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Ex-Ranza / Ranger X questions
Borisz - Nov 21, 2004

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  Borisz Nov 21, 2004
Some people told that the game uses some fancy effects to display 128 colors - can someone explain exactly how does that works? I know the game looks awesome but I never thought it uses more colors, as you can get incredible results with the standard 64 color palette too (Sonic comes to mind).

Also, I have a bootleg copy of this game, which has a sound bug. In the forest stage (3rd stage), the sound starts slowing down. As every other sound effect slows down too, I think something is up with the sound processor going too slow for some reason. I haven't found any ROM that behaves similarly, nor can I dump the cart, so the question would be, how could I reproducate that? What part of the ROM code would need to be modified?

Here's an mp3 on how it sounds like

http://web.axelero.hu/fka2636/Ex-ranza_Stage_3.mp3...

The slowdown is something I can understand, but those wierd drum-kinda sounds freak me out, how come those get there?

 antime Nov 21, 2004
You redefine the palettes while the display is being drawn.

 Borisz Nov 21, 2004
So it is like, when half of a frame is done displaying it quickly changes the palette for the other half of the frame?

 antime Nov 21, 2004
Depends on how you set it up. You are restricted by the time taken to transfer the entries and when you can modify them (to avoid glitches), but I can't remember the numbers. As usual, Charles MacDonald has some info on his site.

Ranger-X also uses the shadow/highlight modes, but I wouldn't classify them as "tricks".

 M3d10n Nov 22, 2004
It isn't like getting "more" colors on the screen, it's that, technically, when using the shadow/highlite effect you can get a 50% brighter/darker set of colors under the masked areas. While this does double the amount of on-screen colors (if you count them on a screenshot), it doesn't allow you to show whatever colors you want.

 antime Nov 22, 2004
If you want to increase the colour range you can try C64-style colour mixing. Using different palettes on alternating frames will cause the colours to blend together, creating new ones. Obviously it doesn't work on all combinations and the effectiveness also depends on your display. The palette redefinition trick aims to work around the limited number of palettes provided by the hardware.

 fonzievoltonov Nov 22, 2004
Mixing raster effect + shadow highlight you can get

3*512-2 colors (1534 at once).

Quite easy to do in a demo but very hard to perform in a game.

Here a explaination of some demo of mine:


  ExCyber Nov 22, 2004
Bwahahahaha... 68K HEART ON FIRE.

 Borisz Nov 22, 2004
okay, so which one of those does Ex-Ranza use?

 fonzievoltonov Nov 22, 2004
"okay, so which one of those does Ex-Ranza use?"

Ummm i opened the exranza beta rom and i'm sure that none of these effects are used.

Only 47 colors on screen...

And seems that Shadow/hilight mode is disactivated (i'm too lazy to confirm by checking the vdp regs).

Only a few genesis games uses raster with colors palette...

-Samurai showdown

-Sonic 2 and 3

-Ristar

...

Or maybe exranza beta is not the same as exranza

[edit]

I downloaded rangerx final and i can confirm that none of these effects seems in use.

Btw: There are very nice 3D intros before all stage, great!

 antime Nov 23, 2004
Take a look at the second level, the places where the sun shines in through the cavern roof are using highlight for the graphic effect.

 M3d10n Nov 29, 2004
Same goes for one of the latter levels, a city with many spotlights soaring the sky.

Some other games:



Vectorman also uses the shadow and highlight modes extensively (actually, BOTH at the same time, but it's not shown in the image - Vectorman's projecties and jet effects use the highlight mode).



This FX-frenzy game couldn't be without it. Look at the flashlights.



Shining Force 2 alternates shadow and highlight to display the characters' walk range (looks really smooth in-game).



Bloodlines got a fair share of shadow effects too.



Here's one of the few games where the shadow effect is used for what it was meant to: shadows.

As for chaning palletes duing Hblank, several games do it for underwater effects (Sonic 2 and 3 are good examples), using a different pallete for anything below the water surface line.

 fonzievoltonov Nov 29, 2004
"bloodlines got a fair share of shadow effects too."

Ummm, when i see the last screen shot (with some ray of shadows on the whole screen) it's a method of priority with planes only.

Some month ago i was able to to this effects (shadow using underlaying plane and not the upperlaying)...

Could anybody tell me how to do that?

HPplaneB on LPplaneA (i tested this without succes) ...?

I don't remember.

