CompuServe Thread

Brian–

2 messages in this thread
#158348From: William F. KneelandMar 11, 1995 1:52 AM
Brian– I am writing an application in Visual Basic that uses the Autodesk VBPlay.VBX and its .DLL. This program is written to be displayed in 256 colors. When I play an .FLC file against a background image in the program, the colors become distorted as the focus is switched from the background image to the .FLC file. This occurs even when both the .FLC and the background image use the same palette, each the same 230 colors. I do not have this problem when displaying another image against my background image. I would have thought that using the same color palette would prevent this problem. If I then change video drivers to 64K colors, the problem goes away. I'm stuck. Can you–or anyone else–help? Thanks, –Bill
#158737From: Brian Rudolph [Adesk]Mar 13, 1995 6:15 PM
<<I would have thought that using the same color palette would prevent this problem. If I then change video drivers to 64K colors, the problem goes away.>> Count your blessings, most people can't make it go away at all. The problem is that FLC palletes are not actually Windows compatable. You can minimize the effects of the palette flashing, but sometimes you can never get rid of them entirely. To minimize the effects, make sure you are using a common palette for all bitmaps and animations. (It sounds like you are already doing that.) Also, in that common palette, make it use only 236 colors. Windows uses the first and last 10 palette positions for itself, so if your 256 color palette leaves the first ten and last ten unused within the animation, (so you use a total of 236 colors) that helps reduce palette flash problems. -Brian