Intellivision font bitmap/color palette please?

[BladeJunker]

Hello I'm a retro enthusiast who likes to draw pixel doodles/mockups and study hardware. The problem is I can't find a bitmap that contains the entire built in Intellivision font found on the system EPROM. As I could not find it even after hours of searching and since I'm not tech savy enough to extract it myself I was hoping someone here could help.

 

I also need a bitmap approximation of the 16 colors used on the Intellivision IE. the RGB or something close to that for the sake of posting a pixel art guide for the INTV. This guide will also contain hardware specific limitations too but I need these basics for the pixel art types.

 

Anyway if you can help that would be most appreciated.

[intvnut]

Hello I'm a retro enthusiast who likes to draw pixel doodles/mockups and study hardware. The problem is I can't find a bitmap that contains the entire built in Intellivision font found on the system EPROM. As I could not find it even after hours of searching and since I'm not tech savy enough to extract it myself I was hoping someone here could help.

 

I also need a bitmap approximation of the 16 colors used on the Intellivision IE. the RGB or something close to that for the sake of posting a pixel art guide for the INTV. This guide will also contain hardware specific limitations too but I need these basics for the pixel art types.

 

Anyway if you can help that would be most appreciated.

 

jzIntv may be able to help you on both counts.

 

You can use the "show_grom" utility that comes with it to dump the contents of GROM. I haven't posted the bitmap myself, but the show_grom utility will generate the bitmaps for you for each character. To make this easy, I'm going to assume you are on a PC and that you can just copy everything into one directory to do your work.

 

Copy the file "show_grom.exe" from jzintv\bin into this new directory. Also copy in "grom.bin". Then in a command window, do this:

 

 cd \path\to\directory
 show_grom -h grom.bin > g.html

 

This will make 256 files named "grom_00.gif" through "grom_FF.gif" with all 256 pictures available from the GROM. The uppercase alphabet begins at grom_21.gif. The lowercase alphabet begins at grom_41.gif. If you open up the file "g.html", you'll get an HTML table that shows all of the pictures. Each cell has one of the 8x8 GIFs.

 

(Note: If you want to make the GIFs display bigger, you can use "show_grom -h -x 32 -y 32 grom.bin > g.html". This will display them as 32x32 images, although the GIFs themselves will remain 8x8. You can replace the '32' with whatever number you like. Modern web browsers 'blur' the bitmaps when they scale up. Rest assured the actual 8x8 GIFs are not blurry.)

 

For the colors, well, I will state for the record that jzIntv's color table is far from perfect. That said, the file jzintv\doc\color\colors_new.png snapshots the palette that jzIntv uses.

[BladeJunker]

Hello I'm a retro enthusiast who likes to draw pixel doodles/mockups and study hardware. The problem is I can't find a bitmap that contains the entire built in Intellivision font found on the system EPROM. As I could not find it even after hours of searching and since I'm not tech savy enough to extract it myself I was hoping someone here could help.

 

I also need a bitmap approximation of the 16 colors used on the Intellivision IE. the RGB or something close to that for the sake of posting a pixel art guide for the INTV. This guide will also contain hardware specific limitations too but I need these basics for the pixel art types.

 

Anyway if you can help that would be most appreciated.

 

jzIntv may be able to help you on both counts.

 

You can use the "show_grom" utility that comes with it to dump the contents of GROM. I haven't posted the bitmap myself, but the show_grom utility will generate the bitmaps for you for each character. To make this easy, I'm going to assume you are on a PC and that you can just copy everything into one directory to do your work.

 

Copy the file "show_grom.exe" from jzintv\bin into this new directory. Also copy in "grom.bin". Then in a command window, do this:

 

 cd \path\to\directory
 show_grom -h grom.bin > g.html

 

This will make 256 files named "grom_00.gif" through "grom_FF.gif" with all 256 pictures available from the GROM. The uppercase alphabet begins at grom_21.gif. The lowercase alphabet begins at grom_41.gif. If you open up the file "g.html", you'll get an HTML table that shows all of the pictures. Each cell has one of the 8x8 GIFs.

 

(Note: If you want to make the GIFs display bigger, you can use "show_grom -h -x 32 -y 32 grom.bin > g.html". This will display them as 32x32 images, although the GIFs themselves will remain 8x8. You can replace the '32' with whatever number you like. Modern web browsers 'blur' the bitmaps when they scale up. Rest assured the actual 8x8 GIFs are not blurry.)

 

For the colors, well, I will state for the record that jzIntv's color table is far from perfect. That said, the file jzintv\doc\color\colors_new.png snapshots the palette that jzIntv uses.

The colors look close enough, I know how hard it is to match analog colors. If better versions of the color palette come up I can exchange it, still nice to get an assessment on its accuracy.

