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Palix: themes

The system palette​

The system palette is a predefined list of 44 colors, shown below. Index 0 indicates a transparent pixel, so the color indexes are 1 – 44.

01234567
89101112131415
1617181920212223
2425262728293031
3233343536373839
4041424344
0
clear
1
black
2
raven
3
frypan
4
tinman
5
pigeon
6
ghost
7
white
8
blush
9
shrimp
10
crumpet
11
slime
12
iceberg
13
skyscape
14
lavendare
15
mauvelous
16
red
17
orange
18
yellow
19
green
20
cyan
21
blue
22
purple
23
violet
24
rudolf
25
muffin
26
goldbar
27
wasabi
28
oceana
29
denim
30
merlin
31
potion
32
chili
33
mustache
34
punkin
35
lawn
36
sharkfin
37
sapphire
38
midnight
39
saddle
40
meatloaf
41
moose
42
bonbon
43
offroad
44
tortoise

The other pixel byte values 45 – 255 will appear as black pixels. (A future version of Hybrix might introduce new colors with indexes 45 – 47, therefore be careful to avoid accidentally using these particular numbers.)

Note: In the pixel array for a sprite or tile image, the byte elements refer to the active theme (see below), not the system palette. For example, if the pixel byte is 48, it will be displayed as "Color A" from the default theme set, even though 48 is not part of the system color palette above.

Themes​

The system palette colors shown above cannot be modified; no other colors are possible for the Palix video system. However, the color number assignments can be remapped using themes. Themes enable a given sprite or tile image to display different color variations. For example, a chess game might use a theme to determine the color of a chess piece, avoiding the need to create separate sprites for white and black colors. Themes can also be used to create "color cycling" effects such as animating a waterfall or fading the screen to black; a program accomplishes this by writing different values into the IO::THEMES table for each video frame.

The default theme set​

When your program first starts, the themes are initialized as follows:

Themes 0 – 15​

  • Indexes 0 – 44 map to the corresponding colors from the system palette.
  • Index 48, called "color A", has a different color in each theme. Themes 0 through 10 use the corresponding HASCII color.
  • Index 49, called "color B", is a darker shade of color A in each theme. It is typically used for shading.
  • In theme 15, color A and color B are transparent.

Themes 16 – 31​

  • These are "reversed" versions of the corresponding themes 0 – 15.
  • They are identical to the corresponding theme, except that color #0 (clear) and color #48 (theme color A) are swapped.
  • The framework CONSOLE reverses characters to make the blinking cursor.
  • Reversing is also useful with drawing glyphs, for example transforming character #177 ▝ into ▙, or transforming character #185 ◤ into ◢.

Your program can customize these mappings by writing to the IO::THEMES array. However, the Hybrix designer always shows the default theme set; it does not yet provide a way to create or preview custom themes. (This may be improved in the future.)

Color A and B​

ThemeColor AColor BHASCIIEscape
0
black (1)
frypan (3)
16 ($10){0}
1
white (7)
pigeon (5)
17 ($11){1}
2
red (16)
chili (32)
18 ($12){2}
3
orange (17)
mustache (33)
19 ($13){3}
4
yellow (18)
punkin (34)
20 ($14){4}
5
green (19)
lawn (35)
21 ($15){5}
6
cyan (20)
oceana (28)
22 ($16){6}
7
blue (21)
denim (29)
23 ($17){7}
8
purple (22)
merlin (30)
24 ($18){8}
9
violet (23)
potion (31)
25 ($19){9}
10
mustache (33)
meatloaf (40)
11
shrimp (9)
blush (8)
12
crumpet (10)
pigeon (5)
13
slime (11)
green (19)
14
sharkfin (36)
tortoise (44)
15
clear (0)
clear (0)

I/O definitions​

The IO_THEME class stores an array of 64 bytes, each byte indicating a system palette index. For example, if IO_THEME.COLOR_MAP[4] equals 6, that means pixel value 4 should will display color 6 from the system palette (if this theme is active). You can define up to 32 themes and use them in fields such as IO_SPRITE::THEME and IO_TILEMAP::TILE_CODES_ADDRESS. Thus, the pixel color values that are specified by sprite and tilemap bitmaps are actually theme indexes, not system palette indexes.

CLASS IO_THEME # SIZE 64
  # MAPS A PALETTE INDEX TO A THEMED PALETTE INDEX
  INSET COLOR_MAP: BYTE[SIZE 64]
END CLASS

MODULE IO
  . . .
  INSET THEMES: IO_THEME[INSET 32]            LOCATED AT $D0_0800 # ..$D0_0FFF
  . . .
END MODULE