NAME

       ex12bit  -  How to fake a 12-bit truecolor mode on an 8-bit card. Allegro game programming
       library.

SYNOPSIS

       #include <allegro.h>

       Example ex12bit

DESCRIPTION

       This program sets up a 12-bit mode on any 8-bit card, by setting up a  256-colour  palette
       that  will  fool the eye into grouping two 8-bit pixels into one 12-bit pixel. In order to
       do this, you make your 256-colour palette with all the combinations  of  blue  and  green,
       assuming  green ranges from 0-15 and blue from 0-14. This takes up 16x15=240 colours. This
       leaves 16 colours to use as red (red ranges from 0-15).  Then you put your  green/blue  in
       one  pixel,  and  your red in the pixel next to it. The eye gets fooled into thinking it's
       all one pixel.

       The example starts setting a normal 256 color mode, and construct a  special  palette  for
       it.  But then comes the trick: you need to write to a set of two adjacent pixels to form a
       single 12 bit dot. Two eight bit pixels is the same as one 16 bit pixel, so after  setting
       the video mode you need to hack the screen bitmap about, halving the width and changing it
       to use the 16 bit drawing code. Then, once you have packed a color into the correct format
       (using the makecol12() function below), any of the normal Allegro drawing functions can be
       used with this 12 bit display!

       Things to note:

       The horizontal width is halved, so you get resolutions like 320x480, 400x600, and 512x768.

       Because each dot is spread over two actual pixels, the display will be darker  than  in  a
       normal video mode.

       Any bitmap data will obviously need converting to the correct 12 bit format: regular 15 or
       16 bit images won't display correctly...

       Although this works like a truecolor mode, it is actually using a 256  color  palette,  so
       palette fades are still possible!

       This code only works in linear screen modes (don't try Mode-X).

SEE ALSO

       BITMAP(3alleg4),  END_OF_MAIN(3alleg4),  MATRIX(3alleg4),  PALETTE(3alleg4), RGB(3alleg4),
       allegro_error(3alleg4),          allegro_init(3alleg4),          allegro_message(3alleg4),
       apply_matrix(3alleg4),      blit(3alleg4),     circle(3alleg4),     clear_bitmap(3alleg4),
       clear_keybuf(3alleg4),          clear_to_color(3alleg4),           create_bitmap(3alleg4),
       create_bitmap_ex(3alleg4),          destroy_bitmap(3alleg4),         ellipsefill(3alleg4),
       fade_out(3alleg4),  fixcos(3alleg4),  fixed(3alleg4),  fixsin(3alleg4),   fixtoi(3alleg4),
       font(3alleg4), get_rotation_matrix(3alleg4), getpixel(3alleg4), install_keyboard(3alleg4),
       itofix(3alleg4),       keypressed(3alleg4),        line(3alleg4),        makecol(3alleg4),
       masked_blit(3alleg4),    putpixel(3alleg4),    screen(3alleg4),    set_clip_rect(3alleg4),
       set_color(3alleg4),  set_gfx_mode(3alleg4),  set_palette(3alleg4),   text_height(3alleg4),
       text_length(3alleg4), textout_ex(3alleg4), textprintf_ex(3alleg4)