DimensionX

Here's the ST version in 320x200 Not much dithering used to create new shades?

Which version of the game? Amiga or ST? I mostly see clean colours and some dithering in much higher resolution then on C64. Look at the threes for exemple, brown and green in quite high resolution. The explosion uses dithering too, but most of it is shades.

BB games (Dan Malone drawn stuff anyway) used a more C64 palette though, a reasonable shade (say 6-8 greys) with some very different colours and interleaved those using the greys to make other coloured shades. That's how things are done on the C64, You've got 4 greys in total including black and white, you add to those the blues or reds or greens etc and you dither them/interleave them (as the BB games do) to get the perception of more colour. To create a smooth detailed look like in Bitmap brothers games, use real shades. The resolution is too low to be dithered. You will loose all detail. Bitmap often used about three different spreads and some well thoughtout single colours. I have examined their palette in De Luxe Paint ST many times.

See above, I edited because you edited and you missed my edit.. Like you said yourself. It's always an advantage to be able to choose your colours from a big palette? Even if you just use 5 colours you can choose exactly what colours to use. 5 different greens? Or Yellow? Then you can switch palette for each new level if you have a big palette to choose from. That gives the game more variation. In fact you can switch colours many times in the same game. Dithering? Dithering isn't a good method to use because you will destroy all detail and half the resolution using that method. And it's very limited anyway. Well really that's just your opinion again, I think most artists (and most other people) would disagree, some form of dithering/shading gives more depth to an image, regardless of the number of colours else everything would look flat like a cartoon. I'm still unsure of your stance on dithering, you seem to equate it to a bad thing that's only used when there aren't enough colours but use that to target the C64 AND machines with more colours than the 800 as if either it's never used on the atari or it doesn't matter if it is because you've got more colours "to choose from". I used it a lot on the ST, because lack of colours. To make a game detailed using dithering, isn't even to think of. Dithering is mostly suited for still pictures without too much detail. If you have access to shades, use them instead. But off course, you can use dithering as an "effect" to create a certain style.

One way to look at it. for each machine ask what you'd do to improve it. I dont mind samey colorschemes between different games.. machines always tended to have a distinctive best way of using them. The bitmap brothers games had similar palettes... but IMO looked quite a bit better than rivals. Amstrad CPC464 vs commodore 64... the Amstrad has bigger palette, but I think I'd still go for the C64's hardware fast sprites & scrolling over the Amstrad If you look at Bitmaps games, they use quite different palettes. But they use them very effective, and they had to because 16 on screen colours to work with, isn't much if you are about to create smooth shaded graphics. Many games change palette often, like many driving games for exemple and creates night stages, sunset stages, different environments etc and makes good use of ST's 512 colour palette.

Having large areas of single color also means 'resolution lost' Generally in computer graphics you'd choose less res for more color depth Dithering was always a highly effective technique on 8,16 bit computers. even the 32bit PSX benefited from dithering Dithering is only real effective in much higher resolutions when you don't really notice it.

clearly for a certain number onscreen, a bigger palette doesn't help CPC464 xenon looks quite good to me, only 27 color palette but 16 onscreen being very effective. an attempt at A8 xenon (see my mockup earlier) is clearly lacking onscreen colours. Yes it helps because you can switch palette many times in the same game to give it more variation. Then you can create much finer spreads using a big palette.

See above, I edited because you edited and you missed my edit.. Like you said yourself. It's always an advantage to be able to choose your colours from a big palette? Even if you just use 5 colours you can choose exactly what colours to use. 5 different greens? Or Yellow? Then you can switch palette for each new level if you have a big palette to choose from. That gives the game more variation. In fact you can switch colours many times in the same game. Dithering? Dithering isn't a good method to use because you will destroy all detail and half the resolution using that method. And it's very limited anyway.

See above, I edited because you edited and you missed my edit.. Like you said yourself. It's always an advantage to be able to choose your colours from a big palette? Even if you just use 5 colours you can choose exactly what colours to use. 5 different greens? Or Yellow? Then you can switch palette for each new level if you have a big palette to choose from. That gives the game more variation. In fact you can switch colours many times in the same game.

