toot_toot wrote: ↑Tue Jul 04, 2023 6:38 am
For me, it’s the colours. [...snip long post...]
Hahaha, toot makes the excellent point that no other computer would dare to have MAGENTA.
Certainly not the C64 with its 30 shades of brown (sshhhh it's how we deal with it).
Even the CPC palette -- *might* have this colour but they don't use it much.
Diversion: in ancient Windows times (when you were mostly making stuff for 16-colour screens) it was typical to use the bright pink magenta colour as the "transparent", i.e. the one that you would not render on screen. For interesting unknown reasons, around the time of Windows XP or earlier, the exact fuchsia pink shade in Microsoft Paint was changed, so it was no longer the obvious 0xFF00FF (red+blue) but a little different... I think this probably created a lot of amusing bug reports.
@toot_toot thats it exactly. Anyone with the slightest interest in 80s computers will instantly recognise those screenshots as Speccy games. The quirky games are made even quirkier with the limited choice of colours and potential clash resulting in some VERY vivid/odd looking games. Fahrenheit 3000 is a great example:
equinox wrote: ↑Tue Jul 04, 2023 6:48 am
Even the CPC palette -- *might* have this colour but they don't use it much.
It does have it, but it's easier to avoid it when you can choose 16 of the 27 colours. Although it is easier to use when you can blend it more easily by not being constrained to two colours per character square. And, of course, it's great for giving that CGA vibe in four colour mode.
I think Speccy graphics are mostly recognisable as a combination of the limited colours and colour resolution, coupled with the pixel resolution. It leads to artistic choices that are a bit weird, but so kind of work most of the time. Nothing else quite looks the same (the C64 kind of would but it's colours are always muted and it tends towards a three colour look for boring technical reasons).
AndyC wrote: ↑Tue Jul 04, 2023 11:07 pm
It does have it, but it's easier to avoid it when you can choose 16 of the 27 colours. Although it is easier to use when you can blend it more easily by not being constrained to two colours per character square. And, of course, it's great for giving that CGA vibe in four colour mode.
I think Speccy graphics are mostly recognisable as a combination of the limited colours and colour resolution, coupled with the pixel resolution. It leads to artistic choices that are a bit weird, but so kind of work most of the time. Nothing else quite looks the same (the C64 kind of would but it's colours are always muted and it tends towards a three colour look for boring technical reasons).
WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON EXACTLY
(Thanks, this is actually informative, lol.)
Now explain the game Qabbalah, and how it relates to CP/M. (40 marks)
Actually the "three-colour look" (or more often four colours) is what we are used to on the BBC Micro (all those red-yellow-black-white games in MODE 1), or MS-DOS (cyan? purple? Christ, what did we do to deserve this) ...
equinox wrote: ↑Tue Jul 11, 2023 2:32 am
WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON EXACTLY
(Thanks, this is actually informative, lol.)
Now explain the game Qabbalah, and how it relates to CP/M. (40 marks)
Actually the "three-colour look" (or more often four colours) is what we are used to on the BBC Micro (all those red-yellow-black-white games in MODE 1), or MS-DOS (cyan? purple? Christ, what did we do to deserve this) ...
I'm on the side of the Dragon 32. ALL HAIL THE MIGHTY DRAGON.
Yeah, the Beeb has a very four colour and extremely garish look that makes it instantly recognisable. It was another machine, like the Speccy, where hardware support for flashing colours effectively halved the amount of colours on screen because nobody really wanted crappy flashing effects (and with a palette based display could have easily been done in software).
The "three colour ish" look on the C64 comes from the fact that while the bitmap data on the C64 can be pretty much anywhere in RAM, the colour data is in a fixed location and it's a lot of work for the lethargic 6502 to move that much data in a frame. So games tended to cheat and keep all the background graphics using the same three colours in every multi-colour character cell. And then using different colours on the sprites (although one has to be shared with the screen). It's one of those things that once you start to notice it you can't quite un-see it ever again and probably adds to why many of us always thought C64 games seemed very drab for a machine that supposedly had more colours available on screen (well that and its washed out palette choices).
