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Jul - The Cutting Room Floor - Placeholder tiles and unused fonts New poll - New thread - New reply
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nensondubois
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Posted on 11-08-13 03:01:30 PM Link | Quote
Not really bitching it if sounds like it. Its just a general curiosity that seems like it is avoiding one of the grasps of this site.

The question is: Why are we going out of our way to avoid documenting these?

So what if they're not always interesting to everyone, they're still not intended for anyone to be seen. Getting rid of them says two things about us "yeah we don't find them interesting so neither should you." or "They clutter up the site so we must avoid them at all costs".

I could understand that dedicating articles specifically to them is rather dull and I'm not encouraging the notion, but we shouldn't go out of our way to purposely avoid adding them and outright deleting them at all costs is also rather dull. A box with X and numbered tiles in it is just as interesting as a smiley face. The problem would then be trivial one pixel dots or rather null black and white titles.

Honestly FF and 00 padding at the end of a ROM bank is not even the same thing, and truthfully maybe one person cares about them; their existence contains no artistic creativity; gives almost no insight about the development process and you can't access them in any universally meaningful manner.

Japanese fonts leftover from the localisation process are still interesting to some degree and they are technically unused and can still be accessed, they're just not very important to note.

Hope this doesn't turn into something stupid like "We'll have a billion pages". No, clearly we need to set reasonable guidelines on this issue to prevent that blatant problem.

Over and out!

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Posted on 11-08-13 05:09:23 PM Link | Quote
Oh well, in my very second post I remember mentioning Wario Land has some X tiles (and the "Unused Bobo Boss" bank there is even an earlier "X" tile), but now I have deleted it.

Anyway, there doesn't appear to be a specific guideline for these sort of tiles in the wiki, but in my opinion it should be at least mentioned if there is a placeholder tile in the tileset, especially if there are different placeholder tiles in the same ROM.

If the tiles look absolutely the same in multiple games, there can be a global set of placeholder tiles. A new category for these kind of images, maybe?

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Posted on 11-08-13 07:04:08 PM Link | Quote
I document leftover or placeholder stuff whenever I stumble upon it.

I don't believe anyone goes out of their way to not include it...

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Posted on 11-08-13 07:09:01 PM Link | Quote
Placeholder tiles can be interesting sometimes. But for the most part, I agree that articles shouldn't be created just to cover them. Pretty much every other game I've looked into has placeholders of some sort. Unless they pad them out with something interesting (the smiley face, for example), I don't see much point in including them. Same thing with leftover Japanese fonts, unless those fonts differ from the original in some way, which would indicate the localizers worked with prototype/revised content.
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Posted on 11-08-13 09:05:28 PM Link | Quote
If it has other content by all means feel free to add the little graphic × if you want.

If that's all the page has we'd have a bunch of pages with no comment but literally "This game has the same × you see in [30 other games]".

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Posted on 11-08-13 09:08:52 PM Link | Quote
If a game uses a "master set" universally for all banks should we list the offset ranges that the preceding banks which contain said placeholder tiles are located at instead of constantly throwing a ton of tiles every three fourth of the page? Because that would also be a general problem.

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Posted on 11-08-13 09:16:49 PM Link | Quote
If you can prove that some placeholder tiles once contained graphics (as in the example Dragonsbrethren posted) or served some purpose other than marking empty space for future use, then feel free to mention them. Otherwise, they're not really noteworthy, as they're basically the graphical equivalent of padding a ROM with FFs (what else are you suposed to do with the space when your ROM has to be a power of two?).

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Posted on 11-08-13 10:56:50 PM (last edited by Foxhack at 11-08-13 10:57:45 PM) Link | Quote
Originally posted by BMF54123
If you can prove that some placeholder tiles once contained graphics (as in the example Dragonsbrethren posted) or served some purpose other than marking empty space for future use, then feel free to mention them. Otherwise, they're not really noteworthy, as they're basically the graphical equivalent of padding a ROM with FFs (what else are you suposed to do with the space when your ROM has to be a power of two?).

Write obscene rants and wait for someone to discover them years later?

*hides*

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nensondubois
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Posted on 11-10-13 01:54:48 AM Link | Quote
Originally posted by BMF54123
If you can prove that some placeholder tiles once contained graphics (as in the example Dragonsbrethren posted) or served some purpose other than marking empty space for future use, then feel free to mention them. Otherwise, they're not really noteworthy, as they're basically the graphical equivalent of padding a ROM with FFs (what else are you suposed to do with the space when your ROM has to be a power of two?).


