Love it, hate it or meh? what games did it improve (not counting those based entirely around it)? which ones were made worse by it?
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Mode 7
Love it, hate it or meh? what games did it improve (not counting those based entirely around it)? which ones were made worse by it?
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I don't get why it became a sort of meme to hate on mode7, I guess it's because it was a marketing word, much like how people make fun of blast processing now, but yeah everytime I see people shit-talking mode 7 I remember how much fun F-Zero is and how smoothly it runs compared to other racers of the era on consoles.
But if I had to pick my favorite use of mode7, it'd be Taito's On The Ball/Cameltry. Addictive as frick, that game.
Can't think of any game where the use of mode7 made it "worse". I love the overhead levels in Contra III, some people complain about them but it's so much fun to shoot while rotating with L and R, more fun than the more tame cabal-style levels of Contra 1 imo.
Mode 7 has been a meme since at least the late 2000s. SNES fanboys and some game journalists hyped it up a lot and it naturally gained a contrarian counter who think it's overrated or not as great as it has been made out to be.
I like the effect. It's the main way to distinct SNES games. My favorite mode 7 game is Pilotwings.
Pilotwings used a SD-1 co-processor to speed things up and that right there indicates the problem: the SNES had very slow memory. So shitty games like Castlevania 4 would stop and made you sit still while nothing happens until backgrounds finished spinning so they could then slooooowly unload from memory.
I think the completely flat look is just so boring visually. at least in mario kart and f zero you have the 2.5d sprites to keep your attention.
I hate it. Looks like they took a piece of paper and drew a design on it. Then you end up traversing on a flat surface.
Mode 7 was almost always poorly implemented in Snezz games. Racing games that used it had no hills or dips, platformers using it would often feel like gimmicky time-wasters (Rotating Room in Castlevania Bore) or shit like pic related, etc.
>Racing games that used it had no hills or dips
Yes, nothing like this when it comes to dips and hills. It's all flat as shown in OPs image.
Not with mode 7 alone, but some smart devs used it in conjunction with other techniques to create very cool effects.
?t=861
how tf did they do this?
that's pretty cool. Normally each scanline's scale factor is a constant in the code, but it doesn't have to be. Looks like they vary the scaling to create undulating terrain. I don't know if any other SNES games did that.
That's because mode 7 is literally a flat, rotating texture, it cannot do what you want it to do.
Right?
Sure you could,
did it.
>Rotating Room in Castlevania Bore
That room was pretty cool though, and really? Castlevania BORE? What are you 12?
I'm reminded of this game, which I would like somebody to explain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRBX2GbGr2M
It obviously isn't using only Mode 7 to draw the ground, but is it using Mode 7 at all? I have no idea.
Another crazy Mode 7 effect comes at the end of one of the Star Wars games, when you fly down a long, 3D tunnel. The tunnel is crudely (but somewhat effectively!) drawn as a single flat image that you hover in front of for like ten minutes straight, as it gradually and infinitely grows. It's kinda stupid-looking but it's also really cool and impressive.
Mode 7 is so simple and limited that using it in a cool new way is really difficult. But the basic Pilotwings/F-Zero usage is a pretty good one, and using it to add a bit of aesthetic camera tilt or zoom (ActRaiser, FFVI) without deeply affecting gameplay is pretty good too. Using it to draw rooms in a 2D side-view game (Castlevania IV, Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts) is more gimmicky and awkward, though I haven't played Mohawk & Headphone Jack... occasionally somebody claims that that game is actually fun, despite its many problems? Using it to draw a growing/shrinking enemy in a 2D side-view game (Mystical Ninja, Castlevania IV) is okay but not great. Overall it's fine, but its more gimmicky uses do occasionally get in the way of fun.
Mode 7 itself is just scaling+rotation for a single background layer. Super Mario World's boss fights are an example of "simple" mode 7. The effect is uniform across the whole screen.
