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Graphics 10 (9 color) palette suggestions needed.


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Thanks to palettes that MrFish so kindly posted on another thread (here), it reminded me of this question:
What would be some good universal palettes for 9 color gtia mode ?

No Dli changes, no separate regions for different colors, any pixel can be any out of 9 colors.

Besides going for simple solution similar to first 8 colors of C64 or Zx spectrum (Black, White, Red, Cyan, Purple, Green, Blue, Yellow) plus maybe Grey, what other combo would work well in some scenarios ?

Something like platform game with lots of vegetation and earth would benefit from more brown and green colors. Something 'technical' in space would need more shades of grey for example.

Bellow are example images scaled, cropped, converted to Atari pal palette and reduced number of colors to 9.
My guess is that custom palette and new graphics could look even better.

Turrican screenshot from Amiga:
post-14652-0-50327800-1443952400.png

Dragon Ninja screenshot from Amstrad:
post-14652-0-92339100-1443952413.png

 

What do you think ?

 

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Thanks to palettes that MrFish so kindly posted on another thread (here), it reminded me of this question:

What would be some good universal palettes for 9 color gtia mode ?

 

Interesting you should bring this up, because part of the reason I worked on getting these palettes done was to assist myself in doing some mockups for a potential project in Mode 10. I'm not gonna post any shots of it though, until I know whether it's going to happen or not, but either way they'll eventually get shown.

 

I should have mentioned in the 128 color palette thread that all GTIA modes cannot use 256 colors either; I was of course referring to the ones that do.

 

[Edit: Actually only one mode can display 256, Mode 9.]

 

 

No Dli changes, no separate regions for different colors, any pixel can be any out of 9 colors.

 

Why no DLI's? Don't most well-designed Atari screens have DLI's? icon_wink.gif

 

 

Bellow are example images scaled, cropped, converted to Atari pal palette and reduced number of colors to 9.

My guess is that custom palette and new graphics could look even better.

 

Turrican screenshot from Amiga:

attachicon.gifTurrican9colors.png

 

Dragon Ninja screenshot from Amstrad:

attachicon.gifDragon Ninja cpc.png

 

What do you think ?

 

These screens will work with GTIA pixels, but you're missing some resolution that could make them better. They're both at half vertical resolution possible.

Edited by MrFish
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Interesting you should bring this up, because part of the reason I worked on getting these palettes done was to assist myself in doing some mockups for a potential project in Mode 10.

Great minds think alike ;)

 

Imho those modes were somewhat used in 3d games but kinda neglected in 2d space. A8 deserves at least couple experiments in those large pixel colorful modes.

 

Looking forward to seeing your projects!

 

Why no DLI's? Don't most well-designed Atari screens have DLI's? icon_wink.gif

That's just for my project sake, sprites can move anywhere on screen so I'm going for simple solution of no-Dli color changes at all :)

 

These screens will work with GTIA pixels, but you're missing some resolution that could make them better. They're both at half vertical resolution possible.

4x1 is little too flat for my taste and I do want to save some ram and gain some speed with larger pixels.

 

Colors that SeaGtGruff proposed can be combined in nice ways, I'm just not sure what exact colors to choose. Dark blue would go nice with lighter purple, but lighter blue would look nices as 'Sky' color. Think it's best to have some graphics done and then try to adjust colors.

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Great minds think alike icon_wink.gif

 

Imho those modes were somewhat used in 3d games but kinda neglected in 2d space. A8 deserves at least couple experiments in those large pixel colorful modes.

 

Looking forward to seeing your projects!

 

Not to disappoint, but the project I'm speaking of would only use it for the 3D portion. Obviously there are some 2D applications for it as well. The mode has been generally neglected altogether when it comes to complete games, I'd say.

 

 

That's just for my project sake, sprites can move anywhere on screen so I'm going for simple solution of no-Dli color changes at all icon_smile.gif

 

I figured it had to do with something like that. I was partially jesting. But DLI's can be used for score panels, background colors changes, and fixed objects in different vertical zones, right?

 

 

4x1 is little too flat for my taste and I do want to save some ram and gain some speed with larger pixels.

 

Colors that SeaGtGruff proposed can be combined in nice ways, I'm just not sure what exact colors to choose. Dark blue would go nice with lighter purple, but lighter blue would look nices as 'Sky' color. Think it's best to have some graphics done and then try to adjust colors.

 

Actually from my experience individual 4 x 1 pixels in isolation don't always look so good, so I'd tend to avoid them. But when forming curves with groups of pixels the extra resolution is a benefit.

