Issue with evening background color

I've got a little problem with the colors in my game.

Level 1, 2 and 4 already look quite nice:


But I don't know what to do with level 3:


I have a feeling that the red background looks too bold on a TV screen. Also, the yellowish fog might be too bright.
And the colors clash too much with the cyan skyscraper and tower.

Do you have any idea how I could change this to make it better?


Also, please note that whatever color the fog has will also be the color of the font. Unless the palette of the status bar has some other bright color that I could use.
I did this in level 4: The fog is dark gray, but I still have light gray, so I was able to use this for the font.

I could have done it in level 1 and 2 as well, making the font white. But this would have meant that the background color of the status bar would have been gray. And I didn't want that.

Likewise, in level 3, I don't want the status bar background to be too similar to the sky. Green is best here. That really dark brown would work as well.
But I wouldn't want the reddish brown for the status bar if the sky is already some kind of red. Therefore, the fact that the second palette has another whitish color doesn't help me with the font since I don't want to use the reddish brown of that palette for the status bar background.


So, what's the best way to improve the colors of level 3?
And do you know of any examples from actual NES games with an evening sky? I know "Rygar" did the plain red for their sky as well, but I don't know if that's really so good.


Oh, by the way: Setting any of the intensity bits in the PPU for the whole background is out of the question. This game shall look like one of the first generation games, so I will use only the standard colors.

Friday the 13th has a decent evening palette. Dunno how you'd adapt it to your scene though.

Anyway, here's my try:

The idea is that the sky is dark but everything the evening sun shines on is bright and orangy, including the fog cloud.

Thanks. But unfortunately, that's already too dark. The background should still be based on red/orange/pink.

Yours is almost night. If another blue-based sky (in this case purple) was an option, I would just use some dark blue as a continuation of level 1 and 2. But we specifically want something red-based, so that it is a nice variation from the previous two blue levels.

Also, the fog is still too bright.

I will check out "Friday the 13th", but I'm still open to other suggestions.

Here's my version... (completely ignoring your 'red sky' suggestions)

And here's one that is orange...(and YES, I refer to color $16 as orange).

Eh, that's still orange to me (a reddish orange, more exactly).

The two major issues (sky and fog) are still exactly the same color as in my original image. So, how is this supposed to help me?


If $16 is orange to you then you should maybe adjust your screen. $16 is Mario's color, so it's probably supposed to be standard red as much as that's possible.

With the red 'color emphasis' bit set, $16 looks red. Or, if you surround the object of color $16 with blues or greens, it looks red in comparison. Otherwise, next to grays (for example), it is red-orange (slightly desaturated).



I'm helping you be more confident in your own judgement, by showing alternatives that you will find faults in.

My first version is what I would have done.

My second version, is what I would have done with a red sky.

Always depending on the screen.
The screen of my mother's laptop shows it as red-orange as well.
While her actual computer screen shows it as bleeding red.
My screen shows it pretty close to the actual red.
My CRT TV shows it pretty close to red, similar to my PC screen.

If I make a screenshot in fceux, which is a 256 color PNG, and try to draw the actual color red (#0000FF or #FF0000) there, it will use NES color $16.

And, as I said: Mario's clothes appear in this color. So, independently from individual screens, the color is clearly supposed to be the closest equivalent of the real red.


Erm, yes.

I guess I'll just have a talk with my graphics artist and we will try out all useful color combinations one by one.

NTSC: Never The Same Color. Actual hues depend on tint control and any "flesh tone enhancement" features the TV may implement. True, $16 is Mario red, but I think the Apple II port of Mario Bros. used an orange closer to $27 because hi-res mode on the original Apple II lacked red.


An emulator or an NES's composite out run into an USB capture box?


Perhaps the most "canon" palettes would be that of the 2C03 RGB PPU (for PlayChoice, in which $16 is 0700, or pure red), that of Animal Crossing for GameCube, and that of Virtual Console.


Try this: Load my NES graphics editor on a PowerPak, convert a screenshot of your game's background, and change the palette inside the editor until satisfied. This gives instant feedback on hardware.

*checks* #D82800 Yup, reddish orange.

If I recall correctly there isn't a pure red on the NES (making this the closest it has to it). Just because they used this color on Mario doesn't mean it's pure red.

