On Amstrad there are some games in MODE 1 (4 colors) with a badly selected palette, e.g. only shades of blue, or colors so random and non-contrasting that you don't want to look at them. Surprisingly, I counted over 40 of them, including 10 well-known and popular ones.
And they can be changed with just a few POKEs, just to find the right place where they hide.
I started with one of my favorite games, although it is not one of those with terrible colors. I'm talking about Prohibition. If you like the picture below with a piece of map in new colors, you can play from DSK below with such colors.
To find and modify POKEs I used a free PC program - Hex Editor Neo. And I've been tinkering with the whole DSK. It took just few minutes. :)
The next one I took a look at is "Nigel Mansell's World Championship" (1993) - Don't confuse with "Nigel Mansell's Grand Prix" (1988), but unfortunately, despite several hours of tinkering, so far no result. :( My enthusiasm has waned a bit, I have a few more fancy and time consuming ideas how to discover these POKEs, but rather next time when I feel do some retro I will choose another title, maybe it will go easier. I'm attaching the concept of new colors. The blue ones are the original, then the 1st and 2nd, rather final concept. :)
Here are the other candidates for change:
Afteroids (1988), Hero Quest (1991), Hudson Hawk (1991), Iron Lord (1990), Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge (1990), Midnight Resistance (1990), Untouchables (The) (1989), War In Middle Earth (1989), ...
I've been messing around with Nigel Mansell's code and for some reason the programmer wrote a weird routine to set the palettes. You have to poke #9F2,17 #9E3,0A and #9DA,1E to get the blue and yellow scheme that you wish. Wich btw, it will serve for other colours you would like to try with.
Bare in mind that this will also change the colours on other screens, and certainly it could be done in a better way but at least it does the job ;D
I'm really liking some of the games that have been modified to use the Plus palette I must say. Tweaked mode 0 games on the Plus can look almost 16 bit with no more than a few simple palette adjustments. It makes such a difference.
This is how we end up with limited games on a system seen as not very efficient. ;D
I know it's not exploiting the Plus to its full potential but I've always had a difficult relationship with the old CPC palette, and the Plus colours just look so delicious.
Too bad Amstrad didn't integrate Plus features into the Basic and everything instead of pretending it was hardware locked to the cartridge port. I really think it's worth it for just the colours alone, but I'm sure home coders would have loved to have had a crack at the new features as well, and other users would have appreciated having, you know, software. Even if it was only magazine pokes to give your old games new colours.
I had loved a 6128 with a 4-bit palette. 12-bit palette is great, but the limited number of displayable colours is more frustrating.
As a woke up too early for a sunday morning :picard: I've decided to create a patched dsk of the version cracked by XOR for the in-race palette changes, not affecting the rest of the screens. In this case it will be needed side B of the XOR version ofc.
Besides, for further modifications, it is possible to arrange any palette of choice, changing the values from #93 to #96
@trocoloco - I don't get it how to find this #93 to #96 ??
If you mean offset in file NM1992, there are zeros.
I beleve better pallet are colors 20,16,9 not 11,24,12, that was early concept I had. And it's not so bad colors for whole game. Including mono monitors.
Can you change pallete for ech scenes? Earth with flags, modify car area, podium, etc.
Yesterday after your first post I found on DSK (XOR version), 5 places with colors set the same way as at address you gived, I was happy for a while, because I thought that pallets for each scenes, but if I change least 1 byte, game is reset itself. So I don't understand your sorcerys.
I see only 2 person took Prohibition and nobody said a word. Is it better or not?
I have not made myself clear. I meant when game is loaded in memory you have to check memory positions going from &93 to &96 (hexadecimal), those are the four bytes with the value for ingame palette, but if you open the file in a hex editor the values surely are in the same positions.
I don't know if is the best choice of colours or not as that is just a subjective point of view. I've just followed the first of the screens that you showed and used as an example... As far as I know there are a few palettes, for the intro screens, 4 blacks, menu and ingame, they are starting at &994 and the composition is "00 XX 01 XX 02 XX 03 XX FF", so there's only one palette for ingame. Not sure but I suppose that with a lot more time and patience it could be patched so every scene could have a different one...
Regarding the "sorcery", in order to not provoke for the game to do weird artifacts due to the jumps in memory just to get a value to set the colours ??? , what it is done here, is simply skipping the game routine and jumping to a routine placed at &80 , that just sets the palette located right after everytime the racing part is loaded
Values 53,4C,56,54 match the colors of the 3rd image, which look better IMO.
But maybe we can find even better!
