DKC Atlas Forum

[Aaendi]

Sorry for delaying the next update of my homebrew game. My laptop caught a virus, and I won't be able to work on it until my laptop is fixed.

In the mean time, I'm making a top 5 list of the most unimpressive graphical tricks that non-technical gamers find impressive.

#5) Line Scroll Parallax in Genesis games - People believe the Genesis can do more parallax layers than the SNES can because it's CPU is fast enough to render hundreds of individual background layers onto one layer. First of all, the Genesis has built in line scrolling. Second of all, the Genesis's CPU is nowhere near fast enough to render hundreds of backgrounds ontop of eachother. Third of all, is it really that hard to notice the complete lack of vertical scrolling, or how the layers never overlap eachother?

#4) Color - Most people give the programmer credit for this. It is not the programmers job to make the graphics colorful, it is the graphic artist's job. The only thing the programmer does is load the color palette into the color RAM. That's it.

#3) Orchestrated Music - A common belief among gamers is that everything is better orchestrated. To them, orchestrated music is good graphics, and nonorchestrated music is bad graphics. The song could be as complicated as "Beetoven's 1,000,000th" or as simple as "Jingle Bells" and it makes no difference to them. As long as it is played by an orchestra, they will wet their pants.

#2) Transperancy in SNES games - We all know the SNES can do transperancy. Most of the time, it's just there, without adding anything to the gameplay.

#1) Big Bosses That Don't Move - The most insulting example is boss fights in RPGs. Everybody is impressed at how big the bosses look, eventhough they are obviously just static background decorations.

[Scraps69]

I don't think they are tricks heh, they are successful tools to capturing a fickle audience.

Colour can go hand in hand with art style. Successfully done it creates a completely different game ala Okami and the paint brush style.

Orchestrated music has nuances that computer generated music cannot imitate.

Heh, huge bosses is a bit lazy. But RPG's arn't known for their enemies moving so much.

[Aaendi]

Orchestrated music has nuances that computer generated music cannot imitate.

Not the MIDI-like orchestrated music that is overused in SNES RPGs.