What is Confetti Syndrome? - Gods by Bitmap Brothers on the Amiga
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- Опубліковано 5 вер 2024
- In this excerpt from Forensic Pixology 4, Mike officially defines what he means when using the term "confetti syndrome."
Mike's Definition of Confetti Syndrome:
"When nearly all pixels on the screen of a video game are equally fighting for your attention, regardless of what they represent and if they are all relevant to gameplay."
Here's the full episode of Forensic Pixology 4 featuring Classic Amiga:
• Forensic Pixology Epis...
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I agree with the base concepts from the commentator of this video, but we have to consider that Gods uses a palette of only 16 colors for both the tiles and the sprites... I think it's impressive how the pixel artist managed to give to the game a definition that you usually expect only from a 32 colors game, and sometimes even a 32 colors game doesn't look so detailed. If you zoom a screenshot from this game (of course not a blurred frame from a youtube video!) you can notice there are some finely dithered patterns in the background tiles that on a CRT look as undithered colors! So, the observer could think there are much more than 16 colors on the screen (apart from the copper gradient)... Of course with only 16 colors you could not get a great chromatic variety and at the same time a great level of detail, so the game has that blue/grey/pink/brown distinctive look for most of its levels and, inevitably, sometimes the animated objects are not so distinct from the background. But it's obvious to me that if the pixel artist used more variety in the colors palette, the observer could see dithering in the graphics, especially on a CRT monitor (rather than a simple TV) or no dithering but much more "flatness", so the graphics would have been more similar to a screenshot from a typical NES game: flatter, less detailed, more 8-bit game like graphics!
Thanks very much for the thoughtful and detailed comment. I believe in the full length Forensic Pixology video that this is a clip from we specifically mentioned this color palette is 16 color and is the result of developing and art style which would work well for Amiga and Atari ST.
The artist clearly developed a lot of great techniques such as the inter-hue dithering and in general clearly had much skill and put a lot of work into making very nicely detailed graphics.
That all aside though our point still stands that holding back on such strong contrast in the shading of every single brick etc. could have lead to a game where inconsequential background details were less distracting and the entire environment and game screen could be more attractive and more importantly easier to understand at a glance.
However, we are artists and need to put our pixels where are mouths are.
Due to your comment and that of skan006 I've started making a re-paint to show directly what we mean, and we'll make an entire response video for you guys. It could take a while, but please subscribe if you're not already so once the video is out you'll be notified automatically.
The super detail everywhere is part of the charm! It’s a unique look. It’s not about readability, it’s about style. more readable graphics wouldn’t have the same atmosphere.
You could keep the same exact amount of detail and by more careful use of values you could have lower contrast in the distant and less relevant things, increasing both the since of 3d depth and the readability, and therefor improved gameplay.
Of course this is all a matter of choice and priorities in the developer and a matter of taste in the player.
You could keep the same exact amount of detail and by more careful use of values you could have lower contrast in the distant and less relevant things, increasing both the since of 3d depth and the readability, and therefor improved gameplay.
Of course this is all a matter of choice and priorities in the developer and a matter of taste in the player.
Mark Coleman, is a great pixel artist, regarding the background, was intend to use a CRT monitor or TV, all details are smoothed and mixed in its colors with the AA´s, and the background wall has a good contrast with the character's sprites and props (this last always are violet and orange).
The SNES/ Genesis/ PC ports were improved the HUD!
This is a good rant! I didn’t even notice the bullets in that last screenshot until it had been on screen for ages. 😅
A great explanation about the conflict I've always felt between knowing that a game has "good graphics" but still looks wrong. Another big offender of Confetti Syndrome is Oscar (AGA). It has a larger palette - that doesn't mean they had to use every colour at once! And copper gradients worked best when they were subtle/realistic (See Shadow of the Beast) A shame, because the pixel work is otherwise pretty great.
their games are good and they made good quality games. Gods is my favourite.
God, thank you for commenting on this game! I have hated the colour scheme and graphics of this game ever since it came out. I remember playing it (briefly) on my Amiga with the 1081 monitor. Unpleasant scrolling and clunky animation on the main character made things even worse. It always irritated me that people praised this game - I found it unbearable even to look at.
