How to Convert SNES Graphics for the Sega Genesis & Mega Drive - Beginners Game Dev Tutorials

[@PigsysRetroGameDevTutorials]

This has been a much-requested topic, so I hope you all enjoy :) Next video will be about the low-res 256 mode.

[@andore_btt]

Hey Pisgy, congratulations on your neat tutorials for SGDK beginners, the Mega Drive community is being enriched by your knowledge! By the way, I would like to make a bold request: could you explain in the future about the techniques used in Sonic 2 to achieve the 320x448 resolution? I think this topic would be important and exclusive, as I haven't seen anyone on KZbin talking about it yet, see you later 🙌👏👏

[@PigsysRetroGameDevTutorials]

@@andore_btt I'm not sure how to do that TBH. I still have quite a few more essential topics to cover first, but I'll certainly consider it fore the future

[@dtcharo]

@@andore_btt we could always try pestering Jon Burton @GameHut to see if he'll bless us with more of the arcane knowledge of MD/Genesis development but it might require some type of blood sacrifice. 😅

[@LucasSaturn]

A trick for using the Megadrive colour palette for the artwork could be to first allow SGDK to calculate some approximate colours for the image, and then use those as a starting point to build the rest of the colours around that. Having a base for some colours would save a lot of the time of trying many different colours.

[@hawshimagical]

now sega does what nintendoes

[@PigsysRetroGameDevTutorials]

Genesis does what Ninten-also-did haha

[@ESEJESEJ]

Great video. The sega community needs a super metroid port that utializes the 6 button controller. I might have said this before but can't say it enough! The ost has already been made and sounds fantastic. Also, and most importantly, great video man! Keep em coming.

[@protocetid]

Someone was porting the first Metroid with a slight graphics upgrade, asked them why they didn’t do Super Metroid or Zero Mission and didn’t hear back. They’re doing Darkstalkers now.

[@mickeymickey9914]

That blue forest looked cool

[@PigsysRetroGameDevTutorials]

I thought so too! Sometimes you just get lucky like that. Maybe it could be a twilight palette for the forest

[@analog_ape]

Yes! Have been looking forward to this one indeed!

[@PigsysRetroGameDevTutorials]

Hope you enjoy!

[@rubens8382]

Your tutorials are GREAT! Thanks, Bro!

[@PigsysRetroGameDevTutorials]

You're welcome!

[@heilong79]

Soleil OST for the win.

[@Alianger]

What I've used for mockups before is paint net's selective palette feature which loads rgb values from a text file, then gimp for color reduction to 61 on an indexed image, moving it back into paint net and repeating the process while also copying over the palette to check for very similar shades to remove. Then I tweak the shades by hand, having memorized the 7 rgb values of the MD palette which is easy to do. But that's just for mockups, you have to pay attention to sub palettes too so will usually end up with a bout 45-50 individual colors max. Aseprite looks nice.

[@PigsysRetroGameDevTutorials]

Interesting, I've never tried that way before. For the RGB values, do you increment in steps of 36? The palette I'm using there increments like this "0 52 87 116 144 172 206 255". This is what someone sent me, as they said this is more accurate to the MD. However, 16Tile works on the usual increments of 36, so I use that palette whenever I need to use 16 tile. I'm personally not sure which is most accurate myself!

[@Alianger]

@@PigsysRetroGameDevTutorials Yeah, what I've generally used is 0 36 72 108 144 180 216 255 but I also have the one you mentioned and that one is based on some tests Tiido did with real hardware output and posted on the sega-16 forum IIRC, with some equipment I forget the name of. Fusion uses steps of 33 so it's closer to the 36 steps one for the darker shades but also not quite accurate to real hardware since that's not a linear curve. When doing mockups from SNES for example the 0 to 52 step is pretty annoying :)

[@PigsysRetroGameDevTutorials]

@@Alianger Fusion looks pretty close to what I see on my CRT, but Gens is definitely a little off! I always have problems running Blastem, but I guess that will be more accurate.

[@Armm8991]

The way i personally do it: Rather than copy pasting the palette color across two instances of the same image i just pick a color from the palette, and then use the paint bucket. You can untick the continuous option from the bucket which basically functions as a color replacement

[@GimblyGFR]

That was very interesting. I used Asesprite a little, but I was not aware of many of the things you showed in the video. I've learned a lot. Thank you very much. Since you mentioned collision detection during this tutorial that is a topic that I'm very interested in. I hope you can get around to talk about it soon. Again, thanks a lot.