 

If the technique you're using is going to help with RAM and speed, I can understand that. It won't be fully showing off what the mode is capable of as far as resolution, but maybe the gains you speak of will offset it enough.

 

 

Colors that SeaGtGruff proposed can be combined in nice ways, I'm just not sure what exact colors to choose. Dark blue would go nice with lighter purple, but lighter blue would look nices as 'Sky' color. Think it's best to have some graphics done and then try to adjust colors.

 

To be honest I don't know if you can come up with any ideal palette. Part of the problem is that there are only 9 colors, which is a tight restriction for a one-size-fits-all palette. The question to ask in response is, why would you want to do that when you can tailor your palette to each situation/game-screen? That's the flexibility of the system.

Edited by MrFish
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But DLI's can be used for score panels, background colors changes, and fixed objects in different vertical zones, right?

Agreed. I would limit strict 9 colors only for 'play area' where all the action is. And the strongest reason why - to make it simple. One of my other projects has been dragging for ages mostly because it has lots of movable dlis, color changes, lms tricks and such. For once I want to try making something simple to increase any chance of actually finishing it :)

 

The question to ask in response is, why would you want to do that when you can tailor your palette to each situation/game-screen? That's the flexibility of the system.

That could work in platform game separated in sections (or something like larger rooms). Start in forest (green, brown), go into dungeons (grey and darker blues and purple)... As it makes sense to have different enemies in different parts of world, they would benefit from changed colors also.

 

Need to generate some examples... Shame it's Sunday and work starts tomorrow... :)

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Agreed. I would limit strict 9 colors only for 'play area' where all the action is. And the strongest reason why - to make it simple. One of my other projects has been dragging for ages mostly because it has lots of movable dlis, color changes, lms tricks and such. For once I want to try making something simple to increase any chance of actually finishing it icon_smile.gif

 

I understand making it simple, and it's your baby too. But I'm not talking about anything complex. Fixed vertical color changes in DLI's are about as simple as it gets.

 

 

That could work in platform game separated in sections (or something like larger rooms). Start in forest (green, brown), go into dungeons (grey and darker blues and purple)... As it makes sense to have different enemies in different parts of world, they would benefit from changed colors also.

 

Need to generate some examples... Shame it's Sunday and work starts tomorrow... icon_smile.gif

 

Sections, levels, or whatever; there's no reason why a single palette has to persist, and it makes some sense to design your game in order to take advantage of being able to remap your palette -- unless it's being copied directly from some other platform with a restriction against it.

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As far as a 9 color Graphics 10 palette goes, here's one I came up with, in my experiments to convert Commodore 64 low-res bitmaps (.koa format) into the ICE PCIN (Graphics 12+10 mode) ...

Ughhh.... Looks impressive, but could you please explain where do I look for 9 colors in this image ? :)

I like what I see, makes sense as c64 to A8 color conversion, but what do I do with it :)

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On the color bars on the ight, you are looking for the first color in the line of four. The luminance will be half of what the normal setting should be (because of that color being blended with the black background).

 

So basically:

 

BG (PM0 on mode 10) - black

PM1 - brown/orange

PM2 - magenta

PM3 - green

 

Then on the next three lines:

 

PF0 - red (color block #2 has the right color)

PF1 - yellow (color block #3)

PF2 - gray (color block #4)

 

The last two are:

 

PF3 - cyan

Color 9 (BAK on mode 10) - Blue

 

Hopefully this helps.

 

The conversion method takes every two pixels of a low res C=64 bitmap, and looks up the appropriate values in a chart. So for instance, let's say you had commodore colors 4 (purple) and 8 (brown) next to each other on the bitmap. Match these on the table above, and you have two nybbles. The top nybbles are actually a bitpair indicating the Antic 4 colors (here, PF2 - grey, and PF0 - red) while the bottom nybble is the Graphics 10 color (here, PM2 - magenta) ... and it is these combinations which are blended to approximate the two commodore pixels.

 

It's not perfect by any means, but this conversion table does a reasonable job displaying Commodore bitmaps, albeit with a lot of flicker if you are in PAL. I have been thinking about overhauling and redoing the table. For one thing, it only does normal (ATASCII < 128) characters. There are some color combinations in inverse (using PF3 for PF2 in Antic 4) that make the teal greens on the commodore pictures more accurately.

Edited by Synthpopalooza
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  • 3 weeks later...

I do think it is entirely up to you, how you want the game graphics to look like - whether you go for a cartoon graphics look, or for something more realistic maybe?

