The Amstrad CPC palette.

[MacDeath]

I made a few pictures displaying the CPC palette.

Maybe they may be usefull for people who want to do some graphics but somehow fail to understand the palette of the CPC.












The main advantage : I produced those myself, so less need to use the Wikipedia pictures...


This is good also to see the different combinaisons when dithering colours (in mode1 or mode0...)or see what colours can be a suitable transition between 2 others.

Or see the dithered equivalent of existing non-simple colours...

I used Paint.net to produce those, and the colours are generated with 0-128-255 values..

Of course it is difficult to tell the difference between the 2 light blues, somes light greens, the 2 light yellows and so on... as would it be on a proper CPC actually...



Hope this may help some to understand betterly the Amstradic's Cube (like a Rubic's one... or Cubic's Rube...lol...)

[Bryce]

Great.... And where are these pictures?

Bryce.

[MacDeath]

WTF ? I put link to CPCrulez... this must be an antispam/links stuff... ok I try again to upload them properly....

there they are.

I added the 2nd one in the CPCwiki page "video modes"...

[redbox]

These are really great MacDeath and I especially like the visual aid of the dithering.
 
I found this 12-bit (i.e. 4096 colours) test chart on the net which is compatible with the Plus (not sure if we can put it on the Wiki though as I didn't draw it...):

[MacDeath]

This one is already in the Wiki at the page "Video modes".

http://cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Video_modes


Was taken on the Wikipedia actually.

I managed to make those for CPC as it is quite a limited palette (only 27... not limited in possibilities... )

But I won't do the same with the Plus palette as... er... 4096 is a bit too much for me to do it by hands...

I tried to express the 3 dimensional aspect of the CPC palette...

And as you told, to make an helpfull tool to get the Full CPC palette through ditherings with simple basic colours (RedGreenBlueCyanYellowPurple + Black&White...sort of...)

[arnoldemu]

One thing I would be interested in, but I don't know if this falls into this idea:

You can flash two colours rapidly to make a new colour.
In basic it would be

ink 1,26,23

and then

speed ink 1,1

or similar.

Which combinations of the cpc palette produce nice colours. Which don't flicker much.
Maybe some of these "new" colours could be used in games (similar to the "new" colours on the c64 used in Mayhem in Monsterland).

I planned to work it out, but never got far.

Could you also do this?

[MacDeath]

Well, the more contrast there is between the flickering colours, the more it flashes and flicker...


Just look at the different combinaisons, some of them are not smooth, other arer but then the difference beteween the new "colours" and the old one is somewhat limited.

[Grim]

Which combinations of the cpc palette produce nice colours. Which don't flicker much.

Flicker level = abs( luminosity(colour.1) - luminosity(colour.2))
The lower it is, the better. But the threshold between "flickering is OK" and "flicker too much" is really up to you to decide

[redbox]

Was taken on the Wikipedia actually.

Oh yes - love the "contains stuff from Wikipedia" disclaimer 

[MacDeath]

Ok, redone the cube stuff; it is now more complete...

[Gryzor]

This is very cute - I need a wallpaper with these cubes!

Now, if someone could juxtapose the c64 cubes next to these... that would be a laugh!

Btw, the palette page on the wiki is awesome!

[MacDeath]

C64 cubes ?
But the C64 don't even have enough colours to make a real cube actually...

Also there you are : A wallpaper...
The dimension even enable you to put icons on your desktop...

Also it is no notice : those cubes may be displayed on a real CPC if you use some raster interrupt...

As each cube actually display 19-20 colours.

[Bryce]

Ok, I think I could solve the top left Rubics-cube in 34 moves, but I'm not sure about the other ones

Bryce.

[MacDeath]

They are actually solved... the gradiants are smooth and sorted...

[redbox]

Also it is no notice : those cubes may be displayed on a real CPC if you use some raster interrupt...

That would be one hell of a split raster...!

[MacDeath]

Well, forgot to say only if you put only one on the screen...

[arnoldemu]

As each cube actually display 19-20 colours.

it's like beautiful man. Here take the smoke and pass it on

[MacDeath]

http://www.randelshofer.ch/rubik/virtualcubes/rubik/picture_cubes/rgbtone_cube_en.html

http://www.randelshofer.ch/rubik/virtualcubes/rubik/picture_cubes/rgbtone_cube_enVE.html

http://www.randelshofer.ch/rubik/virtualcubes/rubik/picture_cubes/images/RGBToneCube_512.gif

OMFG, they did it wrong... This is not amstrad Palette...



