[Coco] More colors on CoCo 1?

[L. Curtis Boyle]

On Wed, 24 Jan 2007 16:29:39 -0600, Joel Ewy <jcewy at swbell.net> wrote:


> Roger Taylor wrote:

>> As for the topic of displaying more colors on a CoCo, here's my take.

>>

>> This is better for graphics display programs, such as Projector-3,

>> and Sock's HiColor BMP viewer.

>>

>> If you try color mixing tricks with games, you're losing CPU time to

>> the video routines that the game code needs more.  So what you will

>> be faced with is trying to squeeze CPU cycles out of your game code

>> to make up for the loss.  It's already hard enough to write a CoCo

>> game with fast animation without using video tricks, so expect a  

>> challenge....

>>

> I don't think it makes sense to try color mixing techniques for most

> action games, unless you just want to prove you can.  In action games,

> it's about the action.  Color is secondary.  But it would make sense for

> adventure games, certain simulation games, and maybe strategy games.  I

> guess one type of action game that would really benefit from > 16 colors

> would be first person shooters, but those are already challenging enough

> to program on the CoCo.

>

> But I would really like to see a text/graphic adventure that uses a high

> color display.  That would be very cool.  And most of the time the

> program will be waiting for user input with that type of game.  The

> biggest challenge there would be fitting all those pictures on media

> likely to be found on the CoCo, and loading them in a timely manner.

> You could have user-configurable config files to map out on which floppy

> disk/drive/virtual disk image/hard drive partition the pictures are

> stored, use compression to keep file size and I/O time down, and limit

> the size of the high-color images to a portion of the screen.  You could

> also speculatively pre-load next and previous screens, or limit the

> high-color screens to special situations in the game, such as when a

> particular objective has been achieved, using low color images during

> the rest of play.

>

> This is one of the things I would like to try using Sockmaster's HiColor

> code.

>


     If I remember correctly, the intro (animated) screen of Photon by Jeff  
Steidl uses a similiar technique to get extra colors, but I don't believe  
the actual game itself does. An adventure game or strategy game would be  
cool to see using these techniques, I agree.


-- 
L. Curtis Boyle