 

I see what you mean about the blur in the HTML output, many pixel art forums are quite annoyed by this zoom feature since they just want to inspect the pixels lol. Still I can form a larger "sprite rip" from these individual gifs into a png. I didn't know the INTV table contained so many extra graphics tiles within, neat.

 

Thanks for your help.

[intvnut]

Well, as I said, the individual GIFs for the characters are not blurry. I could probably add a mode to dump the entire 256 character set as a single 128x128 GIF if that'd save time. (16 chars by 16 chars)

[BladeJunker]

Well, as I said, the individual GIFs for the characters are not blurry. I could probably add a mode to dump the entire 256 character set as a single 128x128 GIF if that'd save time. (16 chars by 16 chars)

Thanks for the offer, but I did the work manually despite how tedious it was. Mostly I didn't want to have to transcribe them from a bunch of INTV screen shots.

 

Here have a look at the sprite rip image.

[BladeJunker]

It's actually funny how I started this, I came across this Golden Girl post and decided to give a try at making a gameplay mockup for it lol.

http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/193704-another-intellivision-homebrew-announced/

 

I've been working on a Atari 2600 pixel art guide which hasn't been easy given its quirks & limitations so I was thinking a Intellivision and or a Colecovision pixel art guide would be more straight forward but also worthwhile as well.

[+DZ-Jay]

Well, as I said, the individual GIFs for the characters are not blurry. I could probably add a mode to dump the entire 256 character set as a single 128x128 GIF if that'd save time. (16 chars by 16 chars)

Thanks for the offer, but I did the work manually despite how tedious it was. Mostly I didn't want to have to transcribe them from a bunch of INTV screen shots.

 

Here have a look at the sprite rip image.

 

There's something odd with that rip. Segments of letters seem to be out of place. Also, the bottom looks like German airspace during WWII.

 

(Oh, so that's how the EXEC looks like. LOL!)

 

-dZ.

[BladeJunker]

Well, as I said, the individual GIFs for the characters are not blurry. I could probably add a mode to dump the entire 256 character set as a single 128x128 GIF if that'd save time. (16 chars by 16 chars)

Thanks for the offer, but I did the work manually despite how tedious it was. Mostly I didn't want to have to transcribe them from a bunch of INTV screen shots.

 

Here have a look at the sprite rip image.

 

There's something odd with that rip. Segments of letters seem to be out of place. Also, the bottom looks like German airspace during WWII.

 

(Oh, so that's how the EXEC looks like. LOL!)

 

-dZ.

Well you'd know better than I, but as far as the rip I just copy & pasted directly from each GIF making sure not to disturb there alignment within the card blocks that were extracted. Also what is the EXEC, I don't quite get that?

[+DZ-Jay]

Well, as I said, the individual GIFs for the characters are not blurry. I could probably add a mode to dump the entire 256 character set as a single 128x128 GIF if that'd save time. (16 chars by 16 chars)

Thanks for the offer, but I did the work manually despite how tedious it was. Mostly I didn't want to have to transcribe them from a bunch of INTV screen shots.

 

Here have a look at the sprite rip image.

 

There's something odd with that rip. Segments of letters seem to be out of place. Also, the bottom looks like German airspace during WWII.

 

(Oh, so that's how the EXEC looks like. LOL!)

 

-dZ.

Well you'd know better than I, but as far as the rip I just copy & pasted directly from each GIF making sure not to disturb there alignment within the card blocks that were extracted. Also what is the EXEC, I don't quite get that?

 

Sorry, bad joke. The EXEC is the main game engine framework that comes built into the Intellivision. It's the "operating system" of the console. The story goes that it did not fit in the alloted ROM it was put in, so the designers "stole" some part of the bottom of GROM to store the overflow there.

 

As you can see, the last few tiles are garbage. This is because they are actually EXEC program code and not really graphics.

 

Another story says that the game "B-17 Bomber" used GRAM so intensely that when it came time to make a graphic for the "flak" (German anti-aircraft fire) explosions, they had none left. So they just pointed the MOBs to the end of GROM, and in essence used those garbage-looking tiles for the explosions. It fit well, because explosions looks like random garbage anyway.

 

-dZ.

Edited April 6, 2012 by DZ-Jay

[Snafu-1982]

Hope this helps, this is the Intellivision colour base I constructed using the RGB 256 gradient system.

[+thegoldenband]

Just as a quick note, Snafu-1982's second image is incorrect -- $09 and $0A have been reversed, so that cyan and orange are in the wrong order. His first image has those colors in the right order, however.

 

This confused me on a project I was working on (until I figured out the error), so I thought I'd leave a note for future people searching on Intellivision palette information.

