English Amiga Board - View Single Post - Wow, have you seen Cammy's and Rebel's optimized palette

Cammy · 18 March 2010, 17:09

Hi Bloodwych! If you'd like, we could work together on a new ClassicWB pack rather than start a whole new one from scratch, and have it optimised for low-end Amigas but with all the newest software, many of which has gone unnoticed by the larger OS3 community. I try to use my A1200 as my main computer, so I want the best, most responsive user experience. I stick to 3.1/Scalos for this as 3.9 is too slow, mainly at loading in images, and with all the eye candy I use there are plenty of bitmaps loaded. I think including internet software like SabreMSN/AmiMSN, AmiNetRadio, AmiGift, AmiTwitter, IBrowse (unregistered, but configured to look good and have plenty of compatible sites in the bookmarks), useful utilities like Meridian for mouse gestures in IBrowse and Workbench, and more Workbench games like Dynamite and HBMonopoly built in so more people will be online to play against us. We could include Workbench2000 as an optional program launcher, it's a clone of the Windows2000 task bar and start button and has many of the same features, making it easy for most people to understand and use, and it's better than any alternatives for OCS-AGA classics.

About this palette that Rebel developed, he spent years optimising it and coming up with the most commonly requested colours from the largest range of Workbench applications and games. It is OCS compatible, and is designed to avoid DBLPal/NTSC flashing, works with MagicTV, doesn't change when the mouse pointer colours are changed, and remaps well to all popular iconsets, music players, games and other Workbench stuff. I have also written a program which opens a VisualPrefs/Birdie-compatible Public Screen with the same locked palette, so if you don't want to open IBrowse or other applications on the main Workbench screen, they can be opened on the "Spare Desk" and they will use the optimised palette rather than try making up their own random palette (usually which has three blacks and two bright purples among other useless colours). This makes all the GUI images look nice since they were all designed for this palette and don't need to be remapped again.

We're also working on a 4-colour setup for 1MB+ KS2-3 systems with a new iconset that loads faster than the standard Workbench 4-colour icons, and looks a little nicer too. Since the icons use whatever the onscreen palette is, you can choose between several 4 colour palette presets to find the shade you prefer and the icons will still look fine. You can see some of these icons and colour palette presets in use in my old A600 video on YouTube. We're using ToolsDaemon as the program launcher, and are trying to add a few tiny black & white bitmap images to the font we use so the ToolsDaemon menus look a little nicer (like there's a tiny image of a joystick next to the Games menu).

Hi Seuden, my screenshot was taken on my A1200+8MB, and runs very responsively with the standard 020. It's a great pack for CD32/SX-1/SX32 owners too!

18 March 2010, 17:09	#4
Cammy Registered User Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: Tasmania, Australia Age: 39 Posts: 1,189	Hi Bloodwych! If you'd like, we could work together on a new ClassicWB pack rather than start a whole new one from scratch, and have it optimised for low-end Amigas but with all the newest software, many of which has gone unnoticed by the larger OS3 community. I try to use my A1200 as my main computer, so I want the best, most responsive user experience. I stick to 3.1/Scalos for this as 3.9 is too slow, mainly at loading in images, and with all the eye candy I use there are plenty of bitmaps loaded. I think including internet software like SabreMSN/AmiMSN, AmiNetRadio, AmiGift, AmiTwitter, IBrowse (unregistered, but configured to look good and have plenty of compatible sites in the bookmarks), useful utilities like Meridian for mouse gestures in IBrowse and Workbench, and more Workbench games like Dynamite and HBMonopoly built in so more people will be online to play against us. We could include Workbench2000 as an optional program launcher, it's a clone of the Windows2000 task bar and start button and has many of the same features, making it easy for most people to understand and use, and it's better than any alternatives for OCS-AGA classics. About this palette that Rebel developed, he spent years optimising it and coming up with the most commonly requested colours from the largest range of Workbench applications and games. It is OCS compatible, and is designed to avoid DBLPal/NTSC flashing, works with MagicTV, doesn't change when the mouse pointer colours are changed, and remaps well to all popular iconsets, music players, games and other Workbench stuff. I have also written a program which opens a VisualPrefs/Birdie-compatible Public Screen with the same locked palette, so if you don't want to open IBrowse or other applications on the main Workbench screen, they can be opened on the "Spare Desk" and they will use the optimised palette rather than try making up their own random palette (usually which has three blacks and two bright purples among other useless colours). This makes all the GUI images look nice since they were all designed for this palette and don't need to be remapped again. We're also working on a 4-colour setup for 1MB+ KS2-3 systems with a new iconset that loads faster than the standard Workbench 4-colour icons, and looks a little nicer too. Since the icons use whatever the onscreen palette is, you can choose between several 4 colour palette presets to find the shade you prefer and the icons will still look fine. You can see some of these icons and colour palette presets in use in my old A600 video on YouTube. We're using ToolsDaemon as the program launcher, and are trying to add a few tiny black & white bitmap images to the font we use so the ToolsDaemon menus look a little nicer (like there's a tiny image of a joystick next to the Games menu). Hi Seuden, my screenshot was taken on my A1200+8MB, and runs very responsively with the standard 020. It's a great pack for CD32/SX-1/SX32 owners too!