Graphical palette tweak/enhancements for Atari 800 / Atari 5200 emulation

pjs · 1 Feb 2017, 08:48

Hello,

Just thought I would share some tweaks I did for the Atari800 emulator which made my image 100% better. It now resembles the accuracy of the Atari 3200 or 7800 emulation. This will vary from one display to another, but in general the default palette has too much brightness and dull colors. These atari800.cfg settings fixed it for me. The blacks are now 100% dark (not grey) and colors are vivid. I compared it to the darkness of 3200 and 7800 and they are identical now.

COLOURS_NTSC_SATURATION=0.5
COLOURS_NTSC_CONTRAST=0.5
COLOURS_NTSC_BRIGHTNESS=-0.5
COLOURS_NTSC_GAMMA=1.2

Feel free to fine tune for your display.

Note: these settings are for NTSC so DEFAULT_TV_MODE=NTSC should be set in the config. If you use PAL ROMs, you'll want to have DEFAULT_TV_MODE=PAL set and change the same settings for COLOURS_PAL instead of NTSC.