Mockup Frenzy #7: Cinematendo!

[AdamAtomic]

Mockup Frenzy #7: Cinematendo!



Colors & Resolution:


Theme: NES Games Based On Movies
Start Day: February 27th, 2008
Deadline: March 15th, 2008
Notes:  Mockup Frenzy returns!  Sorry for all the delays, it was a crazy couple of months.  I hope you all stored up some serious mockup-making energy!!  The NES had perhaps the finest film-licensed games of all time, including Batman, The Terminator, The Goonies, Fist of the North Star, and (stretching here) TV shows like The Addams Family and Darkwing Duck:



Your mission is to create your own NES mockup of a game based on a movie.  If you're dying to do a TV show instead...that's ok too.  As usual, the color restrictions here are a little wonky, feel free to stretch them a little if it means creating a piece of art you're really happy with!  Just make sure you work at the right resolution


Is this your first Mockup Frenzy?  Why not check out the rules & results from Mockup Frenzy #1: Mobility!, Mockup Frenzy #2: Ninjas!, Mockup Frenzy #3: GB Demakes!, Mockup Frenzy #4: Invasion!, and Mockup Frenzy #5: Horrorween!, and Mockup Frenzy #6: Musical Inspiration!


RESULTS:

Ben2theEdge, infinity+1, johnnyspade:


johnnyspade, L___E___T, L___E___T:


L___E___T, Lackey, schu:


schu, snake, Teknogames:
 

vedsten, xenobond:


Sorry for the INSANELY LATE COLLATING AND UPLOADING!  Happy holidays, pixelators 

[Dusty]

Oh man, I loved Goonies II on the NES, and I loved the NES itself... I'm definitely going to have to try my hand at this challenge.

[I Am Uh]

Finally! I love mock-Ups.(They're my favey.)
Definitely joinin' this one.

[.TakaM]

this will be fun, I think I know what movie I'll do...

and no parallax? a fair number of NES games had parallax, I guess it was all custom coded then? (not that it matters much since we're just making mockups, but still)

[Rydin]

Thanks! For both a new activity, and for one with such personal synchronicity...This speaks to my soul....especially considering what I've been doing art-wise the last couple of weeks 

[AdamAtomic]

this will be fun, I think I know what movie I'll do...

and no parallax? a fair number of NES games had parallax, I guess it was all custom coded then? (not that it matters much since we're just making mockups, but still)

Heh...parallax on the NES was a bit of a trick.  There were at least 3 valid approaches that I know of, none of which are what we would consider "real" parallax:

1 - Use this special bit that could signal when you'd finished one particular raster line...this is how games like castlevania kept the HUD in one place while the level scrolled.  Basically, the first X lines can scroll at one rate, and the rest can scroll at another.

2 - Keep the background relatively blank, set sprite priority to be behind the level.  Then you can have sprite clouds zip by at varying speeds.  However, you can not have any real background tiles, just the main background color, otherwise your main character will be drawn behind the tiles as well!

3 - Build the level out of sprites, and scroll the entire background plane.  However, the sprite limits (8 sprites per raster line before flickering kicks in) are such that this is only applicable in VERY special cases...

[JonathanOfDrain]

Shatterhand was my favorite game growing up. Collect three betas and you got the grenade throwing robot.

I'm torn between making Say Anything a game or doing that other 80s classic Dreamscape. After all, you can do anything in dreams.

[.TakaM]

this will be fun, I think I know what movie I'll do...

and no parallax? a fair number of NES games had parallax, I guess it was all custom coded then? (not that it matters much since we're just making mockups, but still)

Heh...parallax on the NES was a bit of a trick.  There were at least 3 valid approaches that I know of, none of which are what we would consider "real" parallax:

1 - Use this special bit that could signal when you'd finished one particular raster line...this is how games like castlevania kept the HUD in one place while the level scrolled.  Basically, the first X lines can scroll at one rate, and the rest can scroll at another.

2 - Keep the background relatively blank, set sprite priority to be behind the level.  Then you can have sprite clouds zip by at varying speeds.  However, you can not have any real background tiles, just the main background color, otherwise your main character will be drawn behind the tiles as well!

