Gallery talk:Goblin

Way too many overly-technical questions about things no one cares about or will notice

Like the heading says, I've got a bunch of questions, mostly about sprites, that I wasn't sure where else to ask. So I guess I'm just placing them here since they do concern this page. ^^;

1. Unlike later consoles, the NES/Famicom doesn't have a single palette; the colors can vary significantly from TV to TV since it just outputs a signal that the TV's built-in NTSC decoder generates a palette from. Because of this, different NES sprites across this wiki from different sources use different palettes, and I'm wondering whether there's one that would be best to use as a standard. I'd suggest deferring to modern official releases of the original games, but the colors used in the emulators from the Wii/Wii U/3DS Virtual Console releases and NES Classic are all four significantly different. There are also Famicom screenshots for the FF1-3 dungeons in the Japanese version of FFRK which use yet another distinct palette, but those images are compressed so it's impossible to pick the exact colors from them.
2. The Game Boy also doesn't have its own single palette, and because of how it's displayed it differs from system-to-system, as different versions of the original Game Boy have different base screen colors. Later releases of Game Boy games in general tend to stick to a pure black-and-white palette that seems to be the most popular choice for Game Boy sprites and screenshots online, though it does differ in terms of contrast from the original development palettes. The recent SaGa 1-3 collection uses a soft green palette which feels like another possible option, but then on the other hand the Mana collection version of Final Fantasy Adventure allows you to choose between a small handful.
3. Returning to the realm of the NES, no in-battle sprites actually have outlines in-game, since the backgrounds are always black. Because of this, sprites from different sources often define the outlines differently when erasing. Is there a standard that would be best to use here?
4. It's inconsistent across the wiki whether shadows are part of the sprite for the remakes of FF1-2, should there be a standard there? Considering they vary from sprite-to-sprite I feel like they're worth including, but different sources the sprites have been gathered from differ in whether they're there or not, and it'd probably be troublesome to be pickier about that. (though I'd totally be willing to go through and rip versions with the shadows included personally if need be ^^;)
5. I'm not familiar with ripping models and poses from systems other than the DS and can't really find too many from other games online, so while I can grab a few more images of models for this page from the handful of DS spinoffs, I can't do the same for FF7, 9, 13, and so on without a lot of reading. Are there any established sources to use for screenshots people have taken and erased the background from or similar for those games?

Then moving beyond graphics to more general structure of the main page:

1. Should Goblin the monster and Goblin the summon have their own separate pages, or just share this one?
2. Should games related to a main-series title (IV:TAY, XIII-2, etc.) be listed along with the numbered game they're connected to under the main series heading, or separately?
3. It makes most sense to organize spinoff games chronologically probably? But then which spinoff series (Tactics, Crystal Chronicles, Chocobo, etc.) are notable enough to get their own headings before the miscellaneous titles, and how should those series be ordered? And where do the not-technically-FF games (FF Legend, Bravely Default, Vagrant Story, etc.) fall into that ordering?

So sorry for the barrage of questions out of nowhere!

I also probably should expand my edits beyond the Goblin page at some point but like there's just so much to say about them across the series as a whole and it feels so incomplete to just have made the few small additions I did when I've played such a large set of games from this franchise and they're in so many of them xD

--Zeal (talk) 21:05, January 15, 2022 (UTC)

Hey there, I've read over your messages & here are my responses:

Gallery:

1. Probably do the same as what TCRF does: use the "officially sanctioned NTSC palette" (which is provided as a download on their site).
2. Game Boy is a bit more complicated, as it does have different palette depending on which hardware it's run on. On Mario Wiki, there is a user who suggests using original grayscale mode. I would say Super Game Boy palette, but the Final Fantasy Legend series and Final Fantasy Adventure have not been programmed to have enhanced graphics when played on a Super Game Boy, so I'd prob not rip the graphic with a Super Game Boy palette.
3. This is also a very good question. I would make the outline no thicker than 2px in size. I'm not a spriter so I cannot give good advice on that, but from what I've seen, the sprites ripped from existing sources have had a decent outline applied to them. If I were to rerip them, I would edit them to have the exact outline as on other sources.
4. You could include the shadows. I guess for me levitating enemies and/or characters are where I'm more hesitant, as there's pixels of blank space between them, but that would be arbitrary and not part of a consistent format. I dunno, what do you think about levitating character sprites?
5. Final Fantasy Kingdom (finalfantasykingdom.net)

Article:

1. I have made it so that such subjects share an article because they are technically the same thing but only serving a different purpose (unless there's a case where a summon is explicitly different from like an enemy or species themselves).
2. I was imagining under a "Main series sequels" header in chronological order (e.g. Final Fantasy X-2 was released before FFIV: The After Years, so it's listed before it).
3. On the Cloud Strife page, I organized the series by chronological order based on which installment of each series he debuted in (so Ehrgeiz is listed before all the Compilation titles because the compilation of FF7 wasn't created until 2004, so that why Final Fantasy VII is listed separately). Even if they're technically not Final Fantasy games, the same rules for chronological series/release order apply to them as well. Even in cases where, lets say, a weapon debuts in a Final Fantasy Legend title before a main series title, it should still be listed beforehand. Lucky for you we have an independent wiki for Wiki of Mana and SaGa Wiki to go more in depth on Adventure and the Legend series respectively.

Hope this helps! Once again, thank you so much for helping us out! :D Results May Vary (talk) 21:31, January 15, 2022 (UTC)