MxAshlynn

coder, producer, music fan, teagirl


my building-gamer blog
cohost.org/MxBuilder
my yurivania shrine
midnightpalace.gay/

Faxandu for the NES is way more graphically detailed than any other NES RPG I looked at, with around 4,600 unique 8x8 tiles across sprites and backgrounds... and honestly, as a player I never noticed this. Although, its distinctive sepia aesthetic always stood out. 🎨

My most recent game, Yurivania 3, contains about 3,700 unique 8x8 tiles ~~ a far cry from the 521 in Yurivania 2 ~~ and I bet the vast majority of my players didn't notice either! πŸ˜­πŸ€£πŸ˜…

Hopefully my games' femme aesthetic stood out, too, tho~ 🌷


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in reply to @MxAshlynn's post:

It's just hard to tell how many tiles there really are in a game, I think. Faxanadu actually is one of the NES games that really blew my mind when I was a kid, but it was more like "wow, this looks stunning" than any quantitative or educated metric. Then again, I didn't even know back then that pros also had to use measly 8x8 tiles and sprites and stuff. The little me just thought that they must be geniuses who can do almost anything. πŸ˜„

I can see a parallel between my Faxanadu and Yurivania 3 experiences, though. Like, you can't really tell what the tile or sprite budgets are, but you can definitely tell that there's nice stuff going on the screen and that some things look unique and such. I definitely had some "wow, this feels good for a GBC game" kind moments when I played Yurivania 3.

Hmm, I wouldn't be surprised if players are actually subconsciously avoiding thinking about tile budgets and such when they play a game. Like, on some level you want to experience that same childlike feeling of wonder and immersion as back in the day, and deconstructing the game in your mind tends work against that. Suspension of disbelief or something.

Thanks for the long and thoughtful comment!

I agree that players aren't, and probably shouldn't be, worrying about tile budgets or such technical details . . . I more meant that for me I don't think it quite hit me how detailed the art in Faxanadu was. Maybe I was too young or too inexperienced a player to pick up on that!

I'm really glad to hear that you had some "wow, this feels good for a GBC game" moments when playing Yurivania 3! That's very encouraging to hear!

(I'm also glad to hear you got to play Faxanadu as a kid ~~ I didn't know if games like that made their way to Finland. At least in the US it was kind of a lesser-known title.)

The main thing I was thinking of here is just, it's hard to know how much pay off you get as a dev from putting in this kind of work. Perhaps more people noticed than I realized....

Yeah, it's really hard to tell how much effort you should put into it. I wish I knew too, but I have mostly just resorted to winging it. Like, does this feel good? Does it pull of a style? Does it create the right atmosphere? I try to consider things like those and hope that the art budget somehow ends up making sense.

(Yeah, Faxanadu was lesser-known here too, but my parents didn't care as long as the cartridge was cheap and looked interesting enough. πŸ˜„)