Frame Flipping/Blending more Color Trick

[peteym5]

I have got around to doing this test using flipping 2 images fast to make more colors. On the Atari 8-bit machines there is a trick known as SuperIRG that uses Antic 4/5 5 multicolor character modes that alternate between 2 character sets at 60 frames per second on NTSC 50 frames per second on PAL. These modes have 5 colors on the 8-bit, and people claim they get around 14 colors. Antic 4/5 are 128 character set, characters 128 to 255 have an alternate color for bit pairs (11).

 

The 7800 only has 4 colors per image to work with. 4 times 4 is 16 minus the color sets that generate the same color as the other is like 10 colors.

 

I know this flickers in emulators because they are not always synced with the display of the host computer. But the affect can be seen.

SuperIRGStyleTrick.zip

Edited November 20, 2017 by peteym5

[Synthpopalooza]

I have used this effect in my Sky Scraper 2115 project. In 160A mode it behaves very much like Antic 4 on Atari 8 bit. 10 colors per character, plus you can use 7 other palettes to get more colors.

 

I also did this in 320B mode. This is a 320 pixel res mode which allows 3 colors plus BG per palette. To get all the colors you have to turn on Kangaroo mode but I used this to get 10 colors on the title screen.

 

Using this in 160B mode (12 colors plus BG) will get 91 colors. Again, likely only of use in title screens and static displays.

Edited November 23, 2017 by Synthpopalooza

[Synthpopalooza]

My thread also details a method of designing super IRG characters for the 7800 using ny ICE font editor in Altirra and making png screen captures. Have a look and see if this is of use to you.