Formula one on golf course ;D
Using grey (the misnamed cyan) rather than green should be more realistic, indeed.
53,4C,46,54
Also, we can't have a blue sky if it's raining :-\
Thanks guys for your help. I really appreciate your knowledge and effort. Now the game looks the way I wanted. All made in the same colors 0,20,16,9, although you can make a different one in options than in race. Some flags and cars look quite good, others a little less, but still better than in the original colors. :) If someone wants to explain to him how to modify it, because he has an idea for a different palette, and does not understand how the hardware colors work, just ask. DSK below. :)
For relaxation, I'm putting some imaginary pictures from Lotus 2, which will probably never be made CPC. And next time I'll try to improve Hudson Hawk and Untouchables. :)
Quote from: Jean-Marie on 21:52, 26 March 23Using grey (the misnamed cyan)
Problem with your CTM? :-\ This colour is not grey but cyan (dark) or teal. (R=00%, G=50%, B=50%)
Quote from: ZbyniuR on 11:46, 26 March 23I see only 2 person took Prohibition and nobody said a word. Is it better or not?
Personally I prefer the palette of the original version of
Prohibition (brown, grey and white).
It should be a different work depending of kind of mode 1 game. Nigel Mansell or Hudson Hawk are speccy port, Iron Lord is converted from Atari ST.
And Teenage Queen (sadly) ?
What an awesome project!
Hero Quest also suffers from late Gremlin blue effect. ;)
Thanks!!
There's a patch made by The Mojón twins that has been running around for quite some time. It's the spanish version and I don't know if the game has been translated. Just use the "Hero Quest (nuevos colores) ES" link at the bottom of the page in the green area. You can try it online first too.
https://www.amstrad.es/doku.php?id=foraneos:hero_quest
The picture you are showing was done by
@MacDeath and came from here:
https://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php?title=Hero_Quest&mobileaction=toggle_view_desktop
(https://www.cpcwiki.eu/imgs/b/bd/Heroquest_possible_colour_variation.png)
I had no idea. I took it from the webpage I found the link.
Here you can find images for that version. The link for downlading it is at the bottom of the page.
https://www.mojontwins.com/cepeceros/descargas/hero-quest-colores-modificados/
I have seen the link and downloaded it, before posting.
That do not match with the picture used into your post.
But yes, your last link is the good one. :)
Quote from: Brundij on 13:33, 11 July 23I had no idea. I took it from the webpage I found the link.
Here you can find images for that version. The link for downlading it is at the bottom of the page.
https://www.mojontwins.com/cepeceros/descargas/hero-quest-colores-modificados/
This link says "Forbidden" for me
I already told them and they're working on it ;)
The game exists in French and Spanish. French bundled with English Gremlin release, Spanish in its own Dro Soft release.
I love the new Prohibition palette! I think I prefer it! Great work :)
However, the game corrupts when you get a game over and it tries to return to the title screen FYI
@ZbyniuR
Hello there.
I see some old montage to pray for someone to patch Heroquest and "correct some speccy ports was of some inspirational value.
You or mojon twins or anyone can use it if you want guys, it's ok for me.
Just put something like 'hey that man did this and its cool, lets do a patch for the game along that concept and give that man 1.000.023 pesos."* :laugh:
Nah it's ok.
Funnily I recently found out I was an inspiration for some Wikipedia media too and cited from this forum... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Amstrad_CPC_ink_numbers.png
(was just flexing by)
Good to see some coders are still trying to patch a few oldies.
*1.000.023 pesos = 0.023 euros I guess... :laugh:
Quote from: TotO on 00:04, 26 March 23I had loved a 6128 with a 4-bit palette. 12-bit palette is great, but the limited number of displayable colours is more frustrating.
the "ideal and realistic" CPC-from-1984 palette would have been a 5 level (not bit) RGB cube, the 5x5x5 of 125 colours, which is the extended /dithered CPC palette....
Nigel Mansell's World Championship : it use some monochromatic palette of Black and White + 2x colours in the same hue/colour ramp, so if you want to switch it into a bichromatic palette you may have to patch the graphic assets as well.
Prohibition use a grey+red palette, no real need to patch it, it is good as it is, Mode1 is very limited si no need to really try that much to get a full colour vibe, it won't work.
Some "Mode5 CGA" palette is always good : Black-White(pastel yellow?)-Red (pink?)-(dark)Cyan
I goes with everything, may get the darkcyan instead of plain cyan, may get the white into pastel Yellow, or some variations of that.
Oh MacDeath is back with more palettes!