so @TomF talked me into making it so blending colors on the #Mega68k console is true blending rather than resolving back to one of the 64 palette colors (so that the output is always 64 color)
i made a utility that takes an image and converts it into a tile layer with only 16 base colors with the framebuffer overlaid using all 64 colors with alpha blending and i can't help but wonder if this isn't too powerful
@eniko
is this blending between multiple tile layers, or a tile layer and sprite layers?
could it also work with moving objects that stay aligned to the tile grid? (i.e. board games, tetris blocks)
@clyde it's blending between one tile layer and the framebuffer (which sort of acts like a layer as well)
the trick is that the console's framebuffer uses 1 byte per pixel, allowing you to use all 64 colors plus all 4 blend factors (25%, 50%, 75%, and 100%) so even though the tiles are restricted to a 16 color palette the framebuffer can blend over that to create 16 * 256 = 4096 theoretical colors
it would be very hard to do with anything non-static because you have to figure out for each pixel which of those 4096 combinations is closest to your source pixel
you can however layer the 2nd tile layer on top of this, as well as sprites
@eniko with the 2nd tile layer and sprites it might make a good background for a shmup if it can be scrolled
wrt whether it's too powerful it seems like exactly the kind of neat trick that makes retro systems and fantasy console development fun!
Eniko (moved ➡ gamedev.place)
Clyde (GameTank Guy)