Spectrum Computing

Out of curiosity, here's how the Spectrum palette would look like with 16 truly distinct colors:



At the center is the real Spectrum palette.

At the top, I kept the 8 original non-bright Spectrum colors, then added another 8 exactly intermediate colors between them.

At the bottom, I kept the 8 original bright Spectrum colors, then added another 8 exactly intermediate colors between them.

Both new palettes are almost identical because, as I said before, the Spectrum palette only has 8 colors really.

Instead of FLASH and BRIGHT attributes, the Spectrum could simply use 4 bits for INK color and 4 bits for PAPER color. Absolutely everything else would work exactly the same, but the graphics would have improved dramatically...

Einar Saukas wrote: ↑Sat Aug 08, 2020 5:26 am You missed the point.

No.

Einar Saukas wrote: ↑Sat Aug 08, 2020 5:26 am But my exact point was that, when a general purpose computer can only have a very small fixed palette, it works much better to chose a wide variety of colors spread over the color spectrum, regardless of what specific colors were chosen.

And that was exactly what i disagreed with. The specific colors choice corresponding to most common real world objects does matter much more than wide distribution of these colors over the whole spectrum.

Einar Saukas wrote: ↑Sat Aug 08, 2020 5:26 am The link you mentioned illustrates this point quite well.

No, it was about the examples i picked there to illustrate the importance of specific choice of colors for an "universal" fixed palette.

also even the standard existing spectrum palette could be improved a bit with uneven brightness for different colors:




text becomes more readable, pictures less flat, more natural
almost any pic becomes better with this palette imo

this is why i use it in my emulator as a default

Einar Saukas wrote: ↑Sat Aug 08, 2020 7:00 am Out of curiosity, here's how the Spectrum palette would look like with 16 truly distinct colors:

These look great indeed. I like how you (probably) spent a minute to move the letters of the word "Spectrum" back to their proper positions. Offtopic fun fact: The original picture of various colour palettes you posted a few pages back, where it said "Sprectrum", was posted by the infamous MacDeath who frequently badmouths the Speccy mostly on the CPCWiki forums but also in YouTube comments. He's the final boss in Oilboy 5, if you remember that game title ... so "Sprectrum" was definitely not a typo.

I love the fat cat at the bottom [mention]Lethargeek[/mention]! Is that a loading screen from a game or just art?

My first Spectrum was a Timex and probably because of the NTSC the color palette was definitely different. I remember a green tinted "cyan" and more warm "red" that looked fantastic on Deathchase.
On top of that, all levels of bright were visible, including the bright black, and because of that some screens and games looked funny. I'm still looking for an emulator that can recreate both.

The pallette Lethargeek shows above is interesting, because fully saturated colors look bad on a CRT TV, pretty sure most of us always played with more comfortable colors.

druellan wrote: ↑Sat Aug 08, 2020 12:11 pm My first Spectrum was a Timex and probably because of the NTSC the color palette was definitely different. I remember a green tinted "cyan" and more warm "red" that looked fantastic on Deathchase.
On top of that, all levels of bright were visible, including the bright black, and because of that some screens and games looked funny. I'm still looking for an emulator that can recreate both.

ZXEmuT can emulate "bright black". it is also technically possible to replace the default palette with Tcl API. so the only two things you need is GNU/Linux for ZXEmuT, and proper RGB values. ;-)

PeterJ wrote: ↑Sat Aug 08, 2020 11:49 am I love the fat cat at the bottom @Lethargeek! Is that a loading screen from a game or just art?

it's a scene from the old russian cartoon:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8BmL1ZDc-U

Lethargeek wrote: ↑Sat Aug 08, 2020 8:48 am also even the standard existing spectrum palette could be improved a bit with uneven brightness for different colors:

Remember that these machines have analog TV outputs, and TV signals are not RGB - they are based on luminance, chroma and saturation.
And the palete does vary along luminance

If you have perfect electronics and a perfectly calibrated screen then yes, you get equal brightness.
But in practice CRTs are not calibrated, with most people just setting them to whatever looks better, and that would make the brightness differences visible.

And of course colours would mix horizontally (especially on RF connections), since colour resolution is lower than the actual pixels.
That would also reduce saturation.
So your palette is a good approximation to what was seen back in the day.


(Sorry for the late comment but I've been in places with no internet or mobile network!)

