universe amiga 500 256 colors ! ?

[turrican3]

hi guys,
how they managed to make this game a 256 colors one ?
Is it a copper trick or something more ???

[vitux]

Turri: This game has version CD32 therefore may have 256c.
if you mean the OCS version. Where to say there 256c?

[Retro-Nerd]

The game was notable for its then-unique ability to display 256 colors at once on a standard Amiga 500, instead of just 32, due to its innovative system SPAC (Super Pre-Adjusted Colour)

Though don't know how it technically works.

edit: Akira posted this.

http://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=63738&postcount=24

[Mrs Beanbag]

just watched a bit of the longplay, it looks like it could be copper tricks to me, not sure though

[turrican3]

Originally Posted by vitux

Turri: This game has version CD32 therefore may have 256c.
if you mean the OCS version. Where to say there 256c?

yes i mean the ocs version.
http://amr.abime.net/amr_popup_pictu...03.jpg&c=41062
http://amr.abime.net/amr_popup_pictu...64.jpg&c=41062

[Rebel-CD32]

The game is probably in Extra Half-Bright mode or 32-colour mode but the palette is sliced. A few pens in the palette are locked, they're used for Boris and the cursor. The rest of the pens in the palette are free to be changed on each scanline. It's the same technique used by HAMLab. Download HAMLab and the keyfile, then load in some 256 colour game screenshots and play around with a sliced palette in 32 or 64 EHB colours, you'll see that many adventure games could have looked far better if they also used this technique.

[vitux]

Interesting, AMIGA magic.
If these tricks had been more common and had echoed the magazines of the time ... maybe the players attracted by the VGA 256 system would not have changed.

Yep, Rebel-CD32 is correct. I'll try to explain but this is going back a long time so these details may not be 100% correct and I don't have the source code anymore.

We used extra halfbrite mode and changed the first 15 colours (after the background colour) on every scanline. We then had 8 colours that were fixed for all screens as the main character used these. The other 8 colours changed per background and were used for both the background and sprites.

So you could have up to 256 colours, but it was tricky at times as sprites were limited depending if they needed to move vertically. If so then they could only use the last 16 colours.

Hope that helps - Gaz.

[ajk]

@gantcliffe

Thank you for the input, always nice to hear from the makers of the games

[turrican3]

Originally Posted by gantcliffe

Yep, Rebel-CD32 is correct. I'll try to explain but this is going back a long time so these details may not be 100% correct and I don't have the source code anymore.

We used extra halfbrite mode and changed the first 15 colours (after the background colour) on every scanline. We then had 8 colours that were fixed for all screens as the main character used these. The other 8 colours changed per background and were used for both the background and sprites.

So you could have up to 256 colours, but it was tricky at times as sprites were limited depending if they needed to move vertically. If so then they could only use the last 16 colours.

Hope that helps - Gaz.

Thank for the explanations. Great to see you here.
How did you heard about this thread. ?

[dlfrsilver]

ahhh some "Gary Antcliffe" pretty informations on the board, welcome Sir !

Hey, thanks for the welcome everyone - much appreciated.

I just came across this randomly while doing a bit of research for a talk I've been asked to do at the Centre for Computing History in Cambridge.

http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/d...nt-and-Future/

The talk hasn't been announced yet as I've been trying to figure out what to do and have just recently decided to talk about the differences between developing Universe all those years ago, and Killzone Mercenary on Vita that we released last year.

How times have changed! :-)

Cheers - Gaz

[dlfrsilver]

When you said you had not anymore the universe source code, you mean that the dev. Amiga has been thrown to the bin, or you can't access it ?

[vitux]

gantcliffe: Leave the Amiga in a good place!! Tell everyone that we're still alive!!
Thanks for info Universe

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

When you said you had not anymore the universe source code, you mean that the dev. Amiga has been thrown to the bin, or you can't access it ?

Afraid it's been lost in time and space :-/

Think all my Amiga and St code got misplaced or dumped by accident many years during a house move. I'm sure Core Design will have a backup somewhere.