Well, partially inspired by MoonBlaze's topic about how General Jazz 2 Talk needs more activity, partially inspired by a debate with Violet a long time ago, I'm curious to see your opinions, what do you prefer; 8 bit or 16 bit?

Each of them have their benefits and their disadvantages. 16bit has the nice warp backround color effect, while 8bit you will only see one type of warped backround and won't be able to change it. In 8bit, water can be different colors, but in most tilesets looks ugly and horrible, and in 16bit water is just a nice basic blue color. I don't think there's really an arguement about transparency not looking better in 16bit. 8bit also gives better FPS so that's a benefit to people with slow computers or when playing in laggy levels.

Apparently, there's also a difference between smoke rings, ice and lighting in 8bit to 16bit too, but I don't remember what that is.


Violet preferred 8bit. In the arguement some of the things he said is when youre creating tilesets, in 8bit you can customize how you want things like water and the backround to look. In some sets, like Egypt_light/dark from tomb rabbit, and Pyro's Diamondus Beta Lava Version, the authors of those sets decided to make the water look like lava in 8bit, which is pretty cool (and you cant do that in 16bit; the water would just look blue). The backround would also fade into the color of the tileset authors choice (For instance, it fades a light blue in Carrotus and you cant really change that).

I prefer 16bit. As a levelmaker, I find 16bit giving me more options. In 16bit, I could customize the way the backround fades (Because seeing it fade the same color in every level using the same tileset is boring), and I would like to use water without having it look ugly 90% of the time. Having a fast computer, I get no difference with 8bit and 16bit framerate in almost any level, and frankly, I don't think that you'd need to play in 8bit so often because 16bit lags you too much, unless you have like a 133mhz computer or something. And, obviously, the transparency in 16bit looks better.

So....what do you prefer? =P. And don't just vote on the poll and run away or something; I'm curios about your opinions on the subject and why you think either is better.