Nabuko78 Posted October 22, 2006 Share Posted October 22, 2006 Hi, a question for the 7800 fans that emulate this system in M.E.S.S. I'm trying to match atari 7800 original TV colors in this emulator, so it looks like the real thing, althoug there's no way to emulate phosphoresence like in 2600 (BIOS looks completely different in the console) it's not glossy but still nice when emulated with TV-Out. Is possible to change colors or the full 7800 color palette in M.E.S.S.? Or to adjust colors and its settings for this and other systems? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EricBall Posted October 22, 2006 Share Posted October 22, 2006 Changing the colors is a matter of modifying the source code and recompiling. As to what colors to change to, you might want to look at http://atari7800.xwiki.com/xwiki/bin/view/Main/RGB Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trebor Posted October 22, 2006 Share Posted October 22, 2006 Is possible to change colors or the full 7800 color palette in M.E.S.S.? Or to adjust colors and its settings for this and other systems? http://www.mess.org/download.html Contains both binary and source files. In the latest version (0.109) look inside: '\mess\systems\a7800.c' It contains Hex Bit addresses and "color" labels of the hues/tints currently used for the Atari 7800. Regards, Trebor Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trebor Posted October 22, 2006 Share Posted October 22, 2006 (edited) I posted one different pic (Xenophobe) in the MIA thread. Additionally, I'll post before and after pics here for Xenophobe and some others. First, the current default palette in MESS and then hoe a closer palette would look (Actual snaps are taking from the ProSystem emulator. However, it's default palette is the same as MESS and it allows for using an external palette): Hmmm...A GREEN Ghost in Ms. Pac-Man??? Ahhh...now this is more like it: Attack of the purple Double Dragons: And how Double Dragon *should* look: Looks like Scrapyard Dog is a little sickly green: And how a really sky background should look: Donkey Kong Pinky: And how it is suppose to look: Uh-Oh attack of the purple people again: Once more the intended displayed: Pastel buildings and a purple truck in Rampage??? Once again, this is how it should be: Here's to hoping someone with the talent and ability is able to update MESS some day -Trebor Edited October 22, 2006 by Trebor Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nabuko78 Posted October 22, 2006 Author Share Posted October 22, 2006 GEE THANKS!!! That really helps me! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nabuko78 Posted October 22, 2006 Author Share Posted October 22, 2006 Now that you mention about the ProSystem emulator, I would be using it wit MameWah frontend instead MESS, but it has a weakness: fullscreen mode is slow =( why this happens? Window mode is OK, I'm using the same resolution for both window and fullscreen, 640x480. Any way to solve this? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nabuko78 Posted October 22, 2006 Author Share Posted October 22, 2006 Now that you mention about the ProSystem emulator, I would be using it wit MameWah frontend instead MESS, but it has a weakness: fullscreen mode is slow =( why this happens? Window mode is OK, I'm using the same resolution for both window and fullscreen, 640x480. Any way to solve this? Minutes later... i found that color depth was the problem, it was set as default 8bpp, which caused that lag in the fullscreen mode. I changed it to 32bpp in the config file prosystem.ini ^_^ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nabuko78 Posted October 23, 2006 Author Share Posted October 23, 2006 Ok now i have a new trouble with this palette thing: after i assigned to ProSystem to load the palette (New_stella_NTSC.pal), when I close and reopen the emu the palette is not loaded, so it returns to the default one. Trebor, can you tell me what I did wrong here? I´ll put as attachment my configuration file and the log generated by ProSystem. Hope that can help. Thanks ProSystem_files.zip btw i renamed palette as "Stella NTSC.pal" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trebor Posted October 23, 2006 Share Posted October 23, 2006 Ok now i have a new trouble with this palette thing: after i assigned to ProSystem to load the palette (New_stella_NTSC.pal), when I close and reopen the emu the palette is not loaded, so it returns to the default one. Trebor, can you tell me what I did wrong here? Nope. You have not done a thing wrong. Unfortunately, it is a bug/issue with the emulator. If you close and restart the emulator, or load a new rom, it returns back to the default (internal) palette. The above is another reason why I wish MESS was updated to the better palette (Or of course, it would be great if the ProSystem emulator was updated). There are a couple of other 'minor' issues