The Serums are realy great, but...

[marco37]

... poorly exploited.

 

Hello everyone,

First of all, I would like to express my sincere admiration for the remarkable work done by the creators of Serums for our community. Your dedication and creativity undoubtedly enrich our gaming experience, and for that, I'm deeply grateful.

I'm not here to point fingers or denounce anyone, but I'd like to touch on a subject close to my heart that I believe could benefit our community.

While browsing through various discussion forums and Facebook groups, I noticed that I'm not the only one with certain reservations. It seems that more and more people are expressing disappointment with the readability and visual impact of the Serums, especially those who own a ZeDMD, for example (I own one).

 

I do graphic design in a professional environment and have a deep appreciation for the subtle nuances and impact of colorization. It's clear that some Serums, like dtatane's Scared Stiff, are absolutely gorgeous in their color rendering. However, others could benefit from better adjustments to contrast and color consistency.

The use of light backgrounds with gradients, combined with text or animations in similar tones, doesn't allow for good legibility, and greatly attenuates the desired visual impact. At times, you get the unfortunate impression that you're looking at colored pixel mush.

 

It's universally recognized that high contrast, such as a black background with white text, offers excellent legibility. However, the magic lies in the ability to marry colors in such a way as to create visual harmony, while preserving this clarity.

 

I'm not a designer of roms colors, maybe also the more experienced ones could give them their opinion/advice,  in their choice of colors , by inviting them to use black backgrounds rather than overly light ones, but also to use brighter, flashier animations when the background is dark, and darker, more constrasted animations when the background is light.

 

The potential of the Serums is very great, I'm convinced that we can further enrich the visual experience of Serums files.

 

-
thx for reading

[LynnInDenver]

Good points, this has also already been brought up over in the Discord, at least with the WIP for Big Bang Bar.

[PastorLUL]

I agree with this, but every author has their own style. In the end this is all being made available for free. Us Serum authors do not sell colorizations, like most Pin2DMD authors do. Besides that not everyone is an artist, including myself. Although, I have made a set of rules for myself which I do not break in order to keep a well balanced color palette. You will see this in the new Tron version I have been working on releasing soon. 

sneakpeek: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb5i_PAukIA

 

Edited February 6 by PastorLUL

[KRAKEN]

You raise a good point that what (I think) looks good on my LCD screen may not necessarily look good on a physical DMD.  If the colors render differently or the contrast is not the same, things may not look the way I intended.  If you’re interested in beta testing AFM on your ZeDMD (when it’s ready), I’d appreciate the feedback from a professional.

 

Also note that the images posted on the forums are not always the final version;  I’ve seen myself make changes to a sequence after the animated gif is posted on the forum and I know others have as well.  For better clarity, I’ve been adding black shadows to most « foreground » objects to separate them from my gradient backgrounds, have increased the brightness of my text in some areas and darkened some of the background gradients to make them more subtle.

[PastorLUL]

4 hours ago, KRAKEN said:

  If the colors render differently or the contrast is not the same, things may not look the way I intended.

That is unfortunately what happens due to the bitrate limit when displaying on an LED panel (@mk47 could comment further on this). Also a true black only seen on a monitor does not exist on an LED panel, making the perception completely different in some scenarios. 

[mk47]

I don't think that this is a Serum issue or a ZeDMD issue. It applies to other colorizations and real DMDs as well. But Serum let us realize the issue.

In the typical tool chain with PinMAME, DMDext, DMD driver, DMD you have more than one place where some gamma "correction" takes place. And I'm sure that LED panels aren't full 24bit. A LCD monitor doesn't display the correct colors unless calibrated. And I assume these LED panels are worse.
(BTW do people calibrate their monitors before they do colorizations?)

But agree that everyone who does colorizations should test with a real DMD. I think the editor can directly output the work in progress on a real DMD.

And I think that this gamma correction stuff should be configurable, maybe in a next release.

It is also important to update ZeDMD to v3.5.1 and DMDext to the lasted dev version to get a higher color depth on ZeDMD HD. 

Edited February 6 by mk47

[KRAKEN]

38 minutes ago, PastorLUL said:

That is unfortunately what happens due to the bitrate limit when displaying on an LED panel (@mk47 could comment further on this). Also a true black only seen on a monitor does not exist on an LED panel, making the perception completely different in some scenarios. 

It should be somewhat easy to release two versions of the CRZ at the same time.  One with all the background gradients for the LCD users, and a second version, let's call it the "purist" version, where all black pixels that I have colorized are returned to black.

 

Only took a minute to revert this.  It would be up to the end-user to decide what they prefer.

 

[mk47]

 

This a "Diner". @marco37 I assume this is what you're talking about.

 

16 minutes ago, mk47 said:

In the typical tool chain with PinMAME, DMDext, DMD driver, DMD you have more than one place where some gamma "correction" takes place. And I'm sure that LED panels aren't full 24bit. A LCD monitor doesn't display the correct colors unless calibrated. And I assume these LED panels are worse.
(BTW do people calibrate their monitors before they do colorizations?)

