Also Amstrad's Video RAM was shared with the Z80 RAM. This and a cheap concept with fewer custom chips to ease the CPU could turn it into a sluggish snail if badly programmed.
Yet colourful games with few scrolling requirements, reflection games such as [[Klax (cartridge)|KLAX]]... were perhaps the easiest medium for a CPC to shine above other 8 bit computers.
Too bad too few graphically-heavy Role-Playing Games were produced.
*'''Mode 1''': '''320×200''' pixels with 4 colors (2 bpp)
*'''Mode 2''': '''640×200''' pixels with 2 colors (1 bpp)
*'''Mode 3''': '''160x200160×200''' pixels with 4 colors (2bpp) (this is not an official mode, but rather a side-effect of the hardware)
The Video modes are known to display pixels with different sizes.
Basically, the Amstrad CPC Video works like a CGA video card from a PC. But extra features like a 16 colours mode exist.
The dimensions in pixels given could be raised with clever use of FullScreen Trick (often dubbed erronuously as "[[Programming:Overscan|overscan mode]]".)
This then allows with a video memory of 24Ko 24 KB (approximately) to displays on the standard screen up to :* Full screen '''Mode 0''': '''192x272192×272''' pixels with 16 colors (4 bpp)* Full screen'''Mode 1''': '''384x272384×272''' pixels with 4 colors (2 bpp)* Full screen'''Mode 2''': '''768x272768×272''' pixels with 2 colors (1 bpp)
Also the use of scanlines to increase vertical resolution is not "easly" possible on Amstrad CPC.
When dealing with Full screen on real Hardware, the vertical limit of 256 pixels is the "safely displayed zone". As the actually displayed zone may vary depending the time your monitor ran (warmed ?) or from individual hardware to another. The same goes for horizontal diplay as we deal with old electronic.
==Colour attributes==
It is Cubic, generated by "Trigits" (ternary digits)
* This palette is used by the [[CPC|Amstrad CPC]] old series only and is almost not found in any other computers (but clones of course).
* The Toshiba [[PASOPIA 7]] is known to feature the same 3-level RGB palette as the Amstrad CPC, its video modes are different than Amstrad CPC's ones though.
:{| style="border-style: none" border="0" cellpadding="0"
*To set a CPC palette on modern Graphic softwaressoftware.
*Also the official names of the colours may not be that accurate...
"Purple" is more like some kind of Magenta while "Magenta" is more like some sort of MAuve Mauve and Mauve a Purple... and so on.
"White" is actually grey while "bright white" is white...
As shown... the CPC original palette is good as it enable gradiants in Black and White + 3 shades for the 6 basic colours...
Red, Green, Blue... and Yellow, Cyan and Magenta (purlplepurple).
Added to those, there are a few special crossbreed colours such as "Mauve" (2 shades : Mauve and Pastel blue), orange (can mix with red and yellows), "Purple" (a bluer Red) and a lot of "light greeens" (turning into Cyan or yellow).
[[File:Mire CPC.png]]
This kind of picture can be obtained on a real CPC (through mode0 and Rasters) in order to test the monitors, aand and also to understand at first sight how the Colours logic works. [[File:Stretched CPC palette macdeath.png]]
==='''12-bit RGB of the PLUS'''===