[+DZ-Jay]

Here are two images taken from the SDK-1600 describing the Intellivision colour palette.

 

According to a graphics program, the RGB values for each are:

$00 - BLACK:        #0c0005
$01 - BLUE:         #002dff
$02 - RED:          #ff3e00
$03 - TAN:          #c9d464
$04 - DARK GREEN:   #00780f
$05 - GREEN:        #00a720
$06 - YELLOW:       #faea27
$07 - WHITE:        #fffcff
$08 - GRAY:         #a7a8a8
$09 - CYAN:         #5acbff
$0A - ORANGE        #ffa600
$0B - BROWN:        #3c5800
$0C - PINK:         #ff3276
$0D - LIGHT BLUE:   #bd95ff
$0E - YELLOW GREEN: #6ccd30
$0F - PURPLE:       #c81a7d

Edited May 28, 2014 by DZ-Jay

[+thegoldenband]

DZ-Jay, why are the colors shown in a different order in your text table (and Joe's Color Test) vs. the 16x16 grid from the SDK-1600 and Snafu-1982's charts?

 

In Tower of Doom, color rotations are used to show the status of certain items, and they follow the pattern shown in the SDK-1600 and (with the error corrected) Snafu-1982's charts: gray, cyan, orange, brown, pink, light blue (or lavender), yellow-green, purple (or magenta). Based on Snafu-1982's chart I assumed it was going from $08-$0F.

[+DZ-Jay]

Sorry, I posted them out of order. The order in the SDK-1600 is correct. I've updated my post above to match.

The screenshot for "Joe's Color Test" doesn't follow this order. I think it's because the second row is the same values as the top row, but with the "high-color" bit set. That is,

• BLACK + High-Color = Gray
• BLUE + High-Color = Cyan
• RED + High-Color = Orange
• TAN + High-Color = Brown

This illustrates the way that the colors and their values were chosen by the designers of the Intellivision.

Edited May 28, 2014 by DZ-Jay

[tacrec]

Can someone post the color values in assembly format? Thanks.

[+DZ-Jay]

Can someone post the color values in assembly format? Thanks.

 

What do you mean "assembly format"? I posted the actual STIC colour values in Hexadecimal, above. If you're searching a disassembled source code for them, it's a bit tricky. For one thing, you need to decide whether you are looking for background (BACKTAB) or sprite (MOB) colors, since the colour values are different.

 

You can find the colour codes for each, among many others useful constants, in the file gimini.asm that comes with the SDK-1600.

 

Remember that all values in the disassembly are rendered as 16-bit Hexadecimal words. This means that something like $F will show up as $000F.

[tacrec]

So I found

MVII #$0001, R0 - blue?

and changed it to

MVII #$0006, R0 - yellow?

 

How do I compile it to test?

[+DZ-Jay]

Hmm... I don't think it's that straight forward. I'm sorry, but I've never done what you are trying to do. It occurs to me that the disassembler by default includes EXEC constants to make the source more readable; however, the assembler knows nothing about such constants and will fail on assembly (I know, I just tried).

 

For it to work, you'll either have to define all EXEC symbols in your source (which is not something you're likely to have), or have the disassembler suppress EXEC routine symbols. Unfortunately, the option for the latter in the disassembler does not appear to work. Strange.

 

Perhaps someone else can chime in on how to re-assemble the output of the disassembler. I'm sure others have done this before.

 

-dZ.

[First Spear]

Why would "black" be #0c0005 and not #000000 ?

 

Here are two images taken from the SDK-1600 describing the Intellivision colour palette.
intellivision_color_matrix.gifcolors_new.png

According to a graphics program, the RGB values for each are:

$00 - BLACK:        #0c0005
$01 - BLUE:         #002dff
$02 - RED:          #ff3e00
$03 - TAN:          #c9d464
$04 - DARK GREEN:   #00780f
$05 - GREEN:        #00a720
$06 - YELLOW:       #faea27
$07 - WHITE:        #fffcff
$08 - GRAY:         #a7a8a8
$09 - CYAN:         #5acbff
$0A - ORANGE        #ffa600
$0B - BROWN:        #3c5800
$0C - PINK:         #ff3276
$0D - LIGHT BLUE:   #bd95ff
$0E - YELLOW GREEN: #6ccd30
$0F - PURPLE:       #c81a7d

[freewheel]

Why would "black" be #0c0005 and not #000000 ?

 

 

Not all blacks are rendered perfectly. White is also not #FFFFFF as you'd expect. I'd take those RGB values with a bit of wiggle room. It doesn't really much matter anyway - the INTV can display these 16 colors and that's it. There is no need to match RGB values carefully. Tools such as IntyColor are VERY forgiving when they do best-approximation to determine which color you've actually intended.