Another issue with these LED panels is that they don't have a backlight. So brightness is handled by "calculation". Nobody runs these DMDs (regardless which one) in full brightness. So you effectively reduce the amount of different colors by reducing the brightness. In this photo ZeDMD HD on the left is running at brightness 6/15, ZeDMD on the right at 5/15. And if you now take the additional gamma correction into account, the output must be different from the virtual DMD.

 

Edited February 6 by mk47

[PastorLUL]

18 minutes ago, KRAKEN said:

It should be somewhat easy to release two versions of the CRZ at the same time.  One with all the background gradients for the LCD users, and a second version, let's call it the "purist" version, where all black pixels that I have colorized are returned to black.

 

Only took a minute to revert this.  It would be up to the end-user to decide what they prefer.

 

Ah yeah that could be a good alternative if it ends up looking foggy on a ZeDMD!

[mk47]

13 minutes ago, PastorLUL said:

Ah yeah that could be a good alternative if it ends up looking foggy on a ZeDMD!

You should not talk about ZeDMD only. The same issue will be faced on PIN2DMD, Pixelcade, PINDMD, ...
All use the same kind of LED panels.

But with standard DMD content like you had it before Serum you don't recognize it.

On the other hand, removing such backgrounds isn't nice. It would be better to adjust these gradients to look good on LED panels with mid brightness. And we have to experiment with gamma correction on the DMD device level.

[PastorLUL]

14 minutes ago, mk47 said:

You should not talk about ZeDMD only. The same issue will be faced on PIN2DMD, Pixelcade, PINDMD, ...
All use the same kind of LED panels.

But with standard DMD content like you had it before Serum you don't recognize it.

On the other hand, removing such backgrounds isn't nice. It would be better to adjust these gradients to look good on LED panels with mid brightness. And we have to experiment with gamma correction on the DMD device level.

My bad, I ment LED panels in general. 

Since I am mostly real pin oriented I will 100% take a look at this with AC/DC when I get the chance to test on a ZeDMD. For Tron I already designed it in such a way that it would look good on a real pin. 

[KiwiBri]

On 2/6/2024 at 12:25 PM, KRAKEN said:

It should be somewhat easy to release two versions of the CRZ at the same time.  One with all the background gradients for the LCD users, and a second version, let's call it the "purist" version, where all black pixels that I have colorized are returned to black.

 

Only took a minute to revert this.  It would be up to the end-user to decide what they prefer.

 

 

As much as I like the new colorizations, I would pick the "purist" version here. I have a real Pin2DMD and just adding the colour DMD gives this game so much more life.   Still keeps in the the spirit of the gameplay of the original game. Just my opinion. 

[marco37]

-
First of all, I'd like to thank you for your kind reply.

 

On 2/6/2024 at 12:39 PM, KRAKEN said:

You raise a good point that what (I think) looks good on my LCD screen may not necessarily look good on a physical DMD.  If the colors render differently or the contrast is not the same, things may not look the way I intended.  If you’re interested in beta testing AFM on your ZeDMD (when it’s ready), I’d appreciate the feedback from a professional.

 

Also note that the images posted on the forums are not always the final version;  I’ve seen myself make changes to a sequence after the animated gif is posted on the forum and I know others have as well.  For better clarity, I’ve been adding black shadows to most « foreground » objects to separate them from my gradient backgrounds, have increased the brightness of my text in some areas and darkened some of the background gradients to make them more subtle.

 

I'd love to try your work!
I've been following your work for a while, and I have to say that your serum is very beautiful.

 

 

On 2/6/2024 at 6:25 PM, KRAKEN said:

It should be somewhat easy to release two versions of the CRZ at the same time.  One with all the background gradients for the LCD users, and a second version, let's call it the "purist" version, where all black pixels that I have colorized are returned to black.

Only took a minute to revert this.  It would be up to the end-user to decide what they prefer.

 

 

not necessarily, if the gradation is well dosed, it can be fine, it's especially with the writing that there's a problem. The problem is also on the LCD, and not just on the ZeDMDs. My friends don't have any, and they've made the same comments about readability problems.
On the other hand, with the scared Stiff Serum, it's really magnificent, more beautiful than the LCD.
=> But maybe yes, we should perhaps test the 2 versions to see the difference.

 

 

 

On 2/6/2024 at 6:38 PM, mk47 said:

This a "Diner". @marco37 I assume this is what you're talking about.

 

I wasn't talking specifically about this table, but if we take your example and another serum (again, I'm not judging your work in any way, as I know the work that's been done is enormous), here are a few examples to illustrate my point.
Using a color gradient towards the dark with a dark background, very bright white colors on a very light background, or certain colors that are saturated to contrast with the background, can no doubt be easily recolored to achieve better legibility.

 

thx!

 

Edited February 8 by marco37

[KRAKEN]

6 hours ago, KiwiBri said:

 

As much as I like the new colorizations, I would pick the "purist" version here. I have a real Pin2DMD and just adding the colour DMD gives this game so much more life.   Still keeps in the the spirit of the gameplay of the original game. Just my opinion. 

I’ll make it happen.  👍🏻