"Palette animation" in non palettized mode
With palettized modes such as 8 bit color, palette shifts are often used to perform simple animation... I''m sure everyone has done it at some point. I used to do that too in 8 bit colour.
In 16+ bit colour (i.e. non palettized mode), what are you guys doing to perform those "simple" animation? Are you just treating those animation (where palette shift would''ve been used in a palettized mode) as "regular" Bob/Sprite animation? (i.e. animation by multiple frames.)
That seems to be the most obvious thing to do... afterall, colour registers with colour assignment at hardware level doesn''t exist in non palettized mode. I thought of emulating palette with software, but given that I have to scan EVERY PIXEL and "swap" one colour with another, it feels like a crazy idea. Particularly if you want speed (which most people do when dealing with graphics).
(I''m assuming that the amount of such animation necessary at one time is arbitrary. That is, it might not have any at one time while at another the whole screen may need such animation.)
I''m just wanting to hear you guy''s ideas, methods, theories, wisdom and (most of all) clever tricks on this. But clever or not clever, please do share your thoughts.
I wrote a game on the Amiga (32 colors) and initially used color cyclying to animate a waterfall. It used like 6 colors. It looked neat, but I only had 26 colors remaining for all the other gfx. I ended up making 6 waterfall tiles, and cycling through them instead of color cycling, then I could use those 6 colors in the rest of the gfx. Anyway, this is how I implement that same waterfall effect in 16-bit mode now. It looks like color cycling, but it is animated tiles/textures.
(Of course, if you are just going to do an animation, we might as well make it look better than just plain color cycling, eh?)
Thank you for replying.
Yes, I would''ve thought that''s the only way around it. I do miss palette animation though. I used to use it excessively in tile based scene. It hardly has performance penalty. That was the beauty of palettized mode.
Yes, I would''ve thought that''s the only way around it. I do miss palette animation though. I used to use it excessively in tile based scene. It hardly has performance penalty. That was the beauty of palettized mode.
Heya,
Yeah, that was indeed the nice thing (and also the only nice thing ) of palettes.
But blitting an other tile every frame does also hardly have performance penalty!
Remember the 16 colors on a C64?
Gr,
BoRReL
Yeah, that was indeed the nice thing (and also the only nice thing ) of palettes.
But blitting an other tile every frame does also hardly have performance penalty!
Remember the 16 colors on a C64?
Gr,
BoRReL
Yeah, but it''s also the simplicity as well. Of course, given a decent enough code to map a scene (in tile based games) it''s a simple job to draw a different tile-frame every game cycle. But then with palette, you''d just change few colour registers and the whole scene can animate without any extra code.
I think water effects in particular benefited from it... like if you move into a scene with a lot of water tiles, or little water tiles, there''s no difference at all with palette animation.
Talking of water, how''s everyone doing water effect without palette? Just use predrawn frames cycling and looping in order?
I think water effects in particular benefited from it... like if you move into a scene with a lot of water tiles, or little water tiles, there''s no difference at all with palette animation.
Talking of water, how''s everyone doing water effect without palette? Just use predrawn frames cycling and looping in order?
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