withe the ProSystem emulator besides the palette issue(s). Hopefully, those items too will be corrected one day. -Trebor Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nabuko78 Posted October 23, 2006 Author Share Posted October 23, 2006 Thanks Trebor, but I think I've found other way out to this: Last night I was frustrated and bored of configuring and doing this whole "mess" thing, so I shut down my computer early night, and after that I though "If I cannot change configuration in ProSystem... why not I better change default palette in the core of ProSystem?". So this morning first thing I did was to open ProSystem.exe in a Hex Editor (XVI32) and tried to locate any similar pattern of the .pal (I started with FF FF FF or WHITE) that you made. And I found it! Here's the result: I wanted to make sure this is the default pattern, at the first time I put random hex values, later I restarted edit by putting text strings instead with a secret message. Saved as a copy of the original executable, I opened "color selector demo.a78" rom in both, original and hack .exe as you can see in pictures below. Left: Unaltered ProSystem color palette NTSC Right: Hacked ProSystem color palette (values correspond to the text string used with XVI32) Now I think you are capable of customize your own color palette in the ProSystem by hacking it. ENJOY. BTW I'm not gonna hack it for now, Trebor, you might want to try it by your own and then upload the exe for everyone in the 7800 forum. Thank you for all your help. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nabuko78 Posted October 23, 2006 Author Share Posted October 23, 2006 UPDATE: It's possible that every color palette for all the systems in M.E.S.S. are located in Messlib.dll file, I won't touch it unless you can tell me if it´safe to hack/alter such file. i.e. found a similar hex string of default palette in ProSystem within messlib.dll Ahhhh more homework for all of you Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SeaGtGruff Posted October 23, 2006 Share Posted October 23, 2006 Ahhhh more homework for all of you Thank you for doing all of this research, Nabuko78! MR Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trebor Posted October 23, 2006 Share Posted October 23, 2006 UPDATE: It's possible that every color palette for all the systems in M.E.S.S. are located in Messlib.dll file, I won't touch it unless you can tell me if it´safe to hack/alter such file. i.e. found a similar hex string of default palette in ProSystem within messlib.dll Ahhhh more homework for all of you The MESS license allows for changes to be made to the source "officially" or otherwise. I believe the only key requirement is to include the source file changes of anything you may modify as well. For an "official" change (IE To be included into the "official" distribution), you may want to post a message on the MESS message board here: http://www.bannister.org/forums/ubbthreads...rd=1&page=1 However, it cannot hurt to post changes here as "unofficial" as well. -Trebor P.S. And like SeaGtGruff said, thank you for all the research and work. Hopefully, we will see some changes after all to the palettes for the better. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nabuko78 Posted October 23, 2006 Author Share Posted October 23, 2006 (edited) There is. I just changed 2 of the 256 colors, I'm a bit shy for the moment, I would be changing the whole palette right now but I'm busy with other things. 7800 ntsc palette starts at address 8D84ED in messlib.dll corresponding to Mess ver 0.109 HAVE FUN! =D BTW I need help with using a proper key wrapper for ProSystem, so it can be able to exit emulator with only pressing Esc (or other key) instead ALT+F4 remember I'm applying it with MAMEWAH frontend.. try it! Oh and other question How do I remove the fullscreen antialiasing filter in this emulator? It's generated when resolution is changed to 640x480x32BPP? (default is 640x480x8BPP) P.S. Thanks to Eric Ball, Trebor and SeaGtGruff for your help and comments. Edited October 23, 2006 by Nabuko78 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shannon Posted October 24, 2006 Share Posted October 24, 2006 There were issues like this with the xbox 7800 emu that was released recently. I wonder if it was an issue with RGB translation, since an xbox is typically hooked up to an NTSC output. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nabuko78 Posted November 15, 2006 Author Share Posted November 15, 2006 Hi everyone. I wish to share with all of you atari 7800 fans my unique color palette that fixes the purple used for skin color into red, and some other colors. I don't think this going to be the last palette you will need, you might want to change the other colors with any hex editor... well, say no more. Here it is: Atari_Palette.zip Hint: this color palette also can be used for any atari 5200 emulator, since the original 7800 and 5200 have exactly the same 256 colors palette (NTSC), and also can be found in Stella 2.2 as "original stella color" setting. Note: If you are reading this for the first time, you might want to read the previous posts about how to change color palettes inside emulators. PS: I couldn't find where are the palettes stored in Stella emulator yet, anyone can help me? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SeaGtGruff Posted November 15, 2006 Share Posted November 15, 2006 Hi everyone. I wish to share with all of you atari 7800 fans my unique color palette Thank you, Nabuko78! I'm always interested in trying to get more accurate colors in the emulators. Michael Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trebor Posted November 15, 2006 Share Posted November 15, 2006 Hi everyone. I wish to share with all of you atari 7800 fans my unique color palette Thank you, Nabuko78! I'm always interested in trying to get more accurate colors in the emulators. Michael Thank you, indeed! Wow...This has to be the best palette to date for the 7800. Awesome job, Nabuko78! Now, if this could only make its way into MESS... -Trebor Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+stephena Posted November 15, 2006 Share Posted November 15, 2006 Hi everyone. I wish to share with all of you atari 7800 fans my unique color palette that fixes the purple used for skin color into red, and some other colors. I don't think this going to be the last palette you will need, you might want to change the other colors with any hex editor... well, say no more. Here it is: Atari_Palette.zip Hint: this color palette also can be used for any atari 5200 emulator, since the original 7800 and 5200 have exactly the same 256 colors palette (NTSC), and also can be found in Stella 2.2 as "original stella color" setting. Note: If you are reading this for the first time, you might want to read the previous posts about how to change color palettes inside emulators. PS: I couldn't find where are the palettes stored in Stella emulator yet, anyone can help me? The palettes in Stella aren't directly accessible from the program itself; you need to look at the actual source code (C++). If you're familiar with that, they're located in the file 'src/emucore/TIA.cxx'. They're stored in arrays in 24-bit per pixel format (1 byte red/1 byte green/1 byte blue), all packed into a 32-bit value. The arrays are named as follows: ourNTSCPalette & ourPALPalette: entries for NTSC & PAL, 'standard' colours ourNTSCPalette11 & ourPALPalette11: entries for NTSC & PAL, 'original' colours ourNTSCPaletteZ26 & ourPALPaletteZ26: entries for NTSC & PAL, 'z26' colours At some point I plan to make these configurable, and loadable from the settings/GUI. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nabuko78 Posted November 16, 2006 Author Share Posted November 16, 2006 (edited) Thank you, indeed! Wow...This has to be the best palette to date for the 7800. Awesome job, Nabuko78! Now, if this could only make its way into MESS... -Trebor The only way to get that palette working on MESS is by... hacking it! Didn't mentioned that? also I hacked today colors for colecovision and arcadia 2001 in MESS and worked as well as 5200 / 7800. Emerson Arcadia 2001 "Gobbler"; and "Congo Bongo" in Colecovision Two examples for 7800: Xenophobe and Scrapyard Dog. Now with true colors! And for the 5200 too! Jungle Hunt and Donkey Kong. Doesn't look that cool? Sorry for the quote, Trebor. Sigh, my bad Edited November 16, 2006 by Mitch Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nabuko78 Posted November 16, 2006 Author Share Posted November 16, 2006 thx for the fix, mitch Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Mitch Posted November 16, 2006 Share Posted November 16, 2006 thx for the fix, mitch No problem. Mitch Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Mitch Posted November 16, 2006 Share Posted November 16, 2006 The only way to get that palette working on MESS is by... hacking it! Didn't mentioned that? also I hacked today colors for colecovision and arcadia 2001 in MESS and worked as well as 5200 / 7800. I was looking at the MESS source last night and I think I can make your new palette work with it. Are you OK if I submit it to the MESS devs? Mitch Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shannon Posted November 17, 2006 Share Posted November 17, 2006 So how does beef drop look in mess? There was an altered pallette that was put in the xbox 7800 emu that fixed the blue really being green problem, but then beef drop was completely messed up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nabuko78 Posted November 17, 2006 Author Share Posted November 17, 2006 There you go: 2 screens from 5200 beefdrop and 2 from 7800, with the same palette. $2.50 ty Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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