Castle Paradox

[AdrianX]

..does anyone know the color/palette limitations of gaming consoles? (for example:the game boy can only have 4 (or 3) colors)..what about in the NES?SNES?PS?..

[Cube]

I believe the bit of the system is the color limitation you get. So...

NES: 8-bit
Sega: 8-bit
Sega Genesis: 16-bit
SNES: 16-bit
PS1: 32-bit
Sega Saturn: 32-bit
N64: 64-bit
PS2: 128-bit
Game Cube: 128-bit
Dreamcast: 128-bit

Gameboy Color: 8-bit
Gameboy Advance: 32-bit
Nintendo DS: 64-bit? Actually, I have no idea.

[AdrianX]

..well,honestly,im still confused about the "bit" term.how exactly does that term apply to the colors in the system?

[Cube]

8-bit = Can hold up to 8 colors in a single palette.
16-bit = Can hold up to 16 colors in a single palette.

I think... >.> . It's been a while since I read/was explained anything about this issue, but I'm pretty sure I'm right. It's just not something I ponder about everyday, given I don't do any kind of graphic work at all.

[Fenrir-Lunaris]

As far as I am aware, it's not the actual number of colors one can have in a palette, but may be related to the number of bits that the console/game can handle at once.


The NES's specifications as follows:

# Palette: 48 colors and 5 grays in base palette; red, green, and blue guns can be individually darkened somewhat on a particular scanline
# Onscreen colors: 25 colors on one scanline (background color + 4 sets of 3 tile colors + 4 sets of 3 sprite colors)
# Hardware-supported sprites
* Maximum onscreen sprites: 64
* Sprite sizes: 8x8 and 8x16 pixels
* Maximum number of sprite pixels on one scanline: 8, switching the lowest-priority sprites on and off during overflow (flicker)


And the SNES's

# Palette: 32,768 Colors
# Maximum colors on-screen: 256 (although with a trick which involves lowering the horizontal scan frequency,programmers managed to display up to 4096 colors at once on-screen in the game Donkey Kong Country)
# Texture and map RAM: 64 KB
# Maximum onscreen sprites: 128 (32 per line)
# Maximum number of sprite pixels on one scanline: 256. The renderer had a bug such that it would drop the frontmost sprites instead of the rearmost sprites if a scanline exceeded the limit.



The OHRRPGCE is more closely related to the SNES in its specifications

# Palette: 256 Colors (though the master palette can be customized to display different colors than the default)
# Maximum colors on-screen: 256
# Texture and map RAM: 64 KB (Making a guess here)
# Maximum onscreen sprites: (probably about the limit of 200 or so actual sprites allowed on one map, though each should be allowed to use a different palette

[The Wobbler]

[Joe Man]

NES
CPU Type: modified 6502 8-bit (NMOS)
Clock Speed: 1.773447MHz (PAL) or 1.7897725MHz (NTSC)
Processor: 8-Bit PPU (Picture Processing Unit)
RAM Memory: 16 Kbit (2 Kb)
Video RAM: 16 Kbit (2 Kb)
Game Program Memory: 128K, 32K, 16K or 8K Bytes, 1 Meg, 256K, or 64K Bits
Game Character Memory: 128K, 32K, 16K or 8K Bytes, 1 Meg, 256K, or 64K Bits
Scrolling: Horizontal and Vertical
Sound: PSG sound (2 Square Waves, 1 Triangle Wave, 1 White Noise)
Color:
Colors Displayed: 16
Colors Available: 52
Sprite Colors: 4 per Sprite from the 52 possible
Minimum Sprite Size: 8x8 Pixels
Maximum Sprite Size: 8x16 Pixels
Maximum Sprites: 64 sprites
Maximum Sprites per Scanline: 8
Minimum Cart Size: 128 Kbit
Maximum Cart Size: 4 Mbit
Picture Resolution: 256 x 240

SNES
CPU type: 65c816 (16-bit)
CPU speed: 2.68 and 3.58 Mhz (change able)
RAM memory: 1 Mbit (128 Kbyte)
Picture Proc. Unit: 16-bit
Video RAM: 0.5 Mbit (64 Kbyte)
Max resolution: 512 x 448 pixels
Colors Available: 32 768 colors
Max colors at once: 256 colors
Max sprite size: 64 x 64 pixels
Max sprites: 128 sprites
Min/Max Cart Size: 2 Mbit - 48 Mbit
Sound chip: 8-bit Sony SPC700
Sound channels: 8


Edit: To help you understand the "bits," I'll explain:
A "bit" is a binary digit. The more digits, the higher you can count. With one bit, you have 2 possible numbers (one and zero). With 2 bit, you have 2^2, 3 bit has 2^3, etc. Basically, the more bits you have, the bigger the processes you can perform, and in the case of graphics, the more colors.
With VG systems, the number of bits is decieving, as it is actually the processor bits, so it's really just how complex the actual game can be. If you wish to know the actual graphic capabilities, you should google it.
_________________
"Everyone has 200,000 bad drawings in them, the sooner you get them out the better."
~Charles Martin Jones

Last edited by Joe Man on Fri Dec 13, 1957 1:21 am; edited 2,892 time in total

[Komera]

[Squall]

6 would actually be 00000110

Just thought I'd act like a pompous prick. Thank you for your time.
_________________
You got film in my video game!
You got video game in my film!

[Joe Man]

http://www.thinkgeek.com/cubegoodies/lights/59e0/
I have one of those in my room.
_________________
"Everyone has 200,000 bad drawings in them, the sooner you get them out the better."
~Charles Martin Jones

Last edited by Joe Man on Fri Dec 13, 1957 1:21 am; edited 2,892 time in total