Where Can I Find the PlayChoice 10 RGB Values?

Where Can I Find the PlayChoice 10 RGB Values?
by Jedi QuestMaster on 2014-02-03 (#124888)

So the PlayChoice is the only "NES" machine that uses RGB I assume? I tried looking for these values but got lost in the massive amount of topics trying to emulate the NTSC video.

Are Nestopia's RGB values taken from the PC10? If not, where can I find them? Your help is appreciated. :mrgreen:

This is for an NES-style PC game I'm working on. :mrgreen:

Re: Where Can I Find the PlayChoice 10 RGB Values?
by ccovell on 2014-02-03 (#124894)

You can glean the PC-10 (RGB PPU) values from here, but as you can see they're far from the original composite NES palette.

Re: Where Can I Find the PlayChoice 10 RGB Values?
by Dwedit on 2014-02-03 (#124895)

I wouldn't want to "glean" anything from a .jpg.

Re: Where Can I Find the PlayChoice 10 RGB Values?
by tepples on 2014-02-03 (#124896)

Other Nintendo consoles with RGB output can play NES games in emulation:

acNES for GameCube (used in Animal Crossing)
acNES for Game Boy Advance (used in Animal Crossing Advance Play versions, e-Reader, and Classic NES Series) in the Game Boy Player accessory
PocketNES for Game Boy Advance (used in rereleases of Atlus and Jaleco games) in the Game Boy Player accessory
Virtual Console for Wii

I really wouldn't trust the GBA palettes because they've been gamma-corrected to compensate for the GBA's overly dark display. But if emulators don't count at all, consider a third-party PPU add-on that watches the signals going in and out of the PPU and uses them to create an RGB signal. Also consider the Famicom Titler and Sharp TVs with a Famicom cassette port, which use an RGB PPU.

Dwedit wrote:

I wouldn't want to "glean" anything from a .jpg.

Each output channel of the RGB PPU (red, green, blue) is known to have 8 levels, much like the Genesis VDP. If you can pick out these 8 peaks in the histogram, you have a pretty good idea of what the original levels were supposed to be. On the other hand, someone has done this for you: 2C03 palette

Re: Where Can I Find the PlayChoice 10 RGB Values?
by blargg on 2014-02-03 (#124908)

Dwedit wrote:

I wouldn't want to "glean" anything from a .jpg.

Why the scare quotes?

Code:

  Glean \Glean\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Gleaned; p. pr. & vb. n.
     Gleaning.] [OE. glenen, OF. glener, glaner, F. glaner, fr.
     LL. glenare; cf. W. glan clean, glanh?u to clean, purify, or
     AS. gelm, gilm, a hand?ul.]
     [1913 Webster]
     1. To gather after a reaper; to collect in scattered or
        fragmentary parcels, as the grain left by a reaper, or
        grapes left after the gathering.
        [1913 Webster]
  
              To glean the broken ears after the man
              That the main harvest reaps.          --Shak.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     2. To gather from (a field or vineyard) what is left.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     3. To collect with patient and minute labor; to pick out; to
        obtain.
        [1913 Webster]
  
              Content to glean what we can from . . . experiments.
                                                    --Locke.
        [1913 Webster]

Re: Where Can I Find the PlayChoice 10 RGB Values?
by tepples on 2014-02-03 (#124909)

blargg wrote:

Dwedit wrote:

I wouldn't want to "glean" anything from a .jpg.

Why the scare quotes?

That depends on whether English orthography provides a reliable method to distinguish non-pejorative direct quotation of a single word in ccovell's post from the pejorative quotation sometimes called "scare quotes".

Re: Where Can I Find the PlayChoice 10 RGB Values?
by Jedi QuestMaster on 2014-02-03 (#124913)

I'd rather not rely on any specific emulator's RGB. I'd like to go with something somewhat official back in the day.

ccovell wrote:

You can glean the PC-10 (RGB PPU) values from here, but as you can see they're far from the original composite NES palette.

Can I get a PNG of this, then?

tepples wrote:

Also consider the Famicom Titler and Sharp TVs with a Famicom cassette port, which use an RGB PPU.

