Revisiting the quest for the most accurate NES palette:

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Dwedit
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Re: Revisiting the quest for the most accurate NES palette:

Post by Dwedit »

Saturating the entire palette doesn't preserve apparent brightness, you throw off the brightness when you do that. Notice how the first blue column is lighter than the second column, but only in the saturated palette.
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tepples
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Re: Revisiting the quest for the most accurate NES palette:

Post by tepples »

A mirror for good measure

To clarify: Though $0D is #110011 (dark purple) in the PNG, that's not the case on the actual hardware. Small changes to $0D are something I do to keep certain tools from using $0D when looking for the "first black color in the palette".
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Firebrandx
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Re: Revisiting the quest for the most accurate NES palette:

Post by Firebrandx »

I added some FAQs and also a preview image to the web page (http://www.firebrandx.com/nespalette.html).

Last night as a safety check, I recorded a new session of the color output and exclusively used Photoshop to import, crop, and average all the colors since I was getting complaints of Paint Shop Pro being 'inaccurate'. The results were 99.99% identical, with differences only being 1 tick in 1 or 2 color channels (imperceptible to the human eye). This degree of error is so slight that I don't have to worry about apologizing and yet again releasing a new palette.

Anyway, no complaints on other forums I've posted it in, and in fact some fans are having nerdgasms over how unbiased the palette is. For example in SMB, the bricks are brown as opposed to the "YUV" palette's bias towards red. The direct-capture palette also reveals just how wrong the YUV palette is on the last dark color entry (Mega Man 2's Wily Stage sky background uses it).
Dwedit wrote:Saturating the entire palette doesn't preserve apparent brightness, you throw off the brightness when you do that. Notice how the first blue column is lighter than the second column, but only in the saturated palette.
FYI the saturated palette uses the default saturation balance of the XRGB-mini. The previous unsaturated palette was actually with saturation set to 25 instead of the default 32. So while you may think it's less accurate, it technically is more accurate. I realized I needed to make the saturated version when I tested SMB. The bricks were considerably darker at 25 than they were at the default 32.
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Firebrandx
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Re: Revisiting the quest for the most accurate NES palette:

Post by Firebrandx »

Tim was kind enough to make new firmware versions for the NESRGB boards that incorporate the direct-capture palettes I made. They come in two flavors:

#1 = Playchoice 10 -- FBX Saturated -- FBX Unsaturated

#2 = Playchoice 10 -- FCUX Palette -- FBX Saturated


This should cover those that prefer the tonal consistency of the unsaturated palette as well as those that prefer the vibrancy of the saturated version.

I've made my own zip link of the firmware files here:

http://www.firebrandx.com/downloads/nes ... lettes.zip

Please be aware that you need to be familiar with using an Altera USB blaster to update the NESRGB boards. Some instructions can be found on Tim's page here:

http://etim.net.au/nesrgb/background_fault/

Some users have already made the update and reported they are working.
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dougeff
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Re: Revisiting the quest for the most accurate NES palette:

Post by dougeff »

no complaints
I'm using the FirebrandX palette. It looks pretty close to my actual NES. Better than the default palettes in every emulator I use, at least.
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Firebrandx
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Re: Revisiting the quest for the most accurate NES palette:

Post by Firebrandx »

Just got done using the Altera USB blaster on my own NESRGB board. I'd never done anything like this before, so I was thrilled that there were zero problems and it worked first try.

I can tell you the saturated palette running on the NESRGB board looks identical to my umodded NES hooked into the same 55" LCD display! I couldn't be happier with the outcome (finally screens like the title to Castlevania II have the right colors)!

OCD 100% satisfied, and a HUGE THANK YOU to Tim for taking the time to indulge me on this obsessive goal.


