
Stretching the C64 Palette - ingve
http://www.krajzewicz.de/blog/stretching-the-c64-palette.php
======
smabie
Off-topic, but I recently decided to program a forth compiler on a C64 (6502
cpu) and it's been both fun, and incredibly frustrating. It feels a lot like
exapunks or TIS-100 from zachtronics. In fact, in some ways, the asm in
exapunks is more powerful than 6502 asm!

It's been super fun and I would recommend it to anyone. The opcodes are
designed for people and its super easy to learn. The perfect cure for the
bullshit that software engineering has become since then.

------
kstenerud
Palette stretching was important for a number of platforms. PC Engine (Turbo
Grafx 16) had 16-color palettes from a total of 512 colors, which didn't leave
much room for shades and gradients. And it showed in their flagship game
"Ancient Ys Vanished" in 1989. While it was super impressive as an early CD
based game with (sort of) motion video and CD quality sound, it's informative
to compare it to "Dawn of Ys", released 4 years later (1993), which made use
of dithering, raster and scanline timing tricks to improve the visual quality.

Title screen:

[https://cs11.pikabu.ru/post_img/2019/03/11/6/155229530917353...](https://cs11.pikabu.ru/post_img/2019/03/11/6/1552295309173537623.png)

[https://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/l/387326-ys-iv-the-
da...](https://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/l/387326-ys-iv-the-dawn-of-ys-
turbografx-cd-screenshot-title-screen.png)

Lilia:

[https://blog.gurkgamer.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/08/ys_01-...](https://blog.gurkgamer.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/08/ys_01-225x198.png)

[https://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/l/387337-ys-iv-the-
da...](https://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/l/387337-ys-iv-the-dawn-of-ys-
turbografx-cd-screenshot-something-bad.png)

Bar scene:

[https://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/l/554866-ys-book-i-
ii...](https://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/l/554866-ys-book-i-ii-
turbografx-cd-screenshot-sounds-tempting-but.png)

[https://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/l/387336-ys-iv-the-
da...](https://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/l/387336-ys-iv-the-dawn-of-ys-
turbografx-cd-screenshot-no-alcohol-censorship.png)

Dark Fact:

[https://cs10.pikabu.ru/post_img/2019/03/11/6/155229702414087...](https://cs10.pikabu.ru/post_img/2019/03/11/6/1552297024140878386.png)

[https://www.ysutopia.net/images/ys4pce09.gif](https://www.ysutopia.net/images/ys4pce09.gif)

~~~
kstenerud
Forgot the intros:

Ys 1:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pr2M1523t6s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pr2M1523t6s)

Ys 4:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsUL7TIEvRQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsUL7TIEvRQ)

Ys 4, part 2:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvSK4ErPcio&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvSK4ErPcio&feature=youtu.be&t=597)

------
mjg59
Meanwhile, in NTSC land, people were expanding the colour palette by
generating interference that would be interpreted by NTSC TVs as additional
colour information:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composite_artifact_colors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composite_artifact_colors)

PAL wasn't as amenable to this sort of endeavour, so platforms that were more
popular outside the US tended to focus on effects like those described here -
give the impression of more colour space even when it wasn't there. Efforts
like 8088mph ([https://trixter.oldskool.org/2015/04/07/8088-mph-we-break-
al...](https://trixter.oldskool.org/2015/04/07/8088-mph-we-break-all-your-
emulators/)) that create much more colour than the hardware was nominally
capable of are solidly tied to NTSC, and it's interesting thinking about how
much the demo scene ended up split by the behaviour of their TVs.

~~~
talideon
Here in PAL land, though you'd already know this, you could get a related
effect with some palette swapping. If you flipped between colours with the
same luminance (pink and green, for example), you'd get an intermediate
colour. Mayhem in Monsterland is an example of this that springs to mind.

~~~
mjg59
Yes! [http://www.aaronbell.com/secret-colours-of-the-
commodore-64/](http://www.aaronbell.com/secret-colours-of-the-commodore-64/)
is a great writeup of this. This seems to have become popular much later than
NTSC artifact colours, though.

------
MarkusWandel
I'm old enough to remember using a real C64, with a real 1702 monitor, when
that, and its separated chroma/luma cable, was the hot new thing. And the
colours were bright and vivid. They were thus on every C64 I ever saw in real
life, whether with the older 1701 monitor or connected to a TV.

So why does every single emulator, and every article about the C64 use this
super-drab pallette? Is this a case of "never mind what it looked like, we
follow the spec" like apparently some earlier SID emulations that sounded
nothing like a real SID chip?

~~~
tenebrisalietum
Because one thing many emulators don't emulate (at least ZSNES does) is the
brightness and tint controls that are on TVs and also the 1702.

In the nesdev forums there was some interesting discussion threads about
trying to get an accurate NES palette. Someone digitized each color from a
real NES using a capture card, but the discussion talked about how people's
TVs of the day probably weren't scientifically calibrated; everyone had
different tint and brightness settings on their TVs.

That being said something was always off about the red color in every c64
emulator, it never seemed that "grey" on any TV or monitor I ever saw.

