Screen color changes in Atari800Win PLus

[Yautja]

Hi,

When I try to use the emulator in full screen mode, most "normal" colors change. Here you have an image of DeathChase for example:

 

Any idea on how to fix it?

 

- Y -

Edited January 11, 2014 by Yautja

[Rybags]

I've not got an installed version handy at the moment, but:

 

Looks like it's probably switching to fullscreen in 16 or 256 colour mode - there should be something in the graphics options to select colour depth, you want 24 or 32 bit Truecolor mode there.

[phaeron]

This is unfortunately a bug in Windows.

 

From what I have heard, recent versions of Windows have a bug that causes explorer.exe to change the color palette when it shouldn't, which causes color corruption in any program that attempts to switch to a 256 color full screen mode. There are other programs that do so as well, but Explorer is the most common, and you'll know if you're suffering from this if suspending or killing explorer.exe makes the problem go away. There are ugly workarounds that can be applied to programs that involve detecting and stealing the palette back, but ultimately the only fix is for programs to avoid 256 color mode.

 

I had some success setting Atari800Win to use system colors, but if that does what I think it does, it may cause some of the colors in the Atari palette to be off.

[Mclaneinc]

IIRC in the advanced video options you can ask it to use the system palette but its not enbaled by default...

 

If its Windows 8 that is doing this bug hen its yet another reason I refuse to 'upgrade' to windows 8.

[flashjazzcat]

This happens in Win 7 and - IIRC - Vista as well.

[CKlemow]

Hey, guys - sorry to revive an old thread, but I just ran into this problem myself with Windows 7, and the solution that worked for me is to go into the Windows compatibility settings for Atari800Win.exe and check the box for "Run in 256 colors," rather than avoiding 256 colors as suggested above (which I don't doubt probably works for some people, but if that didn't work for you, try this).

 

If there's anybody doing more general troubleshooting:

 

* The problem only manifested in the "full display," "clipped" and "partially clipped" modes, not the "in a window" modes.

 

* Before applying the fix, clicking "alt" or on menu item would clear up some - but not all - color issues. (For me, some programs continued to replace shades of black and grey with shades of green.)

Edited December 18, 2014 by CKlemow