Palette in Sierra AGI Games

[ricky500]

I'm a big fan of Sierra-Online games. In the Amiga versions of some games (IE Gold Rush, Police Quest) for some reason the color palette is off, and the color pink is shown as a dark red making characters look like they have a very bad sunburn and makes the graphics look bad.

For some of Sierra's older games (King's Quest II, Space Quest II) there are different versions - ones with a good color palette and others with the "messed-up" dark red palette. But the later games (IE Gold Rush, Police Quest) there are only versions with the "messed-up" dark red color palette. This seems to be based on the interpreter for the games, for some strange reason, which must have been the evil plot of Atari ST users who hated the Amiga or something like that , the newer interpreter has the "messed-up" dark red color palette. The later games (IE Gold Rush, Police Quest) of course use the newer interpreter, and the later releases / versions of games like King's Quest II use the newer interpreter.

Since I'm a big Sierra fan and Amiga fan too, I spend countless hours staying up at night wishing that the Amiga versions of Gold Rush, Police Quest, etc. didn't have a messed up color palette while the stinky Atari ST versions of the games have a good color palette, which causes me to plot to build an army of robots programmed to smash every Atari ST in the world.

But seriously, here is my question:
Is it possible to either:
1). Use the older interpreter with a good palette (Such as Space Quest) to run the game files from Police Quest, etc
2). For someone to patch the interpreter used in Police Quest, etc and tweak the palette so that the pink color shows up as pink instead of dark red.

(Of course, I could always play the PC or -gasp- Atari ST versions of these games, but I would like to find a solution so I can happily play the Amiga versions of these games)

Below are some screenshots demonstrating how the palette should look as shown in the PC versions and the "messed up" Amiga palette. Also there are screenshots from two different Amiga versions of King's Quest II.

Gold Rush PC Version



Gold Rush AMIGA Version



Gold Rush PC Version



Gold Rush AMIGA Version



Gold Rush PC Version



Gold Rush AMIGA Version



Police Quest PC Version



Police Quest Amiga Version



King's Quest II Amiga Version with right contrast between red and pink



King's Quest II Amiga Version with Dark Red Palette

[Toni Wilen]

(Crystall ball says, not confirmed) I guess they wanted to keep original mouse pointer colors and simply remapped existing colors. Mouse pointer "red" was "best" choice..

[clenched]

¦ 00013460:  00 00 00 64-00 64 01 40-00 C8 00 0F-00 00 00 00     d d?@ + ¤
¦ 00013470:  00 00 00 00-00 00 00 0B-00 00 00 0B-00 00 00 00         ?   ?
¦ 00013480:  00 0B 00 0B-00 0B 00 00-00 00 00 0B-00 00 00 0B   ? ? ?     ?   ?
¦ 00013490:  00 0C 00 07-00 00 00 0B-00 0B 00 0B-00 07 00 07   ? •   ? ? ? • •
¦ 000134A0:  00 07 00 00-00 00 00 0F-00 00 00 0F-00 00 00 00   •     ¤   ¤
¦ 000134B0:  00 0F 00 0F-00 0F 00 00-00 00 00 0F-00 00 00 0F   ¤ ¤ ¤     ¤   ¤
¦ 000134C0:  00 0F 00 0F-00 00 00 0F-00 0F 00 0F-70 75 72 70   ¤ ¤   ¤ ¤ ¤purp
¦ 000134D0:  6C 65 00 69-6E 74 75 69-74 69 6F 6E-2E 6C 69 62  le intuition.lib
¦ 000134E0:  72 61 72 79-00 67 72 61-70 68 69 63-73 2E 6C 69  rary graphics.li
¦ 000134F0:  62 72 61 72-79 00 4F 52-41 4E 47 45-00 64 61 74  brary ORANGE dat

Need Hex editor w/search. Find data similar or equal to above. This fragment is from Police Quest. The beginning of the color data in the PQ file starts after the 0F in the first line. Each color takes six bytes,one word each for RGB. So, to change skin color edit the 12th color starting from zero. In this case, the six bytes after the first hyphen on line 134B0 are to be edited. The colors program from Workbench works good to fine tune the colors.

Edit 00 0F 00 00 00 00 to 00 0F 00 0A 00 08 to look like my picture. Save PQ program.
I had to check the deletable & writable attributes before I could save. Be advised anything supposed to be red will be this new color too.

[ricky500]

Wow! Super!!!! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

Which Hex Editor would you recommend? I usually use the one in Maverick but is there a better one to use?

[Valken]

Wow, I'm also on a ScummVM / AGI kick so if you make patches, can you show us the updated Amiga screenshots?

I would love to play the Amiga versions natively on WinUAE with the correct palettes.

[john4p]

Btw., since the developers of the AGI-interpreter "Sarien" found some colors of the Amiga's palette to be better they use a mix of the original EGA- and the Amiga-Palette:

http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/Sa...atures#Palette

You can use this "Amiga-ish" palette in ScummVM:

http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/AGI/Palettes

[TjLaZer]

I like F 7 7 for the skin tone! Matches the PC version nicely!

[TjLaZer]

Made this handy map to make it easy for anyone to change the colors. Each box is for every color. Use Palette tool to see which color it is and write down the code and hex edit the exe file then save it.

[quantum8]

This is amazing! Had anyone created any cousin whdload packs for this?

[commodorejohn]

I think this is a case of someone being simplistic in how they decided to set up the palette - AGI is designed for the "RGBI" palette used by CGA, PCjr/Tandy, and most applications of EGA video, so what you're referring to as "pink" is officially "bright red;" even the video card just sends out a signal for "color #12" to the monitor, and the choice to display it as it normally is is the monitor's responsibility. From the screenshots you've shared, I think someone working on the Amiga port naively assumed that "bright red" should be fine as "100% red, 0% green/blue" when in practice the bright colors on RGBI displays are actually 100% on the primary components and 33% on the others - hence, "bright red" is more of a salmon color, "bright blue" is a bit cornflower, etc.