BTW, I'm betting the unsaturated palette will be better for those with CRT setups, as saturation can be adjusted directly from the CRT as needed.
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Firebrandx
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Re: Revisiting the quest for the most accurate NES palette:

Post by Firebrandx »

Alas, just when I thought I'd be done with the project, I began noticing the browns and olive greens were distinctly different compared to the YUV palette. Games like Contra, Castlevania III, and Faxanadu clearly intended olive colors to be more brown than green. So what I've done is make a combination palette alternative, where it uses the core purple-red-brown-olive colors combined with the green-cyan-blue-purple colors of my direct capture work and also a few tweaks to a few colors.

http://www.firebrandx.com/downloads/fbx ... omized.zip
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Firebrandx
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Re: Revisiting the quest for the most accurate NES palette:

Post by Firebrandx »

After spending the past couple days arranging all my palette efforts and comparing them to the YUV palette, I had to face the fact that there were really only 4 entries blatantly 'off', while everything else was within reasonable range. As such, I've settled on only correcting those 4 entries in the dark green-cyan areas of the palette. Web site is updated with screenshots showing how the improvement looks in-game compared to the YUV palette:

http://www.firebrandx.com/nespalette.html

Here's the palette with the corrected entries highlighted in red:

Image

It's weird coming nearly full-circle, but ultimately those colors were my biggest complaint anyway.
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Zepper
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Re: Revisiting the quest for the most accurate NES palette:

Post by Zepper »

Mind you to post a picture of SMB title screen for comparison? This palette is much much like nesdev palette, but a bit brighter.
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Firebrandx
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Re: Revisiting the quest for the most accurate NES palette:

Post by Firebrandx »

On a request, I was able to revisit my unsaturated direct-capture palette and manually correct the green bias the Framemeister was causing on about 6 entries in the table. End result is a palette table that mimics the contrasts of the console tones, but looks identical in hue to the original YUV palette (save for the green-cyan entries the YUV palette is known to be off on). Together with my corrected YUV palette, the two look very similar, but one is vivid while the other mimics physical contrast.

Web site has been updated with tables and pic examples, and I swear this is absolutely finished. Every entry now looks like it should:

http://www.firebrandx.com/nespalette.html
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Firebrandx
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Re: Revisiting the quest for the most accurate NES palette:

Post by Firebrandx »

Tim came through on the final palette firmware update I wanted:

http://www.firebrandx.com/downloads/nesrgbfbxfinal.zip

I've already used it to update my NESRGB, and everything looks beautiful!

I've uploaded full instructions on my project page. Hit "refresh" until you see the update date of January 19th, that's the new version with the installation instructions:

http://www.firebrandx.com/nespalette.html

Done and done!
ooPo
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Re: Revisiting the quest for the most accurate NES palette:

Post by ooPo »

Apologizes if this has already been covered, but were you using a calibrated monitor during this process?
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zeroone
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Re: Revisiting the quest for the most accurate NES palette:

Post by zeroone »

It looks like Firebrandx updated his palette this week.
Great Hierophant
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Re: Revisiting the quest for the most accurate NES palette:

Post by Great Hierophant »

zeroone wrote:It looks like Firebrandx updated his palette this week.
Firebrandx has a portion of a scan from "the original programmer" indicating a preference for the purplish-tint for SMB's blue sky. Does anyone know the original source for that quote?
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koitsu
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Re: Revisiting the quest for the most accurate NES palette:

Post by koitsu »

Great Hierophant wrote:Firebrandx has a portion of a scan from "the original programmer" indicating a preference for the purplish-tint for SMB's blue sky. Does anyone know the original source for that quote?
It's from an interview with Shigeru MIYAMOTO as part of a published book in Japan titled ファミリーコンピュータ 1983-1994 (Family Computer 1983-1994).

ccovell has a reference to it here: http://www.chrismcovell.com/levelxbook.html

For what it's worth, I still maintain that the whole "quest for an accurate NES palette" is an eye-of-the-beholder trait, simply because the display devices these games were being developed using at the time were subject to luminance/chrominance/hue variance. In other words: the way it looks to you, the developer, on your CRT on your desk, may not be how it ends up looking to little Tommy on his CRT TV set at home. The displays the character designers (and systems testers!) were using at the time are clearly depicted (page 1, page 2) -- they're NTSC CRTs. (Hint: now you know why the designer there has 2 CRT displays on his desk: one for the development system which used VGA, and one hooked up to the Famicom directly. (There's several reasons for this actually, but "best colour representation" is certainly one of them))

I find it utterly amazing that the "quest for the most accurate palette" (a.k.a. The Autistic Sperglord's Adventure) has been going on -- quite literally -- for nearly 20 years (the earliest *I* heard of this subject coming up was late 1996 when emulation was starting). :P
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