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just an idea :
On page containing the tiles, located in a memory area, using the copper to raise the amount of colors applied on the tiles doesn't take any CPU right ?
then what if you put the tiles on screen after asking to the copper to map a certain amount of colors ?
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i don't really understand what is meant by this. Colour only exists on the screen, not in memory.
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Let me explain that better :
obviously, before displaying anything, you must have an IFF screen with either the level blocks, and another one with the sprites, right ?
what i meant is that BEFORE displaying anything, you could apply a copper palette change routine over those pages, like this :
do copper palette change from line 0 to 127, 128 to 256 and so on, and then, ask the amiga to display the whole thing on screen.
This is the technique used by Pang, which is using 64 real colors on screen, because it is performing 4 palettes changes on the 4 stripes composing the background graphics.
Yes the Amiga is locked to 8 colors in dual playfield. But some games have proved it can be done via tricks. About Pang, it's not an EHB display, it's a normal 16 colors environnement but with copper palette changes.
Shadow of the beast is actually doing the same, 8 palettes changes so it's 8x16 colors hence the 128 colors displayed at the same time on screen.
Palette changes cost nothing since they're done in hardware, there's no CPU hits. You just have to set them up. By using the Beast trick, you should have all the original colors for level tiles and sprites.
Beast shows that it's possible to have more than 100 colors and a parallax. And it has way more sprites going on screen than sonic.
Toki has more than 32 colors for the main playfield, and 8 colors for the back playfield. I can speak about it, because i have ripped the full graphics of this game. It even does palette change with the copper on the main playfield ! Once again, it shows that you can break the 8 colors barrier on dual playfield mode.