Pixel Art

Program it? The only computer art I've heard of being programmed directly was back in the really primitive days of things like Pong. Well, and I think they assign C++ homework of drawing some simple shapes on the screen with programming. But from Atari, Apple II, Commodore 64, NES, original Gameboy, and forward it's all been pixel sprites. The oldest pixel sprites had a limited color palette (in some cases monochrome because the screen they were being displayed on was monochrome) and each pixel had to be a solid color, but that limitation was quickly overcome as improving technology allowed screens to be higher resolution and greater color depth, and more sophisticated graphics file formats were invented. Currently unless you are making a game to be played on a handheld device of some kind there are basically no technological limitations on 2D art - you can even make your art in 3D and take screenshots for frames, or you can make your sprites with vector art then choose whether to use vectors natively or export them as bitmaps of any desired size.

So, is your dream to create modern games that look retro? Or are you wanting to create games that actually run on old hardware? Or what? You can use Gimp or Photoshop just as well for retro sprites as modern ones. You could also use something like MSpaint, or I imagine there are several programs available which make sprites in one specific color palette and format. There are many collections of sprites people have ripped out of actual games available around the internet; while you can't legally use them in a game, they are very helpful to look at as an example. You can get a sprite or animated gif of exactly the style you want to copy and see how many pixel wide and tall it is, and what color palette it's using.

Quote:Original post by bigbadbear9885
My big future dream is actually a very bigger thing but creating a system is a part of it.

I wanted to develop a system that is as powerful as ps3 or xbox 360 or more powerful actually I wanted to it to have many many games that range from the most weakest graphics to the pressence.

With the state of emulation you can achieve this today with a moderate pc setup. Just build it in a shuttle or htpc case to get that console form factor and load it up with emulators. Write a little app to let you browse your games with a joystick, plug it into your tv and play!

Back in the day a lot of people used DPaint and similar software. Nowadays there are more sophisticated programs that make it a bit easier than artists had back in those days. One application that is used today for sprite work, such as for DS games, is Pro Motion.