[@PigsysRetroGameDevTutorials]

I'll be doing a lesson on collision fairly soon

[@KaskelotenZebbe]

I think the graphics you got were ripped with sprite objects on them, because A Link to the Past uses two 8 colour palettes for the backgrounds. This, along with the simple art style, was decided upon to save on memory, which allowed the game to be quite huge (especially the Light World overworld map, which is duplicated with palette and object differences for the Dark World). Either way, this was a good video and it was nice to see your result!

[@PigsysRetroGameDevTutorials]

Yes, I think there may have been a sprite or two in there. ROM space was really expensive back when Zelda 3 was released, so they definitely wanted to save some space. Doing the dark world was a clever idea by the designers.

[@douggy3222]

This one was a lot of fun! Thank you.

[@im_der_nacht]

Thank you for this great tutorial. It sure beats my method of picking colors by trial and error.

[@euphorik3120]

its also good to mention the importance of meshing two or more colors together rather than a stright line side by side. NOT simply because of limited colors in use as the commonly thought reason and may not even be the case but because it can look to be a more appealing or proper design aesthetically

[@euphorik3120]

although a straight line can look awesome too and meshing is not always necessary to make a kool styled game

[@ThatOldTV]

For me, I use 16tile's sister program, PaletteBatch. It does all the heave lifting in terms of translating sprites (from other hardware) to the Mega Drive/Genesis Color palette. Often, I can't tell the difference. If a sprite or tile is more than 16 colors, I use Aesprite to edit down the amount of colors.

[@solidsnake5712]

Great tip! PaletteBatch make things easier

[@orderofmagnitude-TPATP]

Great topic

[@PigsysRetroGameDevTutorials]

A lot of people have been asking for it, so I was happy to oblige :)

[@Myako]

Very interesting and informative video, thanks!

[@ZombieRyushu]

I love the Crusader of Centy Music over ALTTP art!

[@PigsysRetroGameDevTutorials]

I initially had LttP music, but was afraid that Nintendo might come and harm me, so I changed it to Centy music, which I think goes quite well :)

[@marcosdaniel9845]

Grandes expectativas pra esse ano.

[@euphorik3120]

this video really shows the importance of what usually goes over peoples head - "*use* of color". the S.N.E.S. having a guzillion colors and the M.D. having less is not what that means nor why some Mega Drive games didnt look as good as the S.N.E.S. color wise. its the lousy *use of available colors* giving people the wrong impression that the M.D. color amount was the reason when its had plenty to work with and the S.N.E.S. is never going to display all its available colors in a game. meaning, the M.D. less color palette making some games less appealing to look at is over-exaggerated and isnt usually the case. it was lousy color choices and not displaying as many as it could.

[@euphorik3120]

sorry retying my comment a few times, typing in a cellphone browser with a migraine is difficult and annoying

[@zabustifu]

I'm just used to tweaking RGB values manually: 0, 36, 72, 108, 144, 180, 216, 255. You quickly learn those values by heart. It would be nice to have a little Aseprite plugin that'd make that process less cumbersome.

[@PigsysRetroGameDevTutorials]

I have two MD palettes for Aseprite: one which increments in steps of 36 and another that increments as follows (0 52 87 116 144 172 206 255), which someone told me was more accurate to the actual output of the MD. I'm not sure which is more accurate in reality

[@zabustifu]

@@PigsysRetroGameDevTutorials I guess it's a question with no answer. As long as the colors work nicely together, it should not matter much whether they're rendered a bit darker or brighter. One thing that put me off with 16Tile is that it's supposed to be used with the SGDK, but it does not handle colors exactly like the SGDK does. I'd need to change all of my assets to make them work with both. In the end, I'm happy with Aseprite.

[@PigsysRetroGameDevTutorials]

@@zabustifu Wtih 16Tile I tried the "0 52 87 116 144 172 206 255" palette, but it just messes up the colours when imported, so I still with the 36 incremented palette when using it. Do you have another way of assigning priority and palettes on a per tile basis, as to me that is the main benefit 16Tile has over Aseprite?