 

Colour palette choice is vitally important to get it right - for the subject matter of the game. Antic 4 is always hard with so few colours in use - and with GTIA 10 it's as important to make use of the colour registers you have available.

Experimentation should reveal what works better and what doesn't work so well.

 

And you should go for more than one palette as such - in that subtle colour variations does help - maybe to give the appearance of say morning light, mid-day and afternoon, etc etc. Or seasonable changes.

 

You can go for maybe two tone shades for a metallic look. The Atari Robot demo is done in GTIA 10 and not 9.

 

Harvey

Edited by kiwilove
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Thanks for suggestions Harvey!

 

I have to start somewhere so I chose simple combo of two shades of Red, Green and Blue with added Black, Grey and White.

Luma of Grey is between two colors so I can make 'ramps' with Black, dark color, grey, light color and white.

 

Kinda pointless to discuss I'm afraid as I don't have any graphics to show so far :)

Will post updates as I create something.

Cheers!

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That sounds similar to the palette used on Strictly Gone Bananas, but with yellows instead of greens (the banana had to look ripe!). This won't be of direct use since it's GTIA++ pixels, but I think we ended up with a good mix of different sprite designs all using a single palette. The .ani files in the animations2 folder can be loaded with the editor here:

 

http://www.playsoft.co.uk/animate/editor.html

 

Note that the "TSP0" green is transparent. I don't think there's any significance to the order of the palette, that's just how it ended up.

SGB.zip

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Kinda pointless to discuss I'm afraid as I don't have any graphics to show so far :)

Will post updates as I create something.

Cheers!

I think that better for you to give me the colours and gfxs parts and do what your best that is coding :grin: or with your lack of time is too much for you and going in this route I don't think that "One day I'll finish coding a game" will ever become a true sentence ;)!...

:thumbsup:

Edited by José Pereira
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That sounds similar to the palette used on Strictly Gone Bananas, but with yellows instead of greens (the banana had to look ripe!). This won't be of direct use since it's GTIA++ pixels, but I think we ended up with a good mix of different sprite designs all using a single palette. The .ani files in the animations2 folder can be loaded with the editor here:

Thanks for animations! SGB is the game that started me on this route of experimenting with gtia modes :)

It's a simple game but addictive with it's shiny, colorful and large graphics.

 

For example, I don't see a reason why a game similar to Bop'n'rumble isn't a good fit for A8:

 

ps. As soon as I find inspiration I'll send you ideas Jose :)

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This project most likely isn't going to happen. So here's some of the mockups.

 

Not strictly GTIA 10, just on the track/car area. Actually interesting having 3 modes, all of different pixels sizes, together on a single screen.

 

The palette is simply geared towards this particular game's needs, so maybe of no real use in other situations. But it's one example of mode 10's capabilities.

 

The only color change DLI's would be between the modes; no color changes within the mode 10 lines themselves.

 

post-6369-0-71861900-1445958482_thumb.png

 

post-6369-0-82554800-1445958486_thumb.png

 

post-6369-0-33866900-1445958492_thumb.png

 

 

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popmilo, on 26 Oct 2015 - 8:57 PM, said:popmilo, on 26 Oct 2015 - 8:57 PM, said:popmilo, on 26 Oct 2015 - 8:57 PM, said:

Thanks for animations! SGB is the game that started me on this route of experimenting with gtia modes :)

It's a simple game but addictive with it's shiny, colorful and large graphics.

 

For example, I don't see a reason why a game similar to Bop'n'rumble isn't a good fit for A8

 

If you end up doing something in GTIA 10 and think it might be useful, I have a sprite sheet importer which made it quick to pull in the animations for SGB.

 

Yes, you would think the A8 could do something like that. Or perhaps one of those 2600 style SMB mock ups https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOsu9i0_0H4 - to me the blockiness looks quite stylish.

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Not strictly GTIA 10, just on the track/car area. Actually interesting having 3 modes, all of different pixels sizes, together on a single screen.

attach&attach_rel_module=post&attach_id=417473]pp explosion 9 (scaled).png[/url]

Hmmmm... Somehow I've never thought of using gtia for driving game... A8 does need chase HQ or Gta ;)

Buggy Boy on C64 proved a great game can work with big pixels:

 

If you end up doing something in GTIA 10 and think it might be useful, I have a sprite sheet importer which made it quick to pull in the animations for SGB.

