itch.io

Feel free to share ideas and tools to make multiple versions of your art.

I think, for titlescreens and backdrops, the online tool Dithertron on 8bitworkshop is a big help, since it not only converts the colours but also sticks to other technical limitations of each platform. Very useful.

For sprites, you can find a lot of palettes for the classic platforms at https://lospec.com/

Then it's just a matter of importing them into your favourite graphics tool and convert. But you'll have to know hardware limitations yourself, like sprites only having 3 colours on some platforms.

If you decide to try this with some of your art, please do post each version here as an example. I'm curious. :-)

I can imagine.

It's also up to the individual artist to decide what he/she is willing to accept. Some platforms have very limited palettes, and will require your graphics to have completely different colours. So it'll be a balance between artistic pride and how much you'd like a sale.

When I create different versions of my tracks, I also provide different qualities in order to achieve different filesizes. That means a 160 kbps 44100 Hz MP3/OGG and a 80 kbps 22050 Hz MP3/OGG, but it also means 2-4 different MOD versions, which I typically label "Low Quality", "Medium Quality", "High Quality" and "Ultra High Quality". Amiga developers often insists on very low filesize, because they want their game to run on a stock Amiga 500, so they'll most likely pick the LQ version (which I'm really not proud of - but I'll leave it up to them).

Various graphics conversion tools will convert a spritesheet in seconds to a different palette. The only question is if the artist can accept the result. :-)

And we don't know what palettes "people need".

I've never heard from any Super Nintendo developers yet, despite making a SNES version of my tracks (when possible). But I've heard a lot from Atari Jaguar and Amiga developers for the MOD format version. And also a little bit from Nintendo 64 devs for the XM format they can use.

I will still continue to make a SNES version though. It doesn't take that much effort to do, and maybe some day some SNES dev will come around. We don't know. :-)

Question for pixel artists that aren't already doing this:

Why aren't you offering your graphics assets in multiple palettes to make them usable on multiple platforms?

You already did all the work creating the graphics. Sometimes huge tilesets or a large collection of backgrounds. Converting them to different palettes to fit different platforms really doesn't take much effort. I know, because I did a test yesterday and quickly created many different versions of an image, using various tools. And I'm not even a graphics artist, so I assume graphics artists would be able to do it quicker and better. (Apologies for using an AI image in the example - needed an example to work with. First time ever using an AI generator, and most probably also the last time).

Why do this, you might ask? Because: Having a bigger target audience will logically increase your chances of making a sale. And you'll be particular attractive for developers who wants to create the same game for multiple platforms.

Almost all of the classic platforms still have communities today, and there are still games being released for these classics. Why not make your graphics compatible with these classic platforms, when all it takes is a relative simple remapping of the colours? All you need is to spend a little time looking up the palettes for each platform - or simply use a tool that does it for you.

I'm a musician myself, and it's a hobby of mine to (try to) create my tracks in multiple different filetype versions, in order to make my music usable on many different platforms. The funny thing about this is, that the only reason I'm actually selling the amount of licenses that I am, is exactly because of one of these older formats I create. So for me it's definitely been worth the effort.

Curious to hear your thoughts!