Figuring Dithering

While I continue learning Lua, I'm also starting to figure out how to go about the visuals for 1-bit content. In all fairness, only my first 2 or 3 years of gaming were in the form of 1-bit entertainment via the Macintosh we had at home.

Before going about this, one potential method I had in mind was using 3DSMax to model stuff and then process it down to the necessary images. However, after seeing the examples posted by @dukope I have decided to maybe not try and just keep it to 2D. Since I'm doing 3D stuff at work everyday, limiting myself to 2D only is definitely more of a challenge.

Blending Dithering

In order to save a bit of time, I would rather keep the more pixel-perfect stuff for elements like UI, so I decided to start by making some dither patterns in Photoshop and gusing the Blending Options to blend each pattern into a different range of grayscale.

Making patterns can be somewhat relaxing...

After having the dither patterns, I set it all (together with pure black and pure white) as separate layers assigned to ranges of grayscale in the Blending Options. From there, it's mostly a matter of throwing an image below and seeing what happens. And so, for testing, I'm throwing some grayscale cropped-out bit of some art I did long ago...

Which becomes this under the dither layers...

...definitely not good.

Trying to mess around with the levels, as well as painting some areas to improve readability, it does become a bit easier on the eyes:

Throw in a logo and some text and it almost works...

Definitely not the name of my game

But it still looks like what is is -- a higher resolution image processed to look like 1-bit art. Which, surely some games back then also had, but it can be improved. Handling the amount of steps (11 currently -- maybe too many) and painting on top of this while looking at the processed image might result in something more appealing. Also trying different dither patterns depending on the feature.

Best of all, I still have not received the Playdate so I'm just looking at the simulated version.