PALETTE - QB64Official/qb64 GitHub Wiki

The PALETTE statement can swap color settings, set colors to default or set the red, green and blue color components of palette colors.

Syntax

PALETTE [attribute%, red% + (green% * 256) + (blue% * 65536)]

PALETTE [existingAttribute%, newAttribute%]

Description

  • red%, green% and blue% values can range from 0 to 63. Many color shades are possible in non-DAC color attributes.
  • If the red%, green% and blue% color intensity settings are all the same value the resulting color is a shade of grey.
  • A swap is often used with DAC color attributes that cannot change RGB settings. Only the RGB color settings are swapped from original existingAttribute% to newAttribute%. Screens 0 thru 9 support swaps. Screen 10 supports up to attribute 8 only.
  • PALETTE without any value sets any changed RGB settings back to the default color settings, including DAC colors.
  • PALETTE USING can be used when color intensity values are stored in an Arrays.
  • QB64 implements the _PALETTECOLOR statement to provide extended palette functionality.

QBasic

  • Screens 0, 7 and 9 (DAC) colors could not be changed using the first syntax, but the program could use OUT to change intensity settings of attributes 1 thru 5.

Example(s)

Displaying all 64 DAC color hues as backgrounds in SCREEN 9 using a PALETTE swap.


  SCREEN 9 ' background is default black
  LOCATE 20, 33: PRINT "Press any Key!"  
  FOR i = 1 TO 64
   a$ = INPUT$(1) ' wait for a keypress
   PALETTE 0, i
  NEXT

Note: Other attributes (1 to 15) can also be swapped for DAC foreground colors.

See Also