AuthorTopic: Color restricted palettes? (help)  (Read 13776 times)

Offline Slothien483

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Color restricted palettes? (help)

on: February 08, 2007, 12:06:16 am
Hi there

Just wanted to know something I've been wondering for some time now. Here's the deal : I want to do a piece with color restrictions, with one of those famous palettes I see mentioned everywhere, but I don't know what is the software that has them.

For example, I've seen pieces with "c64 multicolor mode" , "EGA" , "c64 grayscale" , "c64 high res" , etc, color restricted palettes, and I would like to do a pixel art with these, but I dont know what is the software that has them, again.

Thanks in advance!.

Offline ptoing

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Re: Color restricted palettes? (help)

Reply #1 on: February 08, 2007, 12:18:03 am
Download this for C64 mcol as well as hires and other stuff, read the internal help that is c64 specific.

http://noname.c64.org/csdb/release/?id=30789

Also,

general stuff about the C64 colours


ZX Spectrum stuff


ORIC stuff (only for the hardcore and/or insane)


Top one is the standard EGA palette which was used on old IBM compatibles and PCs, bottom again is speccy.


Hope this helps.
There are no ugly colours, only ugly combinations of colours.

Offline Ryumaru

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Re: Color restricted palettes? (help)

Reply #2 on: February 08, 2007, 01:58:38 am
im crazy and would like to try some oric stuff, but im ENTIRELY confused of the paper and ink thing. would be great if you could explain further oh master of everything pixel, ptoing.

Offline Xion

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Re: Color restricted palettes? (help)

Reply #3 on: February 08, 2007, 02:06:11 am
Yeah, got any examples of art made with ORIC? A picture's worth a thousand words.

Offline Ai

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Re: Color restricted palettes? (help)

Reply #4 on: February 08, 2007, 05:31:12 am
There is a picture included -- just above the inversion explanation, corresponding to what was explained earlier.
Someone here used to have an ORIC avatar. Try searching for ORIC on these forums.

EDIT: that doesn't find it -- but the guy to ask is Feron, it was his avatar.

A more technical explanation:

Each 6x1 cell takes up 8 bits

012345CI

(C and I are bits 6 and 7 respectively)

Normally (when neither C or I bits are set), the bits # 012345 represent whether the color in that position is paper (0) or pen(1) color. If the C (color change) bit is set,
bit 0 says whether it is the paper or pen color changing,
bits 123 specifies the color to change to,
bits 45I are ignored.
When the C bit is set, 0 (paper) is taken as the mask value for all 6 pixels in the cell.

If the I bit is set, the meaning of bits 012345 is inverted.
« Last Edit: February 08, 2007, 06:39:01 am by Ai »
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Offline Cow

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Re: Color restricted palettes? (help)

Reply #5 on: February 08, 2007, 06:01:14 am
Eh? ??? That seems to bring up more questions than it answers.

The ZX Spectrum one looks like fun, I'm gonna try that in a bit.

Offline Ai

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Re: Color restricted palettes? (help)

Reply #6 on: February 08, 2007, 06:36:47 am
I only explain things, not answer questions.
Your post did prompt me to notice that the interaction of the C bit and bit 0 was not properly explained, so it's fixed and complete now. In combination with the knowledge that the paper/pen colors are reset to white and black at the start of the line, it is a complete description of the capabilities of the ORIC display.
If you insist on being pessimistic about your own abilities, consider also being pessimistic about the accuracy of that pessimistic judgement.

Offline ptoing

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Re: Color restricted palettes? (help)

Reply #7 on: February 08, 2007, 01:10:49 pm
Yup what Ai stated is correct, tho I don't think it helps to understand anything better (unless you are a programmer perhaps or know a bit more about bits, bytes and nibbles)

Some ORIC pics:

Here a very simple approach by exocet.
The leftmost column or 6 pixels (the first attribute cell in every line) is left black and he uses it basically to change the paper (foreground colour)


Logo by mooz for the barbitoric demo.
You can see he used mainly white and where he changes colour he always has some black buffer around to ensure there are no problems with the attribute changes.
The white on the very border might look strange, but watched on the real thing (or even emulators), you have a black border around the screen which is afaik not changable in any way.


A pic by some chap called D. Vasiljevic.
Quite effective use of the restrictions imo. He changes both ink and paper, not only paper like most others would do.
There are no ugly colours, only ugly combinations of colours.

Offline Feron

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Re: Color restricted palettes? (help)

Reply #8 on: February 08, 2007, 07:57:47 pm
My fad-avatar had an oric mode :



My attempt is poor compared to those ptoing posted.  Its a damn hard mode - perhaps ill try it again on a larger scale sometime...

Offline robotriot

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Re: Color restricted palettes? (help)

Reply #9 on: February 08, 2007, 09:07:02 pm
Here's the KC85 palette and its restrictions:



The left column are background colours, the rest is foreground; 320x256 resolution. The screen is divided in 4x8 pixel rectangles; each rectangle can have one of the 8 background colours, and one of the 16 foreground colours.

Here's my crappy attempt at doing something with that restriction.

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