- I have a US top loader NES that's been modified for RGB video output by Retrofixes within the last year.
- There's a switch on the back that allows me to swap between 3 different palettes that have been flashed to the board inside.
- I own an Altera USB Blaster & have already read this page: firebrandx
I had asked the modding service multiple times through email correspondence to flash this palette to my NES but I guess he forgot. Since then I've attempted to contact for advice but have never gotten a response.
There's a specific palette that I would like to have on the board known as Quor's Palette which seems to have originated from the emulator NEStra 0.66. Quor is the creator of TUXnes, a separate emulator based on NEStra. The palette itself has appeared in tons of emulators from FCE Ultra GX for the Wii to NesterJ on the PSP. It's not true to the original, but since I have space for three palettes I wouldn't mind having it on my board because it's pretty nice for alot of games.
The file extension for palettes seems to be .pal but I'm unable to find a file like this for Quor's when searching Google, nor when scouring directories inside emulator zip files.
I really have no idea where to go from here. How could I go about finding or creating a .pal file of Quor's in order to flash it to my NES? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Flashing color palettes to NES
Flashing color palettes to NES
Godzilla was an inside job
Re: Flashing color palettes to NES
Okay, I thought about how to make a .pal file from scratch. The simplest way to do it:
> If NEStra has the same kind of features NEStopia does, you'd be able to go to video options -> palette editor and save it to a file
If it _doesn't_ have this, you can use NEStopia's editor to create a custom palette that matches the one you want.
To get the color values you're looking for, if NEStra doesn't list them for you, you might have to resort to using a image editor's eyedrop to grab the exact RGB of each color.
But that's my main protip for you: "NEStopia has a palette editor if you need one". Otherwise you'd have to use a HEX editor, which would be much slower as you fumble around, lose your place in the file, at a slow crawl as you convert numbers into hexadecimal if the HEX editor you happened to grab didn't have a decimal display mode.
> If NEStra has the same kind of features NEStopia does, you'd be able to go to video options -> palette editor and save it to a file
If it _doesn't_ have this, you can use NEStopia's editor to create a custom palette that matches the one you want.
To get the color values you're looking for, if NEStra doesn't list them for you, you might have to resort to using a image editor's eyedrop to grab the exact RGB of each color.
But that's my main protip for you: "NEStopia has a palette editor if you need one". Otherwise you'd have to use a HEX editor, which would be much slower as you fumble around, lose your place in the file, at a slow crawl as you convert numbers into hexadecimal if the HEX editor you happened to grab didn't have a decimal display mode.
Re: Flashing color palettes to NES
Well, you set me on the right path. Even after I dug through about 20 emulators I was unable to find a .pal file of Quor's palette. However, I did find a header file for it in NesterJ and was able to view the values of each color.
I've never done anything like this before, but I started an attempt to recreate the palette in NEStopia as per your suggestion. After a couple rows I began to doubt that I was placing them in the right order.
imgur
This is what I pulled from that header file in notepad. I feel like I'm supposed to be looking at these vertically in blocks of 4 and working from left to right along the color grid. The selected gray block would be red 3f, green 3f, blue 3f, then beneath it the light gray block would be red 3f, green 00, blue 3f, so the dark blue block to the right of the selected gray block would be red 00, green 1f, blue 3f -
I've never done anything like this before, but I started an attempt to recreate the palette in NEStopia as per your suggestion. After a couple rows I began to doubt that I was placing them in the right order.
imgur
This is what I pulled from that header file in notepad. I feel like I'm supposed to be looking at these vertically in blocks of 4 and working from left to right along the color grid. The selected gray block would be red 3f, green 3f, blue 3f, then beneath it the light gray block would be red 3f, green 00, blue 3f, so the dark blue block to the right of the selected gray block would be red 00, green 1f, blue 3f -
{0x3f,0x3f,0x3f}, {0x00,0x1f,0x3f}, {0x00,0x00,0x3f}, {0x1f,0x00,0x3f},
{0x3f,0x00,0x3f}, {0x3f,0x00,0x20}, {0x3f,0x00,0x00}, {0x3f,0x20,0x00},
{0x3f,0x3f,0x00}, {0x20,0x3f,0x00}, {0x00,0x3f,0x00}, {0x00,0x3f,0x20},
{0x00,0x3f,0x3f}, {0x00,0x00,0x00}, {0x00,0x00,0x00}, {0x00,0x00,0x00},
{0x7f,0x7f,0x7f}, {0x40,0x5f,0x7f}, {0x40,0x40,0x7f}, {0x5f,0x40,0x7f},
{0x7f,0x40,0x7f}, {0x7f,0x40,0x60}, {0x7f,0x40,0x40}, {0x7f,0x60,0x40},
{0x7f,0x7f,0x40}, {0x60,0x7f,0x40}, {0x40,0x7f,0x40}, {0x40,0x7f,0x60},
{0x40,0x7f,0x7f}, {0x00,0x00,0x00}, {0x00,0x00,0x00}, {0x00,0x00,0x00},
{0xbf,0xbf,0xbf}, {0x80,0x9f,0xbf}, {0x80,0x80,0xbf}, {0x9f,0x80,0xbf},
{0xbf,0x80,0xbf}, {0xbf,0x80,0xa0}, {0xbf,0x80,0x80}, {0xbf,0xa0,0x80},
{0xbf,0xbf,0x80}, {0xa0,0xbf,0x80}, {0x80,0xbf,0x80}, {0x80,0xbf,0xa0},
{0x80,0xbf,0xbf}, {0x00,0x00,0x00}, {0x00,0x00,0x00}, {0x00,0x00,0x00},
{0xff,0xff,0xff}, {0xc0,0xdf,0xff}, {0xc0,0xc0,0xff}, {0xdf,0xc0,0xff},
{0xff,0xc0,0xff}, {0xff,0xc0,0xe0}, {0xff,0xc0,0xc0}, {0xff,0xe0,0xc0},
{0xff,0xff,0xc0}, {0xe0,0xff,0xc0}, {0xc0,0xff,0xc0}, {0xc0,0xff,0xe0},
{0xc0,0xff,0xff}, {0x00,0x00,0x00}, {0x00,0x00,0x00}, {0x00,0x00,0x00}
Godzilla was an inside job
Re: Flashing color palettes to NES
It's left to right, just like reading a book. Note how every row ends in 3 blacks. Note how every row starts with white or grey. (I guarantee the carriage returns in that #define don't do anything. They're listed like that to make it easier to read. It's color 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, etc.)
You can take a peek at the "YUV" palette in the editor; which is more accurate to a true NES. Those other palettes built into NEStopia are... just beautiful lies. The NES palette is an abomination against good taste - it does not have a true Red or Yellow in its palette.
If these are the real numbers of the palette you're looking for (I'm skeptical!) this Quor guy has a fetish of turning blues into greens and such. Some people were into that back in the day, so that might be exactly what you're looking for.
You can take a peek at the "YUV" palette in the editor; which is more accurate to a true NES. Those other palettes built into NEStopia are... just beautiful lies. The NES palette is an abomination against good taste - it does not have a true Red or Yellow in its palette.
If these are the real numbers of the palette you're looking for (I'm skeptical!) this Quor guy has a fetish of turning blues into greens and such. Some people were into that back in the day, so that might be exactly what you're looking for.