New demo uploaded: Basic Color Cycling Demo

jnewman · Post by **jnewman** » Sun Dec 06, 2020 9:50 pm

Basic Color Cycling Demo

Playing with Color Cycling. Only changes colors 7-14 in the palette to cycle a gradient for the sprite displayed on the screen. Inspired by games of old that used this trick to animate graphics.

http://www.effectgames.com/demos/canvascycle/

Submitter

jnewman

Submitted

12/06/20

Category

Demos

desertfish · Post by **desertfish** » Sun Dec 13, 2020 4:26 pm

oh man, thanks for that website link, I've seen that in the past but totally forgot about it.

It's quite interesting to hear the tale of Mark Ferrari the pixel artist for many Lucasarts adventure games such as Monkey Island and how his skills became obsolete overnight once graphics cards got more advanced.

Cyber · Post by **Cyber** » Mon Dec 14, 2020 4:04 am

11 hours ago, desertfish said:

oh man, thanks for that website link, I've seen that in the past but totally forgot about it.

It's quite interesting to hear the tale of Mark Ferrari the pixel artist for many Lucasarts adventure games such as Monkey Island and how his skills became obsolete overnight once graphics cards got more advanced.

Same here about the link. Thanx!

But where did I missed the tale?

desertfish · Post by **desertfish** » Mon Dec 14, 2020 11:44 am

@Cyber i watched various youtube documentaries about MOnkey Island and such, and also the site @jnewman linked above actually has some information:

http://www.effectgames.com/effect/article-Q_A_with_Mark_J_Ferrari.html

Here's a youtube video, I think a long part with Mark talking starts at around 33 minutes in, he talks about how he learned to do dithering for Zak McKracken to increase the number of apparent colors. And goes from there.

Finally, I think Mark Ferrari also did art in Thimbleweed Park.

jnewman · Post by **jnewman** » Tue Dec 15, 2020 7:33 am

I am glad the link sparked nostalgia. I really dig those old graphic adventures as well as text adventures. Played the crap out of the scott adams games on my vic as well as the sierra and lucas arts games (on my PC). They don't make them like they used to! Hoping the x16 will resurrect some of that old magic.

jnewman · Post by **jnewman** » Tue Dec 15, 2020 7:43 am

On 12/14/2020 at 5:44 AM, desertfish said:

@Cyber i watched various youtube documentaries about MOnkey Island and such, and also the site @jnewman linked above actually has some information:

http://www.effectgames.com/effect/article-Q_A_with_Mark_J_Ferrari.html

Here's a youtube video, I think a long part with Mark talking starts at around 33 minutes in, he talks about how he learned to do dithering for Zak McKracken to increase the number of apparent colors. And goes from there.

Finally, I think Mark Ferrari also did art in Thimbleweed Park.

I think this may be the video that originally led me to that link. I did buy Thimbleweed park when it came out and watched the video on him making the art for that game. That lead me to look up.more of his work. Good stuff!

jnewman · Post by **jnewman** » Wed Dec 16, 2020 3:36 am

@Cyber @desertfish

This one may be one you watched @desertfish. It mentions Mark and many examples of different uses.

desertfish · Post by **desertfish** » Wed Dec 16, 2020 9:36 am

I haven't seen that video before but am watching it now ?

Ohh, that video in turn links to a GDC talk by Mark Ferrari himself ... don't mind if I link that here too I hope?

Cyber · Post by **Cyber** » Tue Dec 22, 2020 6:36 am

Thanx, @jnewman! It turned out I've seen this color cycling video, but I was happy to watch it one more time.

But I haven't seen this GDC video with Mark Ferrari. It is super interesting and informative! Wow! Thanx, @desertfish!

desertfish · Post by **desertfish** » Tue Dec 22, 2020 11:07 am

Does anyone know of a stand alone IFF image viewer program that is also capable of showing those color cycling animations?

The few programs I found that are capable of reading IFF ILBM image files (those Amiga paletted images that sometimes contain color cycling information as well) do not show the color cycling... I'm investigating this now myself in my prototype Python program that parses IFF files

Update: my python program can now display IFF ILBM images with Color Cycling. Great Success!