Thx

BTW: Shining force MAY not use highlight (or even shadow but i can't say) this is more a palette fadebright/dark trick like in langrisser2.

Fonzie

 M3d10n Nov 30, 2004
BTW, those shadow rays in Bloodlines are one of the coolest effects in the whole game. The slowly scroll horizontally, and will slowly change their angle as you want through the corridor, until they blend to the opposite direction at the other side.

I am pretty sure Shining Force 2 does use the shadow/highlight thing since the glowing has only 3 fixed states (darker, normal and brighter - Langrisser II fade animation is much smoother and fades to a certain color) and due the fact the shadow/highlight are always on top of all tile layers (even the ones that can hide the characters).

 fonzievoltonov Dec 1, 2004
Ummm, i need to download Bloodlines to remember how they do (its easy to do but wacky to know how to).

Thx.

For SF2, i said that because its not possible to make highlight using tiles and i can't imagine SF displaying +30 highlighting sprites only to make the map highlighting.

 M3d10n Dec 1, 2004
It's not possible to do it with tiles? I didn't know that... if so, then how does Vectorman does it? Sometimes there's a nice amount of screen area maked by shadows. Maybe it's just buttloads sprites. But shouldn't sprites not render when behind shadow sprites (in real hardware, that is - it's a bug)?

Well, the amount of sprites per scanline required to mask SF2's walkable areas doesn't look like breaking the Genesis' limits.

 fonzievoltonov Dec 1, 2004
"It's not possible to do it with tiles? I didn't know that... if so, then how does"

In fact, you can make shadow with tiles and sprites

And highlight ONLY with sprites.

"But shouldn't sprites not render when behind shadow sprites (in real hardware, that is - it's a bug)?"

Nope its not a bug

In fact, the VDP draws the sprites in a special optimized style.

The first sprite drawn is the Upper one.

This is because the vdp draw pixels of sprites ONLY if there is transparent color pixel under.

BUT, since the shadow/highlight colors (for sprites) are replacement of color number 14 and 15 of the last color palette, the VDP thinks that the shadow/highlight made with sprites aren't transparent (since its a code like 62 and 63 instead of 0 for transparent pixels).

WOWOW, very crazy to understand, lol. Sorry if is too bad written.

"Well, the amount of sprites per scanline required to mask SF2's walkable areas doesn't look like breaking the Genesis' limits."

What do you mean ^^?

Bye

Fonzie

 M3d10n Dec 1, 2004
Ah, I got it. I found this nice Gens hack, called DebuGens, that comes with extra options to turn on/off scroll layers and the shadow/highlight effect.

Yeah, seems Shining Force 2 ain't using shadow/highlight, because the screen goes screwy (fully shadowed) when you turn it off but the game isn't using it (really weird). That isn't the case with Castlevania: it's using the scroll layer B for the shadow rays.

And I got what you meant on the VDP sprite rendering system. Sounds similar to the Saturn special sprite transparency modes, that won't show other sprites behind them.

 ST Dragon Mar 30, 2005

  
	
	

		
		

			Originally posted by fonzievoltonov@Mon, 2004-11-22 @ 08:45 AM



"okay, so which one of those does Ex-Ranza use?"



Ummm i opened the exranza beta rom and i'm sure that none of these effects are used.



Only 47 colors on screen... 



And seems that Shadow/hilight mode is disactivated (i'm too lazy to confirm by checking the vdp regs).



Only a few genesis games uses raster with colors palette...



-Samurai showdown



-Sonic 2 and 3



-Ristar



...



Or maybe exranza beta is not the same as exranza



[edit]



I downloaded rangerx final and i can confirm that none of these effects seems in use.



Btw: There are very nice 3D intros before all stage, great!




[post=124279]Quoted post[/post]


How can you tell the exact no. of colours on screen in a game? for example the "47" colours is exranza?

Is there an acurate method?

How many onscreen colours does Sonic 2 use for example?

 fonzievoltonov Mar 30, 2005
>Is there an acurate method?

You just take a screenshot (using no filtrering) of the game and count colors (using paint shop pro for exemple) of the shot ...

This isn't really accurate since the no of colors depends of the different sprites/planes shown. So if i say exranza was 47 it was for a shot @ time x in the game.

MMMissile have sometimes more than 70 colors at once .

Some games might have more than 150 colors at once (the games that uses raster + shadow/hlight.

Bye

Fonzie

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