Koffi's Coloring Book :)

[calamari]

Yep you only have a 128 color palette unless its a GTIA mode.

 

calamari

[+Cafeman]

http://cafeman.www9.50megs.com/atari/5200d...fiArchives.html

 

As documented at the above link, after seeing the differences of colors on different emulators and the 5200 hardware itself, I decided to implement a color-change debug routine into Koffi.

 

Now, I can quickly change the colors of anything on the screen, since all my color values are in a ColorTable that the debug utility allows me to alter at will.

 

Last night I let 6-yr old Caf jr play it -- he had so much fun just changing colors! I had a difficult time getting him into his bed. Then at lunchtime today, I added some Binary Coded Decimal logic so I could see the color table's hex values onscreen, and I then messed around for about an hour myself.

 

Maybe I will just release Koffi as a coloring book program?

 

"Koffi: Yellow Kopter" becomes "Koffi's Coloring Book", hee hee.

 

Anyway, I recommend doing this kind of thing early on because it obviously saves beaucoup time, and its fun!

 

[ 01-21-2002: Message edited by: Cafeman ]

[+Cafeman]

Oh yeah, forgot to ask my question: has anyone else noticed that color values only seem to change in increments of 2?

 

$00 and $01 are identical; $02 and $03 are identical, etc.

 

At least, in both emulators I use, they are. I haven't really examined the actual 5200 machine yet, but I'd hope that there would be some slightly different brightness value between every number, and not by 2's.

[Bill Lange]

Cafeman - What do you use to make animated gif files? I want to make a few gifs with two images that change every 2 or 3 seconds. Is there a good PD program to do this?

[Nukey Shay]

This is a very good point about little things (at least from a programming standpoint) you can add to a program to give the user more control (and thus, more interest. One of the things that I really liked about the C64 was that in a lot of the games, you could change the colors at will by using the function keys. It's funny that other systems rarely implemented that...and I am disappointed to find that the majority of games released don't offer more flexibility by way of menus (even when the game includes a menu to pick game variations). My opinion is that if a game uses variables to set time limits, enemy speed, etc...why not make them user-adjustable? As your enlightened offspring demonstrated, it opens new doorways to imagination when given more options to be creative.

Hats off to ya.

[Albert]

Heh, this is pretty amusing, because I put this same sort of thing into the PC version of Deus Ex so we could play around with colors in the UI. It turned out to be quite useful, so I ended up expanding it so people on the team could create entire color schemes, just like you might do in Windows. The game must have shipped with at least 20 different color schemes, which may not have added anything to gameplay, but it was still cool allowing users to customize the user-interface and HUD to that extent. I even left in the screen that allows you to select the RGB values for all the different UI elements, although it's hidden and I don't know if anyone ever found it (Deus Ex has quite a few easter eggs.)

 

On the project I'm on now, this is even more relevant, since we're creating art on the PC and then looking at it on NTSC (Never The Same Color) televisions. The game looks quite different running on the PC vs. PS2. Just when you think you have something looking good, you then run it on the PS2 and slap your head when you see it looks like total ass.

 

..Al

[+Cafeman]

Bill, I use a free trial version of AniMagic. Do a Yahoo! search on "Animagic animated gif" or something like that, you'll find it.

 

Even after the trial period ends, you can still make animated gifs.

 

I suggest using .bmp's as the source for the gifs. I tried using .gif's and .jpg's but it badly pixelated the final image. Actually, everything I have ever done on the net has been using free tools: MS Paint, MS photo editor, Animagic, Image Expert (came preloaded in my PC). I used to think Paint was pretty worthless, thats until I learned how to really use it.

 

I think I will have a child's mode in Koffi, now that I've thought about it. Very slow fire, no timelimit, and the ability to change the colors. Might be a worthwhile diversion, who knows. But this leads to a valid 5200 coding question:

 

While tinkering around changing colors, every now & then the screen-saver color-cycling would kick on! What could I do to prevent this? I think that if I moved Koffi around a bit (i.e., touched the joystick controls), it wouldn't happen, but I'm not sure.

[Bill Lange]

I believe that there is a memory location to turn of the Screen Saver Color Cycling, called the "attract mode", I think. Check out the Atari memory map at www.atariarchives.org. Not sure if the memory location is different for the 5200.

 

Thanks for the animated gif info.

[Bill Lange]

quote

I use a free trial version of AniMagic  

 

That is just what I was looking for. I was playing with it at work and got the effect that I wanted. Thanks.