I recently got a copy of one of my games, and it has a palette tester as an easter egg. Anyway, on the screen displaying the "D" colors, $0D and $1D both appeared as black (yeah, I know $0D is a bad color. It didn't cause any problems while looking at it, though) and $2D and $3D were some different greys.
I think I've heard that $1D is SUPPOSED to be a dark grey, but seeing it on a TV seems to contradict that.
Is it TV-dependent or is $1D really black?
You just described a perfectly normal NES palette:
There is a discussion about colors $2D and $3D though... it seems that in RGB PPUs they are black.
Well, looking at that image and at my TV (I know this is not a relevant point since all TVs vary), some of those are similar but obviously a few differences are there.
For instance, $15 and $16 look pretty similar on mine. The $X8 have a little more greenish tint to them, but not as much as the $X9 ones.
But $2D and $3D were definitely not black.
For emulators, I use the ascquire.pal I found at some site, which is fairly good.
Pretty sure $1D is black. It might not output the same voltage levels as the others, but it looks black on every TV and monitor I've tried, and that's all that really matters...
Are any of the $xD colors safe to use? I stay away from them as I'm not sure.
$1D-$3D are safe to use, but as tokumaru said, they aren't present in RGB PPUs.
Did the official Famicom/NES documentation make any mention of these oddball colors, aside from $0D? They almost seem like an artifact of the way the PPU is designed, rather than legitimate colors, especially since the RGB PPU omits them entirely.
BMF54123 wrote:
They [$xD colors] almost seem like an artifact of the way the PPU is designed, rather than legitimate colors, especially since the RGB PPU omits them entirely.
Yes, they are an artifact. The PPU doesn't have any lookup table, just some clever, minimal logic to generate a composite-like video waveform. No need to waste any logic when software can just avoid $0D.
Three Stooges uses the xD colors frequently, and includes no protection against "Blacker than black" during fades.
The first Garage Cart used the $0D color in it somewhere, probably in the intro (based on an old palette file that I neglected to change). But just out of the first (maybe 10?) carts there was one person's TV it messed up on. So the later ones are a revision with those palette bytes changed.
I don't know about the other xD colors, but 0D is one to avoid.
Well, I liked $1D as I had thought it was a dark grey color, but apparently not it seems. Heh. I guess $00 is as close to dark grey as I'll get.
Yes, it is [ link:
http://nesdev.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?t=2113 ]
I tend to want to use 2D for the darkest grey in demos/games, but as mentioned before, both 2D and 3D are black on RGB PPUs. So, just a caveat.
Call me stupid, but what/where are these RGB PPUs you all speak of?
It outputs RGB instead of composite video. You'd find it in a playchoice-10 and an obscure piece of hardware I forgot.
smkd wrote:
You'd find it in a playchoice-10 and an obscure piece of hardware I forgot.
That subtitler thing, right?
You can check out my page of the Famicom Titler here:
http://www.disgruntleddesigner.com/chri ... itler.html
(Also the Sharp C1 Japanese TV has RGB internally too.) [and if not, someone please correct me.]
Interesting note: on the back of the box for the game Just Breed is printed (in Japanese) "Not for use on the Sharp C-1".
According to
NESDevWiki, $xE, $xF, and $1D are slightly above sync voltage while $0D is slightly below. I've heard somewhere else that $1D is higher than $xE/$xF, though supposedly it's not noticeable.