Intellivision font bitmap/color palette please?

[carlsson]

In your emulator, you can define just about any palette you like.

 

On real hardware, it depends a little on which type of video output (RF, modded for composite video, RGB) you have, but the video chip is what it is. The Intellivision does not have a soft loadable palette.

[+DZ-Jay]

Just to be absolutely clear, the Intellivision colour palette is static, with only the 16 colors you saw in the screenshot.  It is not the most visually appealing palette (I find it a bit drab myself), but it is what we've got.

 

Although the jzIntv emulator allows for configurable colour palettes, I do not think that feature would bring the results you are looking for.  For on thing, only you or whomever configures the palette he same way will see your bespoke colours.  Then there is also the fact that not everyone uses the same emulator -- and of course, the original hardware will not support colour changes.

The emulator feature was created mostly because there wasn't complete agreement on how the actual colours were supposed to look back in the 1980s using contemporaneous television technology.

    dZ.

[carlsson]

See also this thread for a discussion which colours are the intended ones, and how you could tune the emulator to best match real hardware:

https://forums.atariage.com/topic/278354-gfx-palette-flag

 

[+nanochess]

My book Advanced Game Programming for Intellivision includes a reference of the GROM graphics.

 

 

[+DZ-Jay]

19 hours ago, nanochess said:

My book Advanced Game Programming for Intellivision includes a reference of the GROM graphics.

 

 

 

@nanochess, did you by chance meant to post this on another thread? :)

 

    -dZ.

[Walter Ives]

On 2/5/2024 at 3:55 PM, carlsson said:

See also this thread for a discussion which colours are the intended ones, and how you could tune the emulator to best match real hardware:

https://forums.atariage.com/topic/278354-gfx-palette-flag

There is no such thing as an absolute set of colors for NTSC Intellivisions. US/Canadian televisions of the day had knobs on the front that let users adjust the luminance, tint and saturation, and the Master Component instruction manual explicitly instructed users to adjust those knobs to get a pleasing image.

Dave James, the Mattel graphic designer charged with coming up with the palette, intended the color that was later chosen for the title screen color to be brown. To reproduce the colors the programmers intended for most games, adjust the knobs until that color is a nice, rich, pleasing brown. Not that insipid olive that's often used.

Unfortunately, that adjustment doesn't yield the best sky blue. When playing biplanes, adjust the knob so that the sky is a nice pleasing sky-blue.

That's right: the best color palette to use when emulating games is game-dependent. So pick shades that look good for the game you're playing.

For a full discussion, plus a spreadsheet simulator that demonstrates the effect of the luminance/tint/saturation controls, see

https://forums.atariage.com/topic/316961-intellivision-color-palette-v-atari-2600-color-palette/page/2/

https://forums.atariage.com/topic/278003-colors-off-on-my-intellivision-system-1/

[Orangery]

On 2/5/2024 at 11:04 PM, DZ-Jay said:

Although the jzIntv emulator allows for configurable colour palettes, I do not think that feature would bring the results you are looking for

Well, I've been tinkering with custom palettes anyway, with a paid version ($1 or more) of Palette Pallet by Chris Nimmo (beadybox.com).  Has anyone else used this application before?  It's really neat?

 

So will jzIntv allow custom palettes to be imported?  Thanks.

[+Lathe26]

There is a command-line option to set the pallete for jzintv.  However, I don't know the details of how to do it.  This pallette change only applies to your own machine when you include the extra command-line option.

[mr_me]

The command switch is --gfx-palette=<file>.  Where <file> has sixteen lines of text, each line defines one colour in the format #ffffff.

Edited February 28 by mr_me

[+fdr4prez]

if a game was made for ROM release only with a custom palette provided with it, I'd be OK with that.

 

It won't be so easy to configure it for RetroPie, but it is doable.  Each game will need its own runline command defined for it, but doable.

 

For jzintv PC usage it is easier to use a custom palette.

[carlsson]

Yeah, I believe jzintv also supports the super STIC (found in some Tutorvisions) that can address more GRAM as we talked about before. There probably is a whole slew of extensions rarely or not at all seen in real Intellivision hardware, that could be achieved through emulation, for a market of games that origin out of Intellivision limitations but take some small ways around it like added RAM (yes, I know we can have that in cartridges), added VRAM, custom palette etc. As long as nobody mistakes those programs for being possible to run on the original hardware, it should be all joy and fun.