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Cart #55781 | 2018-08-27 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | License: CC4-BY-NC-SA
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Back in the days of the demo scenes, circa 1980 and 1990, rotating palettes was the way to go to make a graphic impression.

It was used for everything from showing twinkling stars in space games, waterfalls in adventure games and platformers, and the occasional hot fire or lava. It was also used to create some incredible fading effects.

I remember writing the introduction code for S1 in QBasic. I used 16-colors to fade a B&W picture from one to another using both OR and XOR to have one true picture fade on top of another as ALPHA did not yet exist - though it was emulated with clever palette arrangements.

I saw this effect originally in a Commodore Amiga game called, "The Killing Game Show."

Play LOUD and FULL SCREEN for best effect. :)

https://youtu.be/mLZoYUgilkI?t=87

Watching them fade one screen to another flawlessly got my mind working and thinking about how they did that.

Now in this next video, watch carefully how they fade one text on top of another. Remember, there was no ALPHA or alpha transparency at this time of computer development. It was all done through clever manipulation of OR and XOR images in a 16-color palette overlaying on top of one another and changing only the brightness levels mathematically and logically.

https://youtu.be/mLZoYUgilkI?t=438

It was the first time I had ever seen anything like this and I worked tirelessly for hours experimenting in QBasic with palette manipulation until I was able to reproduce it myself. What a feeling when I finally was able to reproduce the same incredible effect ! Good times.

Limited to 16-colors in PICO, however, this particular Kaleidoscope is not nearly as pretty as the one I wrote so many years ago. You still get the color chase though.

The one I wrote in Flash is where I had the vectors "chase" down a new color from the 64-million color palette. Pretty indeed.

You can see an Online and crude FLASH version I wrote of this HERE to compare the two:

https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/145350/review_page/8

So why am I not programming in flash today ?

Because it was an absolutely royal pain in the ... assuredly, trust me, it was very difficult to write code in. And sadly, I am understanding that FLASH is now all but vanished today. It is a forgotten medium, though I still have my thousands of downloaded Flash games, videos, and experiments.

PICO though is much easier to program and I am definitely enjoying the very high speed it has when it comes to both number crunching and generating interesting effects by updating thousands of pixels per second.

Likely, you are too.

Please enjoy, Kaleidoscope. And yes, I have no doubt the code could be thoroughly optimized today.

P#55782 2018-08-27 15:58 ( Edited 2018-08-27 20:14)


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