List of 2D PS1 Games With Full Screen Dithering?

[Lawfer]

So far I found the following 2D titles to have full screen dithering:

Arc the Lad I and II
Suikogaiden Vol.1 and 2

Hybrids (Part 2D and Part 3D, like Xenogears or Grandia):

Arc the Lad III


Basically dithering is used to hide the "banding", or low end color gradation which was typical in video games of that era, low color gradation can be observed on low color depth screen for example (though not as noticeable), see 8 bit screen vs 10 bit screen:



The 10 bit screen has superior color gradiation than the 8 bit screen.

Dithering can be used to hide low end color gradation, see:



On the left you can clearly see banding in the horizon, while on the right side you don't see it as it's being cleverly hidden by the dithering.

However, dithering is pretty much useless for 2D games and only serve to add a grainy nature to the picture, see:





But for hybrid games, games such as Arc The Lad III, Xenogears, Grandia etc., mainly games that use 2d characters mixed in a 3D polygonal environement, dithering also seem to have it's uses, as it once again cover the low end color gradation (compare the floor):

[nmalinoski]

Spoiler tags on the images, please; large images break the forum layout.

What, precisely, are the sources and conditions for your images? None of them are labeled; are the ones on the left RGB with dithering hacked out, and the ones on the right normal RGB?

You should really toss in a comparison with what these look like over composite video; after seeing those processed stills recently published by HD Retrovision, it's pretty clear to me that the side-effects caused by the composite video encoding process--color smoothing, giving the appearance of a wider color palette; and pseudo-transparency--were very much the end result the developers were going for.

[gray117]

I think you're conflating how the game may be rendered and how assets may be authored...

Many 2d assets would still be authored into a 256 pallete (or less colours) with a single colour for an effective 1bit alpha.

Other 2d assets may even use only 4 bit colour depth. At such fidelity you will often favour 256 colours since the palette range is wider from the 8bits per channel gamut even if you can only have 256 of them.

In either case it's totally up to the artist how to author the images - dithered or banded or a mix.

Unless you're doing a super sampling demo I'd wager every scaled/lit engine will be dithering on ps1 just for speed.

[Lawfer]

I think you're conflating how the game may be rendered and how assets may be authored...

Many 2d assets would still be authored into a 256 pallete (or less colours) with a single colour for an effective 1bit alpha.

Other 2d assets may even use only 4 bit colour depth. At such fidelity you will often favour 256 colours since the palette range is wider from the 8bits per channel gamut even if you can only have 256 of them.

In either case it's totally up to the artist how to author the images - dithered or banded or a mix.

Unless you're doing a super sampling demo I'd wager every scaled/lit engine will be dithering on ps1 just for speed.

Some 2D games have FULL SCREEN dithering, Arc the Lad, Arc the Lad II, Suikogaiden Vol.1, Suikogaiden Vol.2 etc. While some other 2D games will only have dithering in specific areeas and/or at specific instances, for example Tales of Destiny II or Rhapsody - A Musical Adventure only has diethering on specific monsters at specific moment or gestures, on a specific character area of clothing (hair and top shoulders), dithering only on characters shadows or in Tales of Destiny II only the battle sequences seems to have some dithering, mainly on part the character weapon. Other games such as Legend of Mana only have dithering on the map where you slect where you want to go, while the gameplay parts are originally free of dithering. Some other games such as Langrisser IV or Tear Ring Saga don't appear to have any dithering (at least none that I could find while playing the games for a few minutes).

Game such as Rhapsody, Legend of Mana or Tales of Destiny II have so little dithering that bothering to remove it is not really something that warrants it, HOWEVER games such as Arc the Lad or Suikogaiden have dithering over the WHOLE screen that in the case of full 2D games that don't appear to do anything else but adds grain to the picture, afterall it could be argued that 3D games such as Silent Hill does have uses for full screen dithering even though having lines on the screen isn't exactly improving the picture, but on a full 2D game like Suikogaiden it's really not needed.

[donluca]

Spoiler tags on the images, please; large images break the forum layout.

Code: Select all

.postbody img {
    max-width: 80%;
}

This fixes it.
I had this ready for weeks, forgot about posting it.
If an admin wants he can put this small css code so that it makes the images on the forum as large as the 80% of the post space. I found out that 100% is a bit too big for my tastes.

[gray117]

ergh had a look at some screens appears to be a render effect... Sorry only really familiar with 2d fighters as 2d games on ps1... would assume somehow relates to shading/texture compression limitation, but it's a mystery to me why anyone would apply it to a 2d game (as an aside I find it rather kind of naive/nostalgic in shaded 3d games, but yeah would break my shit in a 2d game). I'd assume either by mistake or because they're also doing something in 3d that they want it for and don't have a choice but apply to whole screen (or that's what code told the artist ) ... might be something that on crt through s-video/composite may have just been ignored/missed.

Can't say I've come across it in an emulator option, maybe I'm forgetting - I presume your screens are emulator shots with an option/driver change?


edit: ofc google's my friend..erk ... see it's all discussed here:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=61746
http://www.chrismcovell.com/psxdither.html
...it's less than 8 bit fidelity graduation (24bit total for RGB) and instead because the end display is 15bit total (presume R5G5B5 = 15) it's a 5bit image attempting to get closer to an 8 bit look... a better comparison is like some of the shit 6bit tv panels that simulate 8bit - except another factor step down... ideally on a 2d game you'd either be in 24 bit mode (8bit per channel), or limit your palette to colours available in a 15bit (5bit per channel) palette and not apply fullscreen dither. Presume in limited instances rather than full screen, the dither will either be in art on purpose, or where system is dithering an unavailable colour 8(24)bit into 5(15)bit. For hybrid games I imagine there were less options available and they were forced into 15bit, aside from which you'd choose to dither to help with (lack of) texture sampling/scaling... In the case of suikoden it looks like they wanted to emulate a softer/3d look for in game, or for technical reasons were limited to 15bit, applied a full screen dither, and then either didn't/couldn't turn it off for cutscenes... or just had dither on and never tried turning it off