The effect in F Zero, Mario Kart, Final Fantasy isn't "just" mode 7. It also changes the scaling parameters on a per-scanline basis. By zooming more on lines at the bottom of the screen, it produces a perspective effect. Changing graphics settings per scanline is often called a raster effect. These games combine mode 7 with raster effects.
That game looks like it has no rotation, but does scale and also scroll per-scanline. Scrolling the background up or down per-scanline allows it to have the appearance of hills and valleys.
Somehow I've gotten this far without ever learning (until now) that Mode 7 didn't do full 3D transformations (including rotation, scaling, AND perspective/tilt/whatever). Huh. But it's surely one of the basic applications of the mode that the developers originally intended, since F-Zero and Pilotwings were the original "Mode 7: The Game" games (I think?) and they both used it. Oh well, it doesn't really matter.
The transformation equation given for the mode on Wikipedia does appear to allow shearing, as well as rotation and scaling, but that is not enough to shrink one end of a rectangular texture like it's off in the distance. I suppose I've probably seen some games use Mode 7 shearing on their title screens or something, though. Or maybe like in an animation of an enemy phasing out of existence immediately after you destroy it, or some other ephemeral thing like that.
Looks like it's using mode 7 for perspective (scaling per scanline), but not doing rotation.
Here's a gif of F-Zero with rotation, but no perspective.
I didn't mind this in contra mostly because I thought of it as a bonus stage and not an actual level, back then (probably because it drops a bunch of stuff)
It had enough other great gameplay to make it worth playing so I didn't care and enjoyed the game anyway
it's okay i guess but the spritework in general looks more impressive these days
Games built around it like F-Zero, Super Mario Kart, and Pilotwings were cool. I really liked world maps using Mode 7 in RPGs. Having trouble thinking of bad examples. Even the overhead levels in Contra III are fun for me.
In the SNES the technology was a bit premature. Sega CD and GBA were able to use it to much better effect, frankly.
>Sega CD and GBA were able to use it to much better effect, frankly.
I dunno about GBA, but how did Sega CD use it better? The bonus levels in Sonic CD run at very choppy framerate instead of the smooth 60fps of F-Zero.
The driving levels of Batman Returns come to mind. Like
pointed out, SNES racing games had the unfortunate tendency to be flat.
I never played that batman game yet, but I know people rave about the driving levels. Is it really racing or more like shooting while driving while evading some obstacles? Are there turns and actual designs for courses? How much fps does it run?
Also I can't see the post you pointed out, I'm using filters.
>shooting while driving while evading some obstacles?
It's like this.
>Are there turns and actual designs for courses?
Yes. They're not circuits though, they're point to point.
>How much fps does it run?
It can be choppy at times.
>I'm using filters.
Lmao, what a fricking baby. As expected of a Nintenyearold though.
Oh, you mean like almost every fricking racing game ever made?
Super scaler racing games managed to have changes in elevation. Even rad racer managed to have that. Mode 7 racers were two steps forward one step back.
The poster child for mode 7, F Zero was vastly improved when it became 3D. Most 3D racing games took advantage of having hills.
Maybe for uphill/downhill racers, but it's literally a flat plane you're racing on. It's something the hardware can't do.
F1 Pole Position 2 has the effect but it's very mild. I have the feeling the SNES CPU isn't fast enough to combine both raster effects, but I'm not a SNES programmer so IDK.
The only 2D racers worth playing today are ones that used Mode 7, like F-Zero. So I like it.
t. Genesis kid back in the day
Huh? But Super Hang On is better than any 3D racing game...
Not on Genesis it isn't
Axelay, Demon's Crest, ActRaiser had cool implementations.
>what is scale? lmao!
Mode 7 was a mistake.
That's square's fault, not the hardware's.
Most RPGs make your character look huge on the world map, rare that you'll have one where things are to scale
I like Yoshi's Island's world map for having sprites on top of the flat ground. A shame it was basically just for cutscenes.