[@zabustifu]

@@PigsysRetroGameDevTutorials You can handle palette associations and priorities with Aseprite too, but it's more complicated (on the other hand, everything else is easier than with 16Tile, imo). For example, if you have a tile that uses pal0, and you want it to use pal1 instead, then you have to make sure that all of the pixels of that tile use colors from the 17th to the 32nd. Using the tile system of Aseprite 1.3 makes that easier. As for tile priorities, you just have to do the same: pick colors further down in your palette (from the 9th palette onwards). I have built my stage maps in a way that I just need to run a script in order to export all 3 images: tileset, plane A, plane B. I'm happy with that.

[@yasminesteinbauer8565]

@@zabustifu In fact, there is an answer to this question. You can measure the analog output values of real hardware via oscilloscope. Enthusiasts who made such measurements across different Mega Drive models got 0 52 87 116 144 172 206 255. The difference is not only that the image is a bit brighter or darker, but that it is a non-linear output of brightness. If this is important for you, you have to decide for yourself. By the way, the official MD emulator from Sega on Steam outputs very similar, non-linear, values.

[@videogamesandfilm6821]

what was the game at beginning of video?

[@johneygd]

This is definitely cool stuff,just imagine if game developers did had access to such luxury toolkits,then they didn’t had to do all stuff from scratch all over again, Now another cool converter tool would be an audio converter wich allows you to convert genesis audio to the snes or vice versa (based on the snes sample pack audio kit by associate those sounds with certain fm and psg sounds from the genesis depending per sound driver, or convert those sounds to other systems sounds,for instance if i want to convert genesis audio to apple || audio,i should determine wich of tho sounds serves as a main melody of a certain music song and convert that to the single channel apple || sound,if i want to convert apple || audio to genesis sound,i should be apple to dermine to wich instrument you want to convert it to etc,,, So instead having to play all melodies all over again for each system,you could just convert them to those different formats, And lastly it would be cool to have a convertor tool to convert a source code from one system to the next,let’s say sega genesis source code to snes or vice versa or converting nes sourcode to mastersystem source code or vice versa, then convertor should flag out any unsupported featore from those type processors and let the user determine what to do with it,this way you don’t have to rewrite a source code from scratch for each system,instead you only have debug and optimize the code for that target platform, With such luxury tool kits in mind,it would definitely become a game changer for game developers and homebrewers, But still,this convertor tool kit is definitely something cool and a wet dream and a big step forward in the right direction automization process🙏😁👍

[@sneakysquidgaming916]

Ive been wanting to make Spawn : the video game for genesis

[@Sinn0100]

What about if one wanted to "break" the color limit? How did developers pull that off and would it work with something like this?

[@frankwhite2072]

Is there anything like this for porting assets to the 32x?

[@elvismorales85]

What about a super TMNT game for the Genesis? Use Hyperstone Heist as the mold, then add stages from the SNES versions, and elements from the TMNT/SOR Revenge of Shredder hack.

[@igodreamer7096]

Great video as expected, Pigsy. Question: is it true that Master System have more diverse colors, in comparison to Mega Drive/Genesis?

[@andore_btt]

I'm not Pigsy, but I believe it's wrong to say something like that, considering that MS has a palette of 64 colors and can display up to 32 on screen (mode 4). I believe that the Master System was the most robust hardware in terms of colors for its generation, but compared to the Mega Drive or other 16-bit consoles it is limited, and that's expected.

[@PigsysRetroGameDevTutorials]

The MD has a larger variety of colours, as Andore said, but the way the RGB increments in the palette means that the MS may have certain shades of blue etc which don't have an exact match in the MD palette

[@andrew_stamps]

Youre thinking of the Game Gear which has 12bit color vs Genesis's 9bit color. Though the Genesis could show 64ish simultaneous colors and the Game Gear only 32 at once

[@igodreamer7096]

@@PigsysRetroGameDevTutorials Understood. Thanks! I asked this because I always found strange how dark the games looked on Mega Drive. While in the case of Master System, they looked much more colorful and pleasing to see.

[@Mittens0407]

@@igodreamer7096 The Master System has 6-bit colour compared to the Megadrives 9-bit colour (64 vs 512 colours).

[@andrew_stamps]

I could be wrong here but I'm surprised the image (LOZ forest) has 17 colors as the SNES backgrounds had 16 color palettes. Are you certain one of the colors didn't represent transparency in Aseprite? Likely the first color with the dot over it. Meaning you could kept your brown color and kept 16 colors total.

