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Pink?


Any time you battle him, (SNES) he's pink and purple with a white face, but his sprite is green and red, with a normal looking face. His hair is also much blonder in his battle form. Why do you think they made him look COMPLETELY different than he actually is?

This post has been edited by Diffused on 24th May 2007 18:56

I've often wondered that myself. Maybe the battle form of him was designed by someone completely different than the person that designed his character (on field) form and their wasn't as much communication between the 2. Probably isn't that though but its an idea.

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He's Back. He is The_TrueBOSS.
Check me and my partners out at: https://www.youtube.com/user/TheTrueBOSSofJupiter

Battle palettes and sprite palettes are two different things. Though I haven't done any hacking with FFVI in ages, IIRC the two are different because one of them has to compensate for having only a dozen available colors and the other has to also include generic NPCs.

Because there's a limited amount of palettes, and because the SNES can only hold 256 colors at once in its palette, the devs have to juggle around with colors and try to come up with combinations that work out best.

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"Judge not a man by his thoughts and words, but by
the quality and quantity of liquor in his possession
and the likelyhood of him sharing."

I've never noticed that he's different colors. That's weird because most of the other characters' battle form stays true to their sprite, besides the green troops.

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Praise Be To Helix!

Quote (Silverlance @ 24th May 2007 19:18)

Battle palettes and sprite palettes are two different things. Though I haven't done any hacking with FFVI in ages, IIRC the two are different because one of them has to compensate for having only a dozen available colors and the other has to also include generic NPCs.

Because there's a limited amount of palettes, and because the SNES can only hold 256 colors at once in its palette, the devs have to juggle around with colors and try to come up with combinations that work out best.

Yes, but surely there were red and green colors available on the battle palettes. It seems quite silly to change his /entire/ appearance because of colors/lack-of.

That's not how sprites work with an SNES.

First, there's a chunk of memory closely related to VRAM (video memory) called CG-RAM, which contains palette information. It has enough space to hold 256 16-bit colors.

Also related to VRAM is the object space which is used to hold sprite information. This information can be the position of the sprite, various rendering information, and, what interests us most, its palette. Because of the way CG-RAM is set up, a 16-color sprite has to have one of 16 palettes, each starting at a palette index that is a multiple of 16 (0, 16, 32... basically each 16 color in CG-RAM.) You can't simply mix and match colors - the colors you use have to be continuous otherwise you'd have to store the entire set of indexes to use instead of the palette ID. Kinda heavy on memory.

Outside of battle, we have to make a few concessions - there's a lot of stuff to render. We have menus and windows, multiple tilesets, multiple NPC sprites, backgrounds, so forth. And we only have so much space in CG-RAM to hold it all. That's why Terra has green hair instead of the brownish-blond her amano-style artwork shows her with - she has to share a palette with other sprites, and the only available color for her hair is green.

One evident problem with this can be seen during the scene where you meet Setzer: Celes blushes. This is acheived by changing the palette she uses in CG-RAM to make some colors reddish. Unfortunately other characters share her palette (Sabin, Edgar...) and because of this, they too will "blush" if they're present. This isn't intentional, it's just because there isn't enough space to go around for everyone.

Likewise, Kefka has to share a palette outside of battle with other characters (Relm, Strago, Gogo...) and, therefore, is forced to use that palette's colors. Which is somewhat different from the battle palette.

Edit: I forgot to add this. Sprite palettes in battle have a very painful restriction many newbie hackers miss completely and end up being confused over. The last 3 colors of all character palettes can not be used, reducing considerably the colors available in battle. Luckily there's a slot for each sprite, meaning the palette can be put to more accurate use. I'd expect Kefka to look terrible with these restrictions in place, hence why he was recolored. So it may also be the other way around - it's hard to tell without knowing the devs' original intentions.

This post has been edited by Silverlance on 24th May 2007 22:15

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"Judge not a man by his thoughts and words, but by
the quality and quantity of liquor in his possession
and the likelyhood of him sharing."

Haha, I feel stupid.


Thanks. It's always puzzled me. So I'll just /pretend/ that Kefka isn't pink (I didn't like pink Kefka.... =/ Red and Green Kefka was my favourite.... It just looked more.... Kefka-esque)


Something about the Character's Sprites just seems more like the Characters to me. I don't like most of the Menu Pics (Cyan's is my least favourite)


I'll quit now, before I get more off-topic than I already am.