3 - Build the level out of sprites, and scroll the entire background plane.  However, the sprite limits (8 sprites per raster line before flickering kicks in) are such that this is only applicable in VERY special cases...

just curious, how did metal storm pull it off:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GED_RatIpwU
etc

?

[Lazycow]

1 - Use this special bit that could signal when you'd finished one particular raster line...this is how games like castlevania kept the HUD in one place while the level scrolled.  Basically, the first X lines can scroll at one rate, and the rest can scroll at another.
2 - Keep the background relatively blank, set sprite priority to be behind the level.  Then you can have sprite clouds zip by at varying speeds.  However, you can not have any real background tiles, just the main background color, otherwise your main character will be drawn behind the tiles as well!
3 - Build the level out of sprites, and scroll the entire background plane.  However, the sprite limits (8 sprites per raster line before flickering kicks in) are such that this is only applicable in VERY special cases...

just curious, how did metal storm pull it off:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GED_RatIpwU

I have never done any NES coding, but the scrolling of NES metal storm looks like an old C64 trick which should work on NES too:

4 - You use a block of background-tiles - e.g. 4x4 tiles (total of 16) and rotate the content of the tiles themself (the pixel-bits) anytime they should scroll. Then you can put this 4x4-tileblock everywhere you want to have the parallax-effect. It does only work for small repeating areas as this eats up very much background tiles that cannot be used for other stuff.

[ptoing]

Yeh deffo, the actual tiles are scrolling. One of the oldest tricks in the book really

[mattness]

  mmh.. the Batman sprite is bigger than 8x16, isn't it?

[Ben2theEdge]

mmh.. the Batman sprite is bigger than 8x16, isn't it?

You can take a couple sprites and mash 'em together for a bigger sprite. A lot of NES games seem to have done that. But it counts as multiple sprites.

[infinity+1]

dibs on the life aquatic.

[AdamAtomic]

1 - Use this special bit that could signal when you'd finished one particular raster line...this is how games like castlevania kept the HUD in one place while the level scrolled.  Basically, the first X lines can scroll at one rate, and the rest can scroll at another.
2 - Keep the background relatively blank, set sprite priority to be behind the level.  Then you can have sprite clouds zip by at varying speeds.  However, you can not have any real background tiles, just the main background color, otherwise your main character will be drawn behind the tiles as well!
3 - Build the level out of sprites, and scroll the entire background plane.  However, the sprite limits (8 sprites per raster line before flickering kicks in) are such that this is only applicable in VERY special cases...

just curious, how did metal storm pull it off:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GED_RatIpwU

I have never done any NES coding, but the scrolling of NES metal storm looks like an old C64 trick which should work on NES too:

4 - You use a block of background-tiles - e.g. 4x4 tiles (total of 16) and rotate the content of the tiles themself (the pixel-bits) anytime they should scroll. Then you can put this 4x4-tileblock everywhere you want to have the parallax-effect. It does only work for small repeating areas as this eats up very much background tiles that cannot be used for other stuff.

Ah yes!  Nice one, I'd forgotten about that

[JonathanOfDrain]

I've never used any of the NES restrictions so I figured I should at least try my hand at them.

Would this qualify? The sprite is two parts, they don't have 5 colors.

[ptoing]

Iceclimbers is hardly a movie, no?

[infinity+1]

since i honestly don't know how to avoid some of the restrictions, i get kind of loose with the rules, and if you want to correct me, go right ahead.
this is as far as i've got.



two players, go around the island taping various aquatic creatures.

[boojiboy]

Is there a thread explaining how exactly the color and resolution restrictions work?
I'd love to enter.

[miascugh]

Mockup Frenzy #7: Cinematendo!

Colors & Resolution:

?

[boojiboy]

Yeah I meant to explain what all that means. Raster, 1 perm alpha etc.
I don't expect anyone to spell it out for me but maybe steer me in the right direction so I can enter this and subsequent Mockup frenzies.