Yeah, I agree that this game is very overrated. Not necessarily bad, but I really don't understand the extreme enthusiasm towards it.
It's really funny, since you've said that it was Allister Brimble who was making DaemonClaw musics, I've been coming across his name everywhere.
I played Alien Breed II. Allister Brimble. Read some stuff about Agony. Allister Brimble. Played Qwak. Allister Brimble. Played Goal!. Allister Brimble. Read some stuff about Assassin Special Edition and Body Blows. Allister Brimble.
And David Whittaker before him ^^
We were thrilled that he was able and willing to make the sound track for us and could not be happier with the results. He also happens to be a really nice guy and fantastic professional of the highest order to work with. Anyone able to collaborate with him should count themselves lucky.
Hrm, this critique I think does not take into account an important thing. Time, and tools. This game could be considered to be one of the 3rd wave of video games, 2nd wave being 8bit computers (Atari 800/C64). On the ST you had a whole new range of colours, 16 a massive improvement over the C64 say, and square pixels to boot. But... still limited. And I think given these limitations, Mark did a remarkable job. Take a look at this games competition at the time. This was a definitive title, in terms of graphics OF ITS ERA.
Something to bear in mind, there were 4+ artists at the Bitmaps, indeed I was one of them :). But it was really Mark Coleman, Dan Malone that did the stand out pixel art for the bitmaps. Both used limited palettes that were suited to the game. For Gods, it appears this set was arrived at. Im sure lengthy discussions occured between Eric Matthews and Mark about the style and colour themes and that palette was arrived at, as a mutual agrement after months of trial and error + a little of what they knew worked from previous experiance.
Lets talk about the shop UI. I would imagine that elements from it get used elsewhere in the game. Resources were still tight, mainly because of fitting it all onto a single floppy. So you can imagine that tiles had to be multi-purpose. So this idea that you knock back some tiles JUST for the shop UI, seems a little naive.
Pixel art, tends to be what I would describe as "sharp", rather than blurry. This is because CRTs REALLY blurred things, so you HAD to use punchy contrast so that once that passed through the CRT softening, things look defined. Indeed, looking at pixel art on a modern screen with no blur really is a distorted view. Mark knew what he was doing, same goes for Dan. They rendered their art large, and then checked over and over how they locked on a CRT.
I once sat working on Z, and Dan was working on The Chaos Engine 2, and as I was working, I would watch him add a pixel, squint (to blur his vision), remove the pixel, put it back, add another colour, remove, repeat. And this sometimes went on for minutes (for ONE pixel). I can imagine Mark would have agonized in the same way.
So, pick it all apart, from the viewpoint of 30+ years improvement and learning, but beleive me, when his game came out, it had outstandingly good pixel art ;)
This mess happens when you place a tiled background texture on your desktop. Instantly you cant find your icons anymore. This happened a lot on 90s workstations.
Just watched this. I think the critique is on spot on a theorethical level, but on a technical level there is not much understanding of the system the art was made for.
The niches for example light up in gameplay, so there is an interactive contrast where you
The bricks in shadow are just a palette swap of the bricks in light, to save some of the very limited graphics memory for other, more useful tiles. It readyquite well, because it#s an interactive contrast going along with input. This also clearly prevents you from chossing stuff on the right side, which anyways would be less contrast due to colors chosen.
CRTs bleed out different colors in different ways, so a lot of the detail is getting blurred out differently depending on brightness and colors used, which is an effect which can't be observed when looking at the same art on an LCD.
Gods actually is a very technical impressive example how the system was pushed far over the limit, the readability might not be optimal, but it's by no stretch of the imagination bad, there are far worse games available on the system. When played on actual hardware. It's clear that the artist was working with what they had and compared to contemporary games released at the time, it's definitely on of the games which has strong art.
Thanks very much for taking the time to comment! It should be noted that I (Mike, the person doing most of the speaking in this video) have been making Amiga graphics for many decades with a specific focus on hardware banging and optimal use of colors within the technical constraints of the system, so nothing I said was coming from a lack of understanding of the hardware constraints. I knew the game, like (I believe) all of Bitmap Brother's games at the time, were done in 16 color mode, and this was largely done so the art could be done once and used for Amiga and Atari ST.
