CGA Graphics Alley Cat Experiment

[+Gemintronic]

Tell me if this CGA mock up flickers too bad:

 

The premise is to use cyan one frame and magenta the other.  Where both playfields have pixels those appear white.

 

alley.basalley.bas.bin

[+splendidnut]

That's way too flickery... You might want to dial back the color brightness and use $59 and $A9 for the two playfield colors.

 

 

Might be cool to rework the multisprite kernel to do alternating scanline coloring.  (like Zevious, Lady Bug Arcade, etc.)

[+Gemintronic]

56 minutes ago, splendidnut said:

That's way too flickery... You might want to dial back the color brightness and use $59 and $A9 for the two playfield colors.

 

 

Might be cool to rework the multisprite kernel to do alternating scanline coloring.  (like Zevious, Lady Bug Arcade, etc.)

I'd just be happy with figuring out how to stop it from mirroring the playfield.  Use the half screen for a dungeon crawler view.  CTRLPF = $x3. is too tricky to work with.  But, I feel I haven't figured out enough to even ask for help yet.

[+Karl G]

16 minutes ago, Gemintronic said:

I'd just be happy with figuring out how to stop it from mirroring the playfield.  Use the half screen for a dungeon crawler view.  CTRLPF = $x3. is too tricky to work with.  But, I feel I haven't figured out enough to even ask for help yet.

So you want a version that displays just the left side of the playfield, and blanks out the right half? I think it's unlikely there's enough free cycles in the right places to do that. Not only would you need to write zeros to PF1 and PF2 after they display on the left side, but you would also have to reload those registers before the next scanline starts on every single scanline.

[+Karl G]

2 hours ago, Gemintronic said:

Tell me if this CGA mock up flickers too bad:

 

The premise is to use cyan one frame and magenta the other.  Where both playfields have pixels those appear white.

Pretty cool! It amuses me to think that one would want to replicate that old CGA palette, though. 

 

In addition to what @splendidnut said about reducing color intensity, it would also help to use the cyan and magenta more sparingly. White doesn't have that issue because you are displaying something every frame, and of course black isn't an issue, either. If the magenta and cyan are more accent colors (and not as bright), then I think the flicker could be better tolerated.

[+Gemintronic]

$59 and $A9 made a much more stable picture.  But, I have to re-test it on a real TV.  It maaay be enough..

 

Thanks y'all for the advice!  It really makes this fun.

[+Gemintronic]

Today I broke down and tried it on a real TV using the darker values.  Splendidnut was %200 accurate in that it's "way to flickery".

 

Don't know of any better tricks to get CGA-like effects with the available graphic kernels.