Anyone have the values for the Sharp RGB then? I'd like to do a comparison.

tepples wrote:

If you can pick out these 8 peaks in the histogram, you have a pretty good idea of what the original levels were supposed to be. On the other hand, someone has done this for you: 2C03 palette

Interesting. Any explanation why the two grays are missing? Or is this just how the Playchoice 10 is?

Re: Where Can I Find the PlayChoice 10 RGB Values?
by tepples on 2014-02-03 (#124916)

Jedi QuestMaster wrote:

I'd rather not rely on any specific emulator's RGB. I'd like to go with something somewhat official back in the day.

The Wii values are probably official by now though. In any case, you can take the known characteristics of the NES video output and run them through a TV emulator; this is the approach used by Bisqwit's palette generator.

Quote:

Anyone have the values for the Sharp RGB then? I'd like to do a comparison.

The Famicom Titler uses a PlayChoice PPU, as do the Vs. System games Duck Hunt and Tennis.

Quote:

Any explanation why the two grays are missing? Or is this just how the Playchoice 10 is?

$2D and $3D in the PlayChoice PPU do happen to be black. I guess they're so close to $00 and $10 respectively that Nintendo thought games were using $00 and $10 instead.

Re: Where Can I Find the PlayChoice 10 RGB Values?
by Jedi QuestMaster on 2014-02-03 (#124919)

tepples wrote:

The Wii values are probably official by now though.

In that case, I'd like to do a comparison with these values. Anyone have them? I can't find them.

tepples wrote:

In any case, you can take the known characteristics of the NES video output and run them through a TV emulator; this is the approach used by Bisqwit's palette generator.

Thank you. I remembered going to this page once. I can go off my RCA TV settings, which cranks up the brightness & saturation

Re: Where Can I Find the PlayChoice 10 RGB Values?
by tepples on 2014-02-03 (#124920)

The palette generator looks usable to me with default settings except 1.2 or 1.5 saturation and 2.0 gamma.

Re: Where Can I Find the PlayChoice 10 RGB Values?
by Jedi QuestMaster on 2014-02-03 (#124922)

Not me. I like to crank the brightness to 1.5!

Or do I dare say it? :shock:

2.0?!!!

Edit: Oh, I see. One of the grays disappears when I do that.

And I'd still like to see the Wii NES's RGB palette, in case I do use that.

Re: Where Can I Find the PlayChoice 10 RGB Values?
by ccovell on 2014-02-03 (#124935)

Jedi QuestMaster wrote:

Can I get a PNG of this, then?

Anyone have the values for the Sharp RGB then? I'd like to do a comparison.

Interesting. Any explanation why the two grays are missing? Or is this just how the Playchoice 10 is?

Sorry, I don't have a PNG handy anymore. I captured the RGB PPU's values from my Famicom Titler (using direct RGB input and a video capture card), and its PPU is identical to the Playchoice-10. The RGB PPU is a little different and inadequate colour-wise compared to the composite PPU, as you can see. You can use this palette for whatever project you have, but I wouldn't recommend it...

Re: Where Can I Find the PlayChoice 10 RGB Values?
by Jedi QuestMaster on 2014-02-05 (#125078)

OK, I don't know where you got those composite colors, but the third row from the top is totally off. They should look more blue. To give you an idea, the third color in that column is used for the SMB sky.

Re: Where Can I Find the PlayChoice 10 RGB Values?
by Dwedit on 2014-02-06 (#125117)

Here's the Nintendulator NTSC palette vs the PC10 palette:

Attachment:

ntsc_pc10_nintendulator.png [ 1.03 KiB | Viewed 6339 times ]

Re: Where Can I Find the PlayChoice 10 RGB Values?
by tokumaru on 2014-02-06 (#125119)

Jedi QuestMaster wrote:

the third row from the top is totally off.

That's the problem with the NES palette... you can't accurately reproduce it, something always looks "off".

Re: Where Can I Find the PlayChoice 10 RGB Values?
by tepples on 2014-02-06 (#125122)

Something looking "off" might have two reasons:

NTSC is Never The Same Color. Decoders on different makes and models of TV operate differently to "enhance" the image, and even across the same model, players might have dials tweaked differently.
The human visual system processes colors based on the differences with other colors in the same scene. Color $22 (the Super Mario Bros. sky) looks very different in the context of a game screenshot compared to the context of a color chart.