A minimalistic 4-colour Workbench setup for unexpanded systems.

[Adropac2]

Nice effort there.I would choose Experimental retro 1.3 theme as it's rather nice and warmly

The biggest problem i can see for the other themes here are the death zones ie the main background vertical bars, in that they create an atmosphere that is of utter dispair- but maybe that's just me.The texture for the windows works well enough though

So do all Amiga girls like pink WB then

[Cammy]

To make ColorFonts the best software to use is Cloanto ColorType, which is available for free on Aminet here http://aminet.net/package/biz/cloan/ColorType

You can also use the program CreateOutline to make simple white fonts with black outlines or shadows which can be used for icons or windows without requiring a patch. http://aminet.net/package/util/wb/CreateOutline

[8bitbubsy]

I just love Calming Ocean and Experimental 1.3. Very good work, Cammy!
I'm very interested in a low-color theme for A1200 too... Did you compile any of those?
Like 4 colors or 8.. For speed's sake, as meega wrote earlier.

[meega]

Originally Posted by cosmicfrog

great idea to use coluor fonts cammy one of the most under uterlised parts of the os. how many colours are they ?

Not more than 4.

[Cammy]

ColorFonts can use up to 256 colours, but they're generally colour-mapped and won't remap to your Workbench's palette on their own. If you have a locked palette, you can remap a ColorFont to your palette and use it if you like. They're really only of much use for icon text and MUI, if you try using them as Screen or System text they just go black with a grey block around them.

Here's a screenshot I just took of my A600's Workbench using a ColorFont for the icon text. It will always use the black pen as the shadow, but you can select the main font pen, which I chose as white since it's the only one in the 4-colour palette that looks any good as font text.



And I took another screenshot but with a cross-hatch dithered pattern for the windows rather than the vertical-line dithering, just to show the difference. Cross-hatching blends the colours together better, but it causes rough edges around the window and icon borders which is why I opted for vertical lines at this resolution.

[Vegas]

Hey that looks nice Where did you get the icons from?

[Cammy]

Rebel and I are working on our own custom 4 colour icon set. The icons are smaller than the original Workbench icons, so they take up less space on the disk and load faster.

[Amiga1992]

There's a ton of straight lines on these icons... Are you working on a progressive display like a VGA monitor or LCD? Also the small icons with stripey backgrounds seem like a CRT eyestrain waiting to happen (and not readable).

[Cammy]

The lines are a form of dithering. It's a technique to make it appear as if there are more shades in the colour palette. This iconset was designed on a RGB CRT monitor (like the 1084), for PAL and NTSC High Res resolutions. It's not intended for expanded systems, or for people who don't like dithering. If you can make a better looking, faster loading 4-colour iconset, go for it.

[Zetr0]

On an A600 since I am a bit of an upgrade fiend, I never realy got time to play with limmited systems, I have to say the work here is inspiring =)

I had a thought though, the ECS chips set can do Half Bright - can this be used in workbench to give 4 bright colours and 4 dim colours

when you add dithering you could get the illiusion of over 64 shades of colour from a base of 4...

is it not possible to use Half Brite modes in ECS workbench ? if not could it be hacked?

Does Half Brite mode use more chip ram then just adding another bitplane??

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by Cammy

If you can make a better looking, faster loading 4-colour iconset, go for it.

This wasn't supposed to be taken angrily just constructive criticism. I know what the lines are for, no need to patronize e (I am a designer after all) but I questioned their real usefulness in an interlaced display,and specially when the font is concerned, these are really small fonts.

Zetro, halfbrite is like 32 color mode, which in workbench is too much.

[Zetr0]

@Akira

yeah I know the 32 colour halfbrite - I was wondering if there is a way to achieve what is essentially a hack to work with just 4 colours, say a new custom screen type.

[Cammy]

I don't think you can use EHB in High Res on ECS, I think it's limited to Low Res and Low Res Interlaced screens. Workbench needs a minimum 640x200 screen, so running it in Low Res means you have to scroll sideways two screen-widths to see the whole Workbench display. I suppose it would be possible to write a hack to get it to work though, since you can use HAM modes on AGA machines using MUI Screen Mode.

OCS can do EHB too. But both OCS and ECS can also display Workbench in High Res and High Res Interlace in 16 colours, which is plenty if you want a much more colourful Workbench, but it does take up more ChipRAM and runs slower.

The icons in the pack we're working on are not designed for interlaced screens, these screenshots have been doubled in height to correct the aspect ratio. Background colours and patterns can be changed to suit your needs, just because I use a striped background on my screen doesn't mean everyone who wants to use this iconset needs to use the same pattern. The intention is to include several patterns and fonts to choose from, with easy to access presets in the drop-down menus. Some patterns will be plain colours, others will be dither patterns and other tiles.

The iconset is far from finished, but I think we're happy with the way the drawers look on a PAL or NTSC High Res display. The dithering is much more noticeable on a PC monitor, but there are many other iconsets to choose from with more colours and less dithering if you're using a sharper display. We'll try not to make the icons look too dithered, but there's really not much you can do with four unlocked pens that can be changed at any time.

[Amiga1992]

interlaced screen = any 1084 or CRT.
I don't mean an interlaced screenmode, rather an interlaced way of displaying images onscreen like that of those display types.

A progressive display like an LCD screen would be great with these patterns/sizes. Teh patterns of vertical lines are present in the icons themselves, not just the background that you can change, and this is what i mentioned (also the smallish font typeface with dropshadow)

And yeah I should do my own, I started such project once but never finished, this was years ago when i barely retouched teh inbuilt icons for 8 colors

[LocalH]

Very nice work, Cammy! I especially like that experimental 1.3 theme - combine it with something like VisualPrefs that lets you remap the light and dark window colors and it will look smashing.

With a slightly larger font (for readability) that could look awesome on an NTSC composite monitor, and it could appear that there are more than 4 colors due to blending. Only in nonlace mode, however - in lace mode there would be massive color flickering.