snicklin

Aah I see! OK, quite a simple answer at the end of it. Thank you Stephen. I am thinking then that the best values to use are an averaging of the different palettes, providing all palettes are known to be reasonable representations of the colour output. Or is there a palette already conceived that is known to be an averaging of the other palettes? Interesting subject, I am loving this conversation.

Thank you for this, I will take a look. I need to ask a question which has puzzled me for a long time. Why is there more than one palette? Surely the colours that an Atari produces is are fixed RGB values for each colour? (Forgetting that PAL is different from NTSC). Why are different palettes interpreting these differently? For example, the darkest black on an Atari must be fixed at 0,0,0 surely? Why would one palette maybe make it 0,0,0 and another would make it potentially 1,1,1? Perhaps the RGB values are different peoples interpretations? Is that the answer? But if they were analysed scientifically, they'd only be one set of R, G and B values surely? Or do different Atari models have slightly different colours?

Hi all, Where can I get a list of the R, G and B values for all 128 / 256 colours for the Atari. I'd like to use them to write a tool in my Go/Golang tool chain. Thank you!

I think that Pacmania has 5 different coloured ghosts (and then Pac-man) making a total of 6 colours required. Also, are the fruits going to use PMG's? Unless you flicker the PMG's?? So I was thinking that you would could interpolate 2 normal colours (non-PMG's) to get another colour, maybe for the green ghost for example. It would be tricky, yes and it wouldn't look as good as the 16-bit machines, but it would be a good achievement for the Atari 8-bit. It's OK, I can tell you're not keen on this project, I won't push it! How about a brand new game? The A8 really needs a decent pinball game, something inspired by (but not reproducing) Pinball Dreams on the A8, with realistic ball movement.

Ahh it's OK, I am only joking about prerendering frames, extending on Ivo's idea, though I do think that prerendering textures may be a good thing. I don't want Dragon's Lair, just stick with what is being done now. Let's end this conversation deviation.

Hmm, I didn't realise a 16GB cart was possible. I wonder how the banking works on one of those? As for what is real Atari and what isn't, I personally accept additional storage but nothing else, not even stereo. But then if I accept extra storage, I accept the use of the storage for anything which is possible. Personal taste though, I accept. Anyway, back to the 3D system, I like it. Because at the moment, it is very "bare bones", it shows all the possibilities of what it could become.

I still don't think you could fit every possible frame onto a cartridge. But if you could, I would say "Do it"! All the top demo's are full of smoke and mirrors. If you compare say Space Harrier with this proposition, SH prerenders each enemy. The only difference is that it would prerender the whole screen. Anyway, this isn't worth considering as I am proposing only prerendering each texture, just the same as an enemy in Space Harrier. Have no pride, just abuse the cartridge!

That is OK, use an Atarimax 8Mb cartridge and then you can have lots of textures. Who cares if you misuse the space if you produce a fast game with a lot of content? Great work!

That is looking nice. Would you consider writing all the texture data to a cartridge? Then use up a lot of space, but have a very fast engine?

Yes, it would be complicated if you wanted to keep all the colours, but the ghosts could be dithered to show other "colours". The main thing would be getting the gameplay the same. It's a great arcade game that we're missing. Jose Pereira took a look into this game a few years back (maybe 10?) and saw that the occlusion of the ghosts/pacman in certain situations would make it difficult. However I can see that you have the skills to overcome this issue, from what I have seen in Prince of Persia.

Pacmania on the A8 would be great.

I hope that the talks are recorded for YouTube, that would be great to see from over here in Australia.

Interesting - My wife used to teach at their school.

I have been in Australia for the last few years and the postage here is extortionate. When you pay roughly the same for the postage as the product, it isn't worth it. Australia is similar to the UK being a sovereign country and charging VAT/GST on incoming products. When it comes to printed products, we need to look for localised printers. Unfortunately we can't do that with physical products.

I just won't buy anything from the U.S. anymore as it is extortionately expensive, the postage that is, not so much the products. This is going to have a knock om effect onto the US economy, massively so. I haven't read all the pages here, so I doubt I am saying anything new here.

I tried your same picture and it came back with a different result: Did you give it feedback? If so, the algorithm might have adapted. Thought it would better if it worked out to pick out all three of you.