AndyC wrote: ↑Tue Jul 11, 2023 8:37 am
The "three colour ish" look on the C64 comes from the fact that while the bitmap data on the C64 can be pretty much anywhere in RAM, the colour data is in a fixed location and it's a lot of work for the lethargic 6502 to move that much data in a frame.So games tended to cheat and keep all the background graphics using the same three colours in every multi-colour character cell. And then using different colours on the sprites (although one has to be shared with the screen)
That's not quite the reason for the "three colour ish" look. The majority of C64 games used character based display modes which only need a fraction of the data to be moved than the respective hires/bitmap mode. Multicolour character mode gives you 4 colours per cell where 3 are shared across all characters and only 1 colour is definable from a reduced palette of 8 colour per individual cell.
AndyC wrote: ↑Tue Jul 11, 2023 8:37 amThe "three colour ish" look on the C64 comes from the fact that while the bitmap data on the C64 can be pretty much anywhere in RAM, the colour data is in a fixed location and it's a lot of work for the lethargic 6502 to move that much data in a frame. So games tended to cheat and keep all the background graphics using the same three colours in every multi-colour character cell. And then using different colours on the sprites (although one has to be shared with the screen). It's one of those things that once you start to notice it you can't quite un-see it ever again and probably adds to why many of us always thought C64 games seemed very drab for a machine that supposedly had more colours available on screen (well that and its washed out palette choices).
Theory is one thing, reality is another.
If you know how to use the potential of the machine, you will also know how to cover up its shortcomings.
I like Spectrum because its unique and recognizable in its own way, but this also applies to other retro computers, more or less.
The old mantra about washed out C64 colors is also overstated, the best games, especially the newer titles, look absolutely amazing.
A few days ago I played C64 Atic Atac again, it's simply a symphony of good graphics, although as we know graphics are only part of what defines the system.
Another good example is the BBC B, some games are really great, regardless of the color limitation on screen.
One of my favorites is Saber Wulf, slick gameplay and colorful graphics.
So, you can choose to chase three washed-out colors per attribute or truly enjoy these legendary machines without prejudice.
I have no dilemma, what is the better choice.
Gooeyblob wrote: ↑Tue Jul 11, 2023 12:25 pm
That's not quite the reason for the "three colour ish" look. The majority of C64 games used character based display modes which only need a fraction of the data to be moved than the respective hires/bitmap mode. Multicolour character mode gives you 4 colours per cell where 3 are shared across all characters and only 1 colour is definable from a reduced palette of 8 colour per individual cell.
Well yes, there is also a degree of colour sharing involved (you can also use the Extended Colour Mode to have two choosable colours per character at the expense of less characters overall). But it's the issues with scrolling the colour RAM that, by and large, mean scrolling games cheaped out and just used three colours for all of the background tiles.
There's some garish over-saturating going on in that video. The C64 palette is bleak, at least on PAL. On NTSC it sometimes looked a bit richer but then NTSC is generally interpreted as 'Never The Same Colour'. The C64 palette is very pale. There's something weird about the lack of red in the purple and the purple tint to the blues. The page of C64 screenshots in the 'Spectrum / C64 Book' honestly looks like one whole colour ink has failed in the printer.
The other '3 colour' issue that characterises C64 games is the sprites. If they're low-res multicolour, they all share two common colours and one unique one. This invariably leads to a generic and bland choice like white + dark grey, plus one unique colour which is going to be washed out anyway, so you can do shiny-ish metallic spaceships but nothing else. For monsters it's usually pale yellow + dark grey + another colour, so everything looks jaundiced with druggy eyes.
The best graphics use a low-res multicolour sprite with a hi-res one over the top to give it a crisp black outline. Now along with some careful INK/PAPER choices on a blocky background using hi-res characters, and in something like a platform game where you can keep sprites apart vertically to allow
multiplexing, you can get games that look like they should be on an Amiga. But they're few and far between.
