GBA Color Picker v1.3 Readme

---

Changelog:

Version 1.0, released March 2nd, 2004 -- I finished writing the program, and I wrote this readme.  That's it.  Move along.

Version 1.3, released March 15th, 2004 -- Enough changes to make me skip releasing a v1.1 AND a v1.2. :)  The "Transparent?" checkbox has been removed, since it's pointless (there's no point in modifying transparent colors), and, thanks to Viper, just a simple check or uncheck of the "Byteswap?" checkbox will cause a change in the text box below "Overall Color."  Additionally, I've added a "Copy Overall Color to Clipboard" button to do just that, made a slight alteration to the vertical window size, disabled the "Maximize" button (the program looks nasty when maximized), disabled resizing of the window (resizing made it look bad, too), and made it so that you can type whatever value you want into one of those boxes to the right of the scrollbars instead of moving the scrollbars around, if you're so inclined.  Whatever you do, though, make sure that there's SOMETHING in all of those box at all times (i.e. "type over" the current number), or the program will, unfortunately, crash.  I've put a limit on there, too, so anything higher than 248 will display as...248.  I've also made a couple of code optimizations (thanks to Viper for educating me in the ways of String()), so it's slightly less messy on my end (and hopefully slightly faster for you).  Last, but not least, I updated this readme.

---

The GBA Color Picker is exactly that: it's a program that lets you pick out Gameboy Advance-compatible colors via scrollbars/sliders and displays information about each color value.  The reasons I wrote this were 1) I couldn't find a program like this, 2) I got tired of the "mess around with a calculator and Paintbrush to create/modify colors" deal while hacking Sonic Battle, and 3) I think other GBA ROM hackers or game creators might find this useful.  It's very easy to use, too.  In fact, it's so easy to use, I don't even know why I'm writing a readme for it. :)

So what does each control on this thing do?

Red, Green, and Blue Scrollbars - these control the amount of red, green, and blue, respectively, in the overall color.  (Red increments overall color by 0x10, green by 0x20, and blue by 0x400).  The text boxes to the right show what value each scrollbar is currently set at, but don't think you can cheat by dragging the scrollbars' sliders in tiny increments/decrements to give you more colors: I've set it up so that the actual/displayed colors' values only change with each increase by 8.  And yes, I am aware the highest decimal color value is 248.  This is supposed to help you make/edit (latter term is a sketchy description, at best) GBA colors, remember?  If you want a color picker to help you pick out web page colors, I recommend you head over to pagetutor.com or something.  Now, with the release of v1.3, you can type your desired value in there, but be sure to heed the warning that I've put in the changelog (above).

Overall Color color box - this shows what your colors will look like once they've been "mixed" together.

The text box below the color box - this displays the 16-bit overall color value.  You can't go and use this value as-is, however; the color is displayed "normally" for ease of readability.

The "Byteswap?" checkbox - check this if you want to byteswap the overall color value.  You need to do this if you want to be able to copy and paste your color value into a hex editor or whatever, as this makes the color "GBA-ready."

The "Copy Overall Color to Clipboard" button - what this does should be fairly obvious:  it copies the value in the text box below "Overall Color" and sticks it on the Windows Clipboard, ready to be pasted wherever.

The "Binary" frame - the text boxes in here show the binary value of each individual color value (GBA, i.e. 0-31).

The "Hexadecimal" frame - see above, except replace "binary" with "hexadecimal."

The "GBA Values" frame - these show you the GBA RGB values, 0-31.

I hope these explanations have been clear enough, and that you have as much fun using this (maybe to help hack some ROMs or help make a game) as I did writing it. :)

---

Special thanks/shouts:

ShadowTheChog (VB tutorials), Acmlm's Board (VB tutorials), Tristan Penmann (source code of S.L.E.E.P. showed me a few VB tricks), Viper (optimization ideas and "Byteswap?" checkbox fix), Ice Mario, SubDrag, Rune, Wreck, Doctorsunglasses, Simon Wai, Coolboyman, Banjo-Fella, Parasyte, Dr. Ian, Knux, King Samon, the crowd at #jaimas and #vgmusic, Narvick and everyone at ZD, DaBreegster, Gold Jinjo, Cyberdude93, Doomsday Forte, whoever made Icon Maker, and anyone else I've missed.  Also, thank YOU for having enough interest to check this program out.

Program and readme 2004 Icy Guy.  My e-mail address is IcyGuy900[Shift+2]aol.com, so if you need to contact me for any reason, you can reach me there.  And no, I don't need anymore offers to get 20-70% off on Xanax, Prozac, or Viagra, thanks, or how to bring a mortgate down, or whatever.