Monster Media 1994 #2

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Text File | 1994-07-26 | 16KB | 274 lines

▄█████▄ ▄█████▄ ██ ▄█████▄ ██████▄ ██ ███████ █████ Colorize - Text mode ██ ▀▀ ██ ██ ██ ██ ██ ██ ██ ██ ▄██▀ ██ palette editing tool ██ ██ ██ ██ ██ ██ ██▄▄▄█▀ ██ ▄██▀ ██▄▄ ██ ▄▄ ██ ██ ██ ██ ██ ██ ██ ██ ▄██▀ ██ Documentation File ▀█████▀ ▀█████▀ █████ ▀█████▀ ██ ██ ██ ███████ █████ This entire document is Copyright 1994 Calvin French ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Table O' Contents : ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Disclaimer, Copyright, Etc. ...................................... 2 Introduction ..................................................... What is Colorize? ................................................ Using Colorize ................................................... When are the Colors Reset? ....................................... The Included PAL Files ........................................... PAL2EXE .......................................................... Contacting Me .................................................... ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Disclaimer, Copyright, Etc. : ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── I, Calvin French, the author, hereby disclaim all personal liability to any and all damages or undesired effects which are caused by Colorize or any of it's files. I make no guarantees on the operation of Colorize, whatsoever. USE THIS PROGRAM AT YOUR OWN RISK! The entire Colorize software utility is Copyright 1994 Calvin French. You may freely distribute the ShareWare version of Colorize software utility and are encouraged to do so provided it is in it's original, unmodified form. ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Introduction : ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Thank you for choosing to try Colorize! I trust that you will find it very useful in creating a more aesthetically pleasing computing environment! (if it doesn't, I messed up somewhere! <grin>) Colorize is ShareWare, or user supported software. That means you can use Colorize for free for a short demo period. If you find Colorize useful and wish to continue to use it, a registration fee of 12$ (US or Canadian) is required. Otherwise you must remove Colorize from your hard disk. Please see the file ORDER.TXT for information on obtaining the registered version of Colorize. Colorize is a simple software utility designed to modify the colors your computer normally uses via a special feature available on all VGA-compatable (this includes SVGA) graphics adapters known as the DAC register set, or as I call it, the "palette". This will allow you to change any of the default 16 colors to any of 262,144 available shades! And what's more, you can do it easily and quickly! Colorize will not run under Windows, or most other Graphical User Interface (GUI). This is because a most GUI's have thier own system of orginizing colors, one which is normally entirely different from the method Colorize uses. Colorize is intended for DOS systems only. ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── What is Colorize? : ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Colorize is a software utility designed to make your computing environment more aesthetically pleasing by letting you alter the colors to a degree far greater than is normally supported by utility programs. On VGA systems, the colors in text (non-graphics) modes are orginized so that each color has a corresponding number. When a program wants to display text (or lines, boxes, etc.) in a certain color, it does not actually select a color, per se, but rather a number. VGA then interprets the number as a color. In text mode, there are 16 of these numbers, and they are numbered 0 to 15. Color number 0 is normally black. Color number 4, on the other hand, is normally red. What Colorize does, via your VGA card, is make it so that every instance of a certain color number is not neccesarily what it should be. That means, in plainer terms, you can change color 4 to be light pink, green, blue, a darker blue, or anything else you want out of the 262,144 possible colors!!! Colorize does not alter your other programs at all. In fact, your other programs will not even realize that you have done anything. This is because Colorize uses the VGA hardware directly, bypassing DOS, and any other program which might be running completely! Unless something is wrong with your VGA graphics adapter, Colorize should never permanently alter your VGA hardware or harm it. If you have questions as to the safety of Colorize, I can only offer this: Nearly every game, utility, or any other kind of program that uses a graphics mode (i.e., Windows for example) does precisely the same thing that Colorize does. This is why a 256 color mode can provide near-photographic images: it is not actually 256 colors that can be displayed (this would nowhere near suffice) but rather it is 256 different color numbers which can be each assigned to one of 262,144 actual colors! Colorize will allow you to save your edited "palettes" to disk, via a "save" function. Later on, for instance once you have rebooted your system, Colorize will then be able to load one of these "palettes", thereby restoring your changed color codings. ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Using Colorize : ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── To run Colorize from the DOS prompt, type in: COLORIZE <enter> A short delay screen will then pop up informing you that you are using the UNREGISTERED version of Colorize and that you are required to register (pay for) it if you continue to use it. When the message "Press any key." is displayed, do so. A window will then be displayed. It will look something like this: ┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ Colorize! Copyright 1994 Calvin French │ ├──────┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┤ │ [-+] │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ ├──────┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┤ │ ┌────────┐ ┌───────────────┐ │ │ │ Save │ │ │ Red ──────────────────────────────── │ │ └────────┘ │ │ │ │ ┌────────┐ │ │ Green ──────────────────────────────── │ │ │ Load │ │ │ │ │ └────────┘ │ │ Blue ──────────────────────────────── │ │ ┌────────┐ ├──────────┬────┤ │ │ │ Exit │ │ Color: │ │ Red [ ] Green [ ] Blue [ ] │ │ └────────┘ └──────────┴────┘ │ │ File: ░░░░░░░░.PAL [<ALT+S> Save] [<ALT+L> Load] [<ALT+X> Exit] │ └──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ The top line contains my copyight