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Color difference between Emulator and hardware


tsom

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I was playing around with the game Getaway (http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-getaway_2193.html). Running on the emulator (Atari800MacX, emulating both the 130 and 800), I noticed the colors are similar to the screenshots on the AtariMania page:
 

213914962_ScreenShot2020-09-28at9_59_16PM.thumb.png.6c0758143cecc856ec674f346c286b9a.png

However, running on real hardware (130XE and 800XL), the colors are wrong:

 

IMG_1389.thumb.jpeg.e0ecc06e5ee13a2fc69a7e2dfc2b83c2.jpeg

 

This is using an S-Video cable to an LCD TV/monitor. I've tried a couple S-Video cables, and another TV with S-Video and it's the same. I tried adjusting the colors on the TV, but the closest I could get was turning the "Tint" all the way to one limit (which is not ideal.)

 

Any ideas on what's going on? (I've tried a couple different versions of the Getaway xex - there are V1, V2 and V3 on my Sio2SD card, no idea what is different. Color was the same.) And to reiterate, it happens on both 130xe and 800XL.

 

Thanks!

jt

Screen Shot 2020-09-28 at 9.55.35 PM.png

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6 hours ago, bob1200xl said:

I used an original Atari APX disk that said v1.1 on a 1200XL in s-video. Looks like your emulator pics.

 

This has to be bad code in the V1, V2, and V3 files.

 

Try this one.

 

Bob

 

getaway.atr 90.02 kB · 3 downloads

Thanks I'll give it a try.  But I did take the SD card out of the Sio2SD device and mounted it on to my computer and ran the same file in the emulator as I using on the hardware. The emulator showed the emulated image above - the light green background vs. the almost white one.

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1 minute ago, DrVenkman said:

Search the forum for ACP.XEX - the Atari Color Program. Run that on both your emulator and real hardware. Adjust your hardware (computer color potentiometer and/or TV Tint control) to match.

Thanks! I was going to see if I could find such a thing.

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Atari 65XE -> S Video -> Sony Trinitron CRT  PAL

 

IMG_20200930_152243.jpg

 

 

MiSTer Atari 800 core -> RGB -> Sony Trinitron CRT NTSC

 

IMG_20200930_152320.jpg

 

 

 

Please note this is just a quick phone job, capturing CRT colors and image in general is a nightmare, and I would have to spend some time with my proper cameras and probably post process to produce quality photo. The real colours are livelier/better in reality than in these pics, but not that much off. Anyway, it's just to demonstrate real hardware+CRT, no idea why in OPs case it's all off.

 

I was using Getaway.atr from the Gamebase set.

Edited by youxia
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NTSC vs PAL - interesting. Though I can switch the emulator between NTCS and PAL, and the only real difference is the timing of the title music. Otherwise, the colors look similar.

 

As far as another CRT, unfortunately, I only have two TV's that have S-Video input - and they both look the same.

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40 minutes ago, tsom said:

NTSC vs PAL - interesting. Though I can switch the emulator between NTCS and PAL, and the only real difference is the timing of the title music. Otherwise, the colors look similar.

They are similar actually, it's just like I said - quick shot, so if you move the camera even an inch the results might vary, also these are from 2 different TVs with slightly different settings. It was just to show they are rather unlike that the heavily blue-tinted one you posted.

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3 hours ago, Mclaneinc said:

Seems also to be a PAL NTSC thing, in PAl its lush green, in NTSC its like the two blueish YT videos 

 

While not disagreeing with you, it would seem odd that this would be a PAL/NTSC issue. If I'm remembering correctly, Atari's own images for the game show the lush green colors that you guys are saying are from the PAL version. I'm fairly certain that Mark Reid, the original programmer was from the U.S. and would more than likely have used an NTSC 8-bit, so I would've expected the images with the vibrant green grass to have come from the NTSC version.

 

Definitely strange.

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So I opened the 130xe and tweaked the color pot a little bit. I got the color of the game to be closer, but if I turn even a little too much it throws off the rest of the colors - the normal blue background is gray (or what looks gray to me). I'm hesitating opening up the 800xl, as the keyboard connector is very finicky. 

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2 hours ago, bfollowell said:

 

While not disagreeing with you, it would seem odd that this would be a PAL/NTSC issue. If I'm remembering correctly, Atari's own images for the game show the lush green colors that you guys are saying are from the PAL version. I'm fairly certain that Mark Reid, the original programmer was from the U.S. and would more than likely have used an NTSC 8-bit, so I would've expected the images with the vibrant green grass to have come from the NTSC version.

 

Definitely strange.

 

To be honest I was thinking exactly the same thing but the NTSC is green and works as a tree and grass scenario, if anything the PAL is too green...As you say it would have been on NTSC kit..

 

Might be worth finding out if he was indeed from the US?  Confirmed, American, sounds Texan (ish)

Edited by Mclaneinc
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I've noticed a lot of Atari 8-bit games suffer from muddy-looking colors and might be related to whatever the root cause of this is

 

On Atarimania, it seems like the screenshots are taken from emulators with the best possible palette settings.    The games never looked so vivid to me on real hardware!

 

One weird one I encountered the other week was in Mountain King.    I remember this platforms in this game being red.   I remember them being red under emulation too in the past.   But the other week when I played it was a horrible-looking greenish/brown on multiple emulators.    Eventually I switched it to PAL and got red, but this doesn't make sense as I remember the game being red on my NTSC TV back in the day.

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There were some documents on archive.org showing his discussions with Antic when they were trying to get the rights to sell old APX stuff. The address showing on there was either West Virginia or one of the Carolinas, I forget. Either way, he was definitely in the U.S. at that point, but I guess that doesn't mean he was when he designed and submitted the software to APX. I know one of the early APX catalogs had a whole write-up on him and the game when he won the contest that year. I'll have to look it up. It may have some more information.

 

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We have to be careful with applying colours to games, games on the real hardware often looked different from machine to machine, some down to the TV and a lot down to the pot on the underneath being set within a range. Emulators show true unblemished colour so often can look different as well but as with all of this its down to the person as to setting it to what they remember or if possible to a box art so you get an idea of what the publisher wanted you to see. Sadly it they were multi platform you might get a screen from say the Apple version on the Atari box so different palettes.

 

Awkward isn't it...

 

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