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Picky, but: > 140 colors just isn't enough—it's even less than the 8-bit color palette available on the original NES console Is incorrect, as the NES didn't s

by berkut 4y ago

Picky, but: > 140 colors just isn't enough—it's even less than the 8-bit color palette available on the original NES console Is incorrect, as the NES didn't support 8-bit color... From Wikipedia: "the console can display up to 25 colors simultaneously out of 54 usable colors"

onion2k 4y ago
That's not quite true. The NES could reregister colors in the middle of a scanline to get additional colors up to 410 onscreen at once. https://ahefner.livejournal.com/11670.html https://ahefner.livejournal.com/11670.html I doubt any games used this though.
- dspillett 4y ago
  Ah, memories of playing with similar tricks to do split-screen modes on BBC computers. Did it myself for a display when I wanted the full 8 colours¹ for an image (I was drawing fractal things) but decent resolution text for the display of parameters at the bottom. Some games did this to great effect, like Elite which had mode 4 (mid res, mono) on top for the ship view and mode 5 (low res, 4 colour) for the controls [or in the version enhanced for the extra capability of the BBC Master, mode 1 (mid res 4 colour) & mode 2 (low res 8 colour¹)]. There was one driving game that didn't flip modes but did flip pallets to get more than 4 colours on a mode 1 screen display and that even loaded some code into a strip of the display memory that always shows blue sky (just setting all the pallet entries to blue so the data wasn't visible). I don't think the technique was fast enough on those machines to work more granularly than per row (or per few rows) though, so no expanding the pallet over the space of one scan line. -- [1] The BBC supported a mode with 16 pallet entries, but only 8 colours as the other 8 were used for flashing pairs, and those 8 were fixed as the standard primary mixes² instead of anything more flexible [2] You could change what colours mapped to each pallet entry though - I once saw an attempt to get more colours by flipping the pallet between two options each screen refresh, essentially temporal dithering like some LCD panels did to fake 8-bit colour from a 6-bit panel, this actually worked but was too flickery to be really useful though.

by berkut 4y ago

onion2k 4y ago

That's not quite true. The NES could reregister colors in the middle of a scanline to get additional colors up to 410 onscreen at once. https://ahefner.livejournal.com/11670.html https://ahefner.livejournal.com/11670.html I doubt any games used this though.

dspillett 4y ago
Ah, memories of playing with similar tricks to do split-screen modes on BBC computers. Did it myself for a display when I wanted the full 8 colours¹ for an image (I was drawing fractal things) but decent resolution text for the display of parameters at the bottom. Some games did this to great effect, like Elite which had mode 4 (mid res, mono) on top for the ship view and mode 5 (low res, 4 colour) for the controls [or in the version enhanced for the extra capability of the BBC Master, mode 1 (mid res 4 colour) & mode 2 (low res 8 colour¹)]. There was one driving game that didn't flip modes but did flip pallets to get more than 4 colours on a mode 1 screen display and that even loaded some code into a strip of the display memory that always shows blue sky (just setting all the pallet entries to blue so the data wasn't visible). I don't think the technique was fast enough on those machines to work more granularly than per row (or per few rows) though, so no expanding the pallet over the space of one scan line. -- [1] The BBC supported a mode with 16 pallet entries, but only 8 colours as the other 8 were used for flashing pairs, and those 8 were fixed as the standard primary mixes² instead of anything more flexible [2] You could change what colours mapped to each pallet entry though - I once saw an attempt to get more colours by flipping the pallet between two options each screen refresh, essentially temporal dithering like some LCD panels did to fake 8-bit colour from a 6-bit panel, this actually worked but was too flickery to be really useful though.