Karnov and its great use of colour

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Joefish
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Re: Karnov and its great use of colour

Post by Joefish »

There's a lot of colour there, but unfortunately the sprite designs just aren't as good. A bit like Golden Axe or Altered Beast conversions.
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Ivanzx
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Re: Karnov and its great use of colour

Post by Ivanzx »

Joefish wrote: Wed Feb 12, 2020 12:51 am There's a lot of colour there, but unfortunately the sprite designs just aren't as good. A bit like Golden Axe or Altered Beast conversions.
The sprite design in AMC is light years above Golden Axe :roll:

There are some very well drawn monsters and creatures, plus the main character. Also the size of them is much bigger than in Golden Axe ;)
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Lethargeek
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Re: Karnov and its great use of colour

Post by Lethargeek »

always liked AMC but it's blocky without any color clash by design so it doesn't fit the OP request
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Joefish
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Re: Karnov and its great use of colour

Post by Joefish »

OK, maybe that was a bit unfair, but the sprites are obviously forced into the character squares which makes them look unnatural and animate in jerky motions. Better to design them as they are meant to be, then make more space around them to avoid the colour clash, as per the point of this thread. Or at least keep the things they pass in front of fairly sparse, so you can obscure a larger area without obviously damaging the background.

And yes, having reminded myself of what it looks like, nothing showcases the Spectrum's display as badly as Altered Beast...

The parallax scrolling in AMC doesn't really work for me either though. I think the background needs to move in smaller steps as it's hard to tell that it is moving separately from the foreground at all.

Of course the release Valley of Rains hasn't helped as it just does everything so much better!
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Re: Karnov and its great use of colour

Post by +3code »

Ivanzx wrote: Wed Feb 12, 2020 8:19 am
Joefish wrote: Wed Feb 12, 2020 12:51 am There's a lot of colour there, but unfortunately the sprite designs just aren't as good. A bit like Golden Axe or Altered Beast conversions.
The sprite design in AMC is light years above Golden Axe :roll:

There are some very well drawn monsters and creatures, plus the main character. Also the size of them is much bigger than in Golden Axe ;)
I agree, but it‘s (colourfull) character based movement, too Turrican 1.
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Lethargeek
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Re: Karnov and its great use of colour

Post by Lethargeek »

+3code wrote: Wed Feb 12, 2020 12:07 pm
Ivanzx wrote: Wed Feb 12, 2020 8:19 am The sprite design in AMC is light years above Golden Axe :roll:

There are some very well drawn monsters and creatures, plus the main character. Also the size of them is much bigger than in Golden Axe ;)
I agree, but it‘s (colourfull) character based movement, too Turrican 1.
btw Turrican 1 has a little bit of color clash though
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Re: Karnov and its great use of colour

Post by +3code »

Lethargeek wrote: Wed Feb 12, 2020 12:12 pm
+3code wrote: Wed Feb 12, 2020 12:07 pm I agree, but it‘s (colourfull) character based movement, too Turrican 1.
btw Turrican 1 has a little bit of color clash though
Turrican 2 (pixel based movement) has, but Turrican 1 (one of my favourites games, I still have the tape) I think runs without color clash.
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Lethargeek
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Re: Karnov and its great use of colour

Post by Lethargeek »

+3code wrote: Wed Feb 12, 2020 12:22 pm
Lethargeek wrote: Wed Feb 12, 2020 12:12 pm btw Turrican 1 has a little bit of color clash though
Turrican 1 (one of my favourites games, I still have the tape) I think runs without color clash.
level one - sprites overlapping the vegetation, maybe more on the later levels
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Joefish
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Re: Karnov and its great use of colour

Post by Joefish »

It's weird; the enemy sprites move in character squares and use transparent PAPER to show through the background, but for some reason they also set their colours one extra character to the left, which leads to the clashes. You can see it on the magenta robots.

The main character seems to be drawn with a wide pixel mask, but is completely dependent on the background INK colour. That is mostly black when against the cyan sky, but changes to red when the background is black. It's quite neat, and also works well in front of the waterfalls (where the INK is blue and the PAPER white). The only place it looks a mess is on the edge of those black rock formations, where they've actually drawn them with black PAPER and cyan INK against the sky, so the player sprite appears inverted over those character squares.
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Re: Karnov and its great use of colour

Post by WDeranged »

No mention of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?

Image
+3code

Re: Karnov and its great use of colour

Post by +3code »

WDeranged wrote: Fri Apr 17, 2020 3:08 pm No mention of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?

Image
Umm, I prefer Turrican 1, no doubt. But TMNT graphics are great!
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Re: Karnov and its great use of colour

Post by Swainy »

Not what the original poster was asking for but I spent a lot of time trying to add colour to OutRun Europa as it was originally intended to be, although you can see why they dropped the idea.

https://youtu.be/B6lqJCcSOpg
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Re: Karnov and its great use of colour

Post by MarkRJones1970 »

I bought Karnov on the Spectrum when it was new and have loved it ever since though it's really hard and I probably still haven't even seen half the game. When I got MAME I tried out the arcade version and actually think the Speccy version is better. The arcade game just doesn't look very good, it's aged badly whereas the Spectrum version has it's own graphical style that has aged much better.

I just wish it wasn't so hard to get further into it! In fact, it's one of those games that puts you back to certain point and sometimes it's miles back from where you were killed. My patience runs thin quickly when games do that!
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Re: Karnov and its great use of colour

Post by arjun »

djnzx48 wrote: Mon Feb 03, 2020 11:10 pm Valley of Rains. Metal Man uses masking on the main character sprite, so the background graphics don't look so blocky.
VoR reminds me of Extreme. Large, colourful sprites; a big HUD; and multi-particle explosions (was Exolon the first to feature this?). It seems to do 8x8 scrolls though and there is no real background clash to deal with.
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Re: Karnov e il suo grande uso del colore

Post by Eugene C. »

I think they got the source code for this game from Data East. All the tricks that were in the arcade version are present, it is not possible to do it if you do not know the game 100%.
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Lethargeek
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Re: Karnov and its great use of colour

Post by Lethargeek »

arjun wrote: Sun Sep 20, 2020 6:38 am
djnzx48 wrote: Mon Feb 03, 2020 11:10 pm Valley of Rains. Metal Man uses masking on the main character sprite, so the background graphics don't look so blocky.
VoR reminds me of Extreme. Large, colourful sprites; a big HUD; and multi-particle explosions (was Exolon the first to feature this?). It seems to do 8x8 scrolls though and there is no real background clash to deal with.
actually VoR has up to 4 levels of scrolled layers with 1, 4, 8 and 16 pixel steps (although the closest layer doesn't overlap)
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Re: Karnov and its great use of colour

Post by Eugene C. »

We need the music!
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