropriately; in that one they had to cycle very specific regions from purple to green for the boundary between the reflection of the hill and the reflection of the building.
(Also for me the Standard cycle mode is very jerky, but Blend is smooth).