16 bit New guy help

[travisofarabia]

Hello! I'm new both to the forum and somewhat to pixel art although I have a good understanding of the basics. Im very interested in the artwork side of game creation and especially pixelart inspired games. Not to mention that after a few solid months of creating some things I am amazed at the detail that can fit in such small packages.

Okay so a simple question, I am under the impression that 16 bit means tiles and sprites comprised in a 16x16 bit square. However I look at examples of sprite sheets and the sprites are obviously larger. I made some sprites in a 16x16 square today and when I was finished I zoomed out and was rather unimpressed. When you play 16 bit games they are obviously stretched out to fit the screen so everything appears much larger. Does this mean a 16x16 bit game at it 100% resolution is very small?

I've kinda confuzed myself typing all this. I would love to include pictures to help but im on a public computer as I am traveling through a foreign country with no direct internet access and alot of free time. and responses would be greatly appreciated!

[Previous]

'16 bit' does not mean that a sprite has to fit into a 16*16 pixel box. It is more about how much colors per 8*8 pixel block and what kind of colors can be used.
When it comes to sprite size, the rule is usually that a sprite has to fit inside a box that is made out of 8*8 pixel blocks (like, 16*16, 16*8, 32*32, 24*64...) because video game consoles such as the SNES of GameBoy worked that way.

[Cobalt Blue]

In terms of Graphics, #-bits refers to the color depth the hardware can display on-screen. color depth is, in simple terms, the amount of colors from which the hardware can work with. in an 8bit display the hardware has a pool of 256 colors to choose from, while on a 16bit display the pool is as large as 64.000 colors.

however, the color depth has nothing to do with how the hardware can display sprites and backgrounds on-screen. while two consoles can work under the 16bit color depth spectrum, the same image can(and probably will) be displayed accordingly to each system's hardware specifications and accordingly to each developer's skill to work under said hardware specifications.

basically, amount of bittage doesn't justify nor determine how a sprite(or an artwork in general) should be displayed, only each spriter/pixel artists determines the final result of working under said limitations. this being said as people often use "8bit" as a terrible excuse for simple/poor/bad/shit shading on their sprites.

also, in terms of specifications, #-bits refer to the hardware's processing power. the higer power the processor has, the faster and more accurate it can display elements on screen without problems. A game that tries to go far beyond the console's processing power may affect the way graphics and elements are displayed on-screen. for example, every time a game on the NES tried to display more sprites than the console could handle (knowing that the nes could handle 8 sprites per scanline), the hardware had to resort to Flickering, which is nothing but alternatively switch between displaying a sprite and hiding another. which was extremely annoying when it happened.

[travisofarabia]

Thanks for all the help! It greatly clarified some things!!

I've tried to upload some images but it doesnt seem to be working, the next time I get to a solid internet connection. I will post a new thread with a few things, I would really like to here critisms and ideas thanks.

[Cobalt Blue]

be sure to use an image hosting service such as tinypic, photobucket or imgur. for now, i'd keep this thread closed. feel free to make a new one whenever you have content to show us o/