The real hidden color palette of the GX4000

[NiNxPe]

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[NiNxPe]

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[Carnivius]

In some cases it looks ok and still beats the C64 because the colours are not restricted in their placement (sprites can have all the colours on CPC, unlike C64) but it does all look rather washed out rainy afternoon compared to the vibrant colours they are originally.

And that's the most realistically skin-toned Bart Simpson I ever seen which means it really doesn't work there. 


Also there are two greens which are so close together in value it's very hard to tell them apart especially on the sprites which makes the Turtles, for example look quite flattened and undetailed.

[arnoldemu]

a special cart or rom would not fix all these programs.

All of them would need patching.

a special cart or rom would only fix basic programs or programs that use firmware. so the special cart would only change the colours of about 40 games or so.

if you need to patch each game then you can choose more appropiate palettes for each game.

How is this different from a load of screenshots with palettes on a disk, or a mockup of how a cpc game could be recoloured for plus?

[arnoldemu]

Yessssssssssss 
It's the same pallet Color

You're right it's an C64 emu ! 

there is a problem with your palette.
On real Gate-Array, index 0 and index 1 are the same -> grey.
Not in your palette!

Here you are defining 32 almost unique colours? So now, the h/w colours in standard cpc do not map correctly to new colours or?

[dragon]

Oh, changue the palette in cpc is very easy.

Yo can select normal palette with colour monitor , green with green monitor and black and white with black and white monitor.

If youn need other colours palette ist more easy.

Take a paper and and transparent plastic and  cut parts of your colour.

Took on macgyver mode and build. it

The result is same as this: Specialized 3-D Lenses | American Paper Optics, LLC And voila palette changed.

[Devilmarkus]

Looked at the screenshots and thought to myself:
How happy I am, the old CPC has not such a color palette
(Just my personal opinion)

Edit: If someone likes to change the palette for some games, to CPC+ palette, I guess, it's simpiler to add a little hack into each game...
So the user can choose between patched game and normal...
(Shouldn't be too complicated to do a jump somewhere to free ram, where original palette code is located, and add additional code to enable plus palette)

[andycadley]

a special cart or rom would not fix all these programs.

All of them would need patching.

a special cart or rom would only fix basic programs or programs that use firmware. so the special cart would only change the colours of about 40 games or so.

if you need to patch each game then you can choose more appropiate palettes for each game.

How is this different from a load of screenshots with palettes on a disk, or a mockup of how a cpc game could be recoloured for plus?

I was mostly curious as to whether there was a "good enough" default palette switch that would make it worth hacking a least some of the better games. There would always be a little scope to tweak the colours and it'd be a lot easier than having to redraw sprites etc to work better with a properly redesign graphics makeover.

The end result isn't overly convincing though. Although the idea of tweaking things in the emulator to get a feel for how colour changes might look isn't entirely without merit.

[McKlain]

Where is the yellow colour? 

[MacDeath]

What's the point, every thing now looks like having only greyish blue and reddish browns...

[Fessor]

SCNR... Very nice palette for drawing piles of dogshit in the moonligth...



If the cpc came out with that it would have flopped....

[Arnaud]

It's snapshots of old CPC game running on CPC6128+ ? Or a special mode ?

[arnoldemu]

It's snapshots of old CPC game running on CPC6128+ ? Or a special mode ?

The screenshots are taken from an emulator where you can define the r,g,b for each cpc colour. The plus allows you to program colours using cpc method, and translates it into r,g,b for plus, this tells the emulator which colours to use.

In this way you can recolour games but only through the emulator.

In reality to recolour the games you need to patch them, edit the code, put the code in to set the palette, disable the old colours.

Perhaps this is a proof-of-concept to find a palette that can be used for many games and then later use that palette.

Now, it is possible to make a patched OS cart that uses new colours, but it would only work on basic or games using firmware, anything that sets it direct to the hardware will not work.

[||C|-|E||]

Huuum... looking at the screenshots MAYBE some games could benefit from a palette like that, but I think that not so many. Somehow, I like Terminator, perhaps Cybernoid, Impossamole, Prince of Persia, Strider... However, many others look awful  .

[Gryzor]

Some of them do look nice. But I don't understand either the purpose of the exercise other than showing off how we can emulate the muted and awful c64 palette (like others said, even with this they still look better than c64). Why not go in all this trouble with something more proper?

[Optimus]

I think, it's an artistic choice. The author chooses intentionally less bright colors, maybe to have smoother transitions between them, or maybe because they look more mature?
There is a clash between C64 and CPC graphicians taste sometimes, for example I heard many C64 graphicians claim the CPC has very childish cartoonish color, while many CPCists find the C64 colors very brown and boring. While we prefer some bright colors, maybe it's how we where raised on the CPC or Speccy. So, you can't say which is better, but I definitely would prefer some brighter CPC+ colors (and there are genuine CPC+ games or demos that show this off)

[Gryzor]

I see what you mean, and in the end, to some extend, it's how we're used to stuff.


But (and it's a huge BUT), if that was good enough then for me all shades of green would be the best. I only lived with the green palette for several years. Friends of mine had c64s and seeing colours was really great, but the first time I plugged my trusty 464 into a SCART TV I was blown away...


Maybe true; maybe the CPC palette could do with a little less saturation. But all kinds of shit being better than this? No way.

[seanb]

Damn.
And I was hoping we'd have a way of changing Double Dragons palette

[TFM]

Sure why not? Patch the game for Plus colors and there you go! 

[Fessor]

You are talking about the Virgin/Mastertronic Version? You can give the game new colours. But the Graphics look bad converted and remember to ultima 6 on atari st which suffers the same fate. nearest colour alghorithm against a limited and fixed palette.

Search with an Hex-Editor for 14 07 0a 1e 1c 1f 00 06 0e 0c 1d 1a 16 03 1c 0b 14 in the Disk Image.
This are the Hardwarecolours which where ORed with &40.


CPC Palette - CPCWiki

Colour-Setting Routine:
21 de a7 01 00 7f 16 11 7e 23 ed 49 F6 40 ed 79 0c 15 20 f4

Code Select Expand


0b8a:
ld hl,#a7de
ld bc,#7f00
ld d,#11
ld a,(hl)
inc hl
out (c),c
or #40
out (c),a
inc c
dec d
jr nz,#0b92
ret