Posted By
MMS
on 2020-05-07
16:50:41
 |  Re: Graphics mode question
I am more into graphics conversion (not a gfx guru), but because of that I know the limitations.
I think this seems to be not FLI, just pretty well made.
This picture would be very hard to convert to +4, because of the limitation VS C64 mentioned by gerliczer
On +4 per attribute only 2 free color is available, and 2 fixed color over the whole screen, while on C64 there are three free color + the background (certainly just in multicolor). So, if you convert it to +4, there will be some weirdo colors all around the picture, depend on your choice on the 3rd color ("2nd background color").
You can't help on that matter, only FLI on +4 can convert 100% a very well made and complex multicolor C64 picture (but it is not typical to have such complexity)
On the other hand there is a trick you may use in more advanced gfxs even without using FLI, and it virtually increases your useable colors per attribute in multicolor mode.
the trick is that you choose for background color such a color you can use for toning, like grey. You can freely use it anywhere on the screen. You should not choose such a color you will use later for filling the BIG background. Or you can, but then the magic will disappear :-)
So, on C64 at the main area of drawing you will have 4 useful colors per attribute. 3 free + 1 background color for toning.
Outside the main character you may use black, but against the typical usage this black won't be the background color, but a local attribute color of the three selectable one (or 2 of the freely selectable ones). So the ppl brain will think the background color is black (the majority of the screen at background use this color), but in fact not. This simple method will trick ppl's brain.
If you check out closely the original one, you may see the attribute limits and there are only 4 colors within.
(I think the (brown or the orange) CORRECTION: "middle grey" could be the fix background color over the whole screen)
The rest of the magix is the CRT screen dithering and the youtube compression (remove sharpness and creates artificial color pixels in between)
I think I could find some bad colored pixels even on this masterpiece 
In fact, there are very few differeces between the two machines in the modes, all the modes known by both machines, the mentioned multicolor is the biggest difference beween the two. (there are few others, like the +4 can generate the inverse characters instead of storing them.
BTW C64 could have had 4 independent colors per attribute in multicolor mode, as they use 2x 1KB RAM as color maps, but one of the 4 bits is definitely unused in that RAM (00 = backrgound color), it could have been the "supermulti" mode with independent background color per each attribute.
OFF
On the other hand, the two independent colors on the screen of Plus/4 could be used to create software sprite with 2 colors on GFX screen, and they could be put anywhere on the screen without color bleeding. If you create a really bigger soft-sprite (eg 3x3), in the inner 1x1 area you may even use other (not free) 2 colors, extra to the 2 fixed colors, noone will see color clash, as they will never be in the same attribute, as the playfield (backgound).
I like the most the Magician's curse software sprite from all I see.
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