I've been doing some experiments, to see what works and what doesn't. I'm looking into cutting out backgrounds, pre-processing the input image and looking into how greyscale images can be improved (I wasn't too happy with my greyscale image for the New Years disc). I've written a tool (not ready for release yet) which will: Load a file, resize it to a resolution, typically 160x224, turn it to greyscale, reduce it to 7 colours but emphasising the pure black and pure white tones in the image, remove noise, resize it to 320x224 and then spit the file out ready for Rastaconverter. I was rather happy with Forest legend Stuart Pearce with only 5 colours (I mean shades, but I'd rather call them colours)... I chopped him out of the background and making black a predominant colour on every scanline meant that Rastaconverter didn't try to hide it on his shirt. snicklin-pearce-5colours-d_0.10.xex I had tried him with 7 colours and was less impressed with how his face came out. 5 colours is almost cheating, but this is an experiment not a competition. And it needs to work out where the PMG's go on that extra colour. Considering 7 colours didn't look any better, I am happy with this. The pre-processing to the image colours helped a lot on his shirt and collar region. Now here is Roy Keane in his Nottingham Forest days, with the background cut out and in colour. I've not restricted the number of colours with this and there is no pre-processing apart from the background. 75 million evaluations. snicklin_Keane_d2.75.xex I've seen before that fleshy tones don't come out too well. I was hoping that the lack of background meant that it could use the PMG's heavily on the legs. This is still very streaky, not a pleasing result, but with some more evaluations it may get better. And here he is in black and white, with pre-processing to reduce him down to 7 colours. snicklin_Keane_BW_d0.27.xex I am not too keen on how the background removal leaves that white edge around him. Though it is useful on his head so that his hair doesn't disappear into the background. His legs look more realistic in black and white. My algorithm (not sure if this is how this is done in the mainstream, but it seemed to make sense was the following): If you're aiming for 7 colours, add 2 colours so that you have 9 colours. Then if all the colours are numbered 0 to 8 with 0 being black and 8 being white, all 1's are made into 0's (making the dark blacker) and all 7s are made into 8s. You then only have 7 unique colours. Still plenty to learn....

I am guessing that it is a demonstration that you could, when this is further developed have a 2 player game operating at this speed. It's got nice movement. At a guess that is because it's at 160 pixel resolution.

Here's a tip for anyone who wants to convert pictures of people, but don't want the background. There's no point RC working hard on the background when everyone wants the persons face looking decent. Anyway, the tip is: Try this website, https://www.remove.bg/upload . They will remove backgrounds from your image for free. They charge for downloaded HD images, but for the size of image that we are looking at, you get it in the free preview.

I reckon that clever use of character mode pots would be much easier to implement.

Hi Mario, Yes, I agree with point five there, very true. As for point 6, you might like this: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=info.kfsoft.force.rotation

I have been looking into the Powkiddy. How do you find diagonals on it?

Hi, I was wondering what setups other people have for mobile Atari gaming? I am using Colleen on my Samsung Galaxy phone together with a GameSir x2 gaming controller. You can see reviews of them on YouTube. So, how am I finding this setup, not perfect but OK. Here are my minor gripes: 1. It is not an eight way D pad, though you can use the left joystick which is analogue for diagonal movement. This is not perfect but is adequate. 2. To access the console keys, you need to touch near the top of the screen. When doing this, most of the time a Colleen settings panel will appear rather than the console keys. This can be awkward. 3. In order to have the screen rotated this way, I needed to use an Android app to Force Rotate the screen when using this app. 4. A lot of games need the start button to start rather than the fire button. With the way that a lot of people hack games for better sprites, it would be nice if they could also be hacked to accept the fire button to start if they do not already. Is Colleen still in active development? Despite my gripes with it, it is still a very good emulator for Android. Tell me more about what you have as a setup and what strengths and weaknesses your setup has. Also, if you do not do mobile Atari gaming, why is that and what is holding you back? Cheers, Steve

Thanks for getting back to me on this one Avery. Regarding clutter, if it was hidden by default unless you switch it on, this will keep people happy who don't want too much clutter. With regards to scalable art, I'd be happy with text on a button if that makes it easier. I'm sure that there should be enough art in the Wingdings font (hey yes, that font can be useful!). It's your choice though, you're the one doing the work here. As for the instructions in .help, I read them the first time I try something again, but sometimes I get the syntax wrong the 2nd and 3rd times until I get used to it all again. As there's a lot of text in there, potentially I should create a cheat sheet

A feature request here, sorry if it has been asked before. I will start with my problem. I program on and off and may go months between programming on the Atari, juggling with PC projects. I really love the power of the Altirra debugger, but do not find it particularly user friendly. As I am a sporadic Atari programmer, I forget what the commands are and their syntax each time and I have to relearn them. This means that I often do not get to use the more powerful features as I have spent a lot of time relearning the basics. At least for the most useful features, like stepping through the code, running from a place, moving the current program counter, setting a byte or word to a value, can there be an icon in the UI that I can click on? It would really help me to work quicker. As we all have to juggle life and our passions, I suspect a lot of people will enjoy such a set of features.