Please check out this follow up video where I put my pixels where my mouth is and quickly readdress some of what I describe as confetti syndrome specifically in a pixel perfect screen grab of Gods:
ua-cam.com/video/tq-X5fhiQd0/v-deo.html
Also, I'm the lead artists/art director for Metro Siege for Amiga, which also runs on Amiga in 16 color mode, but unlike Bitmap Brother games, it gets many more colors and parallax on screen by leveraging the additional graphical power the Amiga has which the Atart ST did not, such as copper, sprites, and extra blitting power.
ua-cam.com/video/QB1UUcuq_1M/v-deo.html&ab_channel=BitBeamCannon
@@bitbeamcannon2468 yup the other video is way better and way fairer. Also way more favourable with the points getting picked up. The analysis here is hooking into a few very unfair an cherrypicked spots.
The portability back then, unlike in todays demo scene has been also one of the main business concerns and a huge deal. It's in modern games also a huge deal with the PC / PS / XBOX and Nintendo versions.
Also what's a very interesting thing you didn't really bring up was the cultural approach to "realistic and gritty fantasy" they had at the time as the game was released. Looking at a lot of other (airbrush) artwork and media from the time also gives an insight into what mark Bitmap Brothers tried to hit.
As you say in your other video, changing the palette with the blues etc. might be too much and I agree, because suddenly you turn it from the "what 1980s thought realistic looks like" to a "what modern audience thinks lush and colorful pixxel art should be". I mean that specific styles and choices fall out of context is not exactly.
Anyways I still think that if we take all those games on the system, gods is one of the better ones. After all its still talked about and many others did fall into obscurity. And I say that totally without nostalgia, just looking at the amiga library from an artistic standpoint.
This is a great design critique; interesting to separate graphic “quality” from design decisions… very interesting. It’s such a shame this particular game was all one note, visually very repetitive.
Thanks very much Amiga Show!
Confetti syndrome. Never heard of this before, but I get what you are saying and ultimately agree. Still, the art itself looks very nice and does an amazing job with just 16 colours imo. I was watching some footage of Ultracore on Genesis today, and it looks like that game went for a very similar approach there too.
In this video we show examples on how to reduce confetti syndrome with the same color limitations and general color palette: ua-cam.com/video/tq-X5fhiQd0/v-deo.html
@@bitbeamcannon2468 Yeah, just went onto that one, and you made lots of nice improvements there.
I usually agree, but in this case... Sorry, you're damn wrong. Gods is a masterpiece. Case close. ;) (Yeah, hopeless BBros fanboy here ;P)
Thanks very much for watching and for the push-back. As artists, it's up to us to try to prove out points without mere words. Due to your comment and that of Amigamagic I've started making a re-paint to show directly what we mean, and we'll make an entire response video for you guys. It could take a while, but please subscribe if you're not already so once the video is out you'll be notified automatically.
@@bitbeamcannon2468 haha cool, I didn't mean to cause some extra work for you guys, sorry! :) Looking forward to watching the response video nonetheless! ;)
On a serious note, I perfectly know what you mean, but still I like some confetti here and there... Dunno if it's just my naive, inner-teenage pixel side, or nostalgia-infested rose-tinted glasses, but the fact is that sometimes you need some extra (eye)candy - even if it's not functional to gameplay or whatever... :)
@@skann0r Please don't apologize, comments in general are great for UA-cam's algorithm and comments that spark interesting discussion and more content is best of all.
Also, another subscriber had suggested we make a re-paint to demonstrate our points back when we originally released the full length video and we though that was a great idea and were just waiting to have the time to do it.
Spot on
disagree with the every single criticism here. love the art style. love it.
and saying the shop display on the right is a distraction was absurd 🙄 the artist is just displaying its a shop. never even crossed my mind to even think about it as a distraction.
You can display it's a shop using lower contrast than the shop items that the player can actually buy, so that things the player can't interact with naturally don't fight for their attention. It's not a matter of what you display, but how you display it. Contrast, clarity of communication, and screen real-estate are all important considerations.
Yeah, the guy clearly has his own biases and weird takes. Nothing based in reality, just opinions about color management in a pixel art game. Another channel to skip