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204

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I know that NES had 4-color sprites (with 1 usually being transparent Edit: according to zneak, 1 color is always transparent). How then did the original Final Fantasy have so many sprites with 4 colors + transparent? (Example sprite sheet -- especially look at the large ones near the bottom.)

I understand that you can layer sprites to achieve additional colors (For example: Megaman's layering gives him 6 colors: body=3+trans, face=3+trans). It's odd that these FF ones are all exactly 4 colors + transparent. If FF used similar layering, why would they stop at 4+1 instead of taking advantage of 6+1?

Is there another method of displaying sprites that gives you an additional color?

Also interesting is the fact that the big sprites are 18x26. Sprites are 8x8 (and I think I read somewhere that they're sometimes 8x16) but both 18 and 26 are [factor of 8] + 2. Very strange.

+1  A: 

As far as I know, 1 isn't usually transparent: it always is.

As you noted, sprites are either 8x8 or 8x16 (this depends on bit 6 of the PPU control register mapped to memory address 0x2000 in the CPU's address space). Character sizes not being a multiple of 8 simply means there are wasted pixels in one or more of the constituting sprites.

For the colors, I beg to differ: the last sprite at the bottom, with the sword raised, has these 8 colors: Final Fantasy sprite 8 colors: black, brown, beige, sky blue, navy, dark turquoise, turquoise, cyan

I believe this is more an artistic choice, because each 8x8 block is limited to 3 opaque colors; maybe it just was more consistent to use fewer colors.

zneak
RE weapons: true, but it those are just layered sprites so they didn't baffle me like those without weapons do.
Dinah
@Dinah: (use @zneak before your answer in a comment if you want to reply to me; this way StackOverflow will notify me) Then it really is an artistic choice. They are able to overlay sprites to get more than 5 colors, they even do it. So it's not a technical issue.
zneak
@Dinah (again): maybe it's not obvious at first glance, but it really *is* hard to make good-looking sprites with 8x8/8x16 tiles and no more than 3 colors + transparent for each of them. I encourage you to try it some time.
zneak
@zneak RE '@': interesting, I got notified of all the comments on my question. Must be different for answers. RE good looking sprites with 3 colors: I have and it's very hard. I'm baffled why they didn't use *more* colors. Since 2 layers gives 6 colors, why stop at 4? For the bigger black mage with hat, they use one of the 4 colors just for the shading on the hat. They seemed really intent on only using 4. I assumed there must be a technical reason for that limit.
Dinah
@Dinah: There are also concerns about the sprite limits. The NES's PPU supports up to 8 sprites in a single pixels row, and past that point will drop them, which isn't exactly cool. Remember the castle levels of Super Mario Bros. flickering because of the fireballs? Also, the background is much more crippled than the sprites in terms of colors (each 16x16 block of background tiles also has 3 colors + transparent), and making beautiful sprites on the top of a shitty background might not be much better. All in all, I still believe it's an artistic choice considering the technical constraints.
zneak
A: 

Maybe the extra 2 colors were reserved for the weapons.

Joyce
+1  A: 

You might want to check out Game Development StackExchange instead of here.

fuzzy lollipop
@fuzzy lollipop: Thanks! I wasn't aware of this one. Once the beta goes public I'll post there.
Dinah
+1  A: 

I've just had a quick glance at the sprite sheet, but it looks to me that sprites with more than 3 colors + 1 transparent either have weapons or use 3 colors + a black outline. Also, if you could show that sprite sheet with a grid separating tiles...

ninjalj
@ninjalj: I too would be interested in seeing where the separation between tiles is. I wonder if that would clear anything up. Regarding 3 colors+black: that's my point. Unless there's a technique I'm not aware of, all colors including black take up one of those 3 non-transparent colors available to a sprite. Regarding weapons, I'm assuming they're just another overlayed tile with their own colors but I won't swear to this.
Dinah
@Dinah: I was thinking maybe outlines are separate sprites, and wondering what kind of effects you would do with separate outline and colored sprites.
ninjalj
@ninjalj: I think you must be right. I broke down and found a ROM an used NAPIT to extract the sprite tiles. I can't find the tiles for the outlines but I can find tiles for the characters. The black and transparent parts are the same colormask. I bet that color is transparent and the black parts are overlaid later. It's been ages since I played but maybe if the character flashes white when hit in battle (or something NES-esque like that) it might be easier to change the outline palette to white than mess with the bulk of the character.
Dinah
+2  A: 

I found the answer. I finally broke down and downloaded the ROM and extracted the bitmaps with NAPIT. (btw: staring at extracted ROM bitmaps is really bloody hard on your eyes!)

I matched a few bitmaps and end-results here.

Each character has a color that is mostly relegated to top part of the sprite so I chased that idea a while. It turns out that's a red herring. Comparing the in-game sprites vs. the color masks, you can see that black and transparent use the same color mask. Therefore, IF a black outline is shown, then it must be on a separate layer. However, despite the black outlines on the sprite-sheet, I can't find any real examples of black outlines in the game.

Here's a video on YouTube with lots of good examples. When you are on the blue background screen (@ 0:27), the outlines and the black mage's face are the blue of the background (ie: there is no black outline, it's transparent). In combat, the background is black. @ 1:46 a spell is cast that makes the background flash grey. All black areas, including outlines and black eyes, flash grey. Other spells are also cast around this part of the video with different colors of flashes. The results are the same.

The real answer is that the black outlines on the sprite sheet don't seem to exist in the game. Whoever made the sprite sheet took the screenshots with a black background and scrubbed the background away.

Dinah