Color Palette
Let your joystick select program hues!
by JOHN FELTONTake the tedium out of program color selection with this joystick-driven BASIC utility. Color Palette runs on all Atari computers of any memory size. Disk or cassette.
When the time comes to select colors for your new program, it's hard to choose among all the Atari's 128 colors and multiple luminances-if you can't conveniently compare similar shades. Until now, it was a tedious process to find the perfect green for your slime monsters, or just the right red for the sky over Barsoom. You might use SETCOLOR in a program, run it, look at it, break it, adjust it and start over again.
USING PALETTE
Color Palette gives you a better way to use the best home graphics
computer on the market.
Type in Listing 1, check it with TYPO II, SAVE a copy,
and RUN the program. You'll be looking at a joystick-driven utility for
color selection. Listing 2 is the source code for the assembly language
routines used in the BASIC program. You don't need to type it in.
The palette's screen is divided into two windows. In the
top, you'll see 12 patches of color, each with its hue and luminance numbers
and a color register value. The lower right corner is the background color.
The bottom half modifies the color of patches in the top
half. Put the cursor over the patch you wish to modify and press the joystick
button. You'll now be able to change colors by moving the stick up and
down, and change luminance by moving the stick from side to side. Press
the trigger to set that color and move on. To see your values, watch the
X in the lower window.
That's all that there is to it. You might note that the
top four patches are initialized to the Atari default colors. It is amazing
how many programs use these four colors just because it's easier than looking
for better ones. Well, no more.
A three-year veteran of the Atari, John Felton is a computer science major at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, California.
Listing 1 PALETTE.BAS Download
Listing 2 PALETTE.ASM Download / View