[surt]

Yar. What does "1 palette per 2x2 tile block mean"?
Tiles are 2x2 pixels (no mention or tiles elsewhere), or blocks of two tiles by two tiles (if so what size are tiles, 8x8)?

[Ichigo Jam]

Tiles are 8x8, so the BG palette is selectable for each 16x16 pixel block.
Each palette has 4 entries - 3 of these are selectable colours, the fourth is always transparent.

But I don't know what the "fade region" is - is there an example of it in any of the screenshots at the top of this thread?

[AdamAtomic]

Heh...ok as usual, was clearly noted in the specs for this one that you don't have to follow it super-strictly.  But I'll try and clarify it as much as I'm able to...

Background color - one color that the entire screen is set to every frame.  In a LOT of games this is just black, but there are many where it is peach or cyan (but it can be any color from the hardware palette)

BG tiles - 8x8 pixels, and drawn in 2x2 tile (or 16x16 pixel) blocks in *most* mappers.  Some games could draw a single tile at a time (reportedly castlevania III, tho i've yet to see a screenshot that actually does).  Each block is drawn with 1 palette.

BG Palettes - same as sprite palettes, 3 colors and an alpha/dropout.  Palettes could be animated/rotated though!

Parallax - covered in previous posts

Sprites - 8x8 and 8x16 only.  Something like Mario in SMB is made up of at least 6 individual sprites at any time, but obviously that doesn't matter too much for the mockup.

Sprite Palettes - same as BG Palettes above

Vagaries of Sprite Display - only 8 sprites per raster line.  A raster line is a single pixel horizontal line across the display (basically one row of electron gun screen attack)  If you remember NES games flickering a lot, it's because they had at times more than 8 sprites per raster line, so they had to flicker some on and off.  Sprites could be displayed either behind or in front of the BG tiles layer (see Super Mario Bros. 3 for wicked example of that)

Fade Regions - umm heh this shit is pretty weird.  as far as i understand it you can specify a rectangular region of the screen (nto sure if its by pixel or by tile...i think its by pixel), and you can modify the color intensity.  This was frequently used to do fadeouts during cinematics/start/end of levels (as was palette animation).  Fade regions could display colors that are NOT in the normal hardware palette, because it would modify the color signal as it left the machine...totally weird.  Basically, I do not recommend using it for mockup purposes Was a special-case effect that was rarely used afaik.

[JonathanOfDrain]

Iceclimbers is hardly a movie, no?

I just wanted to see if this followed the NES restrictions. Sorry for the confusion.

[boojiboy]

Thanks for the explanation AdamAtomic. I'm still a bit in the dark but I guess the best way is to just make something and if it doesn't fit the restrictions to fix it up.

[AdamAtomic]

I just wouldn't fret over it too much.  Try to stick to 8x8 tiles and 4 colors per tile if you can   That'll get you something that's pretty NES-y looking!  I generally disregard one or two of the more picky restrictions, because I am more interested in the aesthetic than the 100% perfect reproduction of every weird idiosyncracy (sp?) in the system...

[huZba]

Is there a difference between ntsc/pal palettes? Some of those shots have a slightly different palette compared to the one posted. If so, which palette is the one that's up there?

[The B.O.B.]

Was givin' the restrictions a shot, but halfway there, blew it all to poo, and just quit. Was supposed to be a Children of Men mock up. Lotta' things unfinished...

[AdamAtomic]

Is there a difference between ntsc/pal palettes? Some of those shots have a slightly different palette compared to the one posted. If so, which palette is the one that's up there?

Nah, it's actually much weirder than that.  The NES does not have RGB output, and no one has bothered to like get an oscilloscope and try and ascertain what the precise intensity and values are for the colors it displays.  As far as I know NTSC and PAL have the same colors, its just know one knows exactly what they are.  My palette was made from a couple of different ones, and based primarily on looking decent on a computer monitor

[xenobond]

My first time really doing anything here. I was thinking of trying Hellboy, or Firefly, but there aren't mobs of bad guys to kill. I watched Big Trouble in Little China, and started drawing some of the stuff I saw. I spent time looking up more info on the hows and whats, and this is what I came up with so far. Still have lighting, signage, building entrances and then make one of the storms on the other side of the screen.

