01-26-2013, 12:01 PM
(This post was last modified: 01-26-2013, 12:17 PM by Argle-Bargle.)
Meh, coding is coding to me, although I've never coded an entire game, mostly just "proof of concept" stuff, mostly in Flash/AS3, PHP/j-script, C++ and Ruby scripting via RPG Maker. Never been a big fan of completely custom sprites either, cause they usually don't look all that good (often pillow shaded and flat/plastic looking). There aren't that many spriters who make really incredible stuff straight from scratch and even those that do often use specific techniques (often via the use of texture effects and conversion forms). I kinda like an "inbetween" approach, using existing sprite materials and then reworking and editing them to create new forms. Good use of imagination/pareidolia as well. Many sprite forms are generic enough that if you look at them long enough you can see other stuff in them, then you can do a bit of creative editing and ~viola~ you've created a derivative masterpiece. 
==EDIT==
Mmmm, forgot to mention something, on the topic of sprite rendering differences, I just noticed something else that complicates things even further. With Mega Man ZX - Advent, the icons in the menu aren't being displayed individually, rather it's creating one large image for each scrollable block section and then it's running some kind of pallet conversion/image compression over it, which can produce tiny little minute differences from one sprite instance to another. They're not exactly noticeable at all unless you blow them up to like 800% their normal size, but the differences do exist.
The other real nasty thing that the DS does (frequently) is that the game designers often use flat rendered 3D sprites. Meaning, code wise, the sprite is actually a three dimensional construct, but the game's code is rendering it "flat", so it loses it's true three dimensional form. The problem with that is that, depending on how the game was coded, any particular sprite form may not look ~exactly~ the same from one particular instance to the next, even if it's in the exact same sequence.
So basically, overall, at least as far as the DS in general, you're almost never going to get any true level of absolute perfection...because really, none actually exists...unless you just want to post pure code.
==EDIT==
Mmmm, forgot to mention something, on the topic of sprite rendering differences, I just noticed something else that complicates things even further. With Mega Man ZX - Advent, the icons in the menu aren't being displayed individually, rather it's creating one large image for each scrollable block section and then it's running some kind of pallet conversion/image compression over it, which can produce tiny little minute differences from one sprite instance to another. They're not exactly noticeable at all unless you blow them up to like 800% their normal size, but the differences do exist.
The other real nasty thing that the DS does (frequently) is that the game designers often use flat rendered 3D sprites. Meaning, code wise, the sprite is actually a three dimensional construct, but the game's code is rendering it "flat", so it loses it's true three dimensional form. The problem with that is that, depending on how the game was coded, any particular sprite form may not look ~exactly~ the same from one particular instance to the next, even if it's in the exact same sequence.
So basically, overall, at least as far as the DS in general, you're almost never going to get any true level of absolute perfection...because really, none actually exists...unless you just want to post pure code.