But they are unused graphics themselves. As stated earlier, padding a ROM with FF and 00 is not nearly the same thing, just the same idea. The X boxes range in different creativity and are still an expressed form of the artists intent and gives insight into the development history. Can you do anything with padded FF and 00, can you gleam any meaningful interest in it? No.

Now, Xkeeper said that we can cover this material within reason. I'd hate to go against either owner's wishes.

Now that we mention padded 00 in games, there is one specific GB game where 00 comprises more than 3/4 of the ROM. I do not recall the name of the game right now.

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Posted on 11-10-13 03:55:16 AM Link | Quote


What is noteworthy about this? What insight does it give into the game's development history? Please tell me, because I'm really not seeing it.

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Posted on 11-11-13 01:45:50 PM Link | Quote
Originally posted by BMF54123


What is noteworthy about this? What insight does it give into the game's development history? Please tell me, because I'm really not seeing it.


It is interesting because it is unused graphics, still. Ok, yeah it is speculation and it could be said the same for any game.

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Posted on 11-11-13 01:52:34 PM (last edited by Kak64 at 11-11-13 01:57:11 PM) Link | Quote
Originally posted by Xkeeper
If that's all the page has we'd have a bunch of pages with no comment but literally "This game has the same × you see in [30 other games]".

There could just be at least a "Placeholder Graphics" page, where games with these sort of tiles are simply listed.

This way it could be handled without spamming the wiki with articles like "This game contains only this "X" unused. End of Article."

*hides under the bed

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Posted on 11-12-13 05:55:10 AM (last edited by Hiccup at 11-12-13 05:55:18 AM) Link | Quote
You could, have a "This game has unused placeholder markings in it's graphics".

But it just isn't interesting unless there definitely was something there before.

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Posted on 11-17-13 08:21:47 AM Link | Quote
Originally posted by nensondubois
Originally posted by BMF54123


What is noteworthy about this? What insight does it give into the game's development history? Please tell me, because I'm really not seeing it.


It is interesting because it is unused graphics, still. Ok, yeah it is speculation and it could be said the same for any game.

I think there's at least two ways to look at it.

1) Any graphic which is discernibly meaningful, such as the 'X', are to be considered unused. They convey something important, and are not seen normally during gameplay. On the one hand, I can see an interesting use for these: in one of the GBA Metroid games, and in Fire Emblem: Sacred Stones, there are frames of animations which actually have a number for each frame drawn, but which do not display during gameplay (and so they have referential meaning for the person scripting an animation, but no gameplay meaning for the player who sees the animation). Some of these animations even have small sketch-notes, like the enemy textures for Final Fantasy VIII, which detail or expand on what the monster is. So there is precedence for arguing for the inclusion of something as mundane and broad as these unused markers, be them 'x', smiley faces, dots, or whatever you find.

2) Any graphic which seems to be, or had once been, pertinent to the gameplay which had not actually been used in the final design. This might be like the Megaman example, where the TSA of seemingly generic hex tiles actually arrange into some meaningful metastructure, which informs potential early or dropped level design or mechanics. This can also include, as another example, the moving platform from Super Mario World, the one that is large, green, orange, and has some strange mirrored tile issue. These kinds of graphics are far more significant than mere markers of whether graphic space is free to use as a development space, as the significance is geared more towards informing our understanding of how a game had changed during its development. It's hard to argue that a series of 'X' that block out free space can meaningfully express such information--but, in some situations, it can, such as the Super Mario All-Stars article shows, where placeholder graphics can be compared to more finalized graphics that end up being loaded up.

That's my understanding of this stuff, at least.
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Posted on 11-24-13 03:08:01 AM Link | Quote
Originally posted by nensondubois

Now that we mention padded 00 in games, there is one specific GB game where 00 comprises more than 3/4 of the ROM. I do not recall the name of the game right now.


Pong: The Next Level. That games is just over 64KB (512kbits) but Nintendo required GBC games to be at least 1MB (8mbit).
I know one game is covered that said pretty much "this is really only a 2mbit game, but Nintendo decided to print only 8mbit at the smallest, so what do we do with the remaining 6?" and had a ton of filler graphics.
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