Choice in color palettes?

[leech]

I was watching some videos the other day of Conan for both the Apple II and the Atari 8bit.  They both looked pretty much the same, but it got me thinking, why were certain colors chosen for games, rather than more accurate ones on the Atari.  I know it has a 256 color palette, and I've seen amazing looking demos, but certain games (like Conan) just had weird colors, like pink trees.  And it always seemed most games used such muddy colors (like most colors on cars from the 70s). 

 

I figured maybe coders knew why.  I'm sure it has something to do with colors available in specific graphic modes or something, but then that begs the question why they were designed that way.  Thanks for any input.

[Chilly Willy]

Certain ports from the Apple 2 use hires graphics with color aliasing to make them just like the Apple, which can help make the port a bit easier. Aliased hires graphics on the Atari means you're stuck for the color selection. So you get colors like in Conan, or Drol, or Load Runner, or a number of other ports from the Apple.

[leech]

Just now, Chilly Willy said:

Certain ports from the Apple 2 use hires graphics with color aliasing to make them just like the Apple, which can help make the port a bit easier. Aliased hires graphics on the Atari means you're stuck for the color selection. So you get colors like in Conan, or Drol, or Load Runner, or a number of other ports from the Apple.

Perfect, thanks.  That's pretty much what I was thinking, that it was a limit of the graphic mode being used.  Granted, not sure that excuses why some of the original Apple games looked terrible, I'm guessing that's down to limitations of the hardware (was never a big Apple fan, though I recently decided I should get a IIGS for the game I backed on kickstarter...)

[Robert Cook]

On 12/3/2019 at 10:39 AM, leech said:

I was watching some videos the other day of Conan for both the Apple II and the Atari 8bit.  They both looked pretty much the same, but it got me thinking, why were certain colors chosen for games, rather than more accurate ones on the Atari.

In this particular case, it appears that the intention was to merely come as close as possible to the Apple II original with the least amount of work, including reusing as much code as possible.  Even in the C64 version, the same or similar soft-sprites were used, as well as similar colors.  The game was written in a way that translated directly, for the most part, to anything running on a 6502 CPU, and virtually no effort was made to customize it for the A8.  Well, I shouldn't say none, because they could have used the Apple II-like graphics mode 8 (with color artifacting) but appear to have used mode 15 instead (160x200 with 4 colors).  Perhaps this was done to avoid the issue of the colors varying with the particular A8 model.  Both the A8 and C64 versions are limited to 4 colors compared to the Apple II's 6, and no effort was made to use more colors in either conversion.

 

In short, the effort to make the conversions all they could have been just wasn't there--they didn't think it was worth the cost.

 

 

Quote

I know it has a 256 color palette, and I've seen amazing looking demos, but certain games (like Conan) just had weird colors, like pink trees.  And it always seemed most games used such muddy colors (like most colors on cars from the 70s).

 

I think I get what happened in this case, but in general it does seem that even expert A8 developers often used...let's say odd or unexpected colors on these machines.  This includes games developed specifically for the A8, in my opinion.  I don't know why, but came to see it as kind of an artistic style.

 

 

Quote

I figured maybe coders knew why.  I'm sure it has something to do with colors available in specific graphic modes or something, but then that begs the question why they were designed that way.  Thanks for any input.

Aside from mode 8 (Apple II-like artifacting), there are some technical limitations in some cases involving players/missiles, as I recall, but this doesn't explain the overall impression I've gotten, which is similar to yours.

 

 

On 12/3/2019 at 12:23 PM, Chilly Willy said:

Certain ports from the Apple 2 use hires graphics with color aliasing to make them just like the Apple, which can help make the port a bit easier.

