Weapon color limitation violations

[JaxOf7]

Alright, so in the nes megamans, weapons have a very simple color limitation rule: "only use the colors that are on megaman."
Not gonna rally against our use of alphas, or point out that using all of Megaman's colors in a single projectile would cause lag on the nes, or even rally against our use of a bunch of colors in Proto/Bass/Duo HUDs.
Just want our projectile sprites, weapon icons, and translations to follow this limitation. Like if you were to just see them on a sprite sheet.

Currently exlcuding:
Super Arm. That is really different.
Oil Slider Flame.
Icons that use a slightly brighter black for backgorund. This is just a tricky issue in general.
Sakugarne Rocks.

Problematic

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Duo fist

Pretty important one, as this also determines what color Duo and "justice energy" in general is supposed to look like.
Sakugarne

Why is he Quint color exactly? Also, do recall in MM7 and MM8 Mega doesn't actually change color when using Rush. It would probably be the same deal with Sakugarne, where on later systems he doesn't change color, but on NES he would just match it.
Laser Buster and Arrow Buster

Water Balloon

Ice Wall

Just Icons

Right, so MM8BDM icons are based on MM3 weapon icons. White border, black backgrounds. Since MM3 is the defining style, that does explain why we got 4 offenders from there, but yeah, it's inconsistent with the color limitation defined by everything else.

And my proposals

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Duo fist

Sakugarne

Laser Buster and Arrow Buster

Water Balloon

Ice Wall

Just Icons

Proposals in action here:
http://cutstuff.net/forum/index.php?topic=10867.0

(old pictures)

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v5a just icons

v5a just icons proposal


Danger Wrap

Danger Wrap proposal

Just Icons

Just Icons proposal

[ice]

I personally don't see any problems with the icons since 9 times out of 10 the icons are always on a separate screen altogether, the 1 out of 10 ironicly being from megaman 3

[MusashiAA]

That new Duo Fist/Duo color scheme is way better, IMO.

That Sakugarne color scheme, while accurate to the NES rule, looks kinda offputting. I'd rather have Sakugarne be the exception.

I feel like only the projectiles should use the same color scheme as the player, but not the weapon icons. Weapons icons only showed up in pause screens, where they didn't even have weapon colors to begin with. Though I personally don't see any problem in doing this.

Arrow Buster should use Mega Man's skin color instead of just blue and cyan and white, it should mimic the usage of skin color from the regular charge buster shot.

[fortegigasgospel]

Also the colors used for the weapon icons in Megaman 3 were all blue and cyan in game which looks odd.
As for Sakugarne, the official artwork shows Megaman normal colored. This would probably be in line with the Items, Adaptors, and Rush where he followed the color changing due to the color limitations while later games (7, 8, &B) he doesn't change weapon colors due to no actual weapon changing happening.
Now taking into consideration the 8 colors rule, since each layer can have 4 colors which include transparent. So each skin/weapon can have 6 colors total to share with Megaman. Peach/Tan/Skin, White, and Black is on Megaman at all times, so let's say those everywhere on Mega and transparent is layer 1. Blue and Cyan change and go along with transparent to make 3 of the 4 colors on layer 2, this leaves 1 extra color each weapon can have that does not appear on Megaman.

[Korby]

As a quick note, we were going to normalize weapon icons anyway.
I can't guarantee the inclusion of all of these suggestions, or even the ones listed in their current forms, but there isn't really much of a reason not to do some of this stuff so I'll be moving this to Pending until further notice.

[Gumballtoid]

I'm thinking Arrow Buster and Laser Buster ought to stay as they are. Their current color schemes help give them identity, plus they just generally look nicer.

On the other hand, if we gave them their own set of weapon colors when equipped by Mega Man, that would help us distinguish them from the Mega Buster.

I'm glad you pointed out Ice Wall, but I'm not big on most of these other ones personally.

[Messatsu]

Not that it matters in the grand scheme of things, but the violation on Arrow Buster is consistent with how it looked in regard to MM8.  Mega Man was blue but the shot was yellow.  Granted this does go against the limitations of the NES, but .....this isn't the NES.  Would folks rather be consistent to the source (Mega Man 8 PSX/Saturn) or the NES itself? I think for SOME of these, that's worth considering.  This is not necessarily limited to Arrow Buster, but it's the most obvious example.  What do you all think?

