256 colors and Direct3D

I need some help here: i'm trying to emulate an old school feel limiting the color palette (no more than 20 colors haha). The problem is, the 256 colors mode doesn't work with Direct3D, and I need this mode because some computers have little performance issues with the others. The game will have some fade effects, so I really need to limit the colors. Thanks in advance :*)

It's impossible. You will have to hardcode it.

Or you could use software mode.

If it's really as old school as you say then HWA mode shouldn't be necessary.

Aw, too bad. Software mode works fine on my old PC but on the new it shows some screen tearing, and if I resize it only gets worse. By the way, someone told me it's dual core incompatibility or something, anyone knows about it? Thanks again :*)

If you turn v-sync on you will stop the screen tearing, but you could lose some speed.

Also keep in mind that real 256-colour apps won't work right on Windows 7 if they use the first 32 (IIRC) colours in the palette, as Windows plays with them.

Dynasoft, could you elaborate on that? I've successfully used a full palette on Windows 7 (random testing, nothing serious, but it worked).

I'm not sure of the exact repro steps, but all the old non-MMF2 256-colour games I have will show with technicolour madness unless explorer.exe is killed, due to it forcing the first set of colours to primary colours.

I assumed it was a global issue because it happens to all 256-colour things I've tried. MMF may be immune though...

Thanks. Seems like it. I actually rotated a custom palette at runtime without any issues.

EDIT: Actually, I just remembered that some colors were indeed fixed - but not 32 by far! R,G,B,C,M,Y, black and white IIRC...

I did say "IIRC" (If I Remember Correctly). I guess I didn't.

Apparently in 256-colour mode Windows reserves 20 colours in the palette, the first and last 10 colours: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_software_palettes#Microsoft_Windows_defaul t_20-color_palette

Yes, that's definitely them... more than I remembered. Thanks.