information. The next part contains 16 boxes. Each will have a different color inside. One will be highlighted. This is where you select what color number you would like to alter. To select it, click on it with the mouse, or use the + and - keys, respectively. The three buttons on the left hand side will allow you to save your palette, load a previously saved palette, or exit Colorize. These can be accessed by clicking with the mouse or using the shortcut keys: <ALT+S> to save, <ALT+L> to load, and <ALT+X> to exit. The big box in the middle will have your currently selected color inside. Below that (in the box beside the box marked "Color:") is the number of that color. To the right of that are three control bars, marked "Red", "Green" and "Blue". On each one of these bars will be an indicator (control knob) which you can move left or right with the right or left arrow keys or by clicking somewhere along that bar with the mouse. Below that are three fields (again marked "Red", "Green" and "Blue) which will contain the red, green, and blue brightness for the current color number. These values range from 0 to 63, giving you a possibility of 64 * 64 * 64 or 262,144 different shades!!! If you are using the keyboard, the up and down arrow keys will select which brightness rating you wish to change: red, green, or blue. When you press <ALT+S> or click on the save button, the mouse cursor will dissapear (if you have a mouse installed) and the cursor will appear in the file entry box at the bottom (next to the word "File:") Here, type in the name of the file you would like Colorize to save your palette to. When you press <ENTER>, the palette will be saved to that file and control will return to the palette editor. Pressing <ESC> will cancel this. When you press <ALT+L> or click on the load button, again you will be given a chance to enter a name in the file entry box. Type in the name of the file you would like to load (remember it must be in the current directory) When you press <ENTER>, Colorize will load that file from disk. If you try and load a non-Colorize PAL file, or a file that does not exist, Colorize will not complain or try and stop you. In the case of a nonexistant file, a 0 length file with the name you specified above will be dropped in your current directory. In the case of a non-Colorize PAL file, Colorize will misinterpret the data and your colors will become all "jumbled". Pressing <ALT+X> or clicking on the exit button will exit Colorize. If you have NOT saved the current palette, Colorize will NOT warn you before you exit. If you accidentally hit <ALT+X> when you wanted to save the palette you were editing, you have only to reload Colorize (via the DOS prompt) and re-access the save function! Also note that it is not neccesary to save or load in order to change the Colors of your desktop. ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── When are the Colors Reset? : ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── It is important for you to know that the changes Colorize makes to your VGA hardware are by no means permanent. Whenever you reboot your computer or exit from any kind of graphics-mode program, the colors will be totally reset to default. When you run a graphics mode application, (such as a VGA game, or Windows) two things must happen. First, a graphics mode will be initialized. Second, you will exit the program and the text mode will be re-established. Unfortunately, when either of these things happen, the VGA hardware's palette is completely reset. Games or applications which utilize the same technique Colorize uses have to deal with this as well, and they themselves must set the palette to thier own specifications AFTER the graphics mode has been set. When the text mode is set, again the same thing happens. For you to change the palette to your own colors, you will have to do the same thing, after the mode has been set (i.e., upon exit from a graphics mode application). This normally means loading up Colorize and reloading a previously saved PAL file, or if you have the registered version you can simply type in the name of an EXE file which PAL2EXE creates and the palette will be restored. Also, it is not too too terribly uncommon for a TEXT mode application to also alter the VGA palette. This is unfortunate again, for you. For example, I have seen a configuration utility for a very impressive virtual reality game which does just that. As well, every time you boot or <CTRL+ALT+DEL> your system, text mode is re-initialized. If you have registered, you can simply include the name of an EXE file PAL2EXE creates into your AUTOEXEC.BAT file, or if you have not registered, you might also include the name of the Colorize EXE file, and go through the simple process of loading a PAL file. ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── The Included PAL Files : ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Along with Colorize, I have included several PAL files to give you a better idea of what you can do with Colorize. However everyone has different tastes so you may not like either! Feel free to do whatever you like with the colors... there's nothing that says you can't make red into a dark green, or blue into yellow! DEFAULT.PAL contains the default palette, initialized every time text mode is set. PASTELS.PAL is a "foggier" version of the default palette, and is a nice change. SIMILAR.PAL is my favorite, and contains basically the default palette, only altered subtly to make it more brilliant. Remember, once you register you can convert these PAL files (and any others you create) into EXE's with the program PAL2EXE. ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── PAL2EXE : ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── When you register, you will recieve, along with your registered copy of Colorize, another program, PAL2EXE. PAL2EXE will convert a Colorize-format PAL file into an extremely compact 101-byte EXE file, which you may then simply invoke from the command line. PAL2EXE is not shareware, it is commercial software which you can only recieve through registering Colorize. ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Contacting Me : ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── If you would like to get in touch with me, my mailing address is: Calvin French 1319, 89th AVE SW Calgary, Alberta Canada T2V-0W9 As well, I can be reached on FidoNet netmail through 1:134/40 (TechTalk BBS) or 1:134/75 (RJ's Byteline BBS). FidoNet netmail is always preferred because it is both faster and easier (and cheaper). Also, I welcome comments and constructive criticisms.