Also I found out I re-invented the RGB-cube...d'oh....

http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JDC/Spring-2000/bendito/activities2.gif
http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JDC/Spring-2000/bendito/bendito2.html

[SyX]

In relation with this thread, i made something similar for my graphician could see differents combinations of dithering and  palette on his cpc.

You can download the DSK here (use space to change between palettes).

And of course: 

[Gryzor]

C64 cubes ?
But the C64 don't even have enough colours to make a real cube actually...

Also there you are : A wallpaper...
The dimension even enable you to put icons on your desktop...

Also it is no notice : those cubes may be displayed on a real CPC if you use some raster interrupt...

As each cube actually display 19-20 colours.

Veeeery nice! Though I prefer it to be full-screen - but I can do that much myself Someone should take this style and render a CPC logo under the cubes - then it'd be effin' perfect!

[MacDeath]

Like this ?


Needs a few rasters and to be in mode0...
But I should verify more closely if this can be done actually...


convImgCPC has a "X mode" but it does not support mode0 rasters nor multimode raster pictures....too bad as it would be great to verify Rastered or even convert-create those in CPC compatible standard/format...pictures...


Also, do you know where can we find AmstradCPC format friendly Amstrads logos ?

[Gryzor]

There are some vector images of old computers out there* that you could extract the logo from, I think...

*I have used the CPC one in our banner:
 

[MacDeath]

Ok I'll check up thoses...


Also :

"Overscan grid" : to produce stuff like "Montage grid Amstrad"...

This is compatible with the "New Cube"

Cube with rasters : I highlighted the lines where raster colour changes can be performed in order to get the 27 colours experience.

The raster zones are as follow (from up to down...) but of course it may be possible to use less zones as we get a 16 colours available per zones.

Black is always included as it it used for the frame.
But it may be better to aim 12 colours max per zones and keep 4 colours for the reste of the picture (Black+White+Grey+ one other, per exemple...)

Oh, Grey is never diplayed on the cube itself because it is inside the cube (in the middle of everything, so nowhere...)


1st zone : total 2 colors
(1+black).

2nd zone : total 4 colors
(3+black... and so on...).
2 colors from past zone disappear, 3 new colours appear.
 

3rd zone : total 6 colors 
1 color from past zone disappear, 3 new colours appear.

4th zone : total 6 colors
2 colors from past zone disappear, 2 new colours appear.

5th zone : total 6 colors
1 colors from past zone disappear, 1 new colours appear.

6th zone : total 8 colors
2 colors from past zone disappear, 4 new colours appear.
 

7th zone : total 7 colors
2 colors from past zone disappear, 1 new colours appear.
 

8th zone : total 8 colors
3 colors from past zone disappear, 4 new colours appear.
 

9th zone : total 7 colors
2 colors from past zone disappear, 1 new colours appear.
 

10th zone : total  4 colors
3 colors from past zone disappear, no new colours appear.
 
11th zone : total 2 colors
2 colors from past zone disappear, no new colours appear.
 


The pixels numbers in vertical may vary... (didn't counted them precisely, too hard to do in english lol)  but an important detail : this is supossed to be in "vertically doubled Mode0"...

Implying :

=Square "pixels" of (mode1) 2x2 so (Mode0)1x2.
=As the pixels are doubled vertically this may give windows for some tricks (sort of compression... as each scan line is repeated once) or even ease the raster interrupt (you have 2 scanlines to perform it.)


With those many "zones" the max colours per line is 8... for one cube, including the Black (comon colour for 2 cubes per example)..


The rest would be for coders to tell me feasability and specifications...

[Bryce]

I have a vectorized graphic of a 3D 6128 with GT65 (drew it myself) that I use on my PCBs sometimes (see close-up below)  I can send you it as a DXF if that's any use? The picture actually has a lot more detail than seen here, just copper isn't the best medium for graphics

Bryce.

[MacDeath]

just copper isn't the best medium for graphics

You should tell that to Amigafans...


There another example of composition, should be heavy in rasters, and the cubes are not varied...I still have to see what combinaison may be easier or good looking...

The more common colours per raster the better.

If 3-4 colours may be keept for the non-cube zones, then it may even be possible to give the "texte-tiles" some kind of a scroll-texte effect...

I displayed the cubes so only a small portion of them actually cross rasters...


So I am officially searching for a coder...



According to the Rasters highlight on the second version, this composition seems technically possible yet may be quite heavy CPU wise...

This is to be a fullscreen picture with "cell based animation"...and shittons of rasters...

Mmmm... could this fit in a x64 config ?