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NTSC Palettes for Atari800 Emulators


atarimac

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All,

One of the Atari800MacX users pointed out that all the current palettes distrubuted with the Atari800 emulators do not display the real colors for NTSC machines. He especially noted the purples instead of reds in PacMan and Ms. PacMan. I had never noticed it before, but found several threads in the 800 forum about the real colors. It looks like all the original palettes were developed by PAL users. Since the 800 and 2600 used the same palettes for NTSC, I've converted the three different types of palettes used by Stella. The user who pointed it out said that the new Stella palette was the best, and that is what I have found in Stella also, but I've also converted the original Stella and the Z26 palettes. I've attached the three .pal files, and they should be useable with Atari800, Atari800WinPlus, and Atari800MacX. I'll be including them in the next release of Atari800MacX.

 

Enjoy!

 

Palettes.zip

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Since the 800 and 2600 used the same palettes for NTSC, I've converted the three different types of palettes used by Stella.  The user who pointed it out said that the new Stella palette was the best, and that is what I have found in Stella also, but I've also converted the original Stella and the Z26 palettes.

 

Great job! The new_Stella_NTSC.pal looks dead-on match for the colors. I use the Atari800Win Plus emulator for Atari 5200 emulation and the colors look much more like the actual system produces.

 

In respects to your above post, the Atari 800(5200) and the 2600 use the same palette, I would presume then the palette would also be valid for the 7800 (?) That being the case, I would love to modify the current palette used in MESS for Atari 7800 emulation to match more closely what should be the accurate colors.

 

How did you create/edit the palette? What tool(s) did you use? Is there a way to obtain the hex values from the palette? Pardon my ignorance, but I would love to see better, 'more' accurate NTSC colors for the 7800 in MESS. I've attached the source code file which list what the current palette values are in MESS. The file is from the mess\systems folder from the v104 source. I would appreciate any advice or direction you could provide me.

 

Thanks for reading,

Trebor

a7800.zip

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In respects to your above post, the Atari 800(5200) and the 2600 use the same palette, I would presume then the palette would also be valid for the 7800 (?)

I have a small program I wrote for the 2600 that displays all 128 colors at once, which I've previously posted in other forums/threads at AtariAge. And I now have a working 7800 again, with a Cuttle Cart 2, so I've taken several digital photos of my 7800 running the 128-palette display. Unfortunately, I couldn't seem to get a decent photo, so I didn't post any of them yet, but I'm going to try again tonight when I get home, and post a good one in this thread "for the record." Then we can compare the actual 7800 palette in the photo to the palette in the emulator. :)

 

Michael Rideout

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I have a small program I wrote for the 2600 that displays all 128 colors at once, which I've previously posted in other forums/threads at AtariAge. And I now have a working 7800 again, with a Cuttle Cart 2, so I've taken several digital photos of my 7800 running the 128-palette display. Unfortunately, I couldn't seem to get a decent photo, so I didn't post any of them yet, but I'm going to try again tonight when I get home, and post a good one in this thread "for the record." Then we can compare the actual 7800 palette in the photo to the palette in the emulator. :)

 

Michael Rideout

1019960[/snapback]

 

Excellent. I would appreciate that Michael.

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Trebor,

I took the hex values for the palette from the source code for Stella. I'm attaching TIA.cxx, which contains both the PAL and NTSC palettes. They are in a format similar to the 7800, except instead of 3 8Bit numbers for each color, there is one 24 bit number, in the format 0xrrggbb, for red green and blue.

 

Mark

TIA.cxx.zip

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Trebor,

  I took the hex values for the palette from the source code for Stella.  I'm attaching TIA.cxx, which contains both the PAL and NTSC palettes.  They are in a format similar to the 7800, except instead of 3  8Bit numbers for each color, there is one 24 bit number, in the format 0xrrggbb, for red green and blue. 

 

Mark

1020155[/snapback]

 

Thank you. I appreciate it.

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I have a small program I wrote for the 2600 that displays all 128 colors at once, which I've previously posted in other forums/threads at AtariAge. And I now have a working 7800 again, with a Cuttle Cart 2, so I've taken several digital photos of my 7800 running the 128-palette display. Unfortunately, I couldn't seem to get a decent photo, so I didn't post any of them yet, but I'm going to try again tonight when I get home, and post a good one in this thread "for the record." Then we can compare the actual 7800 palette in the photo to the palette in the emulator. :)

 

Michael Rideout

1019960[/snapback]

 

Excellent. I would appreciate that Michael.

1020077[/snapback]

 

I can't seem to get a decent photo. I'm attaching one of the better ones, but it's too dark; on the TV screen, the colors were brighter. I tried to apply various types of adjustments to the photo (brightness/contrast, gamma correction, etc.), but none of them worked very well, so I'm just attaching the unmodified photo.

 

Michael Rideout

 

7800.bmp

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I can't seem to get a decent photo. I'm attaching one of the better ones, but it's too dark; on the TV screen, the colors were brighter. I tried to apply various types of adjustments to the photo (brightness/contrast, gamma correction, etc.), but none of them worked very well, so I'm just attaching the unmodified photo.

 

Michael Rideout

 

7800.bmp

1020698[/snapback]

 

I tried to take screenshots though my screenshot grabber using the Atari color palette chooser but they didn't turn out too well either.

C:\Atari\web site\screenshots\Colorscreen.htm

 

Mitch

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  • 3 months later...

I've been playing around with palettes for the 8-bits lately. This one I came up with today is a combination of the formulas from atari800 with the info on Trevin Beattie's web page and a couple of tweaks to the formulas by me. I think it is really close to what I see on my TV. One is for kat5200, on is for atari800. Any thoughts?

 

-Brian

 

ntscpalettes.zip

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I've been playing around with palettes for the 8-bits lately. This one I came up with today is a combination of the formulas from atari800 with the info on Trevin Beattie's web page and a couple of tweaks to the formulas by me. I think it is really close to what I see on my TV. One is for kat5200, on is for atari800. Any thoughts?

 

-Brian

 

ntscpalettes.zip

 

Hey Brian,

 

I enjoyed the palette you created. Nice job. However, the "new_Stella_NTSC" that atarimac originally posted is still the one for me. I guess an 'accurate' palette can be a tough thing to produce (So many variables involved). Heck with all the interest in NES emulation, it is only recently (Thanks to the talent of an individual name 'blargg' and some others), NTSC colors been accurate represented in emulation of that system.

 

Nonethless, thank you for sharing this with the public. It would really be ideal if there was a way to truly obtain an 'accurate' palette for Atari 5200 NTSC video (7800 NTSC palette too). Maybe blargg's formula will make it into Atari emulation someday (Heck, Genesis and SNES emulators have already had it ported over). Unfortunately, it is way beyond my technical expertise or understanding. Keep up the great work as always! I look forward to the next kat release :-)

 

-Trebor

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Hey Trebor, so is my TV "off" or is yours! lol! Your right, it's a tough thing to get right. I guess alot of it is in the eye of the beholder along with differences in TVs and systems.

 

Anyway, I got on it because I am implementing the artifact colors produced in the hi-res graphics modes. I'll just try to finish that and let the palette go for now. However, I think I will replace the default with this one and will include the new stella one as well.

 

And I will check out blargg's stuff at some point. Maybe there's something there that can be utilized...

 

-Brian

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