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68k (PPC emulation) color / CLUT shifting values?

jessenator

Well-known member
So ever since we had our family Performa 6218CD, ages ago, one of the things that bugged me about The Even More Incredible Machine was how it displayed. Something about its color scheme seemed very off compared to every other 256 color game I had used: I didn't really know how to distill what I was perceiving into anything coherent, but it was just a general sense of terrible contrast with key colors, namely text appearing on screen. This same thing persisted when we got our iMac DV a few years later so I couldn't really blame the old beige box.

I was tinkering tonight, and after installing (from the same disc I kept) it onto my Quadra 700, I noticed something very odd:
1uA9P9R.png


I had previously tried adjusting the CLUT resource of the 256 color objects file for the game in ResEdit to no avail. The darker I made that peachy color the less difference it appeared to make—I got close once, but then tried to make it darker and it went back to what it was. Now that's just me, designer brain, thinking I can go and adjust those values like I would indexed colors... but it was very odd that it kept shifting it back to that or close to that peachy color.

Now it's looking to me like there's something wacky going on with the emulation of that game (it was only 68k native as far as I've been able to tell). What would cause this? Does this happen with other titles as well? Is there a workaround? It's by no means an emergency kind of problem, but interesting.

Like I say, I've worked with other 68k era color games/programs and I haven't seen anything like this.

Edit: yeah, I know it says Appearance is enabled, but it did this before MacOS 8 came around... I think I just mention that out of due diligence :p

 
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jessenator

Well-known member
Well, I've tried a number of games, but none really fall under the 256 color and 68k umbrella, except for SimCity 2000 v1.1—the other titles I downloaded, Dark Castle, SimCity classic and a couple others need either mono or 16-or-fewer colors*. If anyone has some titles to try that are 68k native only I'd be happy to test them.

The only "bug" so far with SimCity 1.1 is the window expand open past 640x480 even though I'm running at 1152x870. V1.2 does allow this however, but it's a FAT binary AFAIK.

 

NJRoadfan

Well-known member
Don't know if SimTower is 68k only or not. It requires 256 colors and 68030 or higher. The original release was in 1994, so maybe 1.0 isn't a FAT binary?

 

jessenator

Well-known member
Thanks for the suggestion. I tried a couple of SIM games on the PowerPC side last night. I was surprised that SimEarth color ran, but no issues. I'll hopefully load up the 68k versions tonight and then compare the screen shots I took, but nothing looked off to me so far.

Funny side note: that v1.1 window limitation on SC2k doesn't exist on v1.0
cgAuCKC.png
which is …something.

I wonder if I should try more Sierra titles (as TIM are published by them)… what else was ported over for color Mac?

 
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LaPorta

Well-known member
TIM has 16 color and 256 color modules. What I found over the years, with no explanation as to why, was that different system revisions change this. System 7.1 (maybe 7.5, not sure) works fine and gives you the normal, readable color. The Systems above cause all sorts of visual glitches (the opening animation showing a black screen, blue lines radiating all over when waiting to click the second time to place a belt or rope). It must be a programming issue. Try with System 7.1 and 8 and see if that changes for you.

 

jessenator

Well-known member
Try with System 7.1 and 8 and see if that changes for you.
Interesting.

Funnily enough, I was getting all the SIM games from your deposit on vTools, so thanks! ;) Yeah, nothing was glaring on the games I could run on the PPC. FWIW TEMIM ran the same, but faster, on the family Performa and the iMac (7.5, 8.0, and then 8.6 on the iMac) I'll test it on the Quadra and see.

 

LaPorta

Well-known member
Glad to see my disks are of use! I need to upload more when I get time. TIM runs great on my kid’s Quadra 630. 

 
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jessenator

Well-known member
So I tried both 7.1 and 8.0 on the Quadra, but I didn't notice any difference on TEMIM :/ I did the fades at the intro, but I still saw everything. I was actually surprised that the program was running faster on OS 8.0…

 
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