Pixel games that use transparency
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Printed Date: 09 September 2025 at 10:24am
Topic: Pixel games that use transparency
Posted By: adscomics
Subject: Pixel games that use transparency
Date Posted: 01 April 2017 at 5:40pm
| As I'm sure a lot of us know, a lot of indie games tend to use the pixel art style for its games. Some people do it because it's easy to make (although they're wrong in some cases), others to give a sense of nostalgia. However, I see it quite often that a lot of games that are pixelly use a lot of transparency. Not necessarily anti-aliasing, but just various sprites and whatever having transparency on it which you couldn't see very often in games on 16 and 8 bit consoles (well maybe a little bit on 16 bit). Just so we're clear, I mean transparency as in a red with a 50% opacity, not simply a lack of color. I honestly feel like having that in your game sort of draws me away from it. What are y'alls thoughts on it? With the ever-growing amount of indie titles that use that style, I just feel like few of them use the style to their advantage (like Shovel knight did). |
Replies:
Posted By: pyrometal
Date Posted: 01 April 2017 at 6:37pm
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I agree with you that many modern effects are misused with pixel art. Personal pet peeves:
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Posted By: mccoyed
Date Posted: 02 April 2017 at 6:11pm
| What are some examples from games where you see those mistakes? I ask because I'm not familiar with all the terminology and am trying to learn as much as I can. |
Posted By: adscomics
Date Posted: 03 April 2017 at 6:33am
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Terraria, Starbound, and Rogue Legacy all have transparency in them I think (I'd have to look at some of them again to be sure but I know Terraria does).
Here's an example of what I mean since you said you're learning the terminology: An image with an opaque blue 
An image with a blue with 50% transparency 
I see examples of the second image rather often in games that use a pixely style and it really tends to bring me out of the game. |
Posted By: adscomics
Date Posted: 03 April 2017 at 6:37am
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Originally posted by pyrometal
I agree with you that many modern effects are misused with pixel art.Personal pet peeves:
I agree with you on just about all of those, especially rotating sprites (Although I can understand that it can be difficult to as I say "respect the grid" for games that use pixel art). By improper upscaling, are you referring to upscaling where the pixels aren't all in the same proportion to each other? |
Posted By: pyrometal
Date Posted: 03 April 2017 at 9:34am
Yes that is precisely what I meant 
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Posted By: mccoyed
Date Posted: 03 April 2017 at 3:24pm
| Ah. So using photoshop-y tools and brush art stuff in a pixel art setting? |
Posted By: pyrometal
Date Posted: 03 April 2017 at 9:24pm
| That, or the game itself doesn't scale to the screen properly. |
Posted By: adscomics
Date Posted: 10 April 2017 at 9:39pm
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Originally posted by mccoyed
Ah. So using photoshop-y tools and brush art stuff in a pixel art setting? More or less, yeah. Basically if you use modern graphic stuff on pixel art in games or whatever without a valid reason, it kinda ruins it. Technically transparency has been used in games like Super Metroid on the SNES. However, I'm unsure if it uses alpha channels or some special algorithm or whatever that takes from the SNES's color palette and adjusts accordingly to give that illusion. I have no idea if that made any sense though. |