Edit

"""""BY SILVERLANCE Edit: I forgot to add this. Sprite palettes in battle have a very painful restriction many newbie hackers miss completely and end up being confused over. The last 3 colors of all character palettes can not be used, reducing considerably the colors available in battle. Luckily there's a slot for each sprite, meaning the palette can be put to more accurate use. I'd expect Kefka to look terrible with these restrictions in place, hence why he was recolored. So it may also be the other way around - it's hard to tell without knowing the devs' original intentions.""""""

Just out of curiosity, how do all of the other Characters maintain their sprite colors in battle if this is so?

Edit

I really don't intend to be a bother, I am just too curious. Sorry.

This post has been edited by Diffused on 24th May 2007 22:27

Actually, now that I'm home, I just compared Kefka's overworld and battle palettes, and they're identical. Are you talking about the battle sprite or enemy image? There's a big difference in how those are managed.

Regardless, the palette limitation issues still stand. Enemies images, unlike sprites, generally have their own unique palettes. Therefore the real colors of Kefka are those of his enemy image shown during battles like during the snowfield event. His sprite's palette is most likely different because no other sprite palette fit in with his design any better. The Mog/Umaro/Esper Terra palette has the right colors but no hair/skin colors. The Locke palette has two shades of pinkish red, but in battle this wouldn't work because they occupy the slots that get overwritten. All other palettes simply don't come close to fitting in with his design.

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"Judge not a man by his thoughts and words, but by
the quality and quantity of liquor in his possession
and the likelyhood of him sharing."

I'm talking about his enemy image (narshe, etc.)



Heh, sorry if I confused anyone. I didn't mean to sound so stupid. I tend to not be so smart when it comes to technical issues such as this.



So it would be impossible to stick with one color for both? I still like sprite Kefka better. And either way, it's still different from how he's painted. Anyways, thanks for the help. I REALLY didn't mean to sound dumb, or seem bothersome to anybody, and if so, please forgive me.

I believe this image I made will explain why they didn't use a very similar character and battle sprite

This is how it would look.

This post has been edited by ultimatma on 26th May 2007 17:27

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atma weapon,
ultima weapon,
ultimatma weapon

Quote (ultimatma @ 25th May 2007 07:11)

I believe this image I made will explain why they didn't use a very similar character and battle sprite

This is how it would look.

That shading is terrible

With the shading done right it would probably look alright

Quote (Dark Paladin Danny @ 25th May 2007 09:59)

That shading is terrible

With the shading done right it would probably look alright

Wow, that's a bit harsh. If you can do it better, please do - his mockup did fine as far as I'm concerned to showing the palettes.

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN? Or perhaps buying a really good looking shirt?

Sorry, I come from spriting forums, force of habit

EDIT:

Hows this?

This post has been edited by Dark Paladin Danny on 25th May 2007 18:16

Thats actually really good.

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He's Back. He is The_TrueBOSS.
Check me and my partners out at: https://www.youtube.com/user/TheTrueBOSSofJupiter

Thanks, I've had a lot of practice, I also added the original for referance

The reason that this never was something that I question (I just realize) is I always thought of the fights with this form as fighting with his shadow and it wasn't the real Kefka. (Like when Leo fought Kefka and he found out it was just Kefka's shadow that he just killed) I feel kind of stupid now.

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He's Back. He is The_TrueBOSS.
Check me and my partners out at: https://www.youtube.com/user/TheTrueBOSSofJupiter

Quote (Dark Paladin Danny @ 25th May 2007 13:12)

Only, the SNES only allows 16 colors, not 25 (background/transparent color included.)

Your image would NEVER function in-game, and adjusting it to do so would look no better than ultimatma's attempt. So... easy there big guy.

This post has been edited by Silverlance on 25th May 2007 21:52

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"Judge not a man by his thoughts and words, but by
the quality and quantity of liquor in his possession
and the likelyhood of him sharing."

I realise that, I just like to make my sprites look pretty

fitzchivalry3000 likes pretty

OK, I think the OP got his question answered. The rest is...well.

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN? Or perhaps buying a really good looking shirt?