[IamaMedalHunter]

I'd like to point out that these limitations don't and shouldn't apply to the weapon icons since, as stated by ice, they're shown in a menu screen that hides the game ; and while MM3's menu didn't hide the whole screen, you can observe that all sprites vanish while the menu is up, effectively freeing color layers.
And as pointed out by fortegigagospel, megaman can have up to 6 colors, but he only uses 5 of them, leaving another free color possibly for the weapon.

So, Sakugarne, Laser Buster, and Duo fist would need these corrections ; I think these arranges could go well :
-  Saku's blue color would be colored in Mega's secondary color
or Mega's secondary color would be colored in Saku's blue ;
-  the Arrow's lighter yellow would be colored in Mega's skin color ; same for Laser
-Your change for Mega's duo colors + Duo Fist projectile is good, and the projectile's white could get colored in a lighter blue.

Personally, I don't mind if changes regarding color limitations are made because SplashWoman has been caught cheating : she has 7 colors instead of the formal 6 (white & black & skin, blue & light blue[armor], yellow[gem, tail joint, trident], and red[lips]) and this is still her official sprites.

[Gumballtoid]

I'd rather be consistent with the original source in most of these cases, but it couldn't hurt to be consistent with the NES where it's both applicable and tasteful (such as Ice Wall).

I'm not nuts about changing things like Sakugarne or the busters; the former because its current palette helps set it apart, and the latter because it looks better and helps give them identity.

[JaxOf7]

First off, feel free to post pics of your own suggestions, the sheets are right there. While I would like my proposals used, I moreso just want limitations met.

On icons
MM3 - White outline, black background, wild color selection
MM4 - Blue and Black outline, green background, wild color selection
MM5&MM6 - Blue and Peach
MM9&MM10 - Blue and Cyan and Peach
MM10 had a quick switch. In the quick switch, the icons changed color to Megaman's and displayed over his head.
A quick switch type of system is mostly what I'm basing this limitation on, because in essence, that's what our weapon switching is.
But more so than tech, it's inconsistent to see a red hard knuckle icon when you turn blue. It's inconsistent since most of the icons meet this limitation. It's consistent to see an icon on the field be a certain color, pick it up, and then change color within its limitations.

On using another color
The reason face sprites even work in Megaman is because they're small and you're not replacing a whole guy's outline with it.
Thunder Beam
Drill Bomb
Those are the NES weapons that used both layers on 1 projectile. I'm not sure if you entirely understand how nice I'm being in saying you can do this on as many sprites as you want. 2 Layers per projectile on rapid Wave Burner? No way that shit would fly.
Use the colors on Megaman. That's what every weapon did.

[Promestein]

I'm torn. Sticking within NES limitations is generally a good idea and can make the game feel more cohesive, but I feel like we should definitely take advantage of the lack of such limitations.

Duo Fist looks much better, and Ice Wall looks fine, but the rest, I'm just not a fan of. Particularly Sakugarne and the icons. Sure, you can make them all conform to a set of guidelines, but you get rid of some of the uniqueness and betray the source material in some cases.

Sticking to the NES palette is one thing. Limiting how many colors you can use even further just for consistency is another. But I'm no graphic artist, and I can cope with whatever is used.

[JaxOf7]

Updated 1st post.

[Geno]

By the way, right before v5 was out, someone in the team did make "weapon palette accurate" colours for all the MM3-4 weapon icons, but Mike insisted that we didn't change any of them except Pharaoh Shot and Dive Missile


(I personally think at least Gemini Laser should be changed)

[CutmanMike]

I am highly against removing colour from things like weapon icons just because it's canon that they should be greyscale. Also I generally don't care too much about palettes not being 100% NES accurate as long as they still look good in game and are mostly accurate to the games/concept art. Making things look worse because they couldn't be rendered on the NES is blasphemy!

However I'm all for making things look *better* so I'll leave the discussion open for potential colour changes.

[JaxOf7]

For completeness sake, here are the MM9-MM10 weapons that used 2 "layers" on a projectile.

MM9
Concrete Shot
Laser Trident
Hornet Chaser

MM10
Mirror Buster
Solar Blaze
Rebound Striker
Thunder Wool
commando Bomb
Chill Spike
Water Shield

As you can see, MM10 went kind of crazy with the colors, but it still follows the limitation of "Use the colors on Megaman."