Effect

Alters MSX color palette, loads default color palette or restores color palette from VRAM. It can be used in all screen modes, but has no visual effect in SCREEN 8.

Remark: To alter MSX color palette in KANJI text modes, you need to use CALL PALETTE.

Syntaxes

• COLOR = (<Color>,<RedLuminance>,<GreenLuminance>,<BlueLuminance>)

• COLOR = NEW

• COLOR = RESTORE

Note: No parameter can be omitted.

Parameters

<Color> is a number between 0 and 15. It can be a numerical constant variable, an array variable or an expression.

Note that color 0 is a transparent color, it means that border space is seen transparently - to handle it as a 'normal' color, you need to use VDP(9)=VDP(9) OR &H20 (back to transparent feature with VDP(9)=VDP(9) AND &HDF).

<RedLuminance>, <GreenLuminance> and <BlueLuminance> are numbers between 0 and 7.

NEW allows to load the default MSX color palette, as it was when you turn on the computer. It can be a good idea to place this statement at the beginning and the end of your program.

RESTORE allows to restore the color palette from VRAM, for example when it has been stored by a graphic program.

If you BSAVE with ,S option, you can save the contents of VRAM to the disk along with color palette infos. If you BLOAD with ,S option, you can load such palette data to VRAM, but there are not yet any changes to the actually displayed colors. If you execute COLOR=RESTORE, you can display the picture in the same colors at the time you saved with BSAVE,S.

Examples

COLOR=(7,4,3,5)

10 SCREEN 2
20 BLOAD "BOX",S
30 COLOR=RESTORE
40 GOTO 40

Default palette

Storage of palette in VRAM

MSX-BASIC stores/restores palette to/from VRAM, but the address is different for each screen mode. The palette is stored in VDP native format. (R*16+B,G) Here is list of addresses for each mode:

Related to

CALL PALETTE, COLOR, SCREEN, SET PAGE, WIDTH

Compatibility

MSX-BASIC 2.0 or higher