[+DZ-Jay]

 

Not all blacks are rendered perfectly. White is also not #FFFFFF as you'd expect. I'd take those RGB values with a bit of wiggle room. It doesn't really much matter anyway - the INTV can display these 16 colors and that's it. There is no need to match RGB values carefully. Tools such as IntyColor are VERY forgiving when they do best-approximation to determine which color you've actually intended.

 

You say "tools" as if there was more than one.

[freewheel]

 

You say "tools" as if there was more than one.

 

There are, outside of the Intellivision scene

[+DZ-Jay]

 

There are, outside of the Intellivision scene

 

What do you mean... "Outside"?

[intvnut]

Why would "black" be #0c0005 and not #000000 ?

 

 

Here are two images taken from the SDK-1600 describing the Intellivision colour palette.

intellivision_color_matrix.gifcolors_new.png

 

According to a graphics program, the RGB values for each are:

$00 - BLACK:        #0c0005
$01 - BLUE:         #002dff
$02 - RED:          #ff3e00
$03 - TAN:          #c9d464
$04 - DARK GREEN:   #00780f
$05 - GREEN:        #00a720
$06 - YELLOW:       #faea27
$07 - WHITE:        #fffcff
$08 - GRAY:         #a7a8a8
$09 - CYAN:         #5acbff
$0A - ORANGE        #ffa600
$0B - BROWN:        #3c5800
$0C - PINK:         #ff3276
$0D - LIGHT BLUE:   #bd95ff
$0E - YELLOW GREEN: #6ccd30
$0F - PURPLE:       #c81a7d

 

FWIW, you could also just look in jzIntv's source and save some time.

LOCAL uint_8 gfx_stic_palette[32][3] = 
{
    /* -------------------------------------------------------------------- */
    /*  I generated these colors by directly eyeballing my television       */
    /*  while it was next to my computer monitor.  I then tweaked each      */
    /*  color until it was pretty close to my TV.  Bear in mind that        */
    /*  NTSC (said to mean "Never The Same Color") is highly susceptible    */
    /*  to Tint/Brightness/Contrast settings, so your mileage may vary      */
    /*  with this particular palette setting.                               */
    /* -------------------------------------------------------------------- */
    { 0x00, 0x00, 0x00 },
    { 0x00, 0x2D, 0xFF },
    { 0xFF, 0x3D, 0x10 },
    { 0xC9, 0xCF, 0xAB },
    { 0x38, 0x6B, 0x3F },
    { 0x00, 0xA7, 0x56 },
    { 0xFA, 0xEA, 0x50 },
    { 0xFF, 0xFC, 0xFF },
    { 0xBD, 0xAC, 0xC8 },
    { 0x24, 0xB8, 0xFF },
    { 0xFF, 0xB4, 0x1F },
    { 0x54, 0x6E, 0x00 },
    { 0xFF, 0x4E, 0x57 },
    { 0xA4, 0x96, 0xFF },
    { 0x75, 0xCC, 0x80 },
    { 0xB5, 0x1A, 0x58 },

I'm not sure all the numbers there match the numbers above. Not sure why that might be. I may have adjusted jzIntv's palette at some point. Or maybe your graphics program pushed it into an sRGB palette that did some gamut-shaping?

 

All I do know is that it's darn hard matching the Intellivision colors, especially when two TVs sitting next to each other often don't agree. And then there's the color temperature problem on PC displays. Most are set to 9300K, which adds way too much blue, while a "true white" is 6500K (which can look quite yellow if you're accustomed to overly-blue displays). Colors are hard!

 

I tried computing the colors from the AY-3-8915 data sheet, and again from data from the PapaIntellivision site, and neither gave me workable colors. jzIntv's colors may suck, but don't say I didn't try. :-)

 

 

 

Not all blacks are rendered perfectly. White is also not #FFFFFF as you'd expect. I'd take those RGB values with a bit of wiggle room. It doesn't really much matter anyway - the INTV can display these 16 colors and that's it. There is no need to match RGB values carefully. Tools such as IntyColor are VERY forgiving when they do best-approximation to determine which color you've actually intended.

 

Indeed! Although I'm not entirely sure my 'not-quite-black' and 'not-quite-white' are correct. It's still close enough to the edges of the color band to be largely imperceptible.

Edited December 23, 2014 by intvnut

[Orangery]

On 5/27/2014 at 12:06 PM, DZ-Jay said:

Here are two images taken from the SDK-1600 describing the Intellivision colour palette.

Is it possible to alter a few of the colours?  The red and magenta are almost identical - I'd want to change the latter for a dark grey.  Not keen on the cyan either.  There are plenty of greens but that's not such a bad thing, as they were useful for outdoor sports like golf, tennis and even auto racing.