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the player also looks nice .. a little bit huge compared to the trees perhaps ..

Yeah, he kinda has a macguyver thing going on... about the perspective... you might be right but then again, in PA3 player is also big in comparison to the trees not to mention Dragonslayer 6...

ps.. can you add houses, fences, gardens and other structures now?

You might want to research ROM6/Sunrise Magazine 20 for that. Peter Meulendijks (Umax) has a detailed article about 'smart' pallettes there. Just look and try if it's of any use

You can get it from the MRC Downloads database, in particular this file.

Setting-up a good allround palette is the true tricky stuff of drawing I think ..
I usually try to setup something with 12 fixed colors, and 3 custom ones..

Yeah, Meulendijks did so too... With PA3 they reserved a palette cycle color as well, to get flashy commercials in towns, etc.

OMG, please not that 'allround palette' thing again... An allround palette is only needed if you do not plan on switching palettes between scenes! ie. only when the coder is lazy.

might.m, those graphics look really good. They really have the whole Secret of Mana thing going on Very cool!

I don't really mind the lack of contrast in the trees/grass, although it could be solved by not using bright green in the grass, or making the shadows darker (dithering with dark-green/black in stead of transparent/black). Just an idea

Keep up the good work!

I think the trees and the player character look great! My compliments. You really succeeded in creating an atmosphere that hasn't appeared on MSX in RPG's yet. I would also be very much interested in more cells

Maybe you could just make the trees bigger?

And guyver is right: you can change the pallettes per area as needed. An area at a beach or in a desert will not need the same colours as a cave or mountain area. Also, you do not need to take colours for the status into account because you can seperate the status window from the play field with a screensplit (palettesplit).

Anyways, keep the good stuff coming ;p.


~Grauw

Depending on how you set up your rpg, you DO need an all-round palette. Think about the border, the player sprites, the player snapshots, graphical items, etc. You need a generic palette to draw that stuff.

For people who are actually serious about building an rpg, I can offer the engine that was used in PA3/Lost World. It is about as generic as it gets, plus it's finished, complete with editors. You do need to do coding, but it's so simple anybody should be able to learn it. When we started PA3, I had never written one line of ASM code, but I ended up doing all the coding (plot coding, if you will). Of course there are some mayor shortcomings that you need to accept, such as no scrolling and a battle mode like DS6

Like I said, if people are serious they can use the engine. i can post the specs (possibilities and shortcomings) here if you're interested. If an RPG is going to be build, I offer my help with the engine and graphics. It would be great if a new RPG was made.

Guyz, this is getting so serious, it's time you form a development team and start kicking asses

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Depending on how you set up your rpg, you DO need an all-round palette. Think about the border, the player sprites, the player snapshots, graphical items, etc. You need a generic palette to draw that stuff. For people who are actually serious about building an rpg, I can offer the engine that was used in PA3/Lost World. It is about as generic as it gets, plus it's finished, complete with editors. You do need to do coding, but it's so simple anybody should be able to learn it. When we started PA3, I had never written one line of ASM code, but I ended up doing all the coding (plot coding, if you will). Of course there are some mayor shortcomings that you need to accept, such as no scrolling and a battle mode like DS6 Like I said, if people are serious they can use the engine. i can post the specs (possibilities and shortcomings) here if you're interested. If an RPG is going to be build, I offer my help with the engine and graphics. It would be great if a new RPG was made.

Well it would be nice to see the specs yes. And hmm generic palettes. Sprites and background share palette *suddenly realises the gruesome shortcoming of the MSX graphical modes* aaaah! If you haven't done that much on MSX for a long time, it can be shocking how limited it is. So yes, you need a generic palette (which sucks) at least a few colors you use for the player.

If you only use a border below you can use splitscreen, and if your inventory/equipment screen is not actually visible (like in Ys) that's no problem either. You just need a specific palette for all the items, although you could even work around that with line interrupts if you really, really want. If the PA3 engine will be used the battle mode is like DS6 which means no enemy sprites on the playing field...it could all work y'know

Well, Princess Maker has a palette split when a dialog box with pictures comes up... An RPG could do the same. Just orientate stuff vertically in stead of horizontally and screensplits will make a whole lot possible!
The statusbar on the bottom with a screensplit in between has already been mentioned a few times.

ABout borders, I think they are overrated, i.e. there's nothing wrong with a black border. That said, you could always make a border with the player colors

And ofcourse, Gfx9000 has none of these problems

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Well, Princess Maker has a palette split when a dialog box with pictures comes up... An RPG could do the same. Just orientate stuff vertically in stead of horizontally and screensplits will make a whole lot possible! The statusbar on the bottom with a screensplit in between has already been mentioned a few times. ABout borders, I think they are overrated, i.e. there's nothing wrong with a black border. That said, you could always make a border with the player colors And ofcourse, Gfx9000 has none of these problems

I agree that borders are overrated, if you have a nice HUD at the bottom of the screen, what's the problem with the upper part being the playing screen - completely - without borders? Now the biggest "problem" I see with the PA3 engine is the lack of scrolling...scrolling rules!

I didn't know btw that Princess Maker used screensplits for the dialog, that's a really cool idea. Having pictures of who is speaking really adds to the experience in my humble opinion, and it gives the really-good-artist-who-sucks-at-tiling something to do

I would really like to see a new RPG made, and would also like to help in the graphics design department and coding.

The point is making an RPG is not as easy as it seems. All this talk about a scrolling engine like YS2 and screen split and so is really nice, but I can bet it remains at talking about it. You are just getting too much "hay on your fork". Believe me, I speak from experience (*cough*roa*cough*)

Im serious. If you use the PA3/Lost world engine, a good team of devoted artists can build a really fun rpg in less than a year. (I build Lost World all by myself). You just have to accept the shortcomings. No scrolling. No battles like Ys2. limited music files (wolf?).
The most important part of a good RPG is a fun and interesting storyline anyway. The pa3/Lost world engine offers enough possibilities to support this.

the current engine was done for 128k .. I don't mind jumping to 256k, meaning that music (and other thingies) can be bigger.. (requires some code-workaround tho)

the current ~6kb for music (less in battlemode) isn't that much unfortunately..

$0.02