They could have done this in the case of Conan, but they didn't.  I know this because I changed the artifacting phase (like a hue control) in the Altirra emulator, but the colors remained the same.  And the appearance of the text is a major giveaway, too.  It sure looks like they used the more C64-like mode 15 rather than mode 8, and indeed the C64 version looks quite similar to the A8 version.  They could have used different colors on both conversions, but chose not to.  They could very easily have added more colors to the C64 version especially (using the color memory cells), but didn't bother.

 

Games on the A8 that actually use mode 8 for Apple II conversions are the Ultima games, for example, but as I said, Conan seems to use mode 15 instead.  Either way, it's missing two colors from the Apple II original, and the developers did nothing A8-specific (or C64-specific for that version) to compensate.

 

By the way, Ultima I is an exception to the rule in that it apparently uses mode 1 instead of 8 for the outside view, allowing for 5 colors total (without changing the color registers on the fly).  All of the other games in this series used mode 8 for the most direct (and effortless) conversion possible.

 

 

Quote

Aliased hires graphics on the Atari means you're stuck for the color selection. So you get colors like in Conan, or Drol, or Load Runner, or a number of other ports from the Apple.

In the case of Conan, however, with mode 15 and all Apple II-style soft-sprites being used, they could have chosen any colors they wanted from the A8's large (for the time) palette, but they didn't.  Instead they chose to match 4 of the Apple II's colors (just like on the C64).  The guy who did these conversions, Ron J. Fortier, knows how to program both the A8 and C64 well enough, but he was probably told to do as little as possible, and his decision to use mode 15 on the A8 might have been influenced not only by a desire to keep the colors consistent between various A8 models, but also by the potential fact that making his A8 conversion more like his C64 conversion reduced his overall workload (and therefore the cost of doing these conversions).

 

 

On 12/3/2019 at 12:25 PM, leech said:

Perfect, thanks.  That's pretty much what I was thinking, that it was a limit of the graphic mode being used.  Granted, not sure that excuses why some of the original Apple games looked terrible, I'm guessing that's down to limitations of the hardware (was never a big Apple fan, though I recently decided I should get a IIGS for the game I backed on kickstarter...)

Not in this case, as this is not the Apple II-like graphic mode 8 with artifacting.  And the similar C64 conversion did not limit the A8 in this case, either.  I think it all came down to reducing cost.  And while it would have cost nothing to change the colors, perhaps there was a desire to stay true to the original artistically, I don't know.

 

As for the Apple II series in general (besides the IIgs), it is a remarkable example of design elegance, as well as capability for its time, but graphically it can't compete with the A8 nor the C64 with their custom chips (and of course the A8 with its ANTIC have a certain design elegance of their own, albeit I'm talking about sheer capability here).  Many/most games looked "bad" on the Apple II because of its limitations, but it had "hi-res" color graphics before any other home/personal computer did, and how it was implemented using an absolute minimum number of off-the-shelf components by this guy Woz is legendary.  All of these classic 8-bit computers are cool in their own ways.

Edited September 29, 2020 by Robert Cook

[Graham Dearsley]

Another reason not to use mode 8 artifacting for colors is that it just dosn't work on PAL tv's. People in the UK with an Apple II had to buy an NTSC monitor if they wanted color because the Apple II can only do color high res using artifacting. 

 

Look up the Apple ll graphics system, I think you will think its a bit rubbish like I do ?

[Rybags]

Conan is Mode E so really not many reasons not to use better colours.

 

But a potential problem that can arise when items use certain pixel values and setting the colours to be true for one thing can make it look bad on another.

With just 4 colours or however many available it was always a compromise, and with computers having lesser palettes it was a compromise again there.

 

No doubt if the game had originated on the Atari some extra effort might have gone in.  Just a few things that come to mind for Conan:

- use some PMGs.

- proper colours.

- DLIs to allow more colours.

- better game engine with less speed variation.  One of the annoyances of Conan on the Atari, as if it wasn't hard enough already, was that the speed could be highly variable depending on how much was onscreen.  No doubt just the use of PMGs alone there would have made it a lot more consistent.