next »

[happymonster]

When PC machines with CGA Graphics adaptors first appeared, games were now able to display graphics in 320 x 200 resolution with 4 colours. Unfortunately due to technical issues there were only a few palette choices and the most commonly used one was Black, White, Cyan, and Magenta:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CGA_graphics

This was not the best colour choice for games..


So imagine if we could go back to that time and you had to create a palette of only four colours that would be used by all the games created for that machine for the next few years. What colours would you choose? And why?

[Eigen]

Looking forward to the results

[happymonster]

Well as you're doing a 4 colour game here Eigen, you are the inspiration for us all!

[Sik]

I'd probably use Eigen's =P

In a more realistic situation, I'd probably just go with grayshade, 4 colors is too few and if you can't choose the palette freely I'd rather go with monochrome than with a probably useless palette.

Worth noting that the CGA was like that because of how the colors were wired: the two bits of each pixel mapped to the red and green components, while blue and intensity were the same for all colors. The exception to this was color 0, which could be changed to any of the 16 colors the CGA supported.

[Eigen]

Heh, thanks. But it's interesting. The original CGA is no doubt the worst 4 color in the world, ever (both version). The main problem in my eyes is the gamut of contrast and saturation. But when you start to think what would fit most use cases you'll be stumped. It'd be easier to just go monochromatic or even grayscale. But yeah, I think I've arrived at a pretty decent set of colors with Pioneers.

It looks somewhat decent it many cases:








But it looks terrible with lots of dithering happening.




For something more generic I would go with a monochromatic palette akin to the original Gameboy. Sepia works best for some reason. Because of old photographs, maybe. We're used to seeing it more often?

[Sik]

I disagree on the dithering thing, it looks fine.

Also worth noting that on the CGA cyan and magenta are not 00FFFF and FF00FF, they're 55FFFF and FF55FF (this is because the intensity bit adds 1/3 to all three components). That makes them somewhat more bearable... not by much though (the dark colors are 00AAAA, AA00AA and AAAAAA, if you wonder).

[happymonster]

They do look great Eigen!  

[Glyph]

Monochrome is probably the best option, but the Pioneers palette also works great because each color meshes well. Personally, I'd go with a deep purple to yellow-white ramp. I just picked these colors haphazardly so they're not properly spaced, but it should give you an idea what I mean:



Also, most of the GB-in-GBC palettes work well, except the funky B+direction ones anyway. I'm partial to the weird cyan-yellow-white one though.

[Eigen]

Yeah, it looks really good. I would just desaturate the red a bit because when you use it to fill larger areas it becomes too strong. Similarily using blue-yellow contrast as base gives similar results.



Then again, this image is one of those cases where nearly everything looks good because it's clearly designed for CGA or at least it's been a concious consideration whereas that California Games one isn't.

[happymonster]

I also like blue and green, but with a light blue and a dark green. I've also gone with a slightly brown darkest colour and slightly yellow brightest colour:

[standardcombo]

At the time I would possibly gone for white, black and 2 grays. However, what about Black, Red, Green, Blue? You can composite various colors with pixel patterns like so:

[happymonster]

I'm not sure how well that work when you try to do shading or non-dithered details though?

[Eigen]

My eyes!

[standardcombo]

Yes, things would be dithered, as they often were.

You'd have to get creative with your pixel art, but having that as one of the technical options would be great.

Here is a direct translation with a 2x2 grid. The white is the main issue but I'm sure it would work if you found the correct style. I suppose Black, White, Green and Red would be the 4 color choice here!

[Sik]

How about what the Channel F did? That was white, blue, green and red.

[cirpons]

Guys youre forgetting that the cga had a hackish mode 3 and low saturation modes available. they look much more feasible in my opinion, shown in the top two panels. Below is my attempt.

[eigenbom]

I'd probably choose green, green, green, and green.

[Unplayables]

Hmm that's really interesting. I've never realised they had all choices to choose from when they designed the system but it makes sense.

[surt]

Apparently with some scanline palette-swapping hackery CGA 4-colour-mode could do this:


And with some composite video hackery:

[happymonster]

That's clever!

Reminds me of the colour palette changing at various points down the screen in some Atari 800 games.