Here's where it's at, now. The shirt is actually a separate sprite (I was looking at megaman and how they got his face to work on top of the body), so by sacrificing a second palette he becomes a little more recognizable. I could do the same thing with his eyes and give em some whites, but kurt russel is mostly squinty, so this works, kinda.



This level is mostly from the intro, so it's loading docks, so I want to get a chain link fence goin on, some crates, and a few other things I drew in my sketchbook as I watched. I can now sorta see why there were so many bad movie based nes games out there.

[yosh64]

hey

I dunno if this will help, but I just want to try and give some info behind the 1 palette per 2x2 tile block restriction. Hmm, it's all rather tricky, well at first it is anyhows, hehe .

Anyhows for each 2x2 block of tiles, the upper 2 color bits are retreived from the Attribute Table, and the other 2 lower color bits are retreived in the Tile Pattern Table. Basically, the upper 2 bits refer to one of 4 palettes, and the lower 2 bits refer to one of 4 colors inside the palette (note, the first color of a palette is always transparent ).

So in other words, each 2x2 block of tiles share the same upper 2 color bits, which means 1 palette per 2x2 tile block, hehe .

You might want to ignore this, as it may confuse you more. Anyhows each byte of the Attribute Table stores the upper 2 bits of each 4x4 block of tiles, and cause there are 4 sets of 2 bits in a byte, each 2 bits are shared across a 2x2 block of tiles . It's quite hard to explain, but if you are really interested then you should read Y0SHi's NES Documentation (not by me ), as it explains things and has some diagrams and such .

Gah, hopefully this is not too technical or something. Anyhows I won't go any further.

But yea, that image AdamAtomic posted sums up the restrictions very well .

cyas

[QuickSilva]

Damn! I was going to do Big Trouble In Little China. Still, your mockup looks cool xenobond, good job so far

Jason.

[L___E___T]

Hi everyone,

Are there any restrictions on what films we can and can't use?

I.E.  Films that already have NES games like TMNT, or STAR WARS etc.  Along with things like anime and cartoons.  I'm not making all that sense of what we can and can't do with character sprite overlays etc so maybe someone could elaborate a little more or put it in layman's terms.

I'm going to get started and if it needs a bit of alteration then I'll do my best. 

One more thing - are we allowed to animate it if we have time?  I couldn't help thinking why there's a parallax rule in there if this would be a problem.

[AdamAtomic]

There is no parallax rule, animate if it makes you happy!  As for the rest:

Your mission is to create your own NES mockup of a game based on a movie.  If you're dying to do a TV show instead...that's ok too.

Two of the examples given were based on an anime movie and an american cartoon, so...yeah.

[mice]

[Removed].
Wasn't any good either way.

[cave]

"Brokeback Mountain: Flat Tire"

Jack needs to avoid the wheel spanners thrown at him. If he's hit too many times the pressure in the tire will increase and finally blow up...

That is of incredible poor taste. Are you making a joke out of gay bashing?

[Ben2theEdge]

Still need to add some details and enemies and whatnot, but here it is.
Anyone who guesses the movie gets a high five.
Anyone who guesses the game it's based on gets a cookie AND a high five.

[Sherman Gill]

Anyone who guesses the movie gets a high five.

Shoot 'em up, quite obviously.
Maybe you could replace the health points with carrots, or a carrot bar?
I think that movie gave me brain cancer, by the way .

[AdamAtomic]

Nice one ben!!  And yeah, definitely from Shoot Em Up...not sure what game though...there are aspects of RCR in that shot, but that seems like a stretch...

[mice]

That is of incredible poor taste. Are you making a joke out of gay bashing?

Was there a bashing? Isn't that the primal question of the movie?

[L___E___T]

Ben,

Is it based on River City Ransom?    The change bar in the HUD and the look of the sprite remind me of it.

[sharprm]

I think Ben's is based off a religious game that the ANGRY nintendo gamer nerd reviewed, baby moses or something, can't remember properly. That guy should review the mock-ups ...