Colours in total? ie it's palette not just on screen? If you think so then it's homework time again because you're only partially right. On screen colours off course. ST used 16, Amiga 32, Megadrive 64 and Snes 256. Snes was the only one who could presented something real close to the arcade. Both ST and Amiga emulated lots of games that were a bit too hard for them to fully recreate. Often you had to get rid of some colours and make the sprites smaller. So now it's the number of colours on screen that's important. I see. Pete Only when you have a big palette to choose from. In which way? Big palette, small number of colours on screen or big palette, lots of onscreen? To have a big palette to choose from like on Snes means that you can create any spreads for the 256 available on screen colours. That means more fine nuances to make everything look more real.

Colours in total? ie it's palette not just on screen? If you think so then it's homework time again because you're only partially right. On screen colours off course. ST used 16, Amiga 32, Megadrive 64 and Snes 256. Snes was the only one who could presented something real close to the arcade. Both ST and Amiga emulated lots of games that were a bit too hard for them to fully recreate. Often you had to get rid of some colours and make the sprites smaller. So now it's the number of colours on screen that's important. I see. Pete Only when you have a big palette to choose from. Snes for exemple had 256 on screen colours AND a palette of over 32.000 colours to choose from.

i started out polite despite your condescending attempts to "educate" a bunch of programmers with things you'd picked up from wikipedia; that's the point i could have been insulting because you were already insulting other people's intelligences. In your opinion. Off course it is. I can't speak for anyone else.

Colours in total? ie it's palette not just on screen? If you think so then it's homework time again because you're only partially right. On screen colours off course. ST used 16, Amiga 32, Megadrive 64 and Snes 256. Snes was the only one who could presented something real close to the arcade. Both ST and Amiga emulated lots of games that were a bit too hard for them to fully recreate. Often you had to get rid of some colours and make the sprites smaller.

Just wrong. The ST/Amiga have enough colours - but they still use Dithering to overcome limits of mostly 16colors visible at once. (even amiga needs dithering on its 3color sprites or 7color playfields) It is not about the Palette. it is about the bitmap/tiles/sprites Even if the C64 had more colors it would still use dithering due to sprites & tiles being 3 colors. Neither ST or Amiga had enough colours to recreate some games as Streetfighter II for exemple. Megadrive was on it's limits and there's was lots of nuances missing from the arcade orginal. Snes was more true to the arcade except for tiny sprites compared to the orginal arcade game. Often dithering was used to create hues that wasn't in the pallette, because all colours was used. Even Megadrive was forced to use dithering sometimes. A very common place for dithering is the when the sky and ground meets to create extra shades and to smooth things out. You can even see it in the Sonic games for Megadrive. Don't waste shades when you can get away with some dithering.

Nothing as long as it's not about trying to force people to agree with a subjective opinion of which has "magnificent colours" or other such rubbish - it's a nice palette, but "magnificent"... no, that's just hyperbole on your part and nothing more. For any programmer (and again, that's who should be discussing things in this thread) it's all about how you can actually use the colours, the very point you've been trying to call irrelevant. When you entered the thread your second post was an attempt to declare the Atari 8-bit the winner. Let me put it like this TMR, perhaps i'm more the typical ST guy then the typical A8 guy. First i thought that A8 was the winner...now i know. I didn't even know when i entered this thread that C64 only had a 16 colour palette, kind of ZX Spectrum on steroids in the colour area. And i dindn't know that dithering was very common because lack of colours. Dithering is always last way out when the machine simply don't have enough colours. And if you had been more polite, you would have been recived a more polite answer. Yes, i really love those A8 rainbows. Pure magic from an old computer who hade the best and most vivid colours around.

Thanks for the link. Now i'm off to try it.

It was still more on topic (since it relates to programmers and in particular back-ups) than your opinions on colours, yes. So, what's wrong discussiong the colours on both computers? Well, i say the same thing as when i entered this thread. I choose A8 for it's magnificent colours. Then you can think whatever you want. Now i'm off to another part of the forum that suits me better.

