SECAM palette for Stella

[+SpiceWare]

There's a group order for Medieval Mayhem in progress over in France. One of them mentioned their Atari was a SECAM model, so I was curious what Medieval Mayhem would look like:

 

PAL cartridge on SECAM Atari

 

NTSC cartridge on SECAM Atari

 

The dragon turned out blue and the castles are psychedelic , but other than that they look fine. I'd purposely made each player have a different luminance so they'd look different on the small 5" B&W TV I did a couple tests on; because of this, I got lucky and each player has a unique color. In fact, they're really close - just purple and blue swapped corners.

 

I also got real lucky due to some feedback in my blog . The original colors were darker, which would have rendered one player and part of the castle walls invisible when played on a SECAM system:

 

In order to make these tests, I needed a SECAM palette for Stella. I check the ever handy Tia Color Charts and threw together a little VB app during lunch to create the palette - here's the results:

stellaSECAM.zip

 

To confirm I did it right, I planned to test with River Raid; but, I couldn't find the SECAM version of the ROM. The colors of the PAL version match what alex_79 posted, so I think my palette is correct.

 

 

For those interested, here's the code:

Private Sub cmdMakePalette_Click()
 Dim iFileNum As Integer
 Dim i As Integer
 Dim c As Integer
 Dim Colors(1 To 8) As String
 
 ' SECAM Colors from http://www.qotile.net/minidig/docs/tia_color.html
 
 Colors(1) = "000000" ' black
 Colors(2) = "2121ff" ' blue
 Colors(3) = "f03c79" ' red
 Colors(4) = "ff50ff" ' purple
 Colors(5) = "7fff00" ' green
 Colors(6) = "7fffff" ' cyan
 Colors(7) = "ffff3f" ' yellow
 Colors(8) = "ffffff" ' white
 
 iFileNum = FreeFile
 Open "C:\Program Files\Stella\stella.pal" For Output As #iFileNum
 
 For i = 1 To 16 * 2 ' 16 colors, 2 palettes
For c = 1 To 8
  Print #iFileNum, Chr$(CLng("&H" & Mid(Colors(c), 1, 2)));
  Print #iFileNum, Chr$(CLng("&H" & Mid(Colors(c), 3, 2)));
  Print #iFileNum, Chr$(CLng("&H" & Mid(Colors(c), 5, 2)));
Next c
 Next i
End Sub

Edited May 23, 2007 by SpiceWare

[SeaGtGruff]

In order to make these tests, I needed a SECAM palette for Stella. I check the every handy Tia Color Charts and threw together a little VB app during lunch to create the palette - here's the results:

stellaSECAM.zip

This is great! I was hoping Stella would eventually get a SECAM palette.

 

Michael

[+SpiceWare]

Any idea where I need to put the palette for the Mac? At the office I just dropped it in C:\Program Files\Stella\stella.pal. I've tried putting it in the StellaOSX2.3.5, the ROMs direction, and even opened up the "package" and tried a few folders in there.

[+stephena]

In order to make these tests, I needed a SECAM palette for Stella. I check the every handy Tia Color Charts and threw together a little VB app during lunch to create the palette - here's the results:

stellaSECAM.zip

This is great! I was hoping Stella would eventually get a SECAM palette.

 

Michael

It should be easy to add this for the next release, whenever that may be.

[+stephena]

Any idea where I need to put the palette for the Mac? At the office I just dropped it in C:\Program Files\Stella\stella.pal. I've tried putting it in the StellaOSX2.3.5, the ROMs direction, and even opened up the "package" and tried a few folders in there.

According to the manual, the file would be placed in the same location as the properties file (stella.pro). In the case of OSX, this would mean "$HOME/.stella/stella.pal". For the next release, I hope to improve on this, and add an entry to the GUI where one can select the path of this file (and likewise for the properties file).