[@EduardoBonfandini]

Where I can get Genesis/MegaDrive pal file?

[@PigsysRetroGameDevTutorials]

Check out the video description of my How to Make Gen/MD Graphics video, you'll find a download link there

[@insettaccio_bad_bug]

Where did you get the mega drive palette? I've been searching for it everywhere

[@mobrox80]

I’m interested in what the benefits are for sorting the palette in this way ( when using the full 512 color palette ). Sorting on hue seems more intuitive to me but I have next to none exp in pixel art so I have a feeling I’m missing something here 😅 21:50

[@PigsysRetroGameDevTutorials]

You can actually move the colours around in the palette, so can group different colours together according to your preference

[@nikolaus8115]

Thanks for this tuto as well, I struggled for hours trying to understand the mecanics between index mode, color limitations, picture's size, and glad to learn about changing indexed colors on the fly, which I didn't know about, also that SGDK convert the colors automatically..........I guess it's convenient when you want to focus on coding first. Btw, what's the name of the game at the beginning of your video ?

[@PigsysRetroGameDevTutorials]

It's all pretty straightforward once you know what you're doing. The game at the start of the video is Ghost Sweeper Mikami Joreishi wa Nice Body. You can check out the SNESDrunk video on it (which is how I discovered the game)

[@nikolaus8115]

@@PigsysRetroGameDevTutorials Thanks I'll check it out

[@victortristatehate5371]

We can finally play Castlevania on genesis?!

[@PigsysRetroGameDevTutorials]

There's a demo in my Christmas episode, but it still needs a lot of work!

[@euphorik3120]

those are good walls i noticed, because they arent purple but a proper brick 🧱 & stone color. blacks, grays, whites, reds, pinks and browns. seems people have some obsession with purple in the wrong places but its their art idea so w/e. for example, a hint of purple in the sky or water is ok but times i notice purple sky or water in games and think whaaa?

[@CostenaroPlay]

😉👍

[@8squared007]

Yeah this is fine but can we finally get an SNES development kit already? It’s about time.

[@Zinkquer]

i smell lawsuit

[@nikolaus8115]

Merci !

[@PigsysRetroGameDevTutorials]

Thanks!

[@skins4thewin]

That can't be easy considering how much tinier the color palette is on the Megadrive. That was indeed the main weakness of the system.

[@damin9913]

The color wasn't the Sega genesis weakness at all the developers just didn't give the console a chance to show what it can actually do

[@PigsysRetroGameDevTutorials]

I used to think so, but the more I work with the system the less of a problem I think it is. I think it's only digitised graphics that really cause a problem. For regular pixel art you can make it look great

[@skins4thewin]

@@damin9913 Actually, it most definitely was. The Megadrive has a VERY small color palette of only 512 colors total, with only 61 allowed on screen at a time. This limited the Megadrive throughout it's life & you can definitely see the limitation in many games including Sega CD FMV's. It absolutely did limit the system & it has nothing at all to do with developers not trying. Those are the hard facts. You really should get your facts straight before making comments like this cus what you're saying is completely untrue. Devs did all they possibly could with the color palette of the system & squeezed every bit of color performance they could from it. I haven't seen someone post something so straight up factually incorrect in quite some time. Most devs used every speck of color they could from the system, because they basically had to in order to make the games look good. Of course I'm not saying that Megadrive games can't look good. Plenty of Devs have been able to make gorgeous games on the system by really using the colors to the best of their ability. That's sort of the point, the literal opposite of what you just said is true.

[@skins4thewin]

@@PigsysRetroGameDevTutorials Oh no doubt, Genesis games can still look great. It's still a very limiting factor though, no getting around that. SNES games in general look a bit more colorful & vibrant due to it's much larger Color Palette & 4x the amount of colors allowed on screen at once. I think Genesis games could have looked much better had it had a bigger color palette with more colors allowed on screen.

[@mickeymickey9914]

@@skins4thewin Stop sperging out weirdo.

[@XING_10X10]

GS美神极乐大作战？

[@PigsysRetroGameDevTutorials]

对！游戏的名字是：Ghost Sweeper Mikami: Joreishi ha Nice Body (GS美神 〜除霊師はナイスバディ〜)

[@mikutaiko837]

催更中文教程铁子

[@PigsysRetroGameDevTutorials]

一定会有！可是我还需要点时间。