Palette Files

[legenda]

Hello,

In some DOS games or demo programs, there are .pal files. They store the palette info and the program sets the palette according to this file.

How are these *.pal files created? How do we create the palette of our drawings?

Do we need a program for that?

Thanks.

[burger2227]

You can make your own palette files by reading the color attribute's R, G and B settings. If you create custom colors, they can also be recorded using:

Code: Select all

FOR c = 0 TO maxcolors - 1  ' screen 12 = 15 screen 13 = 255
    OUT &H3C7, c                  'prepares color port for INP reads
    Red = INP(&HC39)           'each sends 0 to 63 value ranges
    Green = INP(&H3C9)
    Blue = INP(&H3C9)
    WRITE #1, Red, Green, Blue
NEXT

The color values can later be read using INPUT #1, Red, Green, Blue in a similar loop. Use OUT &H3C8 to start the setting of the palette and OUT &H3C9 to set the RGB values from the file in the same way.

For Screen 12 that is 16 RGB colors values from 0 to 15
Screen 13 requires 256 RGB color values from 0 to 255

#1 is the file Opened using ".pal" for the extension. Some palette files may use ASCII character codes from 0 to 63 instead of numbers. To read them you need ASC to convert values to numbers again.

If you plan to BSAVE a file just index the color settings at the start of the image array and place the image at Array(48) or Array(768)

Ted