 

Yes, you would think the A8 could do something like that. Or perhaps one of those 2600 style SMB mock ups ... to me the blockiness looks quite stylish.

My plan is to make kind of a Gtia game maker-editor. So importing animations from already existing tools is a great option to get the project going as soon as possible. I'll be happy to include it in planed workflow, thanks!
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This project most likely isn't going to happen. So here's some of the mockups.

 

Not strictly GTIA 10, just on the track/car area. Actually interesting having 3 modes, all of different pixels sizes, together on a single screen.

 

The palette is simply geared towards this particular game's needs, so maybe of no real use in other situations. But it's one example of mode 10's capabilities.

 

The only color change DLI's would be between the modes; no color changes within the mode 10 lines themselves.

 

attachicon.gifpp car 9 (scaled).png

 

attachicon.gifpp dual cars 9 (scaled).png

 

attachicon.gifpp explosion 9 (scaled).png

 

 

Please make it so.

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It looks like the SGB demo used an 80x96 version of mode 10.

 

There are a few ways to get an 80x96 mode 10. One possible way is to use an LMS or VSCROL trick to duplicate the lines. Or, use Antic 5 with GTIA enabled to mode 10, which will still get you all 9 colors, with the limitation of 7 colors per character cell.

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Simple LMS duplicated lines should be enough for start. Speed is not so important before any kind of usable game can be produced imho :)

 

Something crazy good that I think would be good aim for a kind of gamemaker on Atari is "Pico 8":

 

Author of one of my favorite games "Voxatron" made this virtual-console emulator, code ide, gfx+sound editor.

Many many games have already been done with simple blocky graphics, simple basic like language with support for sprites and sound effects.

 

Check some of the entries playable in browser:

http://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?cat=7&sub=2

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LMS is probably the easiest method. Longer display list, but easier to work with.

 

Antic 5 with GTIA 10 (what I call Graphics 13.10) is good, if you want to use Charmode, and increase the speed. The drawback is, of course, you can't have P2 (706) and PF2 (710) in the same char cell as P3 (707) and PF3 (711). To get those colors, you have to inverse the characters. This is the pattern of colors you have to use in this mode:

 

0101 - 704 (BG-P0)

0110 - 705 (P1)

0111 - 706 (P2 - normal)/707 (P3 - inverse)

1000 - 712 (BAK - Graphics 10 color 9)

1001 - 708 (PF0)

1010 - 709 (PF1)

1011 - 710 (PF2 - normal)/711 (PF3 - Inverse)

 

Also note that (far as I know) Altirra >2.0 or Atari++ >1.3 are the only emulators which display this mode correctly. Atari800Win wrongly puts PF0 (708) for pattern 1000. I am not sure how other Atari emulators render this.

Edited by Synthpopalooza
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Antic 5 with GTIA 10 (what I call Graphics 13.10) is good, if you want to use Charmode, and increase the speed. The drawback is, of course, you can't have P2 (706) and PF2 (710) in the same char cell as P3 (707) and PF3 (711)..

Good for 40x25 ... Could be good for some fullscreen 3d demo effect.
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Graphics 13.10 can also be set up as a bitmap mode.

 

To do this, you reserve memory for four font sets (three if you are in narrow mode). Set up Antic 5 and engage GTIA 10. Set a DLI to change CHBAS every three character lines (four in narrow mode) to reference each of the font sets. Then output to the screen sequentially the first 120 characters by screen code (128 if using narrow mode), and repeat this down the screen. Also make sure the font memory is zeroed out.

 

How this works is, you will plot pixels by altering the character set memory at the appropriate position on the screen. Where you need to use PF3 (711) and/or P3 (707) you inverse the character grid on the screen position where you want to plot these colors.

 

In this mode, the bitmap will be ordered similar to how C=64 low-res bitmaps are, i.e. by character grid, instead of by rows as with normal Atari bitmaps. Each byte is divided into two nybbles (4-bit groups), each one corresponding to one of seven colors as shown in my first post. You would also ideally have some means of referencing the character map to show which screen positions need to be inversed, where you want to use the two inverse colors. After eight bytes, the bitmap proceeds to the next 2x8 cell.

 

Limitation is, 7 colors per 2x8 character cell, and you cant use P2/PF2 and P3/PF3 in the same cell. If you used VSCROL tricks (Konop's mode) you could cheat with this, but at the cost of wasted RAM.

 

I believe the Bomberman clone done on Atari 8-bit a few years ago used this method, although with a normal Antic 4 non GTIA screen, to set up a 128x192 bitmap with 5 colors.

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