EDIT: to further my point:
#FF0000 = red
#FF8000 = orange
So reddish orange = #FF4000 (the value in-between)

If we scale it down to the same range: #FF4000 → #D83600
So I'd say it's pretty close to halfway between red and orange (　・・)

Yes, I just went this far for a subjective argument about a color's name.

There are no definitive RGB counterparts to the NES colors though, so this analysis doesn't really confirm anything.

The color probably looks orange-ish on many setups, but I wouldn't be surprised if it looked almost red on others.

Well, I was going by the screenshot which is obviously the intended color for the artwork here (・＜・)

Is this any better?

Maybe. I'll have to talk with my graphics artist to see what she thinks about gray fog on the reddish screen.

I wouldn't make the skyscraper red, though. It's cyan in the other levels and it's supposed to be the same building, so it cannot be bright red here.

But as I said, I'll have a thorough analysis with my artist.

Using Drag's suggestion as the basis, with the primary purpose of giving the fog a relatively warmer hue (which would bring it into the lavender range), I've come up with the following:

Disregard subtle differences. The NEStopia YUV palette is what I keep loaded in my Photoshop swatches, so this uses that. It is a noticeably less saturated palette than others.

Also, this wouldn't look good if you are running an older version of FCEUX (before 2.20, I think, when the palette was updated to correct an erroneous entry for palette #23).

Here's a crazy idea. There's no other fog color that plays well with the scene, it's either gray or this, everything else clashes or is too bright.

I didn't notice this earlier. If you want to imply that the cyan (I assume #0C & #1C) buildings are lit by an orange sky, #08 & $19 (warm olive-ish, assuming we're using an NTSC point of reference) could be viable options.

Actually, I think if I were to go about this, I'd probably reduce the total color count and go with roughly monochromatic backgrounds to reduce visual competition with the foreground, also taking a nod from Drag's orange fog suggestion at the sunset:


This would free up a dedicated HUD palette as well.

Sorry, but none of these color combinations are what I have in mind.
This whole orange/purple stuff looks much too neon-like.

And the color reduction in the last post makes the game look like a Super Game Boy game. That's totally out of the question.
Level 1, 2 and 4 already have the perfect colors, so I won't change anything in them.

As I said earlier, for level 3, I guess I'll just have to go through all possible combinations with my graphics artist after all.

Sorry dude, we tried.

In case anybody is interested, these are the colors that we came up with in the end:

The colors on objects change drastically on predominantly different lighting scenes. If you change the building to blue it is effectively changing the light of the scene. With the limited NES palette I don't think a lot can be done in terms of light moods, so a little bit of a stretch has to be done in order to get such results.

The ones you guys decided on are nice tho.

i think i'm agreeing with nesrocks here, it makes me think of how a spruce forest goes from mid-dark cold green to all reds and oranges in the world during sundown. It's a very strong means for symbolizing evening/sunset this way, even if it in reality is just a small portion of the evening.

The one you picked is more dusky, which i think is pretty cool, too!


Here's an idea though. You could try and replace a few clouds with stars coming out. Just by a little during evening, and then some more during night. I think it could really help conveying the sense of time shifting, and require only a very few extra characters in memory. I've made it with a little as two, but that's on the conservative side.

I actually tried a reddish background more than once. We had yellow, solid red, purplish/pinkish. But it always had the problem that it hurt my eyes. After playing level 1 and 2, the color in level 3 just didn't look very pleasant. That's why I decided for the dim blue and the gray clouds.


The problem with this is: We don't have a single graphics tile left. We literally used all 256 tiles, both in the background and for the sprites.

Also, the game is basically finished. The only reason why it's not out yet is all the external stuff: Artworks, manual, box etc. I will include one more sound effect that came to my mind in the meantime, but I won't do any major stuff anymore like a dynamic background image.

I was doing this hack earlier this year (I'm not going to finish it, probably). Maybe it can give you an idea.

An idea for an evening color? Not really what I had in mind. The background is much brighter than my level 2 sky.
Besides, I'm not looking for a color suggestion anymore. The colors for the game are finished.

Cool! I didn't know it was so close to release - congratulations!

Yeah and i think there could a problem with the main protagonists' hair colour vs. a red-toned evening sky.

Thanks. I hope that we can publish it in December.
If it was just the ROM, I would have released it some time ago. But the whole additional stuff: Manual, package etc. still takes time.
And in the meantime, I optimized and altered the ROM here and there since I still have the time to do these alterations. (Manual, box artwork and all the stuff are done by other people.)