/vr/ - Retro Games

Capcom arcade games were specifically designed with 4:3 in mind. They even drew their sprite lineart on graph paper with rectangular cels.

>>6881834
On the subject of CPS stuff, Akiman actually produced specialized graph paper with rectangular cels to match how the pixels would be displayed on screen so artists could draw sprite lineart and keep track of the number of tiles used and such while working in the correct proportions.

This is Capcom CPS graph paper. Note that the cels are rectangles.

As an addition to the graph paper thing, Capcom's arcade spriters actually used specially-developed graph paper that kept their arcade systems' unusual pixel aspect ratio in mind. You can see here that the cels are rectangular rather than square. There are also thicker lines that define each 16x16 pixel tile.

Graph paper is the key to everything.

>>4988632
>CPS2 games did account for the game to be stretched by displays.
The CPS systems were a rather extreme example of difference in storage aspect ratio vs display aspect ratio, so they more or less had to. Here's a glimpse at some graph paper they used to draw sprite lineart on. Note that all the cels representing pixels and tiles are rectangular.

>>4163670
They drew the lineart for them on special graph paper with rectangular cels that matched the displayed pixel aspect ratio. This let them keep track of things at a pixel/tile level (necessary for memory allocation) while also ensuring the desired proportions.

>>3990906
>>3991227
Akiman actually had to design special graph paper with rectangular cells because of the CPS systems' anamorphic nature (384 x 224 resolution stretched to 4:3, meaning each pixel is taller than it is wide).

Probably depends on the dev. For systems with more extreme discrepancies between storage ratio and display ratio (like Capcom's arcade boards) they definitely took the stretching into account and designed things with the way they'd look an a 4:3 monitor in mind. Note how this sprite lineart was drawn on graph paper with rectangular cels.

>>2549917
>Then maybe nearly every game I tried had a sloppy art direction
Got an example?
>One reason is that pixel graphics were made with graph paper and graph paper happens to have squares most of the time
Some anon in a recent aspect ratio thread posted sketches from Street Fighter 2 development (pic related). The artist used graph paper with non-square pixels, precisely to account for this during development

>Japs used 640x200 and 640x400 both with 16:10 aspect ratios even though they have over 64k pixels
Planar modes are not that suitable for fancy realtime graphics or large palettes. There's a reason games were 320x200 while 640x480 was widely available.

>Monitors were just 4:3 because CRTubes weren't very suited for widescreen.
Widescreen was not even a thing.

Most of Capcom's old arcade hardware used a 364 x 224 resolution stretched to 4:3. During the development of Street Fighter 2, Akiman actually developed graph paper with rectangular cels representing the stretched pixels for drawing sprite lineart on. You can also notice that the 16x16 pixel tiles are marked with thicker lines, so that the developers could know how many tiles each frame would use up before they even put anything into the computer.

Former Capcom artist Akiman recently posted a few drawings on Twitter than give some insight into how they created their fighting game sprites. One interesting thing to note is that they are drawn on a special graph paper that Akiman himself designed to take into account the CPS systems' pixel aspect ratio (384 x 224 resolution displayed at 4:3, meaning each pixel has a ratio of 7:9). It's also divided into tiles of 16x16 pixels which helps keep track of how much data each sprite will take up.