Any technical reason for TMS colours?

By MäSäXi

Paragon (1884)

MäSäXi's picture

13-03-2010, 10:45

This wondering started in the late eighties, when I was making nice little graphical BASIC programs with my MSX. I liked to make everykind of colour cycling and that always made me wondering why designers didn´t put all "same colours" in same row, as like we all know, there are two greens together, colors 2 & 3, but dark green is color 12. There are two blues together, colors 4 & 5 but light blue is behind dark red. Next colours, red and pink are in more sensible place, as after them come both yellows in right order to make nice from-dark-to-light-and-vice-versa colour cycle with simple FOR-NEXT or :COLOR C:C=C+1, but it would have been better if dark red would have been before red. And grey and white are next to each other, but otherwise you must do some little routine by yourself, if you want to get some nice flashing colour cycle, like colors 4-5-7-5-4-etc.

I always wondered if Texas Instruments never had at least somehow artistic engineers or bosses who would had understood this or is there some technical reason why colours had to be arranged in this particular order?

I had always compared MSX colour order to Spectrum´s, as Clive´s machine´s colours are particularly designed easiness in mind, (to make things easy for beginner) to have colours which go from darkest to lightest and vice versa with just simple FOR I = 1 TO 8 : INK I : NEXT (ok, maybe that was not correct Spectrum syntax, but you got the idea).

Maybe this is not the biggest problem in the world, but it has always frustrated me as things could have made to be more easier.

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By Leo

Paragon (1236)

Leo's picture

13-03-2010, 19:32

maybe this can give some clue or elements for comparisons :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_8-bit_computer_hardware_palettes

By flyguille

Prophet (3031)

flyguille's picture

13-03-2010, 22:26

so, the one with those hardwired palletes is the TMS chip!