Don't tell DimensionX that, he'll go totally mental when he realises the CPC has even less shades of grey than the C64! =-) Well, when the discussion was mostly programmers we were actually discussing programming... now DimensionX is back that's slowed down. But the best way to learn is to ask questions, what do y'want to know then? And when i was away for a while, it was about electricity in houses... Bad power supply in Wales for exemple. And now i come to destroy the whole thread, discussing the colour palette on A8 and C64.

And people who are repeatedly told that they're posting to the wrong part of a forum but continue to do so regardless are the most annoying of all. Well, you can be fanatic to a certain limit, then i all becomes both silly and obvious. You passed that limit long time ago. You did that with your first fanboy post declaring the Atari 8-bit the winner. Nothing after that has redeemed you and what you've said does not negate the fact that you're still posting to the wrong place. IN YOUR OPINION, THIS IS NOT A FACT. Since i'm currently writing an Atari 8-bit game and have said so repeatedly in this thread, this proves that you don't actually read other people's posts. So your opinions now have even less weight than before, which is a surprise because i doubt anyone thought it was possible for them to lose any more. It's NOT my opinion. Take a look at all screenshots i have posted. Even ONE of them would be impossible to do with C64's limited palette. Then i don't care if you like rainbows or not.

And people who are repeatedly told that they're posting to the wrong part of a forum but continue to do so regardless are the most annoying of all. Well, you can be fanatic to a certain limit, then i all becomes both silly and obvious. You passed that limit long time ago. A8 for vivid crystal clear unmatched colours, C64 for sprites. That's not an opinion but what you see in all screenshots. Good luck with the spritemachine.

Uh-oh, who's supposed to be insulted here? Groovybee? The Yankees? Everyone? HA HA HA!! I love it! (for entertainment only) Perhaps i should clear things up. No, i don't hate americans at all, just the ones who's trying to provoke. "Either you're an american" Means. Okey, another american posting a reply just to provoke and to annoy like some others has done so far. (after my posting i saw that you were a brit) Brits can be very annoying too, especially the ones without any sense of humour. "Or, you're bad at counting" Are you serious? In that case i'll better explain what i mean. That's it, no more, no less.

Numbers of colours on screen is irellevant. It's more relevant to the topic than your personal, subjective opinions as to which machine has the "better" palette. Again, this is in the programming area and programmers don't just stop thinking about the colours at the level you do, what can actually be done with those colours is more important. The C64's designers could've put a larger palette into the machine but they made the decision to assign the space on the VIC-II's chip to the sprite hardware. And since you're just stating personal opinions rather than actual facts, that's not relevant; my opinion is that the C64 palette has a good range of colours to work with that look decent on the screen. Exactly. And that's why the colours on Atari looks better. You always have to sacrifice something to get something. In C64's case, it was the colours. You don't even have the range to create a spread of 8 nuances. And dithering will get you nowhere near A8's clean colours. Give up. It's just gets silly to argue.

Actually, NOT more but INDEED less; the C64 is able to put more on the screen at a time (and on "sprites") than the A8. That is worthy of some respect, even if you prefer the A8 (which, I have to say I still do, but my preference is irrelevant to a meaningful comparison, and so is yours. Numbers of colours on screen is irellevant. It's the quality of them and A8's colours looks so much better even if it's just 3 on the screen. Quality before quantity. C64 has 16 where at least 2 of them are horrible (light green and dark brown) I would say that the colours are the weakest point of C64. They don't look good, while A8 produce awesome colours. And always have been known for.

Not if it's about facts, that even shows in all screenshots. No, it wasn't facts and you were wrong because almost all of the screenshots were in modes which only had access to 128 colours. And your opinion of what the screenshots proved is merely that and nothing more, certainly it's not valid in a programming discussion. You repeatedly talked about 256 colours until post #79, essentially ignoring what i was telling you in favour of wikipedia. Trying to dictate to others when the conversation is over doesn't wash either. How hard can it get? The colours looks better on A8, no more, no less.

And telling people who can program a computer what that machine is or isn't capable of just because you'd read it on wikipedia is hideously arrogant. Not if it's about facts, that even shows in all screenshots. The ONLY thing i said was that colours is better on Atari because they are more clear and vivid, not to mention 256. Then you can forget everything else, like i said. Forget sprites. Further discussion unnecessary. Goodnight TMR.