Colours of graphics in future VIC adventures

[orion70]

Imagine if we were able to produce a VIC text adventure with high-res graphics...



Which colour combo would you choose?

1. Red - Light Red
2. Purple - Light Purple
3. Green - Light Green
4. Blue - Light Blue
5. Orange - Light Orange
6. Orange - Yellow
7. Blue - Cyan
8. Red - Purple

Personally, I prefer shades of the same colour (blue/lt. blue is not bad at all), but also orange/yellow.

[Pedro Lambrini]

Well, I went for the blue/light blue combo as it seems to show the most detail in a balanced way and seems to be the closest to black & white.

[carlsson]

Perhaps different screens could use different combinations of colour? At least one of those should be the auxillary colour register that you could change once per raster line if you need to. I don't know how MINIGRAFIK works, if you have white background and black border on all of those images?

[saehn]

Perhaps different screens could use different combinations of colour? At least one of those should be the auxillary colour register that you could change once per raster line if you need to. I don't know how MINIGRAFIK works, if you have white background and black border on all of those images?

This sounds like the ideal solution to me too, changing colors as appropriate between screens.

[Mayhem]

Yeah, I think the most appropriate colour combination might depend on the image itself and what's in it...

[carlsson]

Like if you are in a room full of sexy women, you don't want them all to be green. Likewise if the view is an ocean, red and purple may not be the first combination to use. Now, I'm not aware of any graphical text adventure that combines these two scenes, but one could always write a new one. Perhaps a Leisure Suits Viclarry?

[formater]

Perhaps different screens could use different combinations of colour? At least one of those should be the auxillary colour register that you could change once per raster line if you need to. I don't know how MINIGRAFIK works, if you have white background and black border on all of those images?

I agree, a pair of colours are perfect in a castle picture and terrific in a dessert o forest

[Mike]

At least one of those should be the auxillary colour register that you could change once per raster line if you need to.

In that case, one can also change the background colour, and in-border colour (used for the graphics), and auxiliary colour each line. And, by cycle-exact splitting, provide an independent out-border colour for each raster as well. My MG raster engine is able to do that.

But a 'pure' MG screen doesn't need nor employ any raster effect.

I don't know how MINIGRAFIK works, if you have white background and black border on all of those images?

PGM IMPORT sets the border to black, and all foreground attribute cells to white, multi-colour enabled. Background, and auxiliary colour are the two intermediate colours, and they can both be chosen from all 16 available colours.

Of course this does not fully exhaust the capabilities of MINIGRAFIK. Each of the 20x12 attribute cells (with 8x16 hires pixels size) can have a different foreground colour, and multi-colour enable bit - besides the three global colours. Those degrees of freedom are fully accessible with MINIPAINT, and can already provide quite colourful results, without an apparent colour scheme as with PGM IMPORT. Mermaid has shown me some excellent examples.

Even though background colour, and auxiliary colour offer free choice of colours, one of them also - normally - is displayed in hires parts of the screen. Which would eventually lead to inverted letters in background colour (but not white) over black foreground. If one of the two intermediate colours is of the lower eight ones, that one might be used as foreground instead, setting background to white (still with inverted letters in the text part). This needs only small changes in PGM IMPORT.

Otherwise it is still feasible to do two raster splits between the graphics, and text part, to change background to black, so foreground could be white again, with non-inverted letters (and change background back again to the graphics part value outside the visible area).

Greetings,

Michael

P.S.: And Orange/Light Orange is the default setting in PGM IMPORT.

[ral-clan]

If you ever need some original artwork for one of these adventures, let me know! I would love to draw some. Of course I could always do some preliminary sketches to see if my style is what you want.

[orion70]

Excellent offer from you ral-clan! Thanks a lot. I hope someone will be encouraged by those new programming / graphics tools to develop new adventures.

I was interested in using the PGM converter, because I've never been good at drawing, so I thought it was a good idea to capture real-life pictures or screenshots from other adventures... Of course original art would be the best.

[ral-clan]

Excellent offer from you ral-clan! Thanks a lot. I hope someone will be encouraged by those new programming / graphics tools to develop new adventures.

I was interested in using the PGM converter, because I've never been good at drawing, so I thought it was a good idea to capture real-life pictures or screenshots from other adventures... Of course original art would be the best.

Well, yes if someone comes up with an original story then it may be the only way to get appropriate graphics - if someone actually draws them.

This also has the advantage that all the graphics in all the locations will have the same style. And the biggest advantage of course is that you can match the graphics perfectly to the location description, and even include features within the graphics to act as clues to solving the puzzle (like making one of the bricks in a wall look slightly different so that the user might notice and say "push brick", etc.).

[Ivanhoe76]

Carlsson said: Now, I'm not aware of any graphical text adventure that combines these two scenes, but one could always write a new one. Perhaps a Leisure Suits Viclarry? Laughing

Why not... Larry is still one of my favourite game!!!