4thRock wrote: ↑Mon Aug 10, 2020 3:53 pm Remember that these machines have analog TV outputs, and TV signals are not RGB

late Spectrum models got RGB and many (if not most) even 48k soviet clones were RGB-only

4thRock wrote: ↑Mon Aug 10, 2020 3:53 pm If you have perfect electronics and a perfectly calibrated screen then yes, you get equal brightness.
But in practice CRTs are not calibrated, with most people just setting them to whatever looks better, and that would make the brightness differences visible.

brightness differences between the primary color components, thus affecting several palette colors at once

4thRock wrote: ↑Mon Aug 10, 2020 3:53 pm And of course colours would mix horizontally (especially on RF connections), since colour resolution is lower than the actual pixels.
That would also reduce saturation.

color resolution is irrelevant as we're talking brightness

4thRock wrote: ↑Mon Aug 10, 2020 3:53 pm So your palette is a good approximation to what was seen back in the day.

no, as i said, it was impossible to tweak the relative brightness for the each color separately with just TV settings

Lethargeek wrote: ↑Mon Aug 10, 2020 7:35 pm late Spectrum models got RGB and many (if not most) even 48k soviet clones were RGB-only

Well, I only had a good RGB capable TV in the late 2000s. I doubt many people used anything other than RF.
So my comments are about regular RF connections on late 1980's TV.

Here's a capture from real hardware (at 1:25). Don't know if it's RF or composite video, but it's PAL signal:
https://youtu.be/SrXFNqxPUHw?t=84

Colours are still bright and saturated, but little differences have appeared.
For example, on the boat Yellow is about #E3E300; on the sky Cyan is #52FFFF, etc.

My point is that both systems looked good back in the day.
They took advantage of existing tech, and the user would optimize the TV settings to get the best picture.

4thRock wrote: ↑Mon Aug 10, 2020 11:33 pm Well, I only had a good RGB capable TV in the late 2000s.

So what? Almost none of the soviet TVs did have RGB input either. People were needed to add it themselves or to call a service technician.

4thRock wrote: ↑Mon Aug 10, 2020 11:33 pm Here's a capture from real hardware (at 1:25). Don't know if it's RF or composite video, but it's PAL signal:

this looks too good to be RF, but too bad for RGB i remember (and since the title says +3/+2A maybe a composite mod?)

4thRock wrote: ↑Mon Aug 10, 2020 11:33 pm They took advantage of existing tech, and the user would optimize the TV settings to get the best picture.

as i said, very limited and rough "optimizations"
just can't get some color combos to become more readable without breaking the other ones

Hi

My computers during the 8 bit golden age were a speccy clone, - the Timex TC2048 and the C64.

I find so silly the wars between the difference scenes, specially these days. I love all retro computers and now I own not only those two I mentioned above but others too.

Regarding the Commodore colours as an amateur artist I think the palette was very well thought out, it works very well in general but it wouldn't have hurt to an optional palette with some full saturated colours!I think the colodore palette is the closest to the real thing and as someone else has mentioned we always could intensify or mute the colours according to our taste using the TV or CRT monitor settings. Regarding the 320x200 hires mode, it was not that much used it is true but it not only had higher resolution than the Speccy but also regarding the attributes it was a bit more advanced as it allowed any of the 16 colours as ink or paper (perhaps this was mentioned before but I didn't read all of the thread yet).

I like coding games for retro computers and one of my latest projects is Patolas' Adventures #1 and on the C64 it is looking like this:
[media]https://youtu.be/3EqQf9mjv1c[/media]

And I just love how it looks, this video capture was taken from an emulator using the colodore palette. What do you think?

I also have been working on two mock ups one for the Speccy 48k :

and the other for the Timex Hicolour mode:


I love how the game looks on the 3 computers, each one has its strengths.

Please take a look at the NIRVANA+ Engine. In a standard Speccy 48K, instead of this:



you will be able to have something like this:

Einar Saukas wrote: ↑Fri Mar 05, 2021 5:51 pm Please take a look at the NIRVANA+ Engine. In a standard Speccy 48K, instead of this:

Thanks for the suggestion!

And also take a look at ULA+
https://sites.google.com/site/ulaplus/

4thRock wrote: ↑Fri Mar 05, 2021 6:31 pm And also take a look at ULA+
https://sites.google.com/site/ulaplus/

Another great idea for a possible version. thx

That was a fun read. Why didn't cartridges use the 320X200 mode? It seems like a real waste of hi resolution. I am allergic to the C64's BASIC but I think the games on it are really good, and many times better than our Speccys but maybe not as original in design.

Lots of games use the high resolution character modes (because you can mix and match high and low res characters on the same screen). The bitmap modes, in general, are better suited to static screens and by and large the low Res modes with more colours give a better result (or one of the funky screen modes caused by fiddling registers on the fly much like multicolour Speccy graphics).