Palette

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Palette

Sets or reads the colours of a palette mode, or restores the default palette.

Syntax

Palette [Get] [index, color]
Palette [Get] [index, r, g, b]
Palette [Get] Using arrayname(idx)

Parameters

• index
• color
• r
• g
• b
• arrayname(idx)

Description

The Palette statement is used to retrieve or customize the current palette for graphics modes with a color depth of up to 8bpp; using Palette while in a mode with a higher color depth will have no effect. Calling Palette with no argument restores the default palette for current graphics mode, as set by the Screen (Graphics) statement.
The GfxLib sets a default palette when a Screen mode is initialized.

First form

If you specify index and color, these are dependent on the current mode:

Screen mode	index range	color range
1	0-3	0-15
2	0-1	0-15
7,8	0-15	0-15
9	0-15	0-63
11	0-1	see below
12	0-15	see below
13 to 21	0-255	see below

In screen modes 1, 2, 7, 8 and 9 you can assign to each color index one of the colors in the available range. In other screen modes, the color must be specified in the form &hBBGGRR, where BB, GG and RR are the blue, green and red components ranging &h0-&h3F in hexadecimal (0-63 in decimal). If you don't like hexadecimal form, you can use the following formula to compute the integer value to pass to this parameter:
color = red Or (green Shl 8) Or (blue Shl 16)
Where red, green and blue must range 0-63. Please note that color values accepted by Palette are not the in the same form as returned by the RGB macro (the red and blue fields are inverted, and the range is different); this is for backward compatibility with QB.

Second form

In the second form, you specify the red, green and blue components for a palette entry directly, by calling Palette with 4 parameters. In this case r, g and b must be in the range 0-255.

Third form

Calling Palette Using allows to set a list of color values all at once; you should pass an array holding enough elements as the color indices available for your current graphics mode color depth (2 for 1bpp, 4 for 2bpp, 16 for 4bpp or 256 for 8bpp). The array elements must be integer color values in the form described above. The colors stored into arrayname starting with given idx index are then assigned to each palette index, starting with index 0.

Form 1 and 3 are for backward compatibility with QB; form 2 is meant to ease palette handling. Any change to the palette is immediately visible on screen.

If the Get option is specified, Palette retrieves instead of setting color values for the current palette. The parameters have the same meaning as specified for the form being used, but in this case color, r, g and b must be variables passed by reference that will hold the color RGB values on function exit.

Remarks

Differences from QB

• QBasic did not support PALETTE GET to retrieve a palette.
• QBasic did not allow passing individual red/green/blue values.

See also

• Screen (Graphics)
• Color
• Using
• Default Palettes

Examples

' Setting a single color, form 1.

Screen 15

Locate 1,1: Color 15

Print "Press any key to change my color!"

Sleep

' Now change color 15 hues to bright red

Palette 15, &h00003F

Sleep

' Getting a single color, form 2.

Dim As ULong r, g, b

Screen 13

Palette Get 32, r, g, b

Print "Color 32 hues:"

Print Using "Red:### Green:### Blue:###"; r; g; b

Sleep

' Getting whole palette, form 3.

Dim pal(0 To 255) As ULong

Screen 13

Palette Get Using pal

For i As Integer = 0 To 15

    Print Using "Color ## = &"; i; Hex(pal(i), 6)

Next i

Sleep

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Category: 2D Drawing Functions
Kind: keyword

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Reproduced from the FreeBASIC Wiki Manual under the GNU Free Documentation License 1.3 — with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts and no Back-Cover Texts. Copyright © the FreeBASIC project and wiki contributors. See License.