Can be bridged, for sure. What might perhaps be interesting is to slightly
change the in-game theme upon encountering a given race or while be in
contact with them, such that the in-game graphics gets coupled with the art
and mystical element of the races.
Nice find!
That's actually not a huge problem. Basically, the framebuffer is already a
recorder! It just needs to incorporate some specifications of a video camera
and record a scene from an angle and a certain distance. Sort of. The
artifacts will come naturally, esp. the color bleeding you see in the picture
you've posted. My engine already does it. Guess for example you have a cube
with a b/w checkboard pattern rotating in 3d at a certain distance. You will
see such fine stretches of red/green colors forming a moiré pattern. Quite an
important effect in bringing back the video to video games. The effect always
happens when there is a huge difference in luminance. Colored pictures will
sufferer from it as well yet slightly different. Unfortunately, I can't focus
on the 3d stuff yet. :| I'm burning for it to apply all the stuff to 3d. It's
going to look amazing, am pretty sure about it. In 3d the effects will rock
much more than in 2d, because in 3d the projected frequency of patterns
changes with distance easily. So given the cube with its checkboard pattern in
perspective view, the engine will also draw a very nice curved moiré pattern
onto the cube as well. And the pattern will move relative to the cube if the
cube rotates.
Yeah ... that's video!
Am currently working on color dithering. It's a little bit more difficult then
just gray level dithering, because there is much more what can influence the
reproduction of shades to produce good color pictures esp. considering to
dither into fixed color tables. Color dithering is not only cool by itself, it
is also has a very important effect on the reproduction of the look & feel of
old-school video games. One will never get the old-school effect done right
while using continuous (24-bit) shades. Why? Well, the dither patterns will
smooth out under a CRT to some degree forming sort of a continuous tone/shade,
but the discontinuous nature of said pattern produce higher frequencies and
will as such produce interference which will influence the reproduction of the
intended color(s). The subtle way the colors of a pattern gets manipulated
(due to its frequency structure) by signal transmission/modulation and the CRT
can't be replicated while using continuous shades (24-bit). So that's a very
important characteristic of reproducing the retro look.
But razu, you know what's cool as well? To simulating the recording on video
tape, i.e. VHS, Betamax, and friends.
That's not too difficult to realize.
So guess for example you have a playback/replay option in your retro game, you
will get to see the playback from tape. xD