[Terley]

Bible Games Sharprm?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkNvQYiM6bw

but doesn't mario 2 use the same concept of lifting above the head like that, actually im sure a lot of games of that generation did.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3A-VUq1e_4o

[Ben2theEdge]

Yeah it's Bible Adventures, heh heh.
Mario 2 uses a similar mechanic but loses points since it didn't allow you to throw babies.

[cave]

That is of incredible poor taste. Are you making a joke out of gay bashing?

Was there a bashing? Isn't that the primal question of the movie?

The movie showed quite clearly Jack being beaten to death by three men, as his wife was telling her version of what happened to Ennis.
Now I don't know if you were deliberately trying to be offensive or not, but the point is that it is offensive.

[robotacon]

For the love of all things holy, say that you based your mock-up on John Woos Hard-Boiled!   

Still need to add some details and enemies and whatnot, but here it is.
Anyone who guesses the movie gets a high five.
Anyone who guesses the game it's based on gets a cookie AND a high five.

[mice]

The movie showed quite clearly Jack being beaten to death by three men, as his wife was telling her version of what happened to Ennis.
Now I don't know if you were deliberately trying to be offensive or not, but the point is that it is offensive.

I appologize to anyone being offended by the submission. This was not my intent, at all.
The mockup is now removed.

[sharprm]

The movie showed quite clearly Jack being beaten to death by three men, as his wife was telling her version of what happened to Ennis.
Now I don't know if you were deliberately trying to be offensive or not, but the point is that it is offensive.

I appologize to anyone being offended by the submission. This was not my intent, at all.
The mockup is now removed.

[/quote]

What, what what? Throwing babies is okay, shooting at pregnant ladies is cool, but a game with homicidal homophobics is not? Please post your mockup, else I'll start posting offensive ones too because I dislike political correct censorship. I'll start with a game where you are Borat's retard brother - you break out of your cage to [censored] your sister - HIGH FIVE!

edit: vedsten - its interesting how if you say you don't like left wing censorship you are labelled a homeophobic, hitler lover. Theres a big difference between a game where you are the victim of a attack motivated by racism/homophobia and a game where you are the perpetrator. One just refers to a social injustice (which is good for people to think about) whereas the other advocates it (bad for society, i agree in poor taste). Although both tivialise the issue, its better to trivialise it than to leave it unspoken. It is not okay to tell people they must think like you think, that if you find something offensive they must remove it. Especially since what you find offensive will be so inconsistent - would it be okay to make a game about 'munich'? Or 'gangs of new york', where you are the butcher out to remove a few irish voters?

[Dusty]

I don't get it either... his mock-up was just of a movie with stuff being thrown at him out of nowhere... I don't get where that's offensive(nearly all games have this same premise).
WTF? I think people are reading too much into stuff.

[vedsten]

The movie showed quite clearly Jack being beaten to death by three men, as his wife was telling her version of what happened to Ennis.
Now I don't know if you were deliberately trying to be offensive or not, but the point is that it is offensive.

I appologize to anyone being offended by the submission. This was not my intent, at all.
The mockup is now removed.

What, what what? Throwing babies is okay, shooting at pregnant ladies is cool, but a game with homicidal homophobics is not? Please post your mockup, else I'll start posting offensive ones too because I dislike political correct censorship. I'll start with a game where you are Borat's retard brother - you break out of your cage to censored your sister - HIGH FIVE!

Don't know if the picture what supposed to be offensive or not, haven't seen the movie, just had to comment on this, cause what a load of crap Off course there are political self censorship - or a healthy idea of normal human conduct. Would you approve of a game based on American History X where you played a nazi bashing jews and blacks? Or a game based on Schindler's List where you had to control gas chambers? If not (and god i hope that's the case) this i merely you having different attitude towards what's acceptable and not than other people on the forum.  I you would be fine with comments of racist, homophobic or antisemitic nature, then go ahead, make a point on "political correct censorship", post comments with content of this sort. I'll praying for a quick ban.