This is clearly the ideal use case for mode 7. Shame many of the early games did the lazy "flat surface" instead of coming up with creative ways of implying vertical depth, which led to
.
Isn't this scene's 3D transformations dependent on the SuperFX chip?
It doesn't seem like it. SNES expansion chips didn't catch on until 1993.
That effect can be achieved with per-scanline scrolling, which was done in plenty of other games and consoles.
The flat plane effect of mode 7 is done with per-scaling scaling so it's not too different to what other mode 7 games are already doing.
>It doesn't seem like it. SNES expansion chips didn't catch on until 1993.
Yoshi's Island is well documented as using the Super FX chip.
That's a 1995 game.
And? What even was the point of that statement in the context of a game made in 1995?
Oh shit, I got confused and thought we were talking about a different game.
I'm not sure, it doesn't seem to be rotating or scaling any sprites. It's just a bunch of regular sprites on top of a regular mode 7 background.
Just look at this zoomer act like he knows what he is talking about, what the frick lmfao leave this board immediately homosexual
>filename
>"bruh"
you don't belong on /vr/. go back to Ganker
Clear case of working smarter not harder. No other console in the early 90s could do this kind of pseudo 3D at 60FPS and the SNES had it as an inexpensive hardware feature.
Yeah but then you'd be playing a dogshit Amiga game.
The distorted pixels are ugly if you actually look at it, so it's at its best when either used in short bursts so you don't get to stare at it long, or to do things you simply couldn't do well on the console otherwise, like the behind-the-car-view racers that let you drive in any direction
My favorite example is how ugly the world map is in Final Fantasy 6 compared to 4 & 5
4 & 5 only mode7'ed the map when flying in airships or doing special effects like the falling meteors, but 6 insisted on doing it the whole game, even when just walking around
Come on guys, pretend to hate mode7 a little bit or australia-kun will have another sad weekend.
That's raster trick, not mode7.
This one is mode7:
?t=1482
Terranigma even combines both
?t=1016
My bad, terranigma is just raster too, there's no mode 7 in that map. I misremembered the map could spin.
The barrel room is mode 7, because the scale factor is varied per scanline.
I love this room. They could have gotten rid of the slowdown if only they deactivated the bone-splattering animations when you hit them. Enemies on the screen don't cause the slowdown, it's all the little bones flying in all directions when you hit them that do.
99% of the game is in constant slowdowns. No idea why they shipped the game in that state. Compare it to how fast The New Generation plays which makes 4 look like an utter joke.
You don't want to go there, auster.
Bloodlines has a lot of slowdown, most of the bosses are very slow because of it.
Anyway, stop shitposting castlevania, you don't like any of them other than Amigavania.
Some occasional slowdowns here and there isn't quite the same as the game running in constant slow-mo like 4 suffers from, lad.
Haha, it's ok auster, I know you don't even care about the Sega game either and probably didn't even play it. All you care about is Nintendo, they live rent free inside of you. You're no better than Nintendo fanboys really, except instead of blind love, you feel blind hate.
It always looked shit to me even back then.
It's based and looked amazing when I first saw it. Mario Kart stood out as having WAY better graphics than anything I had seen at the time. Everyone was blown away by it, none of us had any clue what Mode 7 even was. Anyone who says otherwise and says they are an oldgay who was gaming back then but that it always looked bad to them, is lying outright. Everyone I knew was fricking dazzled by Mario Kart, Pilotwings and F-Zero man.
HD Mode 7 on SNES and GBA has to be one of the weirdest fricking things I've seen an emulator do.
I love it. So charming
Mode 7 always looked flat even when they tried to hide it with sprites, never once looking 3D.
Sonic 2 and 3 unironically had more impressive fake 3D for their special stages.
Then why did Sega add the feature to their saturn?
Saturn could do actual 3D on top of the flat backgrounds. And raster effects